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He doesn’t miss a beat—proving that hehasbeen listening. “A month or so?”
“Burns came into money, and thenkeptgetting money, using it for luxuries like an icebox. I don’t suppose we can pull his banking records?” I catch their looks. “Is there such a thing as banking records?”
“Yes,” McCreadie says. “But I rather suspect they look somewhat different a hundred years from now, if they could help in such a case.”
“It’d be a record of deposits and withdrawals, which might show a suspicious pattern of activity.”
“Such a thing exists, obviously, so that the bank knows what a customer has in their account. However, that supposes that someone like Burns has an account, and that we could find it. I have gone through the few records he keeps here at home, and I do not see a bank listed. He may not use one. Many people do not.”
“Ah, right. Because we are in a time before the Great Depression and the advent of deposit insurance? Nothing to scare people away from banks like realizing the place that’s supposed to keep your money safe can also lose it.”
“This… Great Depression,” McCreadie says. “Is that happening anytime soon?”
“Nineteen-thirties. Stock market crash. Banks failed. People lost everything. Not sure how bad it was in Scotland, but when you hit retirement age, get your money out of the bank. And the stock exchange.”
“Presuming I have money to put in either, I will remember that. As for Burns—”
Gray clears his throat. When we look over, he holds out his hand. There’s a sovereign and a small silver ring on the palm.
“I believe I know where the Burnses kept their money,” he says.
“And when were you going to tell us?” McCreadie says.
“When you were finished conversing. It would be rude to interrupt.”
I look from Gray to the bed, which he’d been examining. “Please don’t tell me they kept it under the mattress.”
“All right, I won’t tell you.”
I sigh. “How much is there?”
“Only these, but there are marks on the fabric that suggest there was more. I am presuming Mrs. Burns emptied it out when she fled, and in her haste, she missed these.”
I walk over to take a look at the ring. It’s just a plain silver one, no inscription or anything obviously useful.
“Okay,” I say. “Bag them.”
“Bag…?” he begins.
“Wrap them up and take them. Please.”
“Any other evidence you have not seen fit to share with us?” McCreadie asks Gray.
“Someone else has searched the room,” Gray says.
“That would be the police,” McCreadie says. “Detective Crichton searched it after Burns’s suspicious death and again this morning after Mrs. Burns disappeared.”
“I mean since then. When we came in, there were damp boot prints. I thought it might be from the officer on guard, but they seemed rather small. I’ll speak to the guard and see whether he admitted anyone else, perhaps with a bribe, but the footprints indicated entrance through an open window. They proceeded throughout the residence, most concentrated in front of the small desk.”
“Suggesting someone came in and searched the desk,” I say. “Any chance of a hidden compartment?”
“I failed to find one myself, but you both ought to look, in case I missed it.”
“I doubt that’s possible,” McCreadie grumbles. “Could you please tell us these things earlier, Duncan?”
“I was giving you both a chance to discover it for yourself.”
“Thanks,” I say.
