‘I suppose so,’ he said slowly. ‘I have never been in Cousin Henry’s bedchamber or dressing room and there are locked cupboards and drawers in the study I have never seen inside. You are right, there may be evidence.’
‘Do you have the keys?’ That was Garrick, always practical.
‘Yes.’ Adrien looked a little uneasy. ‘I removed them from his pocket before they took his body. Perhaps I should have left them, but I thought that would be what he wanted.’
‘You did the right thing,’ I reassured him. ‘The keys should not leave the house. I think we should begin to search as soon as possible: the Justice might not view it in the same light that we do.’
‘Yes, I agree. Actually it is interesting that the keys were still there. It shows that whoever killed Cousin Henry was not searching for something, doesn’t it?’
I caught Luc’s eyes and could see he was thinking the same thing I was: had Adrien used them?
Adrien reached a decision and pushed back his chair. ‘We should start in the study before anyone in authority tells us we must not. I did lock the bedchamber last night and told his valet, Picton, to leave everything as it was.’
Luc took the desk while Adrien opened all the cupboards. He and I searched those, while Garrick rolled back the carpet, tested floorboards, pulled furniture away from the walls and then, when he found nothing, began to tap his way around the panelling.
After an hour we gave up. Luc, who had been examining the underside of all of the desk drawers, replaced their contents and slid them back, one by one.
‘Nothing here, just what you would expect. Highly organised papers. Personal business on one side, Parliamentary on the other.’
‘The drawers this side were all estate business. I recognised all of it and I had the keys to those drawers anyway.’ Adrien, on the opposite side of the partners’ desk, had been checking the underside of the drawers too, and slid back the last one with a shake of his head.
‘The cupboards held nothing suspicious that I could see.’ I closed all the doors. ‘Rolls of estate plans, ledgers, old bills.’
We looked around us and I tried to let my mind wander freely, think outside the box. ‘Up the chimney?’
‘I looked,’ Garrick said. ‘And I tipped up the vases on the mantle shelf.’
There was something niggling at the back of my mind. Something I had read a long time ago… Georgette Heyer, of course. Now, what was the book? The Reluctant Widow, where vital papers had been hidden in a clock: that was it.
‘Who winds the clocks?’ I asked.
‘One of the footmen. But he doesn’t do this one.’ Adrien unlocked a drawer again and took out a gold watch on a chain with one fob and two small keys. ‘I locked this away when they took the body. Cousin Henry always wound the clock in here himself. He would take the time from the clocks in the House of Lords, set his watch by them, then check this one against that. He was a stickler for punctuality and that ensured he was always on time for Parliamentary business.’
‘Can you open it?’ I asked.
He looked puzzled, but unhooked one of the keys and went to turn the clock to expose the back. ‘It does seem strange to lock it,’ he said, fiddling the key into place. ‘I suppose he did not want to risk anyone changing it.’
The back swung open and he stood on tiptoe to look in. ‘There’s something inside!’
We clustered around him as he unfolded the single sheet of paper.
LEAVE HER ALONE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
‘That’s all?’ I lifted the clock down, almost staggering under the weight of it. Luc took it and set it on the desk before I dropped it. ‘There’s nothing else.’
Luc held the paper up to the light. ‘Good quality paper, watermarked – but nothing unusual. The writing could be by anyone who has their letters: footman or duke.’ He frowned at the note. ‘But who is she?’
‘Madame Vaillant? Miss Jordan? One of the female staff?’
‘Or any one of the thousands of women in London,’ Garrick said. ‘What I find strange is that he should keep it, then hide it like that.’
‘I suppose…’ Adrien broke off.
‘What?’ I demanded.
‘My first thought was that there are any number of places that he could have locked it away securely. Places I do not have the keys for. His side of the desk or his bedchamber, for example. But if someone did search, had got hold of the keys illicitly, or forced locks, then they would not find it, because it was hidden there.’ He nodded towards the clock.
‘Did he trust you?’ Garrick asked bluntly.