Ask Me No Questions

by Shelley Noble

  But certainly advantageous when needing bits of gossip to drop. A certain entrée into female inner circles. She could dine for weeks on tidbits from the investigation without humiliating Bev or giving anything away.

  Preswick bowed slightly.

  “So the sooner we discover who the murderer is and save Bev from someplace called Sing Sing, I promise you I will send her off to the Continent and we three will repair to the more elegant environs of the Plaza Hotel.

  “But for now we must avail ourselves of every … legal-ish … means necessary to find the real culprit. Agreed?”

  “If you say so, my lady.”

  “Good. We’ve just discovered, well, actually, Lily pointed it out to me, that the thief couldn’t have entered through the window because the latch is painted shut. He must have cut the glass”—she motioned him over, showed him the cut-out space—“then realized he couldn’t get in without breaking the lock, though I don’t know why he would suddenly become so fastidious. A cut pane, a broken lock. What’s the difference?”

  Phil frowned. “That would mean someone had to let him in.”

  Preswick nodded ever so slightly.

  “But Tuttle is the only one with the keys.”

  Preswick didn’t bother with a nod.

  “Not Tuttle. Reggie must have had a key.”

  “Which he left with Mr. Tuttle when he left the house. He was afraid of pickpockets and such.”

  “Preswick, you’re a wonder. How did you find this out?”

  “Merely in conversation, my lady. Mr. Tuttle has a very fine brandy that he was gracious enough to share with me.”

  “He didn’t happen to confess, did he?”

  “Certainly not, my lady.”

  “Someone must have stolen one of them.”

  “Mr. Tuttle kept them on his person at all times.”

  Phil reluctantly continued. “Then someone else had to let them in … Unless … they were already inside when Reggie left for the docks.” Which suddenly put Bev back as the main suspect.

  “Did the inspector question him?”

  “All of the servants, my lady.”

  “Not you and Lily?”

  “Very briefly.”

  “So he could have been lying dead all through the wake. Ugh.” Phil shivered.

  “Perhaps your ladyship would like to retire to your room now?”

  “Not yet, Preswick. We’re here; we might as well look around. Only—”

  “Then a moment, please.” Preswick eased Lily and Phil out of the way, pulled the drapes shut and overlapped them where they met. Then he moved to the desk and turned on the lamp.

  The sudden light was startling. Even more startling to see Preswick dressed in full regalia down to his white gloves and looking as neat as if it were midday instead of midnight.

  He moved to turn on a floor lamp next to Reggie’s wingback chair. “Is that not better, my lady?”

  “Yes, it is, Preswick. And how clever of you to be wearing your gloves.”

  “Thank you, my lady. And I suggest if you plan to make a search of the library, you wear these.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a pair of pristine white gloves and handed them to her. “They might be a bit large but will be adequate for the purpose.”

  “Preswick, I’m amazed. How did you know we would need gloves?”

  “I didn’t. One always carries a second pair in case of spillages and whatnot. Unfortunately, Lily must use her apron.”

  Lily shot him a sour look but held her tongue. They were making progress in that direction, at least.

  Preswick’s Adam’s apple traveled up his thin neck. “What are we looking for, my lady?”

  “I’m not certain. But something that could tell us … Oh, I don’t know, Preswick. Important documents, money. Where would Mr. Reynolds be likely to keep important papers?”

  “His desk or a safe, my lady.”

  They all looked at the desk. It was the first time Phil had actually looked at it. It was massive mahogany kneehole desk with heavy carved plinths of leaves and grapes, and a brass inkstand that appeared to be built into the desktop.

  The desk at Dunbridge Castle had a similar stand, which didn’t make sense at all to Phil. What if you needed to move the ink closer to you or use the entire surface of the desk?

  “Heavens, but Reggie was a messy businessman.” Papers were stacked high, his blotter was covered with doodles and figures crossed out and rearranged.

  There was a heavy ashtray, piled high with ashes, cigar butts, and a small square of paper, which on closer inspection turned out to be a candy wrapper.

