“Curious that you should say that,” Lyndy said, drawing her attention back.
“Why?”
“Because I just learned that George Parley petitioned the verderers for a rifle club on land that sounded suspiciously near where Harvey’s hut once stood, long before the hut burned down.”
“And I learned that George Parley owns the exact land where Harvey’s hut was.”
“But I thought Harvey owned it.”
Stella shook her head. “No, he bought it.”
“When was this?”
“Tuesday, the day of the Cecil Cup, the day after Harvey’s hut burned down.”
“But that was after he would’ve had to file the petition.” Lyndy rubbed his chin as if still trying to puzzle it out. “How would he know he’d be able to buy it in the time for his petition to be considered by the court?”
“Because Lord Fairbrother sold it to him,” Stella said, pleased with the surprise her pronouncement produced. It was a rare triumph. Lyndy rarely expressed amazement. He was always too busy looking bored.
“And Lord Fairbrother would’ve known about the petition,” Lyndy said. Stella nodded.
Lyndy strolled over to the window and gazed out onto the high street. Stella stepped over behind him. The driver of a passing wagon, laden with newly milled lumber, swatted his pair of piebald geldings with a whip, urging them to pick up the pace. The last of the court attendees, ducking their heads as they held on to their hats, were hurrying away. Dark clouds had rolled in, and splashes of rain sprinkled the glass panes.
“I think George Parley burned down Harvey’s house so that he could develop the land,” Stella said, in an almost whisper, despite the nearly empty hall. “But I think Lord Fairbrother knew about it, maybe even condoned it. Hence Harvey’s accusations toward him.”
Lyndy turned his back to the window to face her. “But I asked around a bit. No one knew how Fairbrother was going to vote on the rifle club issue, and his was the deciding vote. Now no one knows what will happen.”
“Perhaps George Parley knew, or thought he knew. . . .” Stella remembered the talk of Lord Fairbrother taking bribes. “If George Parley paid Lord Fairbrother to guarantee the petition would be a success, then he had every reason to get rid of Harvey’s hut.”
“I don’t believe it,” Lyndy said, starting to pace in front of her. “Parley could’ve known Fairbrother was going to vote in his favor simply on account of his selling Parley the land. And in which case, Parley would have every reason not to kill him. But then again . . .” He told Stella how he’d overheard Parley curse Fairbrother. “Perhaps Fairbrother decided to vote against Parley, after all?”
“This doesn’t help us at all, does it?” Stella said, her shoulders sagging as they strolled, side by side, back to the bench and her slumbering chaperone. “We’re not any closer to figuring out who killed Harvey.”
“No, but we have information we can pass on to Inspector Brown. Let him deal with it.”
“But—” Lyndy caressed her cheek with his fingers when she started to object. Why was he trying to distract her? There was so much more to discuss.
“Don’t you have a party to prepare?”
Stella groaned. The engagement party! “You would have to bring that up.” She removed his hand from her face, took a step back, and straightened her hat.
“Why not? I’m quite looking forward to seeing how my bride-to-be is as a hostess.” Though his expression was unreadable, a glint in his eye gave him away. He was enjoying himself, at her expense.
“I’m afraid, Lord Lyndhurst, you might be disappointed,” she countered. “Besides, doesn’t it strike you as crass, going ahead with the party considering everything that’s happened? And the fact that your Mother wants to cancel the wedding altogether?”
“All the more reason to proceed, I say.”
“Either way, first we have to tell Inspector Brown what we’ve learned.”
“Why, Miss Kendrick,” Lyndy teased, “some would accuse you of being lax in your duties, willing to do anything, even delve into the sordid details of the murder, rather than host a dinner party.”
Despite herself, Stella laughed, the sound echoing off the high, wainscoted walls. Aunt Rachel’s head bobbed up, and the old lady’s eyes fluttered open.
Stella lowered her voice. “And they would be right.”
