‘What about the light? Lucian will be in the dark?’
‘He will have a striker and tinder box in his pocket.’
We waited. I distracted myself from worrying by wishing I was crushed in Lucian’s arms, not James’s, and being thankful for modern matches, torches and light switches. Imagine being in the pitch dark and trying to strike a spark to light a wick you couldn’t even see.
What if Lucian was trapped down there?
Chapter Nine
Lucian emerged from the cellar after fifteen endless minutes. He had cobwebs in his hair and grey dusty smears on his black breeches and I breathed for the first time since Foxy had appeared, or so it seemed.
He stuck the candle back on its spike and joined us on the stairs. Without a word we tiptoed up the uncarpeted wooden treads and arrived in the hallway. ‘Keep going up,’ Lucian whispered.
It was easier the higher we went. There was carpet on the stairs and Lucian took a candlestick from a side table as we passed and struck a light. At the attic level he lit another stuck in a crooked tin. ‘Tallow candles up here. They might notice the difference in smell if we burn wax.’ The man had a talent for detail apparently. ‘Look for locked doors, boarded up openings, scrape marks on the floor, anything that seems out of place. The cellar was clear unless someone has been to remarkable trouble to construct false brick walls. There were no scuff marks on the ground, no signs of disturbance to the floor or walls.’
We split up, each taking a candle. I went towards the back and found a door leading into a tiny vestibule with two rooms off it, each containing two beds. These were the maids’ chambers, by the look of it. I searched rapidly, but they had such few possessions that it was easy and the walls showed no sign of any spaces behind them.
I left and the men joined me, both shaking their heads. ‘Nothing.’ Lucian pinched out the candles with care so there was no lingering smell and put them back.
The next floor took longer. Th
ree bedchambers, three dressing rooms and a linen cupboard all yielded nothing. Every door was unlocked and none of us could see anything untoward. On the other hand, I hadn’t expected to find anything on this floor, or on the main floor below, it was too public. We had to be careful on that level, now we were above the heads of the servants, but the noise was loud enough to cover me cautiously searching the dining room while James took the drawing room.
We met at the door of the study and went in to find Lucian looking through the desk. ‘Nothing,’ he murmured, ‘except proof that he is on good terms with de Forrest. There is a fair amount of correspondence, mostly social. A little business about the sale of a horse, a reference for a footman, that kind of thing.’
‘De Forrest is the impotent one, isn’t he?’
James gave a snort of laughter, but Lucian nodded. ‘As you might expect, there is no indication that Cottingham is encouraging a courtship or that de Forrest has suggested one. They seem to have a scheme of some kind running, but it is probably a mutual investment from the way it is worded.’
He pointed at a short note and I read over his shoulder. We are agreed, then. I believe this to be in our mutual interests. The outlay required is small, the returns significant and the risk low. de F.
‘It would be incomprehensible, frankly, for Cottingham to encourage a match with Arabella,’ Lucian added. ‘I know it is an old title, but the man has got no money to speak of – ’
‘And nothing in bed,’ James finished.
Lucian passed a note to James who read it and handed it to me. It was another message from de Forrest: The draperies are finished and, I must say, are most effective. The pomade is French Fern from Whittaker and Hope in the Strand. I am etc etc…
‘Bizarre.’
‘He is certainly not skilled at composition – these look almost like random jottings relating back to some earlier discussion. The reference to draperies is most peculiar. He could be intending to refurbish a room, I suppose, although why he would expect Cottingham to be interested escapes me, but why add details about a pomade in the same paragraph?’ Lucian shrugged. ‘There is nothing to link it to Arabella in any case.’ He refolded the paper and slid it back into a pigeonhole in the desk. ‘The fact that de Forrest calls and pays Miss Trenton certain attentions is probably simply because he thinks it will please his friend.’
We made our way out with no further incident and no discoveries. We hung the key back on its hook, so had to leave the door unlocked. Hopefully they would put it down to someone’s carelessness after all the alcohol that had been consumed.
James secured the gate and climbed the wall again and we made our way along the alleyway to find that Garrick had turned the carriage and was waiting for us, hat tipped over his eyes, the picture of the patient coachman.
‘Anything, my lord?’ he asked as we climbed in.
‘Nothing.’
‘That was a complete waste of time,’ James said.
‘No.’ In the gloom of the interior all I could see was the negative shake of Lucian’s head. ‘Cassie was right, we had to check and eliminate that possibility.’
‘What is it? Something’s on your mind.’ James obviously understood the inflexions of his brother’s voice.
‘I wish I could like Cottingham but I never feel I really understand him, although I have known him for years. The man feels somehow detached despite all that passion and energy. And I get the feeling that there is more simmering away beneath the surface than at first appears.’
I had thought the same thing, but I was so ignorant of Society manners that Cottingham’s ability to converse with me calmly and then rant about his sister’s purity and Sir Clement’s perfidy in the next breath might have been perfectly normal. All I knew was that if my sister Sophie had vanished like this, I would have been frantic and completely beyond polite chit-chat with a stranger. But perhaps the worry was responsible for the way he behaved.