Page 28 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)

“To a nicety. Even His Grace of Waltham doesn’t keep that much spare cash on hand, nor do the Caldicotts have much in the way of gold to contribute.

” Moreover, I was not His Grace. I could ask the banks to exert every possible effort to liquidate my assets.

I could not order extraordinary measures regarding the ducal resources with the same authority the duke could have.

Strother continued into the foyer. “We wouldn’t expect… that is. You’re doing your best. You have my thanks for that. Mama’s, too, or you would if she was herself.”

“Meaning?”

“She’s a high stickler, but most high sticklers are simply uppish.

Mama believes in maintaining standards, but also in noblesse oblige.

We simply lack the coin to uphold our end of the obligations.

The church should have a curate, preferably a handsome, friendly bachelor who isn’t too keen on brimstone.

The assembly rooms need refurbishing. Pleasant View should host the occasional fete.

Mama would make a fine lady of the manor, but the manor isn’t doing so well in recent years. This leaves her…”

Rude? Overbearing?

“At a loss,” Strother finished. “A little desperate and trying not to show it. When I view her like that, I have some sympathy for her.”

As did I—grudging sympathy. “Well, prepare to have a little more sympathy for her, Stadler. MacNamara’s men will tromp and ride themselves to exhaustion looking for any sign of Hannah or her captors. I doubt we’ll find her, but we must try.”

“What can I do to help?”

That he’d got around to asking that question at all surprised me.

“Manage your mother. Look through Hannah’s effects without the servants catching you at it.

Poke around the house as casually as you can.

Hannah would have hidden the gold where the family was unlikely to come across it, but you—being family—know the parts of the house you and your parents never frequent. ”

“You mean the laundry and larders and such?”

“If Hannah could slip into and out of such locations unremarked, then yes. If she could use the key to the wine cellar without attracting notice, then look there too. Where was she permitted to putter and pry without the rest of the family’s interference?”

Strother’s expression suggested he’d never in all his born days viewed himself as an interference. “I’ll have a look around.”

“Do that. Assume if you hear nothing from me that our efforts have thus far been fruitless.”

He saw me out, and I was relieved to go. MacNamara’s indigents would be free to reconnoiter the property, as would I. We were searching for Hannah, of course, and also for the gold.

But we were all former soldiers, albeit somewhat the worse for our military experience. Every one of us well knew the look of a fresh grave, and we’d take particular notice should we happen to spy one of those.

I explained to the men how to search on a grid pattern.

Whether they were scanning the landscape, rummaging around in a deserted summer kitchen, or evaluating a newly repaired stone wall, I taught them to let their gaze wander over the field of view slowly and thoroughly in the kind of half focus that notes both details and patterns.

Such a gaze required seeing with both the mind and the instincts, and the skill had taken me endless hours to acquire.

“What do you make of that stream bank?” I asked Dutch as we headed toward MacNamara’s abode after a long, frustrating day of tramping.

“It’s a stream bank.”

His enthusiasm for finding Miss Hannah outstripped his reconnaissance skills. “Is the water higher or lower than usual?”

“Lower.”

“How do you know?”

He stopped on the path and considered the opposite bank. “The plants don’t grow all the way down to the water. The dirt is a different color below the plants.”

“Right. How long since it rained?”

He gave me a cross look, then looked again at the bank. “I don’t know.”

“Look at the tracks, Dutch. Animals will come down to the water to drink at least daily, often twice a day. Do the tracks near the water look dried out or soft and fresh? Has dust accumulated in the crevices of the tracks, or are the contours sharp?”

He shook his head. “The tracks look like tracks, and if I don’t get somethin’ to eat soon, I’ll pitch your lordship into the river, I vow I will.”

“Go on in, then. I’ll nose about awhile longer.” We had two hours of light left, and the soft, slanting beams of a setting sun often revealed signs not as visible during bright daylight. “I’ll probably follow by nightfall.”

“See that you do. I’ll be drummed out of the regiment if you come to harm. Captain thinks highly o’ you.”

The captain, who must be half out of his mind with worry. “Away with you. Save me some rations, and don’t fret if I’m out all night.”

“One question, sir.”

“Ask.” Dragonflies danced over the sluggish water near the riverbank, and dust drifted on the slanting sunshine. A beautiful time of day, though my day had been anything but beautiful.

“Dorset says,” Dutch began, nodding in the direction of the manor house, “that these people aren’t paying the help timely.

Carstairs says their riding horses are nigh feeble, and their butler shoulda been pensioned before Farmer George went mad the first time.

