Chapter 33

Thirty-Three

THE MUSIC ROOM

I had to run.

Ian took the stairs two at a time.

To keep up with him (which I didn’t, entirely), I was winded when we hit the second floor and he took off at a jog to the end of the northeast corridor.

He threw open the door to the Music Room and prowled in.

He stopped and looked around.

I turned to the table where the flute had been.

But now it was gone.

My stomach twisted.

“Where’s the flute, Daphne?” he asked.

I pointed. “It was there. On that table. It’s not there anymore. But I swear, Ian, it was there.”

He moved to the table, bent at the waist, inspected it closely.

Then, without a word, he took off, and I again followed.

He entered another room, this one, the furniture was covered with big sheets.

He pushed on a wall by the door, I heard a click, a panel came away, and he pulled it open. He reached in and yanked on a string, and a single, stark hanging lightbulb inside turned on.

False wall.

Hidden passageway.

Shit.

Okay, it seemed like he was going to enter the belly of the beast, and I was not one with the idea.

Before I could share that, he pulled out his phone, engaged the flashlight and went in.

I didn’t want to, but with the way he was acting, I also didn’t want to be alone. So I followed him.

It was dark in there, musty, the stair treads covered in a well-used, faded runner and dust. There was a small landing, it was a very narrow flight of stairs, up and down.

He went up.

Expelling a breath, I went after him.

We came out on the top floor, in the hallway. I’d never been up there. The ceilings were lower, and the décor was nice, but a whole lot more utilitarian.

He walked down two doors and across the hall where there was a keypad next to the door.

He punched in a six-digit code, I heard a click, and he opened the door.

He walked in, switching on the lights.

I went in after him.

The air was very fresh in there, and it was cool.

It was a big room, lots of old-fashioned filing cabinets. There were some paintings stacked against the wall. A table holding crates with photographs, cardboard tabs sticking out, the numbers of years scrawled on the tops. Carefully stacked and labeled boxes. There was an old pair of riding boots in a glass case on a table. A mounted saber. Both with tabs stuck to them with a lot of writing on them.

And there were two humming units that looked expensive sitting in the corners, I knew, filtering the air.

Boy, Ian wasn’t wrong. Louisa did put in a lot of work, and it was meticulous.

Ian was staring at the line of filing cabinets across the room between the two windows that had their curtains carefully shut to hold back any rays of sun that might fade anything.

On top of them was the flute case, currently shut.

A now familiar shiver snaked down my spine.

He pointed at it. “That was open in the Music Room downstairs?”

I nodded. “A couple of days ago. I saw it. The velvet inside is blue.” I took in an unsteady breath and asked, “What’s going on, Ian?”

Ian moved to the filing cabinets and carefully inspected the flute case and its surrounds.

“Ian?” I pressed.

He straightened and looked at me.

“This is my great-grandfather’s flute,” he said.

“Okay,” I replied.

“Joan and David’s son.”

I started trembling.

Ian kept talking.

“He stopped playing it as a child. It’s said he stopped playing it the day after Dorothy Clifton died. He’d loved it and was good at it, some even contend he was a prodigy. He practiced all the time. But the day after she died, he never touched it again. He put it in here himself when Louisa was doing her work and confiscated this space for cataloguing. And that flute never leaves this room.”

Fucking.

Hell.

* * *

We were all gathered in the Music Room, including Lady Jane, and a fucked-out looking Daniel and Portia.

We were waiting for Richard.

This, an audience demanded by Ian, who I’d trailed after when he went down to the Robin Room, pounded on the door and ordered them to get their asses up to the Music Room, then he texted his mother and father.

Ian had returned to prowling, this time back and forth across the room like a lion in a cage.

Understandably, this didn’t give me glad tidings.

Lady Jane was watching him carefully, and her concern was evident. Daniel and Portia appeared foggy and confused.

I was silently freaking out.

Richard arrived, demanding, “Why in bloody hell have I been commanded to the second floor?”

“Close the door,” Ian ordered tersely.

Even Richard had nothing to say in the face of his son’s mood. He shut the door and fully entered the room.

“The maids, they clean up here…what? Once a month? Every other month?” Ian asked his mother.

“I don’t know. Christine makes the schedule,” she answered.

“Text her. Ask her. Now,” Ian demanded. “I want to know when someone was last in this room cleaning.”

She pulled her phone out of her cardigan pocket.

Ian waited until she was done, and we all waited with him.

After she put her phone hand down, he said, “Over on that table, it’s faint, but you can see the dust pattern is disturbed. Something was lying there. Now it isn’t.”

I was too far away to see from where I was, but since I’d seen the flute, there and gone, I didn’t need to look.

Daniel went over to look.

“Don’t touch anything,” Ian warned.

Portia asked, “Oh my God. Has something been stolen?”

“Moved,” Ian told her. “Out of the History Room and into here, then back out again. I don’t know when it was moved in, but it was moved out sometime in the last…” He looked to me.

“I don’t…it’s all cobbling together, but I think three days?” I told him.

“Three days,” Ian said.

Portia turned accusing eyes to Daniel. His face got red.

“It wasn’t Brittany,” Ian decreed. “It was taken from a locked room. She doesn’t have the code. No one does, but Stevenson, Christine and members of this family.”

“Stevenson would never,” Richard proclaimed.

“Christine neither,” Lady Jane said.

“Someone’s been in this house and they’re moving shit around,” Ian told them. “A photograph that was also housed in the History Room was put in the safe in Brandy.”

Lady Jane went white as a sheet.

Richard’s face got splotchy.

As they would. I didn’t see much else but what looked like more historical papers in that safe, but if someone was availing themselves of secured spaces, it’d cause anyone alarm.

“Why would someone do that?” Daniel asked.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Ian replied. “And I’m going to find out. So, before I embark on that, if anyone in this room has anything to say…”

He trailed off but didn’t take his attention from Daniel when he said those words.

Daniel morphed straight to fury. “You think it’s me!”

“You and Portia started this week at home with games,” Ian pointed out.

“I don’t know anything about any History Room!” Portia exclaimed.

Ian didn’t even look at her.

He raised his brows to Daniel.

Daniel exploded.

“Fuck you, Ian! I may have fucked about and screwed up, but I’m not stealing things from my own damned house.”

“Nothing has been stolen, at least not that we know. And I’ll be doing an inventory with Stevenson as well,” Ian told him. “They’ve been moved.”

“And why would someone do that?” Lady Jane repeated after her son, still looking more than mildly troubled.

“I don’t know that either, but the photograph was the one of everyone at the party where Dorothy Clifton died, standing in front of the house. And the thing that was in here, but is now not, that Daphne saw, was great-grandfather’s flute,” Ian explained.

“That’s just odd,” Lady Jane murmured.

“It’s more than odd. It’s what Brittany tried to do, attempting to frighten us, playing on the ghost stories. Except whoever this is, is not only doing it under our noses. They have the codes to secure rooms and safes.”

“We’re changing all the codes,” Richard said instantly.

“Yes, we are,” Ian agreed.

And then he carried on.

“And until we figure this out, I don’t want any of the women in this house alone and always carry your phone. Mum, take the women somewhere then text me where you are. Dad. Danny. You’re with me.”

And on that, he marched out.