The Suspicion at Sanditon (Or, the Disappearance of Lady Denham) Page 17

  “I suppose it was too much to hope that we could simply walk in here and find a copy of Lady Denham’s will waiting for us. Or Archibald Hollis’s, for that matter. Josiah Hollis still seems to harbor a great deal of resentment over the disposition of his uncle’s fortune. I am curious as to the particulars.”

  “The man is so abrasive that if the rest of the Hollis family are of similar temperament, it is not difficult to understand why Archibald was disinclined to leave them any bequest.”

  She went to the bookcases. “There are a number of bound volumes here that appear to be journals.” She opened one of the glass doors, removed a random volume, and opened it. “Oh…” Her voice carried a note of disappointment. “This is a ledger.”

  “You hoped for a private diary?”

  “Surely a diary would provide more interesting reading than a forty-year-old list of accounts.” Her gaze swept the rest of the shelves. “These are all ledgers, from the look of them.” She reshelved the ledger in her hand and withdrew several more volumes, one at a time, from the topmost shelf. “The most recent transactions are from September 1781.”

  “The last full year of Archibald Hollis’s life.” Darcy replaced the letters he had been examining. “The books that followed must be among Lady Denham’s records elsewhere. It would appear that she does not use this room at all—indeed I am in some doubt as to whether she has even entered it in the past five-and-thirty years.”

  “I tell you, it is the bear. He is as good as a night watchman.” She put the ledger back into place and bent to retrieve a volume from the lowest shelf.

  “What are you seeking?”

  “Nothing—this book’s spine was facing the wrong direction, and its nonconformity bothers me.”

  “I am sure Mr. Hollis’s ghost will appreciate your attending to it. Perhaps that is the reason his spirit has been unable to rest these several decades.”

  “Continue teasing me and you will be unable to rest for several decades.” Despite her words, her tone was playful, and her expression belied any true vexation. She turned over the volume and opened its cover. “It is Victor Hollis who would haunt the room over this ledger. It is more than eighty years old—1732 through 1734. Shall we see what transactions occupied Old Hollis’s attention on this date in history?”

  “If doing so will divert you.”

  “Who would not find old accounting records diverting?”

  She leafed through numerous pages. “Rents collected … servants’ wages, housekeeper’s allowance for stores and supplies … monthly pin money to Mrs. Hollis—a stingy amount, I must say. Poor woman!… His tailor, however, was well paid for a coat—” She lifted her gaze to study Darcy. “Perhaps the one you are wearing … Oxford tutorage for Trinity term—I suppose that must have been for Archibald…” She stopped paging and ran her finger down a column. “Here we are—one hundred years ago today. Purchase of two dozen sheep … a masonry bill for repairs to the dining room fireplace…” She broke off, her eyes narrowing as she studied one of the entries. “Hmmm.”

  Darcy waited in expectation. After a moment, she looked up.

  “There is a fairly considerable sum deducted without any notation at all.”

  “How considerable?”

  “Two thousand pounds.”

  “Considerable, indeed. Are there other entries without explanation?”

  She paged through more of the volume. “None that I see. In fact, he notes individual expenditures of minute quantities, down to shillings given to the poor. He was certainly a man who monitored his money closely.”

  “Are you saying he would approve Lady Denham’s management of Sanditon House?”

  “I am not certain about that. He seems to have been willing to part with his money in order to maintain a comfortable style of living—he paid a handsome price for a desk that I believe is the one at which you are seated now. He was simply very conscious of where every penny went.”

  “That makes the lack of notation for a two-thousand-pound expenditure all the more curious.” If there were more such irregularities, Darcy might suspect that Victor Hollis, or another member of his family, had been given to gambling or some other vice. A single outlay, however, could have been spent on anything. “Regardless, whatever he spent the money on, a purchase made one hundred years ago cannot be relevant to our present mission.” He replaced the remaining letters he had been examining, closed the drawer, and stood. “We are not going to find anything in this room of help to Lady Denham or Susan Parker, and we lose more time the longer we linger here.”

