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He pointed at it. “That was open in the Music Room downstairs?”
I nodded. “A couple of days ago. I saw it. The velvet inside is blue.” I took in an unsteady breath and asked, “What’s going on, Ian?”
Ian moved to the filing cabinets and carefully inspected the flute case and its surrounds.
“Ian?” I pressed.
He straightened and looked at me.
“This is my great-grandfather’s flute,” he said.
“Okay,” I replied.
“Joan and David’s son.”
I started trembling.
Ian kept talking.
“He stopped playing it as a child. It’s said he stopped playing it the day after Dorothy Clifton died. He’d loved it and was good at it, some even contend he was a prodigy. He practiced all the time. But the day after she died, he never touched it again. He put it in here himself when Louisa was doing her work and confiscated this space for cataloguing. And that flute never leaves this room.”
Fucking.
Hell.
We were all gathered in the Music Room, including Lady Jane, and a fucked-out looking Daniel and Portia.
We were waiting for Richard.
This, an audience demanded by Ian, who I’d trailed after when he went down to the Robin Room, pounded on the door and ordered them to get their asses up to the Music Room, then he texted his mother and father.
Ian had returned to prowling, this time back and forth across the room like a lion in a cage.
Understandably, this didn’t give me glad tidings.
Lady Jane was watching him carefully, and her concern was evident. Daniel and Portia appeared foggy and confused.
I was silently freaking out.
Richard arrived, demanding, “Why in bloody hell have I been commanded to the second floor?”
“Close the door,” Ian ordered tersely.
Even Richard had nothing to say in the face of his son’s mood. He shut the door and fully entered the room.
“The maids, they clean up here…what? Once a month? Every other month?” Ian asked his mother.
“I don’t know. Christine makes the schedule,” she answered.
“Text her. Ask her. Now,” Ian demanded. “I want to know when someone was last in this room cleaning.”
She pulled her phone out of her cardigan pocket.
Ian waited until she was done, and we all waited with him.
After she put her phone hand down, he said, “Over on that table, it’s faint, but you can see the dust pattern is disturbed. Something was lying there. Now it isn’t.”
I was too far away to see from where I was, but since I’d seen the flute, there and gone, I didn’t need to look.
