Inside the wardrobe, I checked the toes of the three pairs of shoes I had brought with me to Wiltshire: the brogues, the blue strap-shoes I wore with the blue-and-white afternoon dress, and the gray T-straps that went with the butter-yellow evening dress I had just taken off and hung in the wardrobe. (It had an uneven hem and was covered with little metal spangles, so the gray shoes looked very well with it, especially when I paired them with a pair of silvery gray silk stockings.)
There was nothing crumpled up and shoved into the toes of any of my shoes. There was nothing hidden among my unmentionables, and nothing tucked into the pocket of any of my garments. The cloche hat I had worn for the trip down was likewise empty.
I was just about to throw in the towel and rejoice in the fact that I didn’t seem to be on the receiving end of the killer’s attention when my eyes fell on the weekender bag itself. It was neatly folded and eased onto the top shelf of the wardrobe, where I had shoved it after I had finished emptying it, but something about it didn’t look quite right.
Let me say first of all that I’m not usually careless about my belongings. I do perhaps keep my stockings in a bit of a jumble, when I should treat them with more respect, but I take quite good care of my clothes and shoes overall. And I’m rather fond of my weekender bag, if it comes to that. Trips are always fun. I just don’t usually make sure it’s quite so carefully folded before I put it away. In fact, I could distinctly remember having shoved it onto the shelf above the clothes in a bit of a hurry yesterday afternoon, because it was time to go down to tea.
I hesitated before I reached for it, almost like it might suddenly lurch out and bite me when I least expected it. Of course I knew it wouldn’t. Whoever folded it up so neatly and stuck it up there, hadn’t nestled a viper inside the bag. That was ridiculous. But nonetheless, I found myself not really wanting to touch it. And yes, I knew I was being silly. The chambermaid might simply have seen the condition of the bag and decided to do me a favor by folding it more properly, and that was all there was to it.
I told myself I was being ridiculous, grabbed the corner of it, and dragged it down. I moved out of the way of it, though, so it landed on the rug in front of the wardrobe with a sort offlump. I stood back and watched it for a moment, to make absolutely certain that nothing venomous was about to slither out, before I got to my knees in front of the bag and started poking at it.
It didn’t take long, obviously, since the bag was empty, or was supposed to be.
I found what I was looking for—and frankly, hoping not to find—tucked under the piece of stiff leather that served as the inside bottom of the bag. Someone had reached in and slipped a couple of folded pieces of paper underneath, out of sight, clearly hoping I’d not realize they were there whenever I opened the bag next.
That was if I was supposed to be opening the bag at all, and the papers weren’t intended to be found by the police during their search tomorrow morning. They were well-hidden, but probably not well enough that Scotland Yard would have overlooked them.
I pulled them out and then thought better of what I was doing, and went to the escritoire for a letter opener, which I used to unfold the sheets of paper. By then, I had moved over to the bed, where I had more room to spread out across the counterpane, and I figured the fewer of my fingerprints on the sheets, the better for me.
There were three sheets altogether, lined front and back, and covered with cramped, very dark, somehow rushed handwriting. The words ran together. If there’s anything to the noble art of graphology, I would have said that Grimsby was modest and unassuming, repressed, and probably not terribly well educated—there were errors in spelling. Of course, the truth might just have been that he’d been in a hurry, and good notebooks cost money, so he was trying to squeeze as many words as possible onto each page.
None of it mattered, anyway. He was dead, and what was important was the information in front of me.
That, and the fact that someone had hidden it in my room. Someone who was trying to frame me for murder.
I squinted at the first page.Christopher Nicholas Henry Astley, it said.
It was followed by Christopher’s birthdate—March 21st, 1903—and the address of our flat in London. There was the name of Evans the doorman. Florence Schlomsky was mentioned, with a question mark next to her name. There was a day of following Christopher around London last month: shopping at Marks & Spencer, tea at the Savoy, the purchase of a pink evening gown with tassels that Grimsby surmised had been bought for me.
The inference, of course, was that I was a kept woman, something which Grimsby clearly planned to convey to His Grace.
He figured out differently when he saw Christopher wearing the dress, exiting our building the following week. I’d walked out with him, wearing something different, so there’d really been no question whatsoever about the dress being mine.
Then it was tailing Christopher to the location where last month’s drag ball had been held. I made a mental note of the address, although I assumed that after this month’s ball—and the raid by the police that Christopher had so narrowly escaped—next month’s ball, if there was one, would take place somewhere else.
Grimsby hadn’t been able to make it inside the venue, but had loitered outside—in what I hoped was a rubbish-filled alley, in miserable weather, for hours—until Christopher appeared again, this time accompanied by a young man. Grimsby had jotted down a description that could have applied to Tom Gardiner—brown hair, tweed suit—but that could equally well have applied to any number of other men.
They’d gone off in a cab, and by the time Grimsby caught up, Christopher was going inside the lobby of our building, while Tom had disappeared. Grimsby had asked Evans who Tom was, and Evans had been unable to provide the answer, beyond telling Grimsby that he’d never seen the young man before, and no, he hadn’t visited Christopher previously.
After that, there were a few more instances of Grimsby tailing Christopher through London, shopping and taking tea and doing various other, normal things, but there were no more mentions of young men, and Tom had not made another appearance. Grimsby had been in London on the evening of the next drag ball, too, of course, but on that occasion he had called at the flat rather than follow Christopher, and we should probably be grateful for it.
I moved on to the next sheet.Philippa Marie Schatz Darling, it said, followed by my birthdate. I was born some four months before Christopher, for your information, in November of 1902.
The first line below my name said,GERMAN!!in capital letters, with several exclamation points and a heavy underline. I made a face when I saw it, since it’s still not a great time to be German in England, and I don’t appreciate the reminder.
It’s not as difficult as it was a decade ago, in the middle of the Great War, but it could be easier. Especially considering everything that’s stirring over in Germany these days—Herr Hitler and his book and all the unpleasantness surrounding the failedcoup d’étatand all that—and I’d really rather forget that part of my heritage altogether, now that I have embraced my mother’s homeland and been embraced in turn.
I tore my attention, with a little bit of difficulty, away from that single word, and continued down the page.
Grimsby had followed me around, too, but not as assiduously as he had followed Christopher. There were quite a few mentions of me and Christopher together: alone in the flat in the evenings, having tea somewhere, shopping at Fortnum & Mason for food we were planning to consume for dinner together. There was a mention or two of me having run interference when some girl, Flossie Schlomsky or someone we’d met while shopping, had batted her eyes at Christopher, and I had stuck my hand through his arm and tugged him away.
Of course, Christopher knew, and I knew, that it wasn’t because I wanted him for myself. But it was quite clear where the late duke had gotten the idea that there was more between us than actually existed. It must have looked to Grimsby very much like I had interfered out of jealousy, or at least out of my own designs on Christopher.
I rolled my eyes and moved on. If anyone thought I would have murdered Grimsby over this, they had to have a screw loose somewhere.
Crispin Henry Jonathan Astley, the last sheet said, and I hesitated. I had promised Crispin that I would forget the conversation he’d had with his father. Reading the notes Grimsby had taken veered into territory I had mostly agreed I would stay out of.
On the other hand, Tom had said that whoever ripped the pages out of the notebook might be the murderer. I knew it hadn’t been me or Christopher who did it. That left Crispin.
