Page 88 of The Case of the Curate

This situation, however, was unknown territory. He was about to compromise his oldest friend through sheer carelessness, when she was not only innocent but doing her very best to do right. There could be no admission of guilt.

So what the devil could he say to explain their presence here?

He knew from the heavy footsteps that the man in the connecting room was Nye, not a servant. So whose bedchamber was this? And why did Nye, rather than the lady, have the key to the connecting door?

The footsteps had paused. A drawer opened, possibly the bedside cabinet.

Close beside Rupert, Kate rose on her tiptoes. “Lavender. It’s Miss Nye’s perfume,” she whispered, her breath curiously shocking in his ear.

But he had no time to dwell on his own wayward sensuality. The drawer closed in the next room, and he drew in his breath, locking his gaze to Kate’s, cudgeling his slow brain.

Miss Nye sent us to fetch her shawl and somehow the door has locked itself behind us… Of course we haven’t been in your room! We didn’t even know it was there… Ridiculously feeble.

But the feet moved again, surely walking away. Nye’s bedroom door opened and closed. They heard him walking along the passage toward the main staircase. Kate exhaled in a rush of relief.

It’s Miss Nye’s room.

“Miss Nye,” he repeated. “The connecting door is a convenience when he summons her for instruction or help, but he locks it to keep her out when he wants to. Why? Does she spy on him?”

“She’s very observant,” Kate said. “She knew exactly who had left the drawing room and when they returned. Including her brother. Although she might have been protecting him, because she had him returning to the drawing room rather earlier than Lewis said.”

Rupert opened his mouth and closed it again, wild ideas entering his head.

“We’re here,” he said. “We might as well look.”

“He could have hidden anything in his sister’s room,” Kate said, excitement building in her voice. “That would be just like him. He has the key, and even if she found something incriminating, she would probably never confront him. She certainly wouldn’t tell.”

And so they bustled about in yet another intrusive search. Rupert began with the desk this time. In one drawer, several parliamentary papers, together with a summary in the same hand as the gossipy letter she had been writing to a friend.

“He must just go to the library to sleep,” he observed. “Miss Nye appears to do most of his work.”

“Most members of Parliament need an assistant. They can’t all afford secretaries.” Kate sounded slightly defensive.

“Is this what you do for Ambrose?” he asked curiously, although it was none of his business.

“Sometimes.” Kate knelt and raked through the shoes in the wardrobe. “There’s nothing muddy here, and certainly nothing of her brother’s.”

Rupert knelt and peered under the bed. There had been an empty trunk under Nye’s, but his sister might well have brought her own personal baggage. Ignoring the chamber pot—which he hoped was empty—he pulled out a large leather bag. It had something in it. Hastily, he unfastened the strap and emptied it onto the floor.

“Kate.”

She came at once, her eyes widening at the little pile of flaked, dried mud on the floor. In amongst it was a pair of ladies’ indoor slippers, black with mud, a wedge of it caked between the heel and the sole of one.

“They’re ruined,” Kate said in a distracted kind of way. Her gaze was still on the bag in Rupert’s hands. She knelt and reached toward it, and he realized a little chain was dangling from it, trapped against the fastening strap.

Kate detached it, and the blood sang in his ears. A tiny silver dancer dangled before his eyes.

“It’s Dinah’s,” he blurted. “I gave it to her a year ago.”

He didn’t want to meet Kate’s gaze, but he did. Still, there was no judgment in her eyes, only a pity that closed up his throat with pain and rage. Poor bloody Dinah.

“Nye broke the chain when he killed her,” Kate said. “Miss Nye found it in the mud around the plain tree, probably, and hid it with her dirty shoes.”

Rupert shook his head slowly and gestured at the shoes. “No. There’s too much mud. It’s too new and still wet. It has to be from last night. Miss Nye shot at you from outside. By then, nearly everywhere was muddy.”

“To save her brother from being found out?” Kate said dubiously.

“He wasn’t found out, was he? On the night Dinah died, Vic found mud only on Lord Chadbon’s shoes, yours, and Kemp’s. Miss Nye didn’t send hers to be cleaned—they probably weren’t bad then and she could deal with them herself—until she made them worse because she was out last night when the ground was considerably wetter.”