  Phil donned the gloves and pushed the offensive receptacle to the far edge. Then, trying not to think of the dead man who had recently used it, she sat down in the desk chair and started on the first stack of papers.

  “I’ll look for the safe,” said Lily.

  “You,” Preswick said, “will look under cushions and pillows. I will look for the safe.”

  Lily made a guttural noise in her throat. “Yes, Mr. Pr-r-r-reswick.”

  Phil pushed away the first stack of papers, which consisted mainly of racing forms and track schedules, and started on another. There were recent bills, lots of them, letters from creditors, IOUs, and personal letters, but none to or from the notorious Miss Potts.

  She hadn’t expected to find the pistol. Atkins most certainly had taken it. Finding a gun on the floor next to a man who had been shot to death was pretty damning evidence.

  Really, she hoped they discovered his name soon. She couldn’t keep naming people according to the alphabet. Mr. X was quite enough for her.

  She moved on to the frieze drawer above her knees and felt a bit squeamish when she pulled it open.

  With slightly trembling fingers, Phil reached inside, trying not to imagine the man’s hand making the same movement, or his head hitting the desk with that decidedly sickening whack.

  The drawer was a jumble of pens, pencils, a pair of scissors, a receipt book, a bottle of ink, rubber bands, and a container of paper clips. Several more bills were wadded up and Phil pulled them out, dislodging a dyed rabbit’s foot.

  Oh really, Reggie, Phil thought. He should have taken it with him. A silver matchbox, more pens. More papers, which she riffled through, hoping for something interesting. Only more bills. And a set of keys.

  She felt under the desktop. Nothing taped there. Slid off the chair to her knees and perused the bottom of the drawer. She knew a thing or two about hiding secret missives and couldn’t help a reminiscent smile as her fingers ran over the wood.

  Nothing hidden there, either.

  She reached for the top drawer on her right. It was locked, but one of the keys she’d found in the frieze drawer opened it.

  Frankly, she would have hidden the keys better if it had been her desk. Why bother to lock it at all?

  It wasn’t her desk, but it was very like one she knew quite well. “Preswick?”

  “Yes, my lady.” He returned the painting he’d been looking behind and faced her.

  “Isn’t there a desk much like this one in Dunbridge Castle?”

  “Yes, my lady, something very similar. A very popular style during the Tudor period. The fourth earl was said to have used this desk writing his great tome of the family’s participation in the preservation of royal family. The earls of Dunbridge were a scholarly lot … until recently, I believe.”

  “Quite,” she agreed.

  “Though I believe we should hurry. It’s getting on three o’clock and the servants will be up soon.”

  Phil returned to her search, moving more quickly now. How she thought a visiting countess, a lady’s maid, and a butler could find something that a trained detective couldn’t was pure folly. Of course she’d done just that once in London, but that had been so much simpler than this. She didn’t even know what she was looking for. She just knew that she couldn’t sit by while her childhood friend—for all her faults—was accused of murder.

  Th
e second drawer yielded more of the same: bundles of papers held together by rubber bands.

  Again, Phil patted the inside of the drawer, felt beneath it. And found nothing more except that Reggie was in debt to numerous people, some with unsavory names like Toots Kelley, Mosey Grimes, and Roach Pendergrass, and a few copies of formal promissory notes to more respectable-sounding creditors. All in all, Reggie Reynolds was seriously in debt.

  Would Bev be responsible for them? It could break her.

  Phil returned the bundles of papers to the second drawer, quickly opened the bottom drawer. A liquor bottle. A box of unopened cigars. And nothing else.

  Phil moved to the left set of drawers. Mainly old racing magazines and several pairs of binoculars. It had been a fruitless endeavor. Was that because there was nothing here? Or that the second intruder had already taken whatever he and the dead man were looking for? But then how did he get out? Unless whoever let him in, let him out. And that could only be Tuttle.

  What was she missing?

