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“Only Garrick, the butler, who brought in champagne and announced dinner.”

“Did you leave the treasure unattended in the drawing room while you dined?”

“No. Sydney and Harry the footman carried the chest to the strong room. Then Sydney ran upstairs to fetch the keys for me. I found myself somewhat prophetically reluctant to leave the treasure for a moment.”

“Did the footman wait with you?” Solomon asked.

“No, I sent him back to his dinner duties. I never open the strong room door when anyone is watching.”

“Did you wrestle the chest in here by yourself, then?” Constance asked.

Lloyd smiled slightly. “I didn’t need to. Sydney and I moved it together.”

“Then your son saw you open and close the strong room door?”

“Yes, but he already knew how. I showed him on his eighteenth birthday. I live an adventurous life, which is not without its dangers. It seemed only sensible that someone else should know, in case of my death.”

Carefully, Solomon did not glance at Constance. There seemed to be several things Lloyd had not thought to mention at their initial interview. “Who else knows how to open it?”

“Only the locksmith. And there is a sealed note with my solicitor with instructions.”

“Perhaps you would give us the directions of both these gentlemen?”

“If you wish, but I can assure you, they were not in the house last night. I employ a night porter and the doors are locked every night. In any case, even if they were not the most respected men in their professions, how would they have known the treasure was there that particular night?”

“What else do you keep there?” Constance asked. “Money? Jewels?”

“From time to time. But it would hardly be fair to deprive my wife of her jewelry for months at a time while I am out of the country.”

“When was all this security installed?” Solomon asked.

“About ten years ago, when I brought the first treasure home.”

“Then this was not your first?” Constance moved past the men and out into the passage.

“No, we found a wreck on a sand bank, close in to the Jamaican coast.”

Solomon looked up quickly. Everything to do with the island of his birth drew his attention. “When were you in Jamaica?”

“Oh, must have been ten years ago? 1842.”

Too late. His brother David had vanished from Jamaican shores ten years before that.

“The wreck had gone down during the earthquake of 1692,” Lloyd continued, “and was never found until I did so, with the aid of some other sea divers. At low tide, we could reach it and bring things up. Not quite as fabulous as my African treasure— mainly gold and silver plate—but it gave me a taste for treasure seeking.”

“Then you had the strong room installed while you were away?” Solomon asked.

Lloyd looked slightly sheepish. “No, I commissioned it when I came home. I’m afraid I kept the valuables under the bed until I sold what we did not wish to keep.

So you see, my house, and my household, is secure.

But the strong room was common sense. It even has a special coating to help protect it from fire.

And the other valuable artifacts I obtained after it was built—from Egypt and Greece and the Middle East—have been stored quite safely in the room from time to time. Have you seen enough?”

“For now, yes, thank you,” Solomon said, backing into the passage and watching Lloyd close and relock the door, going through the same motions as for unlocking, only in reverse.

Constance asked, “Did the same people as now live in the house ten years ago, when you installed the strong room?”

Lloyd blinked at her. “Of course.”

“Even the servants?”

He led them into a bright, pleasant room, scattered with antique vases and exquisite ornaments carved from wood and marble that he had no doubt brought home from his travels.

“Yes, mostly,” he said, closing the door and gesturing for them to be seated.

“Garrick, of course—the butler—has been here since my father’s time.

So have the cook and the night porter. I can’t really remember when the younger staff joined us, but most of them came from our country estate in Berkshire. Loyal people.”

“What do you think happened here, Mr. Lloyd?” Constance asked.

“If I knew, I would not have consulted you,” he said sharply.

“There is a difference,” Solomon pointed out, “between suspicion and knowledge based on evidence. Do you have suspicions or even vague thoughts?”

“No,” Lloyd said, almost between his teeth. “Frankly, I’m flummoxed. And I’m guessing from your questions that so are you.”

Constance bestowed one of her full smiles upon him.

He was not immune, judging by the glint rising in his eyes.

A man used to following his desires and not to being thwarted.

Solomon smoothed his own hackles. Gentlemanly instincts would probably keep Lloyd from pursuing her for now—providing he never learned her more notorious profession.

“On the face of it, the theft appears impossible,” she said. “But clearly it isn’t, for your treasure is gone. We shall not give up just yet. Do you know how the police are approaching the investigation?”

“I believe they are looking for the items themselves and mean to trace them back to the thief.”

Solomon caught his gaze. “You may not like what we find. Or what we stir up while we are looking.”

“I want my treasure back,” Lloyd said steadily.

“Very well. Then I’m afraid we need to speak to your family, to your servants, and to anyone who visited the house on the evening you came home.”

“I told my wife to expect guests for tea. But, to my knowledge, no one visited the house the evening we returned.”

“Then your family is aware you have employed us?” Constance said.

“I shall not keep it secret.” Lloyd took out his pocket watch and glanced at it before rising. “Shall we go in to tea?”

There were three ladies in the drawing room when they entered. The room itself was a little too opulent and busy for Solomon’s taste, having too many frills to curtains and cushions, and the surfaces so packed with pretty things that he was reminded of Constance’s mother’s shop.

