Page 11 of Murder at Somerset House (A Wrexford & Sloane Mystery #9)
T he whoosh and gurgle of the ebbing tide rose up through the night mist hanging low over the river. Save for the light scuff of their boots on the cobblestones, all was quiet as Wrexford and Sheffield made their way into the courtyard.
“No sign of life in the building,” observed Sheffield after a glance at the unlit windows.
The earl made a survey of their surroundings before indicating that they should proceed to the doorway half hidden in the shadows of the loading area. The latch clicked open at his touch, causing him to step back and draw the pistol from his coat pocket.
“We may not be alone,” he whispered, “so it’s best to be prepared for any surprises.”
Sheffield wordlessly readied his own weapon and followed Wrexford into the cavernous storage space. A weak dribble of moonlight coming in through the windows revealed that it was empty, save for a few broken crates, and they moved on to the stairs located by the far wall.
“Raven said his assailants were on the third floor,” remarked Wrexford. “But I suggest we check around carefully as we head up, so as not to miss any clues.”
He had brought along a small folding tin lantern and a single candle for illumination. The shuttered opening would allow him to focus the beam of light and minimize the chances of anyone outside the building noticing any activity inside.
“It sounds quiet as a crypt,” replied Sheffield, after cocking an ear.
They moved stealthily up to the first story, which held a large reception room and several smaller spaces filled with desks for the clerks and scriveners. A quick search revealed nary a paper within the cabinets, and Wrexford signaled for them to continue their ascent.
The second story proved equally uninteresting. But as the earl turned, something caught his eye in the faint flicker of candlelight, and he dropped down to a crouch.
“What is it?” whispered Sheffield.
He pointed to the planked floor, where a small area was just a shade darker than the surrounding wood, and touched his finger to the faint remains of a footprint. “Moisture,” he explained. “Someone walked through here very recently.”
Sheffield silently eased the hammer of his pistol to half-cock as both of them gazed up at the shadowed ceiling and listened intently.
It might have only been the creaking of the beams, but Wrexford thought that he heard a hint of movement.
“Let us proceed carefully,” he cautioned, mindful of the attack on Raven. The villains had shown themselves to have no compunction about taking lethal action at the first sign of trouble.
Rising, he took the lead and made his way back to the stairs.
The little squeaks and groans of the old treads beneath his boots sounded as loud as gunfire to his ears.
Halfway up, he froze. Was that a glimmer of light to the left of the landing? It disappeared too quickly for him to judge whether it was merely a figment of his imagination.
He drew in a steadying breath and blew out his candle, then signaled to Sheffield that there might be trouble up ahead. His friend gave a grim nod and eased his pistol’s hammer to full cock.
The two of them resumed their climb.
On reaching the foyer, he darted into the room straight ahead, with Sheffield close on his heels. Given the layout of the floor below, Wrexford guessed that he could angle into either the right or the left adjoining room through a side door.
He froze on hearing a sound—definitely a low whisper—and spotting a flicker of light from under the closed door to his left. He edged closer to it, and after putting his unlit lantern on the side table, he took hold of the latch.
Sheffield raised his pistol …
“Damnation, lower your weapon, Kit!” called an all-too-familiar voice from behind them, “before one of us gets hurt!”
“What the devil are you doing here?” demanded Wrexford.
“I might ask the same question of you,” responded Charlotte, her heart still pounding hard as a hammer against her rib cage at the realization of how close they had come to …
She shoved the thought from her head as too awful to contemplate. “I thought you were interviewing the witnesses to the quarrel at Somerset House.”
“I thought you were at home, working on your next drawing,” he countered.
“Clearly, you were both wrong,” said the valet, as he came out of the room on the left, his own weapon now pointing harmlessly at the floor.
“We thought we detected movement on the floor below, so we set up an ambush.” To Sheffield he added, “It’s a good thing you have that flaming gold hair, else things could have turned rather unpleasant. ”
“Bloody hell, Tyler, you have a good deal of explaining to do—” began the earl.
“But not now,” interjected Charlotte. “Let us save our brangling for later and finish searching this place. Tyler and I had just spotted a few things of interest when your presence distracted us.”
“Lead the way,” replied Wrexford, though his voice warned that the discussion of the night’s unexpected confrontation wasn’t over.