  “Ah, here it is,” Preswick said, interrupting her train of thought.

  Both Phil and Lily stopped to watch as he pulled at a large painting of dancing nymphs. The painting swung from the wall on a set of hinges to reveal a wall safe.

  “Of course,” Lily groused. “It would be under a picture of a bunch of naked ladies.”

  Preswick turned back to his mistress. “I don’t suppose we know the combination.”

  “No, we don’t.” Phil shot a hopeful glance toward Lily.

  Lily made a face and shook her head.

  Phil sighed. It had been a long shot, and quite frankly she was relieved that her unorthodox lady’s maid wasn’t also a safecracker.

  “Perhaps it’s unlocked?”

  Preswick tried the handle. “I’m afraid not, my lady.”

  “Thank you, Preswick. Clever of you to find it.”

  “I’ve been butler for many years. One learns these things.”

  One does indeed. Phil looked from her butler to her lady’s maid, who was showing grudging respect toward Preswick for finding the safe.

  The best of both worlds, she thought. She was sensing a future for the three of them. If she could just get into society and make a start.

  Preswick returned the painting and brushed off his gloved hands. “I think we should leave now.”

  “Just one more second.” Phil knelt down and crawled into the kneehole, running her hands along both sides of the desk.

  “Are you looking for the mechanism to open the secret compartment?” Preswick inquired.

  Phil banged her head as she scrambled back and to her feet.

  “Of course,” Phil said. That explained the earl’s curious reactions when she’d sometimes entered the library unannounced. A secret compartment.

  “Many desks of the Jacobean period had one. It was a turbulent era. These particular desks were made to conceal secret documents pertaining to the Crown, the church, what have you. Quite ingenious. The desk at Dunbridge Castle had one that was particularly complicated.”

  “Do you know how to open it?” Phil asked.

  “If I may?”

  “Please.”

  Preswick sat down. With Lily and Phil both leaning over the desktop to watch, he opened the frieze drawer, felt around, not the underneath of the top but along the inside of the desk frame. Phil heard a click, but nothing popped up or sprang loose.

  Preswick ran the tips of his fingers over the ornate carving of the desk frame and down the front of the desk until he almost disappeared from view.

  “Aha,” echoed the disembodied voice.

  “Did you find it?” Lily blurted out.

  “Almost,” came the reply. Preswick’s head appeared over the edge of the desk, making him look very much like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat. The rest of him was still stretched beneath the surface.

  “Now if your ladyship would indulge me by pulling the brass part of the inkstand toward yourself.”

  Phil closed her fingers around the holder and pulled. At first nothing happened. Then Lily pushed a stack of papers aside and the whole pen and inkstand rotated to the right, exposing a dark hole in the desktop.

  Preswick pushed himself back into the chair. “Well?”

  Phil stuck her nose practically inside the opening but saw nothing. Now, praying there wasn’t a mousetrap waiting for her, she stuck her hand and arm through the hole and felt inside. All she got was dusty fingers.

  She pulled her hand out. “It’s empty.”

  “Ah, well, I dare say the Reynoldses didn’t even know about it. Most people don’t.”

  “How did you?”

  “Having been butler to the earl’s family for many years, I was occasionally called in to witness certain documents … And now, my lady, we really must go.”

  Preswick insisted Lily and Phil wait for him by the door while he turned off the lamps, then groped his way across the darkened room to let them out. He waited only long enough for Lily to relock the door, and without comment preceded them up the stairs.

  He paused briefly on the landing to check the second floor, then motioned them down the hall—and followed them into Phil’s boudoir.

  Phil stretched broadly. “Oh, I am tired.”

  “No doubt, my lady,” Preswick said, and made no move to leave.

  “No scolding tonight, Preswick. You’ll have ample time tomorrow. We’re going shopping in the morning. I need an appropriate funeral hat and Lily needs a new uniform and an entire new wardrobe.”

  “Shall I accompany you, my lady?”

  “But of course, the proprieties, Preswick.”