They got no coin, but they got that gold.

Why not sell the gold, pay the help, and onward we march? ”

A pragmatic question. “Much of the gold is distinctive, made into one-of-a-kind pieces that predate the Romans. Some of it is in ancient coin. It can be melted down, but that would mean finding a goldsmith willing to destroy a priceless antique and keep his mouth shut about it. The gold is worth more as jewelry, come to that, but finding a buyer who won’t flaunt the acquisition would be nearly impossible. ”

“And that’s the problem? Somebody knowin’ that the gold was finally put to some use?”

“More or less. To turn the gold into coin would all but shout that the Stadlers were bobbing about in the River Tick. Young Strother would find himself in the sponging house, Lady Standish would become a laughingstock, and Lord Standish might well be blackballed from his clubs.” Debtors’ prison could be tantamount to a death sentence for a cobbler down on his luck, but Strother’s fate would be ameliorated by his family’s ability to keep him in amenities.

“But if they sold the gold, they could eat,” Dutch retorted. “They’d have boots that fit. They’d have all this…” He gestured to the surrounding bucolic splendor.

A doe and a pair of fawns just emerging from the home wood stopped and lifted their heads at his gesture.

“They would have all of this,” I said, “and more scandal than any family could live down in three generations.”

“But instead, they have their gold. Except they don’t even have that, an’ neither do they have Miss Hannah.”

He shook his head and moved off down the trail, muttering about the Quality and daft officers and how was a body to march without tucker?

For my part, I wondered how Miss Hannah was faring. Was anybody feeding her? We’d found no fresh graves, but then, if I were a kidnapper turned murderer, I’d hide the body someplace other than the victim’s figurative backyard.

Where, though?

For the sake of reconnoitering, I sought the closest thing to a church steeple I could find, that being the belvedere.

I made my way to the top and took out a spyglass.

In all directions, the land was green and growing, whether I viewed the park, the pastures, or the home wood.

In the distance, a bank of gray clouds was scudding in from the south, leaving only a band of gold between the horizon and the overcast sky.

The land was verdant, the crops and livestock abundant, and yet, the Stadlers were in straitened circumstances. I nearly fell asleep pondering that conundrum, my hip braced on the balustrade, my spyglass slipped back into my boot.

The men and I had made a grid out of the manor’s immediate grounds and spent the day traversing several hundred acres.

Our emphasis had been on fixtures—an unfinished hermit’s grotto, the old summer kitchen, a woodshed at the edge of the home wood.

We found no sign of Miss Hannah and no sign of any gold.

Thunder rumbled, and a streak of lightning danced down from the distant clouds.

“It needs only this.” Signs obliterated by a downpour, trails turned to mud, visibility reduced from even the best vantage points.

I made my way down through the dark spiraling stairs of the belvedere, prepared to get a thorough soaking on my way back to headquarters. I stopped at the bottom of the steps and glanced back up into the shadowed tunnel I’d just descended.

Spotting the hiding place was simple, especially in the limited light.

The stone structure was well made and old enough to have thoroughly settled.

One patch of wall, though, had suffered a loss of mortar, as would happen in old, exposed masonry.

I pushed here and there, found the loose stone, and removed it.

Nothing. The space behind the stone was merely a whitewashed recess at about chest height. No brooch gleamed at me from the depths of the gap. No circlet caught the rays of the fading sun.

No letter greeted me either.

Thunder rumbled again, closer. I slapped the rock loosely back into the gap in the wall and forced myself to make double time in the direction of MacNamara’s home.

A wasted day on every hand. No sign of Hannah Stadler, no sign of the gold, no sign of who might have kidnapped her. Rather than make the journey back to the Hall, I’d sent word that I’d be putting up at MacNamara’s abode, the better to save time.

That I was also avoiding Hyperia had to be admitted. I loved her. I missed her when we were parted and missed her even as I felt the first cold raindrop slap the back of my neck. My feelings for her were deep and devoted, that hadn’t changed.

But my circumstances were changing. I was regaining health in a manner that bore materially on my expectations of matrimony. What did that mean for my future with Hyperia?

Round and round, I pondered as I tramped the mile and a half back to the captain’s dwelling. I arrived in his foyer in a state between bedraggled and sopping and was thus unprepared for the butler, Coombs, to inform me that I had a visitor awaiting me in the guest parlor.

Coombs had taken the liberty of offering Miss West a tea tray, and she had done him the courtesy of informing him that she would not be staying to supper with milord.