CHAPTER 27
Mr. Hodgson opened Lord Fairbrother’s study but blocked Brown’s way. Brown’s first impression of the room, as much as he could determine from his vantage in the hallway, was of precise order: the desk was clear, the ornately carved ivory chess pieces stood erect on their perspective black and white squares, the books were lined up as if by a ruler. Except for the open, unlatched door of an empty birdcage, there was absolutely nothing to indicate anything was amiss, let alone the chaos Lady Philippa had insisted existed. What was so vital that he drop what he was doing and rush to her aid?
At any other time, Brown might have been more than a bit put out, but the opportunity to search the dead lord’s study was worth a bit of bother. Until now, the grieving widow had blocked every request Brown had made to search Outwick House for evidence that might relate to her husband’s death. At first, he’d accepted it, out of respect for her grief, but as request after request was denied, he’d begun to suspect Lady Philippa had something to hide. Even now, she was only allowing them access to Lord Fairbrother’s study.
“And nothing appears to be missing?” he asked, as his constable, facing the open door, stretched his neck to see past the butler’s broad shoulders.
“How would I know?” Lady Philippa snapped.
How indeed? Her response could only mean that this was His Lordship’s private sanctum. Brown silently thanked the scamp who ruffled a few of Lord Fairbrother’s papers. This might be far more productive than he could’ve hoped.
“Besides, that’s your job, isn’t it?” she scoffed. “To discover who’s violated my late husband’s things, shattering the peace and safety of Outwick House, and why?”
Brown accepted her impatience as part of the job. But then she crossed her arms as if hugging herself, protecting herself. Was that worry or fear in her eyes? Neither was characteristic of the mistress of Outwick House. Yes, she had a right to feel disconcerted, but Brown knew a woman with a secret when he saw one. But did it have anything to do with her husband’s death? Uncovering that, he wanted to tell the lady, was also his job.
“We will do our best. I will send for someone from the constabulary in Winchester as well. There is a new fingerprinting technique they can apply to determine—”
“I will not have an army of policemen invading my home,” Lady Philippa insisted.
“Right! May we get started, then?” Brown gestured toward the interior of the room, and the lady nodded. “You don’t need to remain unless that is your wish?”
She hesitated, as if mulling over her response, then dismissed the idea with a flip of her hand. “No, I have better uses of my time.”
She’d meant to appear indifferent, but Brown saw the steeling of her shoulders, the calculation in her eyes. Lady Philippa wanted to be in that room, learn what they discovered, but didn’t want him to know. But why?
The butler took a long step aside and watched down the bridge of his nose as they passed. “Hodgson, you will stay to assist the policemen and see that they take nothing with them,” she added.
Brown bristled at the implication but bit his tongue. He would take what he needed to take, but he wasn’t about to argue the point with Lady Philippa.
“Yes, milady,” the butler said, as Lady Philippa sashayed down the hall.
“Right!” Brown said to his constable as they strode into the wood-paneled study.
Brown tried to size up the man who had inhabited this room, but aside from His Lordship’s fastidiousness, and the telltale smell of Turkish tobacco, there was little to go on. The deer heads were standard fare in the New Forest. Brown would’ve been suspicious
if there weren’t any antlers to speak of. The gilded free-standing globe, the chess set, even the eighteenth-century French vases flanking the mantel, depicting half-clothed female figures, were nothing he wouldn’t find in any gentleman’s study. Then his eyes were drawn to the elaborate display of armor on the wall, and the conspicuous void. If he’d brought the dagger with him and fitted it in place, he wouldn’t have been any less confident that it once hung in that barren spot.
Here was a gentleman who enjoyed his power and displayed it like a peacock. Whoever took the dagger understood this and knew how much the theft would rile the lord. Not a stranger then.
“Be as careful but as thorough as possible,” Brown said over his shoulder as Waterman headed for the desk. “Don’t overlook anything.” Turning to the butler, he asked, “Is there a safe?” The butler hesitated, then shook his head, denying it. Brown didn’t believe him. “Let me remind you, Mr. Hodgson. I am not only investigating the trespass of Lord Fairbrother’s study but also his murder. There is a safe, isn’t there?”
