Page 26 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)
Chapter Eleven
“Hannah never specifically brought up the gold,” MacNamara said, shoving a pillow beneath his foot where it rested on a hassock. “But the topic would arise nonetheless, like mention of a tippling auntie tumbles into the conversation and has to be tucked away again.”
We occupied Caldicott Hall’s library, a contrast to the Stadlers’ room answering to the same name.
The summer curtains here were rich blue velvet hanging in long, graceful folds, the carpet a bright, floral Axminster pattern.
Evening light flooded in from the west-facing windows and winked on crystal decanters, gilt frames, and an enormous pier glass opposite the central hearth.
All was comfort, repose, and elegance, but without fussiness. I had read in this library by the hour as a younger man, and also played cards here, napped, and tended to correspondence.
I poured two brandies and brought one to MacNamara. “How did Hannah refer to the gold?”
MacNamara accepted the drink. “Like that same auntie. One cannot deny the connection, but one struggles to appreciate it. I know some of the pieces were gorgeous—she’d sketched them—and the value incalculable because the age was so venerable.
Hannah claimed the cache of coins could have come from the leprechaun’s fabled pot, they shone so brightly.
She said no barbarians had fashioned such beauty, and I believe those pieces were ancient when the Romans arrived on our shores. ”
I took the second wing chair and lifted my glass. “To treasures recovered.”
We sipped while off in the distance a cow lowed to her calf. Such a mournful sound.
“Where would Hannah hide a lot of gold she wanted to protect from her family?”
“Gold doesn’t hide easily.”
And yet, history was full of tales of hidden treasure, much of it gold. “The viscountess mentioned that Hannah was forever wandering around the estate with a lap desk or a book. Why bring a lap desk? Could Hannah have been secreting gold in the lap desk or in a book altered for the purpose?”
In Spain, many a dispatch had fallen into enemy hands.
The missives were always coded, though Wellington’s staff managed to crack the French codes eventually, but the messages were also hidden.
Stuffed into a slit in the messenger’s saddle, secreted beneath a false sole on his boot, sewn into the lining of his dusty coat. The hiding places were endless.
“She might, but some of the pieces are sizable, my lord. A circlet doesn’t easily fit into a bound volume of Fordyce’s Sermons , no matter how many pages you cut away. The lap desk was doubtless for writing to Hannah’s literary friends or to me. She is a loyal correspondent, as I well know.”
My mind was sluggish, my spirits low. The gold could be in a cupboard in an empty tenant cottage, behind some loose stones in the belvedere, stashed beneath the bench of an abandoned privy.
All of the above. Pleasant View manor sat in the middle of hundreds of acres accessible to Hannah Stadler on foot or on horseback.
“Forget the lap desk for a moment. Maybe Miss Stadler was transporting the smaller pieces in her book or her reticule or the crown of her bonnet. Where would she take them?”
MacNamara shifted his foot. “Where would her family never look? That is the more difficult question, because as a young lady with no independent means, Hannah was lucky to have a bedroom to herself. She had no authority to order her family away from a folly or gatehouse, for example. In London, she would have been dogged by a companion and lady’s maid and probably accompanied by a footman as well. ”
Think, Caldicott. Think like a young lady intent on literally burying treasure. “Would the staff abet her efforts to hide the gold?”
“Are we certain she hid it?”
Valid question. “We are not. Strother, a notably dishonest fellow, claims she might have, as does the viscountess. If either of them stole the gold, they would of course claim Hannah had moved it.”
MacNamara grimaced. “Right. So we hope Hannah hid the gold, because otherwise, there is no gold and no way to pay the ransom.”
“I’ve sent word to Town. Waltham’s solicitors have been instructed to get the funds together, but a sum that size, without the duke on hand to authorize it personally, will take some time.
” Meaning the funds were coming from my own figurative pockets, about which not a word need be said.
“And I have nothing in the way of ancient gold.”
MacNamara peered into his glass. “Decent of you, all the same.”
“Her Grace seconded the motion. Said one mother could do no less for another, but the sum will be all in bearer bonds rather than partly in gold as directed.” I’d dispatched the requisite pigeon within the quarter hour of consulting Her Grace. “Where do we look for the gold, MacNamara?”
“The manor house is probably out,” he said, sipping his brandy.
“Strother, the viscountess, or her ladyship’s familiars might come across anything hidden within the dwelling itself.
