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She gave him a sidelong glance as she pointed at the other trunks, designating them two through eight. Then they dug in. Their shoulders brushed as they began to riffle through the stacks of paper, and Daniel nearly caught hold of her. His mind wasn’t going to settle on these new documents, he thought. But a general idea of the contents of these trunks would be the same jumble as everywhere else.
“This is odd,” said Miss Pendleton.
“What is?”
“It seems to me… I don’t know.” She went to another trunk and sifted through the contents, tried a third.
“What?” Daniel repeated.
“I almost think these documents have been mixed up. As if they’d been quickly searched and shoved back in. See, part of this stack is upside down, and another section is reversed compared to the rest.”
He looked. “Perhaps they were just dumped in by someone clearing out the estate office.” Daniel frowned. “I don’t remember that ever happening though. The room has been much the same for as long as I can recall.”
“This account is twenty years old,” she said, indicating a page at the top. “The one below it is three decades older. And then, facedown and reversed, comes a hundred-year-old receipt.” She turned it over to match the order of the pile. “Which hardly needed to be kept,” she muttered. “Five shillings to the blacksmith.”
“You think the records were gone through and put back out of order?” Daniel asked again because it was such a strange idea. Who would care to do that?
Miss Pendleton nodded. “These trunks were all in the attic?”
“Yes.”
“So someone could search them without being noticed.”
“Not just anyone. They’d have to get into the house and…” Daniel shook his head. He couldn’t see it. “Perhaps my father’s estate agent was looking for a particular record. Rather as we are about Rose Cottage. And he went mad over the disorganization. Had to fling papers about to relieve his feelings.” He could see the appeal. “Perhaps that’s why he left.”
“Possibly.”
She smiled, and Daniel felt a spark of triumph. He wanted her smiles. Nearly as much as he wanted her kisses. Nearly. “I’ll write and ask him.”
“If he went mad and tossed papers about?”
Daniel smiled back. This was better. “If he went through the trunks.”
“A good idea. You might inquire how he kept track of transactions, too. This top one had to have been placed here when you were a boy.”
“Briggs wasn’t here then. That would have been old Garrity.”
She sighed. “The label ‘old Garrity’ does not fill me with confidence.”
“You’re very perspicacious. Garrity worked for my grandfather for many years, and my father kept him on. By the time I knew him he was… ‘Doddering’ is the word that comes to mind.” Daniel looked at the trunks. “That might account for this mess. Papa kept him on until he died.”
“Sitting at the desk in the estate office, I suppose,” said Miss Pendleton. “With a quill in his hand and a blotted parchment. And so he haunts the chamber still, mixing up the records to thwart his successors.”
Daniel laughed. “At his cottage in his sleep, I’m afraid. Though your tale is much more exciting.”
She closed her notebook. “There’s no simple way to record what’s in these trunks. We may as well give up. And I should go.”
“It’s pouring rain,” he said. Water streamed down the windows.
“I see that it is.”
“Better wait till it clears. That gig of yours won’t keep you dry.”
“That could be hours.”
Their eyes met. That kiss would remain between them whatever their resolutions, Daniel thought. Until, perhaps, another sweeter one replaced it.
“Lord Macklin will be wondering where you are,” she added.
