Chapter 34

Thirty-Four

THE PORT ROOM

Lady Jane, Portia and I were in the Port Room.

Portia and I were watching mindless TV. Lady Jane was playing solitaire on her phone.

It had been hours since I told Ian about the flute. Lady Jane had asked for lunch to be served up there, and then she’d ordered up popcorn, which Portia and I had decimated.

Now, it was getting late, and my relief was extreme when, finally, the door opened and Ian, Daniel and Richard walked into the room.

“I’ve talked to Bonnie,” Richard said immediately to his wife. “We’re going to have an informal dinner in the Viognier Room this evening.”

“Good idea,” Lady Jane replied, putting her hands to the arms of her chair and pushing up to her feet. “When?”

“Same time. Seven fifteen,” Richard told her.

I looked to my phone.

It was six forty-four.

“I’m going to freshen up,” Lady Jane murmured, and swept from the room, Richard following.

“Me too,” Portia said, hopping up. “See you at dinner,” she bid, and she, too, left, Daniel trailing.

Ian came in and folded beside me.

I grabbed the remote, turned off the TV, then shifted my attention to him.

He raked his hand through his hair, which made some of it fall to his forehead in a way that made him appear boyish and cute, a new look to be listed among many I considered my favorites.

I had no time to enjoy how adorable he looked.

I demanded, “Talk to me.”

“We found things,” he told the coffee table. He turned to me. “A lot of things.”

My blood ran cold.

“What things?”

He settled deeper into the couch and twisted my way.

“To preface this, quite a bit of the top floor is storage. If we didn’t have so much room to put things, the Alcott family as a whole over the generations would be considered hoarders. Aunt Louisa’s work could be so thorough because she had generations of Alcott debris to sift through. Over the years, very little was discarded.”

“All right,” I said.

“Therefore, we found a pair of velvet slippers sitting beside the bed in the Jacaranda Room. They’re monogrammed. WAA. William Albert Alcott.”

“Oh shit,” I mumbled. “Was that his room?”

“It was,” he confirmed. “And in the wardrobe of the Dahlia Room, Rose’s orange dress, the one she was wearing the night Dorothy died, was hanging there.”

Good Lord.

I shivered at learning that and asked, “Was that Rose’s room?”

He nodded. “Yes.” Then he carried on, “In the Smoking Room in the northwest wing, we found a pipe that isn’t usually there, next to a silver Cartier pen. I don’t know about the pipe, though I’ve seen pictures, and he did smoke one, but the pen is David’s. It’s also monogrammed. It’s usually kept in the Whisky Room, and it’s still used. However, Dad didn’t notice it missing.”

Ulk.

“Okay,” I prompted.

“There was also a framed picture of Joan, holding a baby, who would be George, my great-grandfather, set in the nursery.”

How disturbing!

“God,” I breathed.

“And an old-fashioned lady’s hat, presumably Virginia’s, was sitting on a sofa in the Morning Room in the northeast wing. To my understanding, that being where she spent a lot of her time, it being situated all the way across the house from the Smoking Room, where David normally spent his time.”

“Fuck,” I said.

“Indeed,” he agreed. “We’ve made the decision to leave everything where it is. In order not to raise suspicion, we only alerted Stevenson to help us search. He’s going to discreetly inventory the house. He’ll recruit Christine to help. The rest of the staff won’t be told what’s happening. I’ve forwarded staff records to my investigators in London so they can be thoroughly researched, and one is coming up tomorrow to have a look at things. I’m afraid I’m going to have to find a way to sneak her in. I don’t want any of the staff to know what she’s doing.”

“So you think it’s an inside job.”

Another nod. “We also inspected the staff corridors and stairwells. They don’t clean those and some of them, which should not be in use at all, those being the ones to the storage areas, have had the dust on the treads unsettled. Only those who live or work here know how to navigate that network of passages through the house. At the very least, no one would have access to them unless they were in the house, specifically the primary entry points, those being belowstairs. It has to be someone who has access and understanding that they’re there to be found…and used.”

“But how do you explain them knowing the code to the History Room and the combination to the safe?”

“All the safes have been checked. Nothing moved into them, nothing missing, except what you found in the Brandy Room. We’ve changed the code to the door to the History Room. There are several safes that have been switched to electric. Those codes have been changed too. The ones that require combinations will be more difficult. But to answer your question, I can only deduce that someone was around to watch someone else entering the codes or combination. That’s the only explanation because, in working with them to search the house, it’s apparent Dad, Daniel nor Stevenson are behind this.”

I asked the million-dollar question, even if I knew he had no answer.

“And why would someone be doing this?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” he told me what I already knew on a sigh, then pushed up slightly in the sofa. “It doesn’t add up. All of these areas are not used by family. Only staff would find these things. Also, why lay out the flute, then put it away? I discovered from Stevenson that those rooms aren’t cleaned except once every four months. No one has been in them for ages, except you.”