One of the three ladies rose immediately from the chair by the fire and walked gracefully toward them. A mature woman with beautiful skin, fashionably gowned, she smiled at her husband’s guests.

“My dear,” Lloyd said fondly, “allow me to introduce Mrs. Silver and her betrothed, Mr. Grey.”

Constance’s gaze flickered with clear surprise, quickly covered by a smile as she took her hostess’s proffered hand. “Mrs. Lloyd, how kind of you to receive us.”

“I am always pleased to meet Barnabas’s friends.” Mrs. Lloyd turned to Solomon. “How do you do, Mr. Grey?”

“Delighted to meet you, ma’am.”

“You must let me introduce you to my sister-in-law, Miss Lloyd.” She indicated a very different lady in appearance—older, wispy, fluttery, and untidy—who dropped her knitting into her lap and then tipped it onto the floor as she rose to greet them with vague, gentle amiability.

“How do you do? So pleasant to meet new young people…”

“And my elder daughter,” Mrs. Lloyd proceeded inexorably, “Jemimah.”

The third lady could not have been more than sixteen years old, a remarkably pretty girl with gleaming chestnut hair and vitality leaping from her bright blue eyes.

Admiration for Constance’s beauty stood out in her face as she curtseyed to them.

She still looked dazed as she turned to Solomon and smiled brilliantly.

“Come and sit by me, Mr. Grey,” said Mrs. Lloyd, taking his arm to give him no choice in the matter.

As they sat down on the sofa, a footman wheeled in a large tea trolley, and he and a maid began laying out plates of sandwiches, elegant savories, scones, and cakes.

The teapot and matching cups and saucers were laid before Mrs. Lloyd.

“So,” she said brightly, “how do you know my husband? Did you meet him on his travels?”

“Why, no, ma’am—we met here in London when he asked us to look into the theft from your strong room,” Solomon replied.

Her amiable mask slipped for an instant, from perfect hostess to stunned, slightly irritated wife. Solomon glanced quickly at Lloyd and found a very curious expression on the man’s face—amused, avid, and somehow not pleasant.

A silence followed Solomon’s words as everyone stared at him with dismay.

A young man, impetuously entering the drawing room, glared at his father. “Seriously, Papa? You brought a policeman to tea?”

Constance saved the day. “Oh, no, we are not the police,” she said. “We merely help people with their problems.”

“Is there much call for finding lost treasure in London?” the young man asked, a shade insolently.

“A great deal,” Constance said. “Although I suppose it all depends on what one regards as treasure.”

“My son,” Lloyd interjected at last. “Sydney, Mrs. Silver and Mr. Grey.”

The youth bowed, his gaze lingering on Constance. He walked toward her as though drawn by an invisible thread. Solomon knew the feeling.

He turned back to Mrs. Lloyd. “We will do our very best to help get your treasure back. Finding it gone, as it were, must have been a great shock to you.”

“I was never more shocked in my life,” Mrs. Lloyd said. “Indeed, I could not think it was true—I thought Barnabas was playing some trick on us.”

Solomon raised one eyebrow. “Why should you think that?”

She blinked a little too rapidly. “Well, it was in the strong room. We have never been robbed before, and frankly, I do not see how it can possibly have happened.”

“It is quite a mystery, is it not? I understand the treasure spent some time in here before your husband and son took it to the strong room. Were you in the drawing room all of that time?”

“Yes, I was.”

He gestured discreetly to include the whole room. “And all your family were present then too?”

“Yes.”

“Was anyone else?” he asked. “Any visitors? Servants?”

“No visitors. No one would call without invitation on the evening of my husband’s return. I think only Garrick—our butler—entered the room with wine and left again. Oh, and he announced dinner, which was when Barnabas decided to lock the chest away. Harry—the footman—helped Sydney carry it up.”

The story was just the same as Lloyd’s, and yet to Solomon something was not quite right.

“Where are the keys to the strong room kept?” he asked, mainly to see if she would tell him.

“Locked in my husband’s bedside cabinet—when he is away. When he’s at home, he keeps them about his person.”

“Are you a light sleeper, Mrs. Lloyd?”

Her eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, if someone was moving about the house during the night, would it normally waken you?”

Obviously, she saw the point of the question, because she answered easily enough, “It depends whether or not I take my drops to help me sleep.”

“Did you take them the night before last?”

“No,” she said, color staining the pale, perfect skin of her face. “My husband had come home after an absence of many months.”

Intrigued by her blush, Solomon wanted to ask if they had separate bedchambers, and if so, in which of them they had spent their reunion night.

If in hers, then however lightly she slept, she needn’t have heard the keys being taken from their usual place.

Though why would Lloyd not have told him?

Because he imagined it was none of his business?

Solomon had come across other rakes who were extremely prudish about their wives.

“Then you did not hear anything unusual during that night,” he said smoothly, making it more of a statement than a question.

“Nothing. Oh dear.”

The last was uttered involuntarily as another young man walked into the room.