Page 67 of A Matter of Murder
Lizzie nodded. “Thank you.”
Sally released her. “Come on, he’s close.”
The second floor was not nearly as nice as the first. The floors were bare and the walls were a simple whitewashed plaster, and the ceilings weren’t as tall as they were on the ground and first floors. Sally noticed Lizzie taking it all in and said, “This used to be the servant wing. But no one has lived here for a very long time.”
Lizzie shivered, thinking of all the poor servants who’d taken sick and died, never to be replaced. There was something unnerving about the empty hall, with its diffused light. “Is the floor stable up here? Did the fire...”
“I wouldn’t go farther down that hall, but he should be—”
Sally reached for the closest door on the right, and it opened soundlessly. A small cream-colored bundle barreled into Lizzie’s ankles. “Guy!”
The dog made pathetic whimpering noises, and his entire body wiggled with excitement to be reunited with Lizzie. He jumped up, scrambling at her knees, and she bent down and swooped him up. “Oh, I’m so sorry, boy. How on earth did you get up here?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?”
Lizzie turned to look at Sally. The other young lady was regarding her with a strange expression—half wonder, quarter confusion, and a quarter... suspicion? “What is it?”
“You’ve been here before,” she said. No, she didn’t just say it—she accused Lizzie. “Haven’t you?”
“What?” Lizzie shook her head. “Charlotte and I were here in the east wing, yes, but that was an accident. I found the service corridor and wanted to see where it led. The door shut on us, so we had to find another way through. But we didn’t come up here.”
Sally took a step forward, and for one heart-stopping moment Lizzie was afraid of her. What was she accusing Lizzie of, exactly? What was she going to do next?
But Sally stepped around her, and into the room Guy had been closed into.
The implication of that settled around Lizzie—Guy had been behind that door. But how? Unless... someone had deliberately shut him in there.
She followed Sally, holding Guy. The room was a large, open space. An ancient cradle sat in the corner, as well as miniature beds with musty, moth-eaten bedding. Old, broken toys were piled in a heap, and there was a single rocking chair poised tilted to look out the windows. They offered a view of the front lawn, sloping down toward the magnificent gates.
“A nursery?” she asked. “All the way up here, with the servants’ quarters?”
“It was the servants’ nursery,” Sally said, voice sounding strangely hollow. “In a different time, I might have grown up in this room.”
Sally’s words reminded Lizzie of what she and Darcy and Charlotte had uncovered that morning, about Sally’s father—or lack of evidence of one. Something about this room had rattled Sally.
Lizzie had no sooner realized this than she noticed something else: The room itself wasn’t covered in dust and grime. The bedding in the corner didn’t look at all inviting, but the floor was swept clean, and as she took a few timid steps to the fireplace, she saw the mantel had been recently dusted. There was no sign of fire damage, either. Almost as if the whitewashed walls had been scrubbed clean of whatever smoke damage or soot might have reached this far.
“Sally,” Lizzie said in a voice that sounded more confident than she felt, “what is significant about this room?”
She didn’t think the other young woman would answer, but Sally responded as if in a trance. “I would find her here, often.Rocking in that chair, staring out the window. An entire manor full of luxurious rooms and the most comfortable seats you could imagine, but she’d come to this room.”
“Why?”
Sally went to the window. “That was the other thing—she wanted a child, but Mr. Bingley never gave her one before... well. I think she liked the simplicity of this room—it’s not as nice as the nursery in the west wing, but the view out the window is better.”
“Do you keep this room clean? In her memory?”
Seeing Sally in the window late at night suddenly made a lot more sense if Sally made regular visits to the east wing to this very room for... sentimental reasons? Lizzie shook her head. Why risk the danger for sentimentality?
Sally still hadn’t answered, so Lizzie decided to take a gamble. “I saw you in the east wing. Four nights ago. When I took Guy out at night, I could see a candle in the east wing, going from room to room.”
Sally’s head snapped back. “You saw that?”
“Yes.” Lizzie swallowed hard. “It was you, wasn’t it?” She didn’t like how her voice came out with a slight squeak.
Sally sighed, and in that one defeated sound, Lizzie knew she was right.
“Why?” Lizzie asked. “It’s so dangerous! I—”