  “I am more than ready to depart and leave behind our furry friend on the wall. This evening’s events are unsettling enough without a constant sense of being observed.”

  They locked the study and headed to Lady Denham’s apartment, where Elizabeth hoped more than expected to find the dowager’s will conveniently awaiting their discovery. What she did not anticipate was detecting a slight movement in a darkened room they passed en route. Nor, upon stopping to determine its source, discovering a lone Mr. Granville in the shadows.

  “Mister—”

  He quickly put a finger to his lips and motioned them back into the corridor with him. “I am following Josiah Hollis,” he said in a whisper. “At least, I was.” He glanced with some concern at the doorway of the room he had just left. “I was hoping you would not see me and give me away.”

  Elizabeth regretted her imprudent tongue. Why had she not sensed the need for silence?

  “What has he been doing?” Darcy asked.

  “After Sidney and I parted ways, I returned to my chamber as planned, to monitor Hollis. However, upon hearing no sounds within his chamber, I could not be certain whether he occupied it, or had slipped out before I was able to double back. I knocked on his door with a pretense prepared if he answered. When he did not, I thought I had better commence a search of my own. His rancor over the disposition of Archibald Hollis’s estate and his resentment toward Lady Denham led me to suspect he might try to take advantage of her absence to cause trouble, so I proceeded first to her apartment. He was indeed there—I caught sight of him with his hand upon the latch.”

  “Was he entering or leaving?”

  “I assume he was about to enter, but I suppose he could have been leaving. Regardless, when he heard you descending the stairs, he ducked into that room”—he gestured toward the room in which Elizabeth had noticed him—“then the one beyond. I must say, for someone who claims to have not been in this house for forty years, he moves about it as confidently as if he still lived here. Fear not, however—I shan’t lose him.”

  “Shall we come with you?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Though I seldom refuse the offer of a lady’s company, in this case I think our purpose is better served if I follow him alone. Three are noisier than one, and unfortunately he still hears well for a man his age.”

  Darcy nodded. “We will check the apartment.”

  “Are you not soon reconvening in the portrait room with the others?”

  “We have time.”

  “Not much. Were I you, I would head there directly.” Mr. Granville glanced at the doorway again. “As for myself, I must catch up with old Josiah before he outpaces me. I do not believe his lumbago complaints for a moment. He is a crafty one, and will probably deny this whole midnight stroll ever took place should any of us ever confront him about it. But I shall stay on his trail until he returns to his chamber. You will understand if I do not appear in the portrait room at the appointed time?”

  “Of course,” Darcy said. “Report back to me when you are able.”

  Mr. Granville resumed his pursuit of Josiah with as much haste as the need for stealth allowed. Elizabeth and Darcy continued to Lady Denham’s apartment.

  “It is fortunate that Mr. Granville volunteered to monitor Mr. Hollis,” Elizabeth said as Darcy produced the key and opened the door. “Although Josiah must have found this door locked, we might never have known that he attempted to enter.” />
  They stepped inside. Darcy cast his gaze about the antechamber. “If you were Lady Denham, where would you store your will?”

  “I trust you mean other than all of the places we have already looked?” Though Elizabeth had been in the suite previously, she tried to assess its rooms and furnishings from a new perspective—Lady Denham’s. The antechamber was primarily a private sitting room with a small sofa and chairs of varying degrees of comfort. Its tables offered surfaces where one could set a workbox or candle or writing materials; a few held vases of flowers heavily fragrant in the humid air; none had drawers or other receptacles where a will might reside.

  “I do not see any likely locations in here,” Elizabeth said. “Even if there were a writing-bureau, I somehow think Lady Denham might not keep important documents in the most public of her private rooms—the chamber through which everyone from friends to servants to her dressmaker enters the suite, or where she might sit with Miss Brereton or other intimate acquaintances. Rather, I see her storing the will—if it resides in these rooms at all—deeper in the apartment—her dressing room or bedchamber. Lady Denham impresses me as someone who might sleep more easily at night in the close proximity of a document that makes her feel in control.”