“There is.” So why lie? Out of loyalty to his dead master? What did Mr. Hodgson suspect, or know, was inside? Mr. Hodgson remained rooted to the carpet, his expression giving nothing away.
“Can you show me where it is?” Brown said, trying not to lose his patience.
Mr. Hodgson led Brown to a tall, narrow display case blocked initially from view by the open door. Behind the glass was a tableau meant to capture the diverse inhabitants of a tree. Birds, squirrels, butterflies, and the like were frozen in time as they perched, climbed, or were alighting from the mossy trunk. It conveyed motion and life even as nothing moved, all being dead. Brown admired the craftsmanship as the butler pushed against the deceptively light case, revealing a wall safe cleverly hidden behind. “Had Lady Philippa known about the safe?” Brown asked. The butler’s only response was to raise a skeptical, high-arching eyebrow. That would be a no, then. If Brown were a betting man, he’d wager a guinea that Lady Philippa suspected its existence. And perhaps its contents as well.
Was that what she’d wanted to see, the safe? But why call the police? Why not order the butler to tell her where it was and open it? Or maybe she had, and Mr. Hodgson had denied its existence as he had with Brown. Brown tried the safe’s handle, but it was locked as he’d suspected it would be. As they found only a key to the house on Lord Fairbrother’s body, Brown hoped the key to the safe was somewhere handy.
“Do you have the key, Mr. Hodgson?”
“No, but I could attempt to find it.” Brown smiled. Butlers didn’t “attempt” anything. He knew where the key was all right.
“Then, by all means.”
Mr. Hodgson strode about the room as if admiring it for the first time, while occasionally sliding his hand under and over various objects. Brown never took his eyes off him. After a minute or two, the butler returned to Brown and held out a small, black key. How long the butler had shrewdly kept it hidden, Brown had no idea. It could’ve been in his pocket all along. Brown resisted the urge to ask. He knew the loyal servant would never tell him where the key had been. Stepping aside, Brown allowed Mr. Hodgson to unlock the safe.
The safe was quite full. “Anything appear missing?” Brown asked the butler.
“It appears as my lord left it.”
Good. But that didn’t mean Brown couldn’t have a peek. Brown had Mr. Hodgson pull over a narrow table that had been set beneath the window and methodically emptied the safe. Brown called Waterman over to help him catalog everything, item by item.
“A copy of Lord Fairbrother’s will,” Brown said. Waterman wrote it down. Brown skimmed its contents. As expected, Lord Fairbrother’s heir inherited his title and his properties in London and Kent, but Lady Philippa stood to gain a great deal, including possession of Outwick House. Brown put the will in the safe and reached for the next item on the table.
“A green velvet box with . . . a pearl necklace inside,” Brown said, as Waterman recorded that too.
Piece by piece, paper by paper, Brown examined the entire contents of the safe. It included a great deal more pieces of jewelry: tiaras, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, brooches, all bejeweled with gems the colors of the rainbow, sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and diamonds. Brown had no doubt they were all worth a great deal of money. Would Lady Philippa inherit these as well, or did they already belong to her? Brown would have to find out. It might make a difference.
There were receipts and provenance for paintings. There were correspondences with local landowners, members of Parliament, and other members of the Verderers’ Court, none of which appeared to have any bearing on the murder. There were deeds for land, including a bill of sale for a piece of property near Norleywood dated the day before Lord Fairbrother’s death. The name on the bill was George Parley. An item of importance then. When the butler turned his head to itch the end of his nose politely, Brown slipped the bill of sale into his jacket pocket. Then Brown came to a stack of envelopes, tied together with a green ribbon.
Love letters, perhaps?
“Find me a letter opener,” Brown said.
Constable Waterman retrieved a pearl-handled one from the top drawer of the desk. Mr. Hodgson pursed his lips but said nothing as Brown slit open several of the envelopes. Each contained, not a letter but cash in differing amounts of ten-pound notes. Like the one found on the dead man’s body. What were they for? A wagering scheme? To minimize his losses to an envelope amount and no more? Brown didn’t think so. He’d no indication Lord Fairbrother was a gambling man. He won competitions; he didn’t bet on them. Was this a kind of payment system then? Surely it wasn’t for the servants’ salaries. Each envelope contained more than Mr. Hodgson, the highest paid member of staff, earned in a year. And why was he carrying one on the night he died?