They have doubtless looked. Hannah would have reasoned that Stadler land was the safest option.
Anybody who came across a bracelet or brooch in some cow byre on Stadler property would have been obligated to assume the piece belonged to the Stadler family. ”
“Anybody but a thief with common sense. He’d assume good fortune had finally smiled upon him.”
“Hannah would not leap to that conclusion. She is blazingly intelligent, but also… innocent.”
“Good,” I said, knowing exactly what MacNamara meant. “Pure of heart. I suppose I must scour the countryside, then, or at least the land adjacent to the manor.” I had found needles in haystacks before, though not often and not when time was so short. “Can you draw me a map?”
A tracking hound would find too many old trails to be of use, and an army of searchers would obliterate as many clues as they found. Nothing for it but relentless hard work.
“I’ll make you a map and note places Hannah frequented. I can also put at your disposal my groom, gardener, and gamekeeper. All former military. Reliable sorts and hard workers. My butler is former military, too, but getting on.”
“Do I dare trust any of the Stadlers’ retainers?”
“You do not. They are too terrified of the viscountess. She’s the kind to sack a maid without a character if Strother takes a fancy to the girl. Hannah wrote the characters, signed her mother’s name, and contributed what severance she could.”
“The more I know of the viscountess, the less I like her.”
MacNamara finished his drink and commenced rubbing his knee. “Don’t underestimate her. She’s smart—Hannah did not get her brains from old Standish—and bitter.”
Her bitterness was obvious, but also off-key. “Her ladyship, a Scot of no lofty pedigree, married an English viscount’s heir. Why the bitterness?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s as simple as she had to marry the English viscount rather than some braw, bonnie laddie.”
“And thus her daughter must be made to marry some strutting Irish lordling? Her daughter who has no dowry to speak of? Who is no longer in the first blush of youth? Who is not, meaning the lady no respect, a diamond of the first water? Too many questions, MacNamara, and not enough answers.”
He sat back. “I should get up and fetch pencil and paper from the desk, but such is the contrariness of my knee that I will ask you to procure them for me.”
I rose, my drink all but untouched. “Have you consulted Hugh St. Sevier about your medical woes?”
“The Frenchman?”
“The French physician who was educated in Scotland and saw more human anatomy and medical challenges on the Peninsula than you did cannonballs. He’s in London these days. I know one of the clubs he frequents.”
“I can’t say I liked St. Sevier. He wasn’t easy company, but he was a damned fine surgeon.”
“He still is, though I think he limits his practice to émigrés. He’d make an exception for you.” Particularly if I wrote and asked him to.
“Find Hannah, then I will fret about an aching knee or dodgy foot. Find Hannah, Caldicott, the sooner the better.”
I brought him a lap desk stocked with paper, pens, pencils, and other accoutrements of correspondence.
“Please jot me a letter of introduction to whoever held the senior rank among your staff, and I’ll acquaint them with the state of the campaign. They might well have heard something or seen something of interest in your absence.”
“Good thought. You’ll get an early start?”
Another early start. “Crack of doom.”
MacNamara considered me. “I’ll do what I can to assist with the ransom. My resources are modest, but my family has some means.”
From the captain, that might mean his older brother was rolling in filthy lucre, or it might mean they’d somehow endure it until harvest.
“You might deploy those family means to buy up the vowels owed by one Sylvester Downing. I have no reason to conclude that he’s implicated, but I cannot rule him out. He has motive, and my instincts are twitching. You’ll have to move quickly and rely on London connections.”
MacNamara ran a blunt finger along the lap desk’s inlaid border. “Downing’s younger brother recently decamped for parts distant, didn’t he?”
“Probably one foot ahead of creditors.” Though the Continent served the purpose just as well as the New World did and was within easier, cheaper reach.
MacNamara opened the desk and rummaged inside. “You’re looking a bit peaky, Caldicott. Not sleeping well?”
“Not sleeping enough. Summer nights are too short and too hot. In Spain, the nights were brisk, even if the days were broiling. I don’t miss it, but…” Why was I talking about bloody Spain?
“But we left pieces of our souls in Spain,” MacNamara said, laying a sheet of paper flat on the top of the lap desk. “And we might never get those pieces back.”
One thing I would not be is maudlin regarding my military past. “Good night, MacNamara. I’ll report back as regularly as I can.”