AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He gave her a withering look, which was exaggerated by the yellow glare of the lantern and the black cavern above them.
“Well, do you have a better idea?” she demanded. “Do you just want to go back to London and never know who killed Mary?”
Wordlessly he turned back to reexamine the wall.
“It’s straight along the line of the abutting wall onto the next warehouse,” he said half an hour later. “There isn’t any space for a secret compartment, let alone an entire room.”
“What if it’s in the roof?” she said desperately. “Or the cellar?”
“Then there’ll be stairs to it—and there aren’t.”
“Then it must be here. We just haven’t found it.”
“Your logic is typical,” he said tartly. “We haven’t found it, so it must be here.”
“That’s not what I said. You have it backwards.”
He raised his eyebrows. “It must be here because we haven’t found it? That is a deductive improvement?”
She took the lantern and left him standing in the dark. There was nothing to lose by searching a little longer. This was the last chance. Tomorrow they would leave, and either Baird McIvor would face trial, and maybe be hanged, or else live with another “not proven” verdict over his head. Either way, she would never be sure who had killed Mary. She needed to know, not just for herself but because Mary’s wry, intelligent face was still as sharp in her mind as when she had gone to sleep that night on the train to London, thinking how very much she liked her.
She did not find it by accident, but by methodical, furious banging and thumping. A heavy panel of the wall slid away and opened up a narrow door. The room itself must originally have been part of the next-door warehouse and not the Farraline building at all. Its very existence was concealed because a floor plan would have shown no discrepancy. One would have had to have the plans of both buildings and compare them.
“I’ve got it!” she cried out exultantly.
“Don’t shout,” he whispered from just behind her, making her start and nearly drop the lamp.
“Don’t do that!” she said as she led the way into the hole ahead.
With the lantern high and as far in front as she could hold it, the entire room was visible as soon as they were inside. It was windowless, about twelve feet by ten feet large, low-ceilinged, and there was a single air vent in the far corner leading to the outside. It was at least half filled with printing presses, ink, stacks of paper, and guillotine cutters. More space was taken by a table like an easel and a rack of fine etching and engraving tools and acid. Over the table was a bracket for a large, unshaded gas lamp. When lit it must have shed a brilliant light.
“What is it?” Hester said in bewilderment. “There aren’t any books here.”
“I think we have just found the source of the Farraline wealth,” he said in awe, almost under his breath.
“But there aren’t any books. Unless they shipped them all out?”
“Not books, my love—money! This is where they print money!”
Hester felt a shiver run through her, not only for the meaning of what he had said but also for the way in which he had addressed her.
“You mean f-forged money?” she stammered.
“Oh yes, forged … very forged. But they must do it damnably well, to have got away with it for so long.” He moved forward and bent over the presses to examine them more closely, taking the light from her. “Lots of it,” he went on. “Here are several pound notes, five pounds, ten pounds, twenty. Look, all the different banks in Scotland—the Royal, the Clydesdale, the Linen Bank. And here’s the Bank of England. And these look like German, and here’s French. Very eclectic tastes, but by heaven they’re good!”
She peered over his shoulder, staring at the metal plates.
“How do you know they’ve been doing it for a long time? It could have been just recently, couldn’t it?”
“The family wealth goes back a long way,” he answered. “Well into Hamish’s time—I’ll wager he was the original engraver. Remember what that woman said in church? And Deirdra said something about his being a good copyist.” He picked up a note and examined it carefully. “This one is current. Look at the signature on it.”
“But if they’ve got new notes as well, who’s the artist now? It’s not the sort of thing you can go out and hire.”
“Of course it isn’t. I’ll lay any odds you like that it’s Quinlan. No wonder he’s so damned arrogant. He knows they can’t do without him, and they know it too. He has them over a barrel. Poor little Eilish. I expect she was his price.”
“That’s unspeakable!” she said in horror. “Nobody would …” Then she stopped. What she had been going to say was absurd, and she knew it. Women had been given in marriage to suit the ambitions or the convenience of their families since time immemorial, and for worse reasons than this. At least she was still at home, and participated in the wealth. And Quinlan was roughly her own age, and not uncomely, or drunken, diseased or otherwise repellent. And it was even possible he had cared for her originally, before she betrayed him by falling in love, however unwillingly, with Baird. Or was that Oonagh’s attempt at self-protection, to marry her exquisite younger sister to a man who would possess her and brook no disloyalty?
Poor Oonagh—she had failed. Their acts might be without blemish, but no one could govern their dreams.