  “I hoped our quest would not necessitate so great an invasion of her privacy.”

  “I, too, do not feel entirely comfortable searching in the bedchamber, even though we do so out of anxiety for her safety. Let us first try the dressing room. We have already been in there, though not with the will in mind.”

  She passed into the dressing room, now noting with new interest the tallboy, a second, shorter chest of drawers, and the great walnut wardrobe. A door that she presumed opened into a closet also held promise. The room certainly hosted plenty of drawers and other places in which a will could be hidden.

  Elizabeth headed toward the shorter bureau, detouring slightly around the dressing table seat, which was standing a foot or so out from its table. “Do you want to start with the tallboy while I look through the smaller chest?”

  Darcy regarded both pieces of furniture warily. “I am more inclined toward the wardrobe.”

  “Do you think Lady Denham is more likely to have concealed her will in a hatbox?”

  “No, but I would rather leave to you any accidental encounter with her”—he cleared his throat—“inexpressibles.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “I had not considered that. Yes—far better for you to search the wardrobe. I also grant you the closet as your province.” She turned to the chest of drawers, not herself particularly relishing the thought of rifling through Lady Denham’s undergarments. Perhaps, however, such disinclination would make a drawer full of shifts and stays the ideal place to secrete a will or other papers from too-curious eyes. Though a determined spy would proceed undeterred, an opportunistic busybody might not think to nose there.

  The chests of drawers yielded nightdresses, stockings, and handkerchiefs in abundance, along with a generous supply of gloves and other accoutrements. Unfortunately, the only document she found was a folded advertisement for a shop in Cheapside.

  JOHN FLUDE

  Pawnbroker and Silversmith

  No. 2 Gracechurch Street, London

  Lends Money on Plate, Watches, Jewells, Wearing Apparel, Household Goods & Stock in Trade

  NB

  Goods Sent from any Part of the Country directed as above, shall be duly attended to & the Utmost Value lent thereon.

  “What have you there?” Darcy asked.

  “The trade card of a Mr. John Flude, pawnbroker and silversmith.” She read the remainder of the text aloud, then glanced at Darcy. “I wonder how Lady Denham came to be in possession of this?”

  “As her financial circumstances do not appear to necessitate pawning the china, it was probably thrust into her hand by a bill-boy sometime during her stay with her cousins in Gracechurch Street. Do not you typically return home with two or three such advertisements after a morning’s shopping in London?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. Often the trade cards were for goods or services of which she had no need, or for which she already had a preferred merchant, but she could not bring herself to turn away the children hired to distribute them to passersby. “However, I usually discard those that do not interest me. Yet Lady Denham saved this one—for years, by the look and feel of it. In fact—”

  Elizabeth studied the handbill more closely, her attention drawn to the illustration of Mr. Flude’s storefront. Two entrances flanked a large bank of windows and display case filled with all manner of goods. The left entrance was a glass-paned door with signs on either side of it bearing the pawnbroker’s trademark three balls and the words “Money Lent”; above the door, a large, ornate oval sign announced “Wardrobes bought in Town & Country.” The other entrance was a less conspicuous solid wooden door with a small engraved plate she could not read. Near it, but above the front windows rather than the door itself, a matching oval sign stated “Unredeemed Goods sold Wholesale & Retail.” A third oval sign in the center bore Flude’s name in large letters.

  She met Darcy’s waiting gaze. “I believe I am familiar with this shop.”

  “A pawnshop?”

  “Not as a customer—in passing. It is not far from my uncle Gardiner’s house. I did not recognize it at first, for Mr. Flude is no longer its proprietor. Another broker now does business there. At any rate, there is no mistaking the dual entrances.” She handed Darcy the trade card so he could see the depiction for himself.

  “It appears that one is for the general public come to pledge their worldly possessions for ready money,” he said, “and the other is for those of a higher class come for the same purpose but desiring more privacy in which to conduct the transaction.”

