The cupboards and the refrigerator were empty, but the wine rack was not. It was a good testament to the loyalty of the housekeeping staff long left behind. Frederick had been one of the leading estate hands for a fair number of years before my father’s death. I’d still been a young teenager when I’d tripped over his rake by the old greenhouse outside and bust open both my kneecaps for school that coming week.
It was as I knocked back a decent gulp of fine cold water that I wondered how well Frederick Hamble had known Amelia George while all the betrayal was going on.
If he’d known her considerably better than I had.
If he knew where she’d ended up running to with all that cash in her hands.
Part of me even considered asking him when morning hit.
Getting upstairs to my father’s old study saw my heart pounding with far more than exertion. I pushed his door open slowly, all so easily transported to being a young boy again trying to grab his attention from the landing after school. It was never easy, his nose always buried in some business or politics affairs that needed action.
I’d never yet been behind his desk. Not since his death and certainly not before it. His drawers were surprisingly empty when I pulled them open one by one. Nothing present bar some random old local shopping receipts and standard letterheads.
Nothing present until the top middle drawer tinkled with an old tatty key with no clear indication of what it belonged to.
I looked in the side cupboards and cabinets but found nothing. I looked in his old briefcase still propped up against the side of his bookcase, but found only a few old dried out pens inside.
His bookcase was freshly dusted but innocuous in its contents. His plants had long died and been removed to be replaced by nothing but the saucers.
I slumped in his desk chair, cursing myself for going through the dregs of this old shit without turning up so much as a hint in my favour.
There must be something here. Something to get me started. Anything to get me started.
I moved upstairs to his bedroom, cursing myself afresh for the intrusion. Still, nothing. His wardrobe was lined out perfectly, clothes dated but immaculate. His book was still on his side table, but again was some innocuous tale of life in the business fast lane.
I remembered being under those exact patterned bedsheets when I was just a young kid suffering from a flu bug. How he’d sat alongside me and patted my forehead with his handkerchief and told me I’d feel better in the morning.
Fuck me, how I needed to find something.
I guess it was the wave of frustration that saw me diving deep under the surface. I checked under his pillows and patted down under his mattress, looking for some hint of anything, just to find fucking something. I checked in his dresser drawers for something besides socks, sweeping aside his underwear like a fool on a mission. Still nothing.
My fingers swept along the top shelf of his wardrobe to check for trinkets and boxes. Nothing.
I checked the shoeboxes underneath for hidden little scrapbooks or secrets. Nothing.
It was only when I was in danger of tugging the picture of the family lineage from the back wall and smashing it over the dresser that I caught a weird little scuff on the paintwork.
Ink.
It was ink.
Ink from the bottom corner at the back of the screened print.
My finger scuffed it. Hollow. A gap between the canvas and the frame. A gap enough that something rustled when I shook it.
I took the frame to the window and pulled the drapes aside for a better look. The morning light was cold and harsh, and worked perfectly, showing the damage to the threads at the back of the canvas.
Damage I could pick at quite happily, only to find a glob of glue underneath fastening in a few scrawled notelets.
My heart was racing. Secrets. They must be secrets.
Secrets from my father about life. About his life. About ours. About Drake’s.
Enough material to give me ground in this battle of all fucking battles and see me with the girl I fucking wanted on the other side, just like a fucking fairy story.
Just like the fucking fairy story Amelia fucking George should have been in the first bout of fucking carnage.
My eyes were like eagle’s eyes as I worked that glob of glue free. My nails were like a surgeon’s pincers, careful but skilled in their attack on the notelets. Because this was it. This was definitely it.
Something.
Any fucking thing.
Any fucking thing I needed in this terrible fucking shit storm.
The notelets were jaded and old when they came free. My hands were shaking as I tugged them open and held them up to the daylight.