Page 34 of A Matter of Murder
Bingley disappeared after the younger girls, followed by Mrs. Bennet, who was calling, “Girls, don’t break anything!”
“Darcy, be a darling and accompany me to the portraitgallery?” Caroline asked. “After all, if dear old Aunt Honoria was going to hide something valuable, why not hide it among the valuables?”
Darcy glanced stiffly at Lizzie, and she knew he was hoping she’d rescue him. However, she simply smiled and said, “What a clever idea, Caroline.”
Caroline harrumphed and dragged a reluctant Darcy after her. Lizzie turned to Charlotte. “Partners?” she asked.
“Of course,” said her friend.
They left Mary with Jane, as neither of them showed much interest in searching, and headed upstairs, Guy trotting after them. There, they were presented with a series of options. To the left was the west wing, a long hallway of guest rooms that eventually turned a corner to the family wing, where Jane and Bingley’s private rooms could be found. Most of the party was staying down this hall. Straight ahead was another hall of more guest rooms, and this was where Darcy, as the lone bachelor, was staying. To the right was the door to the east wing, locked tight. Lizzie and Charlotte chose to go straight down the hall, past Darcy’s bedroom chamber, and began opening doors along the very long corridor.
“This feels like snooping,” Charlotte said in a hushed tone as they crept into a bedroom, Guy leading the way. His nose worked double time sniffing across dusty carpets. White sheets covered the furniture, making Lizzie think of funeral shrouds.
“Be honest—haven’t you ever longed to go snooping through a grand house like this, to uncover all its secrets?”
Charlotte laughed. “I don’t know about uncovering secrets,” she admitted. “But sometimes I do wonder what might be in other people’s wardrobes.”
Lizzie grinned as she drew back a dusty sheet. “Why don’t you look?”
Charlotte opened the cantankerous old walnut wardrobe, whose unoiled hinges screeched. They both winced and froze, as if waiting for someone to catch them, then dissolved into giggles with Guy pressing up against Lizzie’s side eagerly to see what all the fuss was about. “Nothing but dust,” Charlotte said with disappointment.
“Oh, well,” Lizzie said. “There’s more where that came from, I bet.”
They moved methodically down one side of the hall and then the other, checking old fussy sitting rooms and dusty bedchambers that had long since seen proper daylight. Guy ran circles in his excitement, sniffing away and sneezing quite often. Lizzie checked every drawer and cabinet, and Charlotte opened up every wardrobe. They were all empty save for a smaller room toward the back of the house, overlooking a corner of the gardens. The wardrobe there held a collection of stiff old dresses, the fabric discolored with time. Lizzie and Charlotte exclaimed over the old mantuas and the open skirts, the yellowing lace and the fraying ribbons.
“Do you suppose these belonged to Bingley’s great-aunt?” Charlotte asked.
“They must have. Look at the style—my father has a portraitof my grandmother in a dress like this, and she would have been of the same era as Honoria.” Lizzie looked around the small bedchamber. The bed was small, with a worn mattress stripped down to the ticking, and the furnishings weren’t ornate, but they were solidly made. “This must have been her room... but why would she choose this one, when there are larger and better-appointed rooms?”
“Perhaps she had bad memories elsewhere in the house, and this room suited her better?” Charlotte suggested, gently pushing the dresses back into the wardrobe and shutting it.
Lizzie and Charlotte spent a quarter of an hour in that room, searching for false bottoms in drawers or hidden cubbies or shelves. They even lifted the mattress and rolled back the rugs, searching for loose floorboards, much to Guy’s consternation. Lizzie got up the courage to peer up the flue of the fireplace but found nothing.
“I don’t think there’s anything here,” Charlotte concluded. “And there’s not much in the way of personal effects, either. Whoever cleaned up after she died might have moved the treasure.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. One more thing to ask Sally about.
They reluctantly left Honoria’s room and continued down the hallway that stretched along the back of the house. Here, there were fewer chambers, but a slightly uneven seam in the wall caught Lizzie’s notice. She ran her fingers along the seam and the panel of the wall, searching... click!
The wall swung inward, revealing a dark, dusty corridor.
“Charlotte, look! A secret passageway!”
“I’m sure it’s hardly a secret,” Charlotte said, peering into the darkness. “It’s likely a passageway for servants to get from one end of the house to the other without having to run into guests or the family.”
Lizzie didn’t care—her heart was pounding with excitement. “Come on!”
Guy followed Lizzie as she took a few steps into the passageway, but Charlotte hesitated. “Are you sure we should go in there?”
Of course Lizzie was certain—this was far more interesting than a half-empty room full of dust. “We’ll leave the door open for light,” she said. “And only go in a bit of the way. Far enough to get a sense for where it leads. We can always turn around and fetch Bingley.”
“All right,” Charlotte said uncertainly, stepping into the corridor after her. The old wood creaked under their feet, and the corridor itself was rather cramped—only large enough that two people could pass each other if they turned themselves sideways—but the ceilings were tall. Guy forged ahead, not seeming to care that it was growing darker with each step.
“Lizzie, perhaps we ought to come back with a lantern,” Charlotte said.
Lizzie brushed away a cobweb she’d walked straight into and was glad that Charlotte couldn’t see what she was doing. “I just want to see how far it goes. Surely it will come out somewhere.”
“I know, but it’s getting difficult to see.”