  “Or perhaps hoping to discover a bargain amongst the unclaimed items of their peers.”

  “Which do you think was Lady Denham’s purpose in patronizing Mr. Flude’s shop—assuming she ever entered it?”

  “The latter—it is a happier thought than the former. Regardless, whether she went to buy or sell, I have no doubt that she drove a hard bargain. She prides herself on knowing the value of money—she boasted of such to me herself. She would not have left the shop without whatever it was she went there for, and some concession from Mr. Flude in the transaction.”

  She refolded the advertisement, returned it to the drawer with Lady Denham’s reticules, and turned her attention to the dressing table. She doubted Lady Denham would keep important papers in drawers constantly being accessed by her lady’s maid in search of hair combs and night creams, but she checked them nonetheless. As she shut the last drawer, her gaze scanned the tabletop. Something about the items resting on it troubled her.

  “Have you found something?” Darcy asked.

  “No—the opposite. I think something is missing since we were last here, but I cannot identify what.” She studied the various bottles, tins, and tools—until, finally, it came to her.

  “One of the phials is missing—the medicines Diana sent over.” She picked up the remaining one. It was the sorrel root remedy. “The sedative is gone.”

  “Indeed? Perhaps Diana recalled its existence and asked for it to be retrieved for Susan’s use when we find her.”

  “Perhaps—we must remember to ask Mrs. Riley. I believe she is the only person besides ourselves who has a key.” She put the sorrel root concoction back on the table. “Have you discovered anything?”

  “Nothing even half so interesting as your trade card. Certainly not Lady Denham’s will.” Darcy shut the closet. “Only bonnets and boots.”

  He approached the bedroom door, where Elizabeth joined him. She reached for the latch, but paused as a thought struck her. “That in itself is extraordinary.”

  “The number of hats Lady Denham possesses? I think yours exceed—”

  “No, the absence of something else. Forget, for a moment, the will. We have yet to come upon any of Lady Denham’s correspondence. Your mother retaine
d just about every missive she ever received, and copies of many she authored—trunks full of letters. While Lady Denham might not keep up nearly so large a volume of correspondence, we have yet to find so much as a letter case.”

  She pushed open the bedroom door. Neither of them entered. They both remained transfixed in the doorway.

  Upon the bed, a wooden box lay open, its contents scattered on the quilt.

  Darcy found his voice first.

  “A letter case such as that one?”

  Twenty

  “I do not know that, in such a night as this, I could have answered for my courage: but now, to be sure, there is nothing to alarm one.”

  —Catherine Morland, Northanger Abbey

  Charlotte raced down the corridor, her gaze sweeping every corner, arch, and niche she passed. The open doorways were the worst—gaping portals of murkiness that her vision could not penetrate.

  Her rational self repeatedly told her that she had nothing to fear from the darkness. Despite the stories of servants and villagers, the spirit of Archibald Hollis did not inhabit Sanditon House. Nor had the ghost of Ivy Woodcock come inside to escape the rain.

  Her irrational self was not quite so convinced.

  She had heard no further noises in Miss Parker’s room, but she could not shake the sensation of being observed. It had come upon her so strongly that the thought of sitting alone in her own chamber—even with a light—unnerved her. A few minutes in the company of others would restore her courage. She most particularly wanted the companionship of Elizabeth Darcy, whom she knew best of all the party, and whose gentle nature and humor she trusted to alleviate her anxiety.

  Where to find Mrs. Darcy, however, was almost as great a mystery as where to find Susan Parker. Charlotte did not expect to discover either of the Darcys in their apartment—they would be elsewhere in the house, searching for Susan like the others. However, she decided to start her own quest with their quarters anyway. Doing so made more sense than hoping to randomly encounter them, or attempting to find her way to the stillroom, the only specific location mentioned in the company’s discussion of the search. The Darcys’ chamber gave her a destination, the way to which she knew.