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Daniel went over to look.
“Don’t touch anything,” Ian warned.
Portia asked, “Oh my God. Has something been stolen?”
“Moved,” Ian told her. “Out of the History Room and into here, then back out again. I don’t know when it was moved in, but it was moved out sometime in the last…” He looked to me.
“I don’t…it’s all cobbling together, but I think three days?” I told him.
“Three days,” Ian said.
Portia turned accusing eyes to Daniel. His face got red.
“It wasn’t Brittany,” Ian decreed. “It was taken from a locked room. She doesn’t have the code. No one does, but Stevenson, Christine and members of this family.”
“Stevenson would never,” Richard proclaimed.
“Christine neither,” Lady Jane said.
“Someone’s been in this house and they’re moving shit around,” Ian told them. “A photograph that was also housed in the History Room was put in the safe in Brandy.”
Lady Jane went white as a sheet.
Richard’s face got splotchy.
As they would. I didn’t see much else but what looked like more historical papers in that safe, but if someone was availing themselves of secured spaces, it’d cause anyone alarm.
“Why would someone do that?” Daniel asked.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Ian replied. “And I’m going to find out. So, before I embark on that, if anyone in this room has anything to say…”
He trailed off but didn’t take his attention from Daniel when he said those words.
Daniel morphed straight to fury. “You think it’s me!”
“You and Portia started this week at home with games,” Ian pointed out.
“I don’t know anything about any History Room!” Portia exclaimed.
Ian didn’t even look at her.
He raised his brows to Daniel.
Daniel exploded.
“Fuck you, Ian! I may have fucked about and screwed up, but I’m not stealing things from my own damned house.”
“Nothing has been stolen, at least not that we know. And I’ll be doing an inventory with Stevenson as well,” Ian told him. “They’ve been moved.”
“And why would someone do that?” Lady Jane repeated after her son, still looking more than mildly troubled.
“I don’t know that either, but the photograph was the one of everyone at the party where Dorothy Clifton died, standing in front of the house. And the thing that was in here, but is now not, that Daphne saw, was great-grandfather’s flute,” Ian explained.
“That’s just odd,” Lady Jane murmured.
“It’s more than odd. It’s what Brittany tried to do, attempting to frighten us, playing on the ghost stories. Except whoever this is, is not only doing it under our noses. They have the codes to secure rooms and safes.”
“We’re changing all the codes,” Richard said instantly.
