uddenly parched lungs.
Farther along the wall, Christian glanced up, caught her gaze.
She looked into his eyes, into the unwavering, unshakable gray, and felt her reeling world slow, steady.
Her catastrophic secret would only be a disaster if it became known.
He arched a brow at her, plainly asking if she was all right.
Drawing in another breath, she nodded, and returned to her examination of the rail.
Later. She would deal with the potential for catastrophe later. At the moment, it was all she could do to get her mind to accept Dalziel’s truth.
Ten minutes later she found a catch hidden in the moldings around one of the windows. Energized, she told the others. They came to look, then, while they all scanned the room, she depressed the catch.
A bookcase in the center of the opposite wall popped free of the stonework.
“My God!” Hermione breathed. “There really is a secret door.”
Christian and Dalziel had already crossed to the bookcase. They didn’t need to expend any huge effort to move it back—it swung open easily, and noiselessly, on well-oiled hinges.
Standing in the opening revealed, Christian, in a voice tinged with awe, said, “It’s not a secret door—it’s a secret room.”
Letitia and Hermione joined the two men, then followed them down the three steps that descended into what truly was an amazing find.
“Trust Randall to have a secret room”—Letitia slowly pivoted, taking in the space—“to store all his secrets in.”
That certainly appeared to be the room’s purpose. In contrast to the study, which was neat and tidy, with no papers on the desk and a pristine white blotter clearly for show rather than use, this room was full of papers—stacked on both sides of the massive but well-worn desk and bulging from pigeonholes behind it—and a blotter that was crossed, recrossed, and rather tattered.
All of the available wall space was covered with shelves housing ledgers, stacks of files, document boxes, and tomes that appeared to be accounts, their spines marked in Randall’s schoolboyish hand with dates and initials. The shelves stretched all the way to the high ceiling; a wooden ladder stood in one corner.
There was an old, serviceable lamp upon the desk—a large one of the sort clerks favored, that shed a wide pool of light when lit. The glass lamp-well was half full of oil, and the wick was charred, needing to be trimmed. There was hardly any dust anywhere. The room appeared to be in frequent use.
The desk, with its well-padded revolving chair behind it, sat halfway into the room, its back to the shelves covering the wall the room shared with the main body of the house. Letitia glanced back; the wall with the hidden door in its center was likewise covered in shelves, outside the space of the door itself. The wall opposite, abutting some deeper part of the house, was also covered in shelves.
The fourth wall—the one facing the desk—was the one of most immediate interest to them all. Both sides housed more ledgers, but between were two narrow windows flanking a wooden door.
They’d all been standing silently, pirouetting as they took it all in. Their gazes came to rest on the closed door. Christian walked forward, grasped the knob and turned; the latch clicked.
“Well, well.” Opening the door wide, Christian walked through.
The rest of them followed, emerging into a small walled yard. Less than three yards wide, it ended at the lane wall. To the left, in line with the study-side wall of the secret room, a plain stone wall ran across, joining the lane wall. That wall was high—so high none of them could see over it, and no one in the area along the house’s front could see into the yard where they stood.
Opposite, another stone wall ran from the house to the lane wall; again, it was sufficiently high so no one below, in the yard beside the kitchen, could see in, and they couldn’t look over and down.
But they could hear voices floating up and over the wall; a few seconds of listening told them two maids were hanging out some washing.
The length of the yard from the front to the back matched the length of the secret room. Turning as one, they looked back at the house, at the way the roof line concealed the existence of the little room. Shaking her head in amazement, Letitia nudged Hermione back toward the door.
Christian made to follow, but Dalziel hung back, then turned and walked in the opposite direction, to the wooden door set in the lane wall. From where Letitia paused by the door into the room, she could see the heavy lock on the lane door. But when Dalziel grasped the handle and turned it, the door swung open—as easily and noiselessly as the door to the study.
Leaning out, Dalziel looked up and down the lane. Letitia knew what he would see—a cobbled lane too narrow for carriages, with a procession of wooden garden doors opening onto it. Unless one counted and watched the roofs at the same time, the unexpected door wouldn’t appear out of place.
Drawing back, Dalziel closed the door. Turning, he waved them ahead of him back into the room. Once the room’s outer door was shut and there was no chance of the maids below hearing them, he looked at Letitia and Christian. “I believe we’ve solved the mystery of how Randall’s murderer came and went.”
They were all silent for a moment, imagining it.
“I doubt Randall would have left those doors unlocked.” Letitia wrapped her arms around herself. “He was always careful of windows being left open.”