  Preswick unbent enough to raise on eyebrow. “Quite. If that will be all.”

  “Yes, Good night. And I’ll send Lily up to her bed tout de suite.”

  Preswick bowed and reached for the doorknob.

  “One other thing, Preswick. How did you know we should use gloves to search the office? Not from being a butler?”

  “No, my lady, but I’ve been a longtime subscriber to the Strand. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories of Sherlock Holmes are favorites of mine. It was elementary. Good night, my lady.”

  “Who is this Doyle person?” Lily asked when the door closed behind him.

  “A man who writes about a famous detective. Pure fiction.” Though Preswick did seem quite knowledgeable about investigative techniques.

  A butler who knew about fingerprints and secret compartments, a lady’s maid who could pick locks and carried a stiletto. And Phil, merely a dowager before her time. It was a lowering thought. She turned for Lily to unbutton the suddenly not so formidable-feeling purple gown.

  7

  “You’re dressed for going out,” Bev said the next morning as Phil joined her for breakfast. Phil was wearing a pale moss green walking dress with a matching brown twill jacket, one of her favorite ensembles. On a day like this, she needed the extra flair it always gave her.

  “Yes. I bought this on my last trip to Paris, do you like it?” Phil turned around.

  “Love it. I’ll come with you.”

  “Bev,” said Phil patiently, “you’re in mourning. You can’t go shopping.”

  “Oh, Phil, this is the twentieth century. The modern woman goes to the salons. We even shop in the department stores—the upper floors, of course. We dine with other women in public restaurants.” She dropped the triangle of toast she was holding.

  “But not while they’re in mourning.”

  Bev pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “I’ll die of boredom.”

  Phil had a good mind to say better from boredom than from the electric chair, but somehow her wit was running a little too dry even for her this morning. “Well, at least wait until after the funeral.”

  As it turned out, no one was to go shopping that morning. Phil had just left the breakfast room and was going upstairs to ready herself for the excursion when the front bell sounded and Tuttle appeared from the back hall to hurry toward it.

&
nbsp; A brief indecisive moment and Phil decided to leave Bev to her own devices. She’d had quite enough of Detective Sergeant Atkins for one week. She lifted one side of her skirt and hurried up the stairs.

  She reached her bedroom without being summoned. She felt just a little guilty for going shopping while Bev was stuck home being interrogated by the police, but one look at Lily’s limp and spot-cleaned uniform told her where her loyalties must lie.

  “Fetch my hat, Lily. The brown messaline with the rosettes and feathers. Then put on your coat and—”

  There was a tap at the door. Lily went to open it.

  A housemaid stepped inside. “Begging your pardon, my lady, but you are requested downstairs.”

  “That policeman again?”

  “No, miss—my lady. It’s Mrs. Reynolds’s father, Mr. Sloane, and another man is with him.”

  Phil sighed. She wasn’t really looking forward to seeing Bev’s father, either. He was bound to be upset. She’d had a not very congenial discussion with her own father before leaving for the “colonies,” as he quaintly called them, and wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.

  “Tell her I’ll be down directly.”

  The maid bowed and withdrew.

  “I’m sorry, Lily, it seems we are going to have to postpone your new wardrobe for a few minutes longer.” With a quick look in the mirror, she left the room.

  Naturally, Preswick was waiting outside the door.

  She smiled slightly but didn’t stop. At the bottom of the stairs, she’d adjusted her smile and her attitude and stepped into the parlor.

  Daniel Sloane had been standing by the unlit fireplace, but he turned when Phil entered the room.

  He was tall, rather thin shouldered, but fit for a man in his middle fifties. Two wings of silver were brushed back over his darkish-brown hair. As publisher of one of the oldest bookselling firms in the city, he would have held a certain cachet even without his considerable fortune and pedigree. And his manly good looks made him a favorite at every dinner and ball.

  “Ah, Lady Dunbridge. A pleasure as always, but unfortunate for you to visit us in such trying times.”