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When the door opened, however, and a rather stooped elderly woman appeared in the entrance, Tahlia wished she hadn’t bothered to make the journey.
“Hello, I am here to see Mr Tate?” She began only to stop when the old woman left the door open and disappeared into the house.
Tahlia stared blankly at the empty doorway for several moments, unsure what to do.
“Hello?” she called when the woman didn’t immediately re-appear.
“Hello?” Connor prompted, and pushed the door open when he received no reply either.
He studied the empty hallway.
“What do we do?” Tahlia asked quietly.
“I think she wants us to enter,” he muttered in disgust.
“Hello?” she called when the door swung silently open.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” the older woman snapped rudely when she suddenly appeared at the opposite end of the hallway. She made broad, sweeping motions toward the room beside her with one arm. “Come in, come in.”
Tahlia did as instructed and clasped the warm hand Connor wrapped around her chilled fingers. Her eyes were still adjusting to the gloom when the elderly woman suddenly pointed to a room at the back of the property.
“He is in there,” the housekeeper grunted.
Rather than announce them, or ask her for her card, the old woman left them to enter the room on their own.
“Hello?”
Tahlia hesitantly entered the snug candle-lit room. Her gaze immediately fell on a small, bespectacled man seated behind a desk. She was aware of his careful scrutiny as she crossed the room, and smiled becomingly in an attempt to ease the cautious watchfulness. When he didn’t respond, Tahlia squared her shoulders and stuck to the reason why she was there.
“Please accept my apologies for calling by unannounced,” she began. “It is horribly ungracious of me, I know. However, I came at the request of your friend, Mr Tate.”
The man pierced her with a hard stare and waved toward a chair on the opposite side of the desk. While Tahlia sat, he nodded Connor into a chair next to it.
“Who?” It was a singular word full of impatient demand.
“Henry Gillingham.”
The man sat perfectly still and studied her. “Henry Gillingham is dead,” he declared flatly.
“I am his niece. This is my associate, Mr Connor Humphries.”
Mr Tate nodded politely.
Connor sat back and allowed Tahlia to take the lead. It gave him the opportunity to study the room. While he did so, he slowly became aware of Mr Tate’s careful scrutiny. Connor knew, without question, that he had been judged, assessed, and labelled within seconds, but had to wonder why.
What was Mr Tate hiding? Was his wariness anything to do with Henry Gillingham, or the mudlark diamond?
“I went to the solicitors yesterday and was given a letter my uncle wrote to me before his demise,” she explained.
She didn’t go into further detail because she suspected Mr Tate wasn’t interested. There was just something about the rudeness of this man that made her question how he came to be a friend of her uncle’s. The two were so vastly different in behaviour that Tahlia couldn’t see them even wanting to spend any time together.
Connor studied the man carefully. There was something about his face that warned him the elderly man was not as old as he was pretending to be. He was also worried about something. This man had a sneaky, almost furtive gaze that kept flickering around the room almost nervously. It was as though he was searching for something, or trying to find a way out.
At first glance, the room was an ordinary sitting room. A little small, maybe, but well stocked with books. It was quite cosy. So, what was it about this entire situation that made Connor so deuced uncomfortable? He didn’t know, and boldly met Mr Tate’s challen
ging gaze for several moments in an attempt to provoke the man.
“Mr Tate?” Tahlia prompted when the man didn’t answer.
