Last Night's Scandal (The Dressmakers 5)

“When everyone’s asleep,” she said. “So as not to Arouse Suspicion.”

“Right,” he said. “Here’s what we’ll do, you dramatic nodcock. We’ll stop and have tea. By the time we’re done, the workmen will be gone, and we can go down and see how much progress they’ve made. We’ll probably argue about it. That should give us a few hours. Do you understand?”

She turned and continued down the stairs. “Of course I understand. And I am not a nodcock.”

Two hours after the workmen had left for the day, Olivia scowled at the walls of the basement entresol.

“Either we must go at it with pickaxes, or we must do this by daylight,” she said. “Both ends measure twelve feet. Both ends are simply blank walls. I don’t know how you work in windowless tombs. I can’t make out whether the marks in the stones are meant to be symbols or they’re simply random marks.”

“Tomb walls tend to be carefully chiseled and painted,” Lisle said. “With a torch or candles, one can see well enough.” He ran his hand over a block of stone. “It does look as though someone has had a go at the mortar with a pickaxe, and it was covered up later. But that might have been a repair.”

Olivia could see what he was talking about, though it was a very slight difference in the look of the mortar. “If someone was searching, it appears they hadn’t any better idea than we do where to look.”

“I don’t propose to start tearing into walls at random,” he said. “This room is in reasonably good repair.” He looked at her. “You’re going to have to contain your impatience. We need to think this through and make a plan.”

Olivia looked around her. The room, according to Lisle, must have been a guard chamber once upon a time. It boasted a fireplace, a cupboard, and a garderobe tucked in at the corner of a closet in the south-facing wall. At present it was empty, but in recent days it had been cleaned and repaired. She was frustrated and impatient, but she wasn’t eager to undo all the work the laborers had put into it.

“Sunday,” he said. “The workmen won’t be here, and most of the servants will take their half day. We can go over every inch of this place without being interrupted or setting off rumors. And we’ll have daylight. Or something like it. Maybe.”

“I should hope we’d know a bit more by then,” she said. “The ladies will be back for dinner. I’m counting on them to shed at least a little light on the mystery. And there are always your cousin’s papers to review. I’ve only made a start with those.” She waved her hand at the provoking wall. “Sunday, then, you annoying enigma.”

“If it doesn’t rain,” Lisle said.

That evening

“‘The walls have ears and eyes. But that’s their lookout below,’ ” Lisle repeated. “That’s it?”

The two ladies nodded.

They’d returned late from Edinburgh, where they’d dined with friends.

Over a light supper the ladies reported the results of their conversations with Frederick Dalmay’s attendants.

The two sentences were what it amounted to.

“Sorry, my dears,” said Lady Withcote. “Mere gibberish.”

“And no secret,” said Lady Cooper. “All the world knows what Frederick Dalmay said on his deathbed. Everyone thought it was one of his jokes.”

“They apparently made less and less sense during his last months,” said Lady Withcote.

All the world knew about his affair with a local widow that went on for years. The world knew of all his other affairs. Lisle’s cousin had liked the ladies very much, and they liked him back.

Apparently, he liked collecting things as much as he liked jokes and women. Every time he found a book or a pamphlet or a letter dealing with Gorewood Castle, he was thrilled. He hadn’t singled out—at least not in any obvious way—any documents specifically connected with the fabled treasure.

But, “The walls,” Lisle said.

He looked at Olivia, who was pushing a bit of cake about her plate. She’d done that with most of her food: arranged and rearranged it and now and again remembered to eat it.

“Yes,” she said, her mind clearly elsewhere. “The walls.”

Night of Friday 28 October

The Rankin brothers watched Mary Millar and some others guide her drunken brother out of the tavern.

“Useful fellow, he is,” said Roy.

“First time,” said Jock.

Mary Millar had been hired as a housemaid at Gorewood Castle. Her brother Glaud was a cobbler. The Rankin brothers had told Mary that they were worried Glaud’s fingers might accidentally get broken. They were worried this would happen if Mary didn’t get friendlier and talk to them more—say, about everything that was going on at the castle. They worried, too, about what might happen to her if she told anybody.

Anyone who bought Glaud a drink was his friend. Overnight, the Rankin brothers became his very good friends. Every evening, when Mary came to collect him, he was sitting in a corner away from everyone else with his two good friends. She would sit down, too, and talk to them, quickly and very quietly.