“I wandered the house on my own on the tour. And Brittany saw me up there, maybe she mentioned it to someone else. It would have been easy for someone to see me. Perhaps they knew I saw it, and then moved it, the better to freak us out that it was there, then gone.”

“Perhaps,” he allowed, then asked, “Did you see any of these other things?”

I shook my head. “I can’t say my perusal of those rooms was thorough, though. And I didn’t look into many rooms on the southeast wing. It was clear from seeing a few those were family quarters, and I didn’t know whose was whose. I didn’t want to pry.”

He nodded yet again, slumped back into the couch, rested his head on the back and did the pinching of the bridge of his nose thing.

Watching him—and being pissed on his behalf that this was happening in his home, a blatant mindfuck, a violation—it suddenly hit me.

“I saw a girl coming out of the Whisky Room. I haven’t seen her before or since.”

He turned his head to me. “A girl?”

“She was wearing what Jack and Sam wear during the day.”

“Ah,” he murmured. “One of the cleaning girls.”

“Cleaning girls? Don’t Harriet and Rebecca and Laura do the cleaning?”

“They do,” he affirmed. “It’s beside the point, but it’s my feeling we’re grossly overstaffed. I’ve often seen people idle. Something I’ve since discussed with Stevenson, and he agrees. Therefore, Brittany will not be replaced, and it’s likely, when one of the others leaves, they won’t either. A cost-cutting measure that won’t affect the running of the house but will allow me to increase Mum and Dad’s allowances, which might assist me in making them more amenable to the other changes I intend to make.”

I thought of Harriet hanging in the kitchen, eating toast, and nodded, but outside noting how very much Ian paid attention, and cared about his house and his parents, I said nothing.

Ian continued, “But those women’s responsibilities tend more toward the personal. Making beds. Tidying bathrooms. Doing laundry and otherwise seeing to our clothes. All in the spaces that we use. They clean other areas as well and serve. But this is a big house. We own a great many things. And it’s our responsibility to see that it’s all cared for and maintained. We don’t need a leak in the roof and water damage that we don’t know is happening. Wood will get dry and crack if it isn’t oiled. Chandeliers collect dust. There’s silver that needs polishing and china to be fetched, depending on which room it’s being called for.”

I cut in to have my suspicions confirmed. “So each room has its own set of china?”

“Not exactly, but some of them do. Pearl. Rose. Which makes sense, Rose being the room of the lady of the house, Pearl being the room where we most entertain outsiders. But for the most part, the service selected matches the room it’s being taken to. I’ve seen it all, though there’s so much of it, I don’t have a register of it in my head. However, masculine rooms have masculine services, and vice versa. I suspect favored rooms of members of the family over the years had services purchased for when they used those rooms. It stands to reason. We’ve had centuries to collect it and money to burn on those kinds of things.”

“Hmm,” I hummed.

“Tell me about this girl,” he ordered.

“There’s not much to say. Slender. Brown hair. She avoided my eyes. I thought she was shy. Now I wonder if she was somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.”

“If you’ve seen her, she was. The cleaning girls use the staff passageways almost exclusively. They’re also not full-time and, it’s my understanding, they have the greatest turnover. Usually, they’re young women who go to the college in town. When they earn their degrees or certificates, they move on.”

If they used the staff passageways exclusively, then they’d have healthy knowledge of them.

“Do you know them?” I asked.

“Not the current ones, no.” Another heavy breath from Ian and then, “I’ll make a call. Set my investigators into diving into those two first.”

“Do they live here?”

“I don’t know. Some of them have, as a benefit of their employment. No skin off our noses. We have the room. Some don’t. I don’t tend to pay attention to the intricacies of the running of the house, and not only because I don’t actually live here.”

He did pay attention, but perhaps not to that level.

And…

Okay, time to get into the creepiest part.

Or, the second creepiest part.

“Tell me about these passageways.”

His expression grew understanding, and he assured, “There isn’t an entry into my room.”

At least there was that.

“Okay, but tell me about them anyway.”

“Honestly, if someone had the time and energy, it wouldn’t be hard to know about them, though, it’d take quite some effort. In past times, they were used often, and not just by staff. It was a running joke that a husband could run into his wife, both of them on their way to an illicit liaison.”

“Members of the family?”

“Yes, most definitely, but also guests. If they wrote about them in letters or diaries or told others who did the same, anyone who was looking into Duncroft House could piece them together and use that information to move around this house, in large part, sight unseen.”

Not…

Good.

“Is there an entry into the Whisky Room?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“This is fiendish, Ian,” I remarked.

“I know, darling. But it’ll also be figured out. My investigator can lift fingerprints, evaluate the footprints in the dust, thoroughly check the house, including the staff rooms. Stevenson already has a plan to keep the staff occupied so she can do so without being seen.”

Although he’d mentioned her before, that time it struck me.

“Your investigator is a woman?”

“The one coming is. I have two. The other one will remain in London and look into the staff and assess outside motives for someone to pull this shit.” His aura changed, and he said, “Don’t drink anymore Amaretto unless Stevenson gives it to you himself.”

