Free The Peculiar Case of Lord Finsbury's Diamonds: A Casebook of Barnaby Adair Short Novel (The Casebook of Barnaby Adair) by Stephanie Laurens Page A

some point to be asked about the foot-trap. “I’ve been thinking on it and I’m certain we used to have several, some of which I know we passed on, but it’d be unlike old Smithers—he was the estate manager in the days when we had one—to have given them all away. Always one to look to being prepared for anything, was Smithers.”
     “So,” Frederick said, “the foot-trap might have come from the estate’s outbuildings.”
     “Aye.” Penman nodded. “Can’t rightly see where else it might have come from. None of the farmers hereabouts would be likely to have cause to use such these days.”
     “And a sledgehammer,” Gwen said. “Could one of those have been found in the outbuildings, too?”
     Penman pulled a face. “I doubt it. We keep the big sledgehammer in the barn—still use it regular-like to settle the fence posts.”
     Gwen blinked. “Perhaps we should check if the sledgehammer is still in the barn. Could you show us where it’s kept?”
     “O’course.” Penman set his rake against a gnarled trunk, then waved them toward the back of the house to where a large barn squatted behind the stables. “Let’s take a look.”
     Frederick and Gwen followed the old gardener into the shadows of the barn.
     “Should be over here.” Penman led them toward one end of the huge barn. “On its pegs with the rest of the tools.”
     Rounding the last stall, Penman halted. Pulling off his cap, he scratched his head.
     Stopping beside him, Gwen and Frederick followed the old man’s gaze to where two pegs clearly set to support some large implement sat empty, leaving a blank space in the neatly regimented row of tools.
     “Well, I’ll be. P’raps it wasn’t Miss Agnes’s hoop-hammer that did for the gentleman—mayhap it was the estate’s sledgehammer.” Penman nodded to the gap. “The one that should hang right there.”
     Frederick and Gwen exchanged a look, then Frederick turned to Penman. “You said you’d been thinking of where in the estate’s outbuildings the foot-trap might have been.”
     “Aye.” Penman turned and beckoned for them to follow. “Let’s take a look and see if I’m right.”
     They followed him through the stable yard and onto a narrow, grassy track that led out and onward, along the edge of some fields.
     “Outbuildings are out a ways,” Penman volunteered. “This used to be a much larger estate, see, but the master, and his father before him, too, sold off bits here, bits there, until it came down to what it is now with barely an orchard left. But the outbuildings hail from when it was larger, so they’re close to our boundaries now. Can’t even see them from the house.”
     Frederick glanced at Gwen and met her arrested gaze. If the outbuildings couldn’t be seen from the house, who would have known they were there?
     Penman led them past one stone-and-timber building. “Not that one. Least, I don’t think so.” He nodded ahead. “If I’m remembering aright, the foot-trap should’ve been in that one over there.”
     The track they were tramping along had been curving around; Frederick glanced toward the house, at that point hidden behind the high hedges of the shrubbery. The old stone building Penman was leading them to lay tucked back against some trees. More trees grew thickly beyond and to either side of the structure. “Am I right in thinking”—Frederick nodded at the trees—“that that’s the edge of the wood?”
     “Aye,” Penman said. “The path where the gentleman met his end’s not that far.”
     Gwen sent a glance Frederick’s way. He caught it and nodded. This had to be it—the place from where the foot-trap had been fetched.
     The outbuilding had an old wooden door. Penman pointed to the ground before it. “Been opened recently. See the freshly scraped earth?”
     Frederick and Gwen nodded.
     Penman released the latch chain and hauled open the door. Inside, the light was poor. They entered and halted just