Chapter 32

Saffron's heart stuttered as the door shut behind her. On the other side of the door, there was some sort of uproar, no doubt Elizabeth's doing, but that unnerved her less than the fact that the room was tiny. She could barely take three steps across within, it was so small and crowded with furniture. Her breath stuck in her chest.

From Elizabeth's conjectures about records, she'd expected a filing cabinet or something, but she saw only a desk with a tiny lamp, a heavy chair, and a rug that was rolled at the edges of the room, too large for it. It was all good quality, better suited to a real office than this hole in the wall.

She rounded the desk with difficulty, her thighs squeezing between the desk and the wall, and sat in the chair. It was dreadfully uncomfortable for how plush it looked.

The desk drawers were unlocked, to her surprise, but held only pens, ink, spare poker chips. She ran her fingers over the insides of the desk drawers in hopes of a secret compartment. That was just the sort of thing one would expect to find behind a secret door in a secret gaming room.

She leaned forward, digging her hand all the way back into a drawer, and let out a yelp as pain bit her in quite an intimate place. She jerked out of the chair, only to see that a sharp corner had been raised within the leather that ought to be well padded.

For a long moment, she stared at it. Then she let out a disbelieving laugh and went to her knees. She curled an arm under the chair and brushed the underside of the seat, only to encounter a familiar feeling: the binding of a book.

With some careful maneuvering, she shifted the book until it was extracted from the crisscross of iron just beneath where the cushion ought to be. A grin spread across her face as she lifted the book to the desk.

It was a ledger, simply bound in black leather and absolutely enormous. Half the pages had the wrinkled look of having been written on. She flipped open the first page.

Secret codes should be added to her list of disappointments for the evening; this was a plain accounting of the patrons and their debts to the club. Alfie's name was nowhere to be found, but when Saffron flipped to the year 1923 and scanned down the list of alphabetical names, Jeffery Wells was there. And he owed a considerable sum.

Saffron frowned down at the number. A large amount, about a thousand pounds. Enough to sink a fellow, and far more than someone would kill over. But did it have anything to do with the lab? Was there a connection between Alfie and Wells, apart from a gambling debt? Perhaps Alfie had been sent to Harpenden to insist Wells repay his debt.

That was a tidy solution, but it wouldn't explain why Wells had died the way he did nor how it might connect to Petrov's death.

Petrov! She flipped the page, scanning the list for the Ps. Her whole body jolted, however, when her eyes lit on another name.

The book had to be wrong—but how could it be?

Why would whoever did the accounting for this illicit casino write in an entry about Colin Eugene Smith, age twenty-eight, living on Berwick Street in Soho, if it was not Elizabeth's Colin Eugene Smith, age twenty-eight, living on Berwick Street in Soho?

Her stomach roiled with the knowledge that the man her best friend had been seeing was in deep, dark debt.

It was not … unbelievable that Colin was a gambler, nor that he could have found his way to a place like this. The number on the paper, however, boggled the mind when one considered Colin's expensive clothing and his purported hobbies. She just wished she didn't have to now tell Elizabeth.

Gritting her teeth, she finished her search. The P section of 1923 was missing any Petrovs, as was the rest of the book, going back to its beginning in 1920. She replaced the book and was just straightening up when a renewed disturbance beyond the little office stopped her heart in her chest. What had happened now?