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“An acquaintance.”
I didn’t need to look at Harry to know he was delighted to know she was out all evening. He would already be calculating the best time to return to break into the gallery. Now that he knew Lady Treloar wouldn’t happen past, it was the perfect opportunity. It was even more perfect—for him—because I was also occupied and couldn’t join him.
“How can I help you today?” Lady Treloar asked. It was difficult to reconcile this woman as the murderess. She was friendly and composed, cultured and intelligent.
But it was Harry’s father who’d taught me that murderers came in all forms, from the lowest in society to the highest. One’s outward appearance could hide a multitude of emotions and a cruel heart.
“We wanted to speak to you about Biarritz, as it happens,” Harry said. “Specifically, the cost of traveling there.”
“Oh.”
She wasn’t the only one who thought it an odd question. Where was Harry going with this line of interrogation, if that’s what it could be called?
He bestowed a curious smile on me. “Cleo and I want to go, but…” He shrugged, letting her fill in the rest of his sentence.
And fill it in, she did. Her eyes lit up. “I knew from the moment I met you both that you were more than colleagues. How romantic.”
My face heated and my pulse quickened. I didn’t dare glance at Harry to see his reaction, although I dearly wanted to know.
Lady Treloar opened the door wide. “Come in. Let me show you something.” She crossed the gallery floor to the door that led to the rear staff room.
We followed her. The room wasn’t very large. The three of us barely fit. We certainly couldn’t move past each other unless we got embarrassingly close.
While Lady Treloar looked through a box containing scraps of paper, I took the opportunity to glance around the room again, but this time with an eye to her being the killer. Everything was the same as on my previous visit—the bench with the same blue and white teacup, a kettle on the portable stove, the same books on art, and catalogues, and even the same paintings sat on the same scuffed section of the floor, leaning against the wall.
My heart stilled. The scuff marks were in an arc. I’d noticed them last time, but now I wondered if they’d been caused by a door opening. It couldn’t have been a very large door, but big enough for someone to slip through. The same size as the wall panel, in fact.
The right size to hide a painting in the secret room beyond.
“Ah, here it is.” Lady Treloar handed a piece of paper to Harry. “I didn’t travel first class this year, but don’t tell anyone.”
Harry smiled and handed the slip of paper to me. It was a train ticket for a French railway, dated March thirtieth. The price in francs was printed in the corner, below the stationmaster’s stamp.
“Quite affordable,” I said as I handed back the ticket. I sounded cheerful, but my heart was sinking. The ticket was evidence that she’d been in France on the thirtieth. She couldn’t have been in London stealing the Quornes’ painting.
“Indeed.” She returned the ticket to the box and indicated we should leave the room ahead of her. “Now, if you don’t mind, I must get to the seamstress before she closes her shop. I’ll see you at the ball tonight, Miss Fox.” She touched my arm. “Rest assured, your secret is safe with me.”
“Thank you.”
It wasn’t until we were well away from her gallery and walking in the opposite direction to Lady Treloar that I uttered a rather unladylike word. “I don’t believe that ticket is real for a moment, but the police will believe it.”
Harry agreed. “It won’t help our case against her, but I’m even more suspicious of her now than I was before.”
“Because of the scuff marks?”
“What scuff marks?”
As we walked to the omnibus stop, I told him about the floor in the back room and how I suspected the wall panel hid a door to a secret storage chamber.
“A brilliant observation, Cleo. Now I’m doubly sure she’s guilty of the theft, at the very least.”
“Are you? She was quite convincing with the ticket. She seemed to believe our story about running away together to Biarritz.”
We climbed onto the omnibus and took our seats. “She didn’t believe it,” Harry said. “Did you see how quickly she showed us her ticket? She knows we’re fishing for information and she had that on hand just in case the police asked for proof of where she was at the time of the Quornes’ theft. It was too convenient.”
I knew he was right, but being too eager to produce a French rail ticket wasn’t proof against her. We needed something solid.
The conductor tore off two tickets from his roll and punched a hole through each before handing them to us and taking our money.