Tonight she’d told them about the old ladies’ visit to Edinburgh.

“They know what the old man said,” Jock said. “But they ain’t digging.”

“ ‘Walls have eyes and ears but lookout below,’ ” Roy said. “What else’s below the walls but the ground?”

Jock looked about him, but no one was nearby, listening. Even when the pub was crowded, people usually left a little space around them. He leaned over his tankard and said, “We found things in the ground. By the wall.”

Roy thought for a long time.

Jock stared into his tankard. “They ain’t digging, not proper,” he said. “And we can’t.”

Roy went on thinking.

“I’ll go right mad, I will,” Jock said. “All this time—”

“Maybe it don’t mean what it says,” Roy said.

This was too deep for Jock. He shook his head, lifted his tankard and emptied it.

“Maybe they can work out what it means,” Roy said. “Stands to reason. Old man was educated. Laird’s son’s educated. Maybe what he said was like Greek. Stands for something else. And the paper explains it. We can’t get the paper. We can’t do anything. Maybe we should let them do it, let them do the work.”

“And find it?” Jock said. “Just like that? Give up?”

“Why not let them do all the work and find it?” Roy said. “Finding is one thing. Keeping is another.”

“You took a fever, Roy?” said his brother. “You think we can get it away from them? A houseful of servants and that bastard Herrick in charge of ’em? Bars on the doors. Traps in the basement.”

“We got Mary,” Roy said. “She’ll do what we tell her.”

Sunday 30 October

“Curse you, curse you!” Olivia cried. “You cursed, stubborn stones! You’re not the Sphinx, damn you! You’ve got something in there and we both know it.” She struck at the entresol wall with her mallet.

“Don’t—”

“Ow!” The mallet clanged to the floor.

“Don’t hit it so hard,” Lisle muttered. He set down his hammer and went to her. She was rubbing her arm. He pushed her hand away and massaged. “You’re supposed to tap gently,” he said.

“I’m not cut out for this,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m tapping for. I don’t know what I’m listening for. Can’t you simply do that thing that Belzoni does—did?”

He stopped rubbing her arm. “What Belzoni did?”

“You know. You explained it to me once. The way he’d look at a structure and discern something different about the sand or the rubble about it. That was how he found the entrance to the Second Pyramid. He said so in his book.” She pointed at the wall. “Can’t you just look?”

“I’ve looked,”

Lisle said. “But this is completely different. It isn’t covered in sand and rubble. I’m not sure what I’m looking for.”

He’d stopped rubbing her arm but he was still holding onto it, he realized. He let go, gently and carefully, and stepped back a pace.

Five days.

It was a long time. They’d kept busy, going through Frederick’s papers and books. But not behind closed doors. They’d carried down the books and papers and worked in the great hall, he on one side of the table, she on the other.

They hadn’t said it aloud. They didn’t need to. Matters had got out of hand, and even she’d admitted it. Even she had seen they were on the brink, and even she, so incautious, had stepped back.

We’ll ruin each other’s lives . . . I won’t settle for second place in a man’s heart.

“Where’s our clue?” he said.

“On the floor somewhere,” she said. “I dropped it. I wish I’d never seen it.”

“Remind me never to take you on an excavation,” he said.

“As though you would,” she said.

“I would,” he said. “But you’d die of boredom. Or kill somebody. Patience isn’t your strong suit.”

She spun away in a whirl of skirts and flung herself onto one of the benches the workmen had left.

He found the ancient piece of paper she’d tossed aside. He focused on that. The marks didn’t match the ones on the walls. The walls held initials and mason’s marks—everyone leaving some mark behind, the way visitors had done on the Great Bed of Ware.

“You actually thought about it,” she said. “About my being with you, on an excavation.”

He had thought about it, more than he realized. When he first saw the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx, he’d thought of her, and what her expression would be like, the first time, and what she’d say. He’d enter a tomb and. . .

“I think, sometimes, of what it would be like, to be able to turn to you, and say, ‘Look at this. Look at this, Olivia.’ Yes. I think that sometimes.”

“Oh,” she said.

“It would be exciting, that first moment of discovery,” he said. “You’d like it. But before and after are the hours and days and weeks and months of tedious, repetitive work.”