Free A Mourning Wedding by Carola Dunn

won’t go and sell the house out from under me.”
    â€œIs that likely?”
    â€œHe hasn’t got any use for it himself, and it’d bring a pretty penny, I don’t doubt.”
    â€œNo doubt.” Alec gestured towards a large kneehole desk on the other side of the room. “Is that where Lady Eva kept her private papers?”
    â€œThat’s right. Account book and receipts and cheque book top left, letters top right, everything in its place, she always says … said. The middle drawer’s just stationery and stamps and what-not. Second down, invitations on the right, and likely you’ll find a copy of her will on the left. The bottom drawers are locked. She keeps … kept her big notebooks there, that she was always scribbling in.”
    â€œDo you have a key, or know where she kept it?”
    â€œNot me, and no more does Miss Parsons that’s her maid,” the housekeeper said warily. “‘It’s Pandora’s box,’ her ladyship said once to Miss Parsons, ‘or rather, two Pandora’s boxes. If anyone but me
opens them, there’s nothing but Trouble going to fly out, like in the old story. The key’s in a safe place and nobody’s going to find it.’”
    â€œThank you, madam. You’ve been very helpful. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind going downstairs now with Sergeant Tring and answering a few more questions, names and addresses, that sort of thing, just for the record?”
    â€œI’ll bet you’ve got a good memory,” Tom Tring said jovially. “I’ve never known a housekeeper that didn’t.”
    She went off with him quite willingly. On hearing that they were heading for the abode of an earl, Tom had changed out of his robin’s-egg blue-and-white check summer suit. In the dark suit he kept at the Yard for dealing with “the nobs,” he was the essence of respectability, as well as looking several sizes smaller. He’d have the housekeeper eating out of his hand in no time, in a way Alec couldn’t hope to match.
    Ernie Piper joined Alec at the desk. While Alec leafed through the contents of the second drawer on the left, Piper pulled the centre drawer all the way out and set it on the blotter on the desk-top. A twist and a click and he had in his hand a small brass key.
    â€œToo easy,” he said, disappointed, returning the wide, shallow drawer to its place. He went down on one knee to unlock and open the bottom drawer on the right.
    Alec peered into a large manilla envelope. “Here’s her will. What have you got there?”
    â€œSeveral loose-leaf ledgers. Arranged by alphabet and date, looks like.” Piper took out the first ledger, balanced it on his knee, flipped it open and started to read. “Whew! Looks like Mrs. Fletcher’s given us the goods again, Chief.”
    â€œThe Met was brought into the case at Lord Haverhill’s request, nothing to do with Daisy,” Alec said firmly but without much belief in his own veracity. “She just happens to be at his house. I was going down on Friday anyway, so I’m the obvious person to send. Checking Lady Eva’s papers was the Chief Constable’s suggestion.”

    â€œI bet Mrs. Fletcher put him up to it.” Piper’s faith in Daisy was boundless. “How would he know what her ladyship was up to? Listen to this! ‘Teddy escorted Genevieve Rendell to a house-party at the Varleys’, not a month after her husband divorced her.’ Then there’s brackets with ‘see 1924 R.’ Must be another book.”
    â€œWho’s Teddy?”
    â€œNo surname. Prob’ly one of the family. This book’s A to D, and Lady Eva’s a Devenish. Teddy’d be Edward, wouldn’t he? There wasn’t an Edward Devenish on the list the CC read to me over the ’phone.”
    Alec didn’t ask if he was sure. That was the sort of detail at which Ernie Piper