After everyone filed into the adjoining room, Tyler relit his lantern and set it on the floor, where it cast just enough of a glow for them to examine the contents.
“That must be the table that Raven saw through the window,” said the valet. “It’s the only one in the building that fits his description.”
“Any sign of papers?” asked Wrexford. “Though I don’t imagine that the two men would have been that careless.”
“Not as of yet,” answered Tyler. “But m’lady and I didn’t have a chance to look through the cabinets in the room to the right of the foyer.”
“Come, you and I will search there while Kit and Charlotte make a thorough check of the areas on this side of the staircase,” decided the earl. “I would prefer not to linger here any longer than necessary.”
Charlotte was already down on her hands and knees beside the table.
A tattered oriental carpet, its swirling pattern much stained by spills of wine and brandy, had been left behind, and she began running her fingers over the woven wool, examining it closely for any small objects that might have been dropped and gone unnoticed.
Sheffield had moved into a back room that faced onto the street. A muffled series of thumps seemed to indicate that he was going through a set of drawers.
Charlotte refocused her attention on the job at hand. The rug—it clearly hadn’t been swept in ages—was turning out to be a repository of broken pencil lead, cuttings from quill pens, copious bread crumbs …
Her fingers brushed against something more interesting. On closer inspection, she saw it was a cluster of silvery hair that looked as though it might have been tugged free from a wig.
She put it into her pocket. But before she could alert the others to her discovery, a hail from Sheffield announced that he, too, had found something.
“Bring the lantern here!”
She found him crouched down in front of a stone hearth.
“There appears to be a pile of ashes,” he explained, “and perhaps a few fragments of paper.”
“Let’s have a look,” said Wrexford, joining him on the floor and angling the beam into the fireplace. The flickering light picked out a mound of powdery grey ash … and the remains of a few singed scraps.
“Well spotted, Kit. It looks as though there might be some writing on the bits that didn’t burn to a crisp.”
The earl tilted his head and thought for a moment. “Damnation, it won’t be easy to preserve the fragile scraps,” he muttered.
“If we can find some sheets of paper—or even better, a book—we should be able to transport them back to Berkeley Square and examine them under our microscope,” said Tyler. “I’ll go back and check in the workrooms.”
“Wait—no need,” exclaimed Charlotte, suddenly recalling the small notebook she had, on impulse, slipped into her coat pocket before leaving home.
She pulled it out and handed it over.
“Allow me to help, sir,” offered Tyler. “I brought along pincers.” He held up a small metal tool. “If you hold the notebook open, I can pluck up the fragments and layer them in between the unused pages.”
The two of them worked in silence, their attention riveted on the delicate task at hand. Once they had finished retrieving the evidence, Wrexford tied his handkerchief around the book to keep the pages firmly shut and got to his feet.
“I’ve no idea whether this has any relevance to our concerns—”
“I also found a hank of silvery hair in the pile of the carpet,” interrupted Charlotte. “It may have come from a wig or false side-whiskers, given that Raven said he saw something that looked like fur on the table.”
“Hard to say whether the hair has any meaning,” replied Wrexford. “In any case, let us return home without delay and see what secrets we can coax out of the paper clues we’ve found.”
The fire’s heat had faded the ink on the singed scraps of paper, and even when magnified by the earl’s powerful microscope, the writing couldn’t be deciphered. But luckily, Wrexford’s expertise in chemistry offered a possible solution.
“I have an idea,” he said, and then ordered Charlotte and Tyler to get some sleep while he prepared a special potion.
After consulting his research files, he copied out several recipes and began the process of brewing up a mixture of various ingredients over his spirit lamp.
Just as he added a last measure of ox gall, the Weasels rushed into the laboratory, all afire to show him the muddy batch of papers they had collected from their urchin friend.
“There appears to be a lapse in my memory,” he said as he thumbed through the evidence, “for I don’t recall asking you to see what you could learn about the murder at Somerset House.”
“You didn’t tell us not to ask any questions of our friends,” pointed out Raven.
“So we didn’t disobey orders,” added Hawk.
The earl’s grunt was deliberately vague.
“Are the papers any help?“ ventured Peregrine after Wrexford looked up.