I felt gooseflesh glide over my skin when I asked, “Why?”

“I’ve been feeling sluggish the last few days, including right now, and it isn’t just having half a whisky at midday. Daniel and I had a talk about how this started, you mentioning the flute from your dream, and he told me Portia has been dreaming too, and she seems more highly-strung when she’s here, sometimes even erratic. I grew concerned, mentioned it to Dad. He’s a G and T man. After dinner, he goes for port or brandy. Mum is G and T too, and after dinner brandy or sherry. He says they’re not experiencing any changes, though he’s noted that Mum seems more vague than normal.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I asked Daniel, and Portia likes to unwind at the end of an evening with an Amaretto too. She’s been drinking it from the decanter in the Wine Room. Daniel also isn’t experiencing this, but outside lager, he’s a vodka man.”

“Are you saying…?”

I couldn’t bring myself to finish it.

“I’m saying I’ve noticed a marked change in your affect when we finish the night with a drink. You seem you, but hazier, and you yourself have told me you’ve felt off. Then there are your dreams, and the things that happened to you are frightening, your responses natural to them. But Daniel mentioned in passing that Portia was very upset by how scared you were with what Brittany did. She said, you might not enjoy horror movies and scary things, but she’s never seen you like that.” He gave me a ghost of a smile. “She said you’re always together.”

It was nice Portia thought that of me.

But he still wasn’t saying outright what I thought he was saying.

So I asked after it. “Do you think someone put something in the alcohol?”

“I think I told Stevenson to carefully switch all of it out but keep what’s been decanted so my investigator can take samples of it. The new will still be out for anyone to slip something into it, so Stevenson knows if we call for a drink, he’ll have bottles locked away and will serve us directly from them.”

One could say there was no way to express how I really, really didn’t like this.

Which was why I tried, perhaps hopelessly, to offer, “They’re just dreams, honey, and some woman touched my face in the pitch dark wearing a dead woman costume in the middle of the night. My response to that wasn’t unwarranted.”

“I don’t disagree,” he returned quietly. “But I’m a busy man, Daphne. A lot on the go all the time, and people who depend on me. I enjoy it greatly, but it can get hectic and consuming, so I work out daily to clear my head and have time to narrow focus on one thing so I can be fresh when I see to the rest. Bottom line, I stay fit. Occasionally, I can go at it hard, and that can be exhausting. But this is something else. For instance, I don’t sleep heavily. You leaving me in my bed is something I’d normally notice. I had no idea you’d gone. Didn’t feel a thing.”

More indication of why that had tweaked him so much.

Oh, and the reason he had such a fantastic body.

“Stevenson won’t mind,” he continued.

“It’s not that. It’s just…in all this, the idea that someone may be drugging us…” I shook my head. “The rest of it is not cool. It’s freaky and weird and scary as hell. But that’s something else entirely.”

“Well, if my intention was to terrify the occupants of a house, drugging them so their reactions to what was found were more pronounced would make sense.”

“And again,” my voice was high-pitched, “why would someone do that?”

Ian reached out and cupped my jaw. “And again, it’s in hand. We know it’s being done. We’re looking into it. It has to be an inside job, so it isn’t as if the cast of characters is infinite. We’ll sort it, put a stop to it and deal with them when we discover who they are.”

I drew in a shaky breath to calm myself, then let it out.

Ian watched me do that and then, taking his hand from my face, he said irately, “I wish I could take you to London now. But regrettably, if we leave, the jig might be up and the person doing this might make their escape.”

“Ugh,” I grunted, and it was me sagging into the couch.

Ian gave me a few moments to get over it, before he queried, “Do you need to freshen up for dinner?”

“Probably,” I mumbled, though I had no idea what that meant.

That said, I’d only done the basics after our shower. Our thwarted plans were to spend the day in bed after he had his chat with his dad. Ian had returned my vibrator, which boiled down to him showing me where it was. It was still charged up and waiting.

I could slap on more makeup.

Ian pushed out of the couch and held his hand to me. “Up.”

I took his hand, he pulled me out of the couch, and we left the room.

* * *

Ian nuzzled me after we both finished, his big body covering mine in his bed.

Eventually, he rolled off, taking me with him.

He dealt with the condom, we both put our pajamas on, and we headed back to bed with me saying, “I’ll duck out and buy some more protection tomorrow. No one will care if I do it.”

He agreed by saying, “It’ll get you out of the house. And I need to go meet the investigator in town.”

He moved to the bed, but I went to the windows.

“Darling?” he asked after what I was doing.

I was opening the curtains at the two windows that were in his bedroom area.

I turned to him. “I just…I don’t usually have a problem with it, but I don’t want the dark. Will you have a problem sleeping with the moon shining in?”

“Not if it’ll mean you’ll sleep easier.”

He was the best.

I opened the curtains and met him in bed.

Ian turned out the lights and tucked me close.

Even after very nice orgasms, neither of us found sleep quickly.

But when I finally slept, for the first time in Duncroft, I did not dream.