“Do you know what these envelopes are for, Mr. Hodgson?”
The butler shook his head. “I have never seen these before, Inspector.” By the unease on the butler’s otherwise stoic face, Brown tended to believe him. Perhaps Lady Philippa or Fairbrother’s estate agent or valet would know. Brown would have to keep asking.
When all the contents of the safe were recorded in Waterman’s notebook and securely tucked back into the safe, Brown had Mr. Hodgson lock it again. He pulled the handle to make sure.
“Did you find anything?” he asked Waterman, stepping before the desk. His constable pulled open the drawers one by one to show the disheveled state they were in. He now understood Lady Philippa’s concern.
“Just these drawers of disheveled papers, as Lady Philippa described. The papers are all notes concerning Lord Fairbrother’s breeding stock, Outwick House estate issues, or Verderers’ Court issues.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary, then,” Brown said.
“Well, unless you include a few recent letters from a solicitor named”—the constable flipped open his notebook—“Sir George Lewis.”
The Sir George Lewis? The most sought-after solicitor in England?
“Show me their correspondence,” Brown said, holding out his hand. Waterman pulled out the bottom left drawer. It looked completely untouched. The constable slipped his hand under a tray containing ink bottles and produced three open envelopes from where they’d been hidden. Why had Lord Fairbrother hidden them beneath the bottles and not in the safe? For quick access, perhaps?
“Why do you think this drawer was untouched?” Brown held up the unopened letters. “Because the intruder realized he wasn’t going to find what he was looking for, that it was probably locked up in the safe, and stopped looking . . .”
“Or he was interrupted,” Waterman said.
“Or there wasn’t an intruder at all,” Brown said. “Besides the servants, Lady Philippa, and her guest, who else would even have access to this room? Perhaps this was simply the work of Lord Fairbrother rifling through his papers before he died.” It was the most obvious explanation.
“I think you are mistaken, Inspector,” Mr. Hodgson said, setting one of the cry
stal inkwells to rights. Waterman must’ve bumped into it during his examination of the drawers. “On further examination, I can say that something was indeed taken.” He strolled, not to the weaponry display on the wall, but over to a bookshelf and pointed. “There used to be a framed photograph here.”
A photograph? How curious Mr. Hodgson didn’t mention the dagger.
Brown joined Mr. Hodgson by the bookshelf, but there was nothing to see but a vacant space on the well-polished, well-dusted, wooden top.
“What was the photograph of?”
“His Lordship served in the Boer War in South Africa. It was a photograph of his regiment, I believe.”
Brown nodded. That would explain the cigarette habit. Brown knew of several men who brought back a taste for Turkish tobacco and cigarettes after the war. But why would anyone want to take the photograph?
“Perhaps Lady Philippa took it?” Brown had already considered the possibility that the lady of the house had removed things from the room, even vital evidence that pertained to the case, before they’d arrived. But when he’d asked the butler, Mr. Hodgson firmly denied it. As if he would know. Perhaps, he did. If Mr. Hodgson was so protective of His Lordship, would a bit of spying on Lady Philippa be above him? It was worth considering.
“As I said before, Lady Philippa had no opportunity to remove anything from the room.”
“Well, then, was the frame expensive?” Brown chided his foolish question the minute it left his mouth. As if Lord Fairbrother would have anything slipshod or cheap. But the butler surprised him.
“Not particularly. It was one of those mass-produced articles you find in a shop on the high street. Supposedly it was a gift from one of his men.” Brown glanced at the opulence of the room, the priceless weaponry on the wall. Why had they taken a photograph and nothing of any value? Besides the dagger, of course.
“You didn’t mention the missing dagger,” Brown said.
The butler’s expression didn’t change. “I didn’t think it was pertinent as it went missing before His Lordship’s death.”
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