I pointed out the four unique entries in the ledger, each one repeated on a monthly basis. “There are four people, all paying differing amounts on different days.”
Harry peered over my shoulder. His chest brushed my back, but if our close proximity affected him as much as it did me, he showed no sign. He was entirely preoccupied with the book. “If those codes refer to names, it won’t be too difficult to crack it. We already know he might be blackmailing the Bunburys.”
“But not the Livingstones,” I added. “Mr. Livingstone refused to pay, and that’s why Amelia’s secret got out—her father refused to pay the blackmail Mr. McDonald demanded for his silence.” I pointed to the letter E in each of the codes. It appeared twice in several entries. “E is the most commonly used letter in the English language.”
Harry shook his head. “But not necessarily in codes.”
“Could it represent the letter B? B for Bunbury?” I counted on my fingers as I spelled the name in my head. “It appears in the right spot and there are seven letters in those entries and seven in Bunbury.”
Harry clicked his fingers then strode out of the room. I followed and joined him at the dressing table in the main bedroom. He picked up the book on Caesar and flipped to the index then found the page he wanted. He tapped his finger on a table with two columns, each listing the letters of the alphabet. In the left-hand column, the letters were ordered from A to Z. In the right-hand column, the alphabet started at D and ended at C, but was otherwise in order.
“I thought so,” he said. “It’s the Caesar Cipher.”
“The what?”
“It’s the code Julius Caesar developed while on military campaign. If his plans fell into enemy hands, they couldn’t be deciphered without knowing the cipher. It’s very simple. All you do is shift the alphabet along by a particular number of places, like in this table. The number of shifted places is called the key. Caesar usually used three, as it does here as well as in McDonald’s ledger. So the letter A is now represented by the letter D, B is represented by E, C is represented by F and so on until the letter Z is represented by C. All one needs to know to break it is what numerical key is used.”
We moved to the study and used the table in the Caesar book to decipher Mr. McDonald’s code. We were right. The Bunburys were listed a few times, as were the Quornes. But we’d been wrong about the Livingstones. Their name was in the ledger, although there was no payment against it for over a month. The fourth name took me by complete surprise. Indeed, I deciphered it a second time to be sure.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “Could it be him? Could it be Mr. Chapman, the Mayfair’s steward?” The deciphered entry just read “Chapman” with no first name, no place of work, or other identifying information.
Harry rubbed a hand across his jaw. “I suppose… If McDonald knew something scandalous about him, Chapman wouldn’t want Sir Ronald to hear about it. Your uncle isn’t the most understanding or forgiving man when it comes to his employees’ indiscretions.”
“Indeed. But Mr. Chapman’s not wealthy like the others. Was it worth blackmailing him?”
Harry pointed to the amounts next to the name. “He was paying considerably less. McDonald adjusted the amount accordingly.” He frowned. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but Chapman is now a suspect for the murder.”
“No. He couldn’t have done it. He was just leaving the hotel for the night when we arrived home after the ball. He’d been in the dining room all evening.” It was something of a relief to exclude him. The last thing I wanted to do was suspect one of the staff, even if I didn’t like him much.
Even so, we ought to question him about his relationship with McDonald. But if I questioned him, he would tell my uncle in retaliation. Harry, on the other hand, could speak to him in his capacity of private detective.
“You have to interrogate him,” I said.
Harry shook his head. “Neither of us will. Not until we know for certain we have the right Chapman. The name isn’t uncommon.”
“Very well. We’ll leave him until it becomes absolutely necessary to confront him. In the meantime, I’ll ask Harmony and some of the staff to watch him.”
“He’ll get suspicious.”
“They can be very discreet.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. If he was being blackmailed, he clearly had something to hide. What if it’s something that could ruin his professional relationship with the staff? He’s their manager and deserves their respect.”
I hadn’t expected him to object so strongly, but perhaps I should have. Like Mr. Chapman, he’d been in a position of authority in the hotel. He expected the staff to treat him as a manager deserved. If something damaged that respect, he would lose his authority.
It was why Harry couldn’t remain in the hotel after my uncle fired him. Harry thought he’d lose the respect of the staff when they learned why he’d been dismissed. He was wrong, but it was how he felt and far be it from me to tell him how he ought to feel.
I set aside Chapman and concentrated on the other three names. “His reason for blackmailing the Bunburys and Livingstones is obvious,” I said. “But I wonder if he was blackmailing the Quornes because their stolen painting was also a fake, or because there’s something in Lady Quorne’s background she’s trying to hide.”
“Let’s find out.” He indicated the book. “Bring that with you.”
“You want to steal evidence?”
“Borrow, not steal.”
He seemed thoughtful as we headed for the door, but it was me who asked him to wait while I checked one more thing before we left. I hadn’t seen the paintings, and something had occurred to me. Was Reggie Smith good enough to have painted the fake Grandjean? While I was no art critic, I should be able to tell if he was an amateur or not.
I entered the room used as a studio and stopped in front of a large painting on an easel. It was almost complete, except for the hands and feet. Whoever did it, must have trouble with those parts of the body. From what I knew of the male nude, the rest looked…lifelike. The artist had also captured Mr. McDonald’s confident air and Mona Lisa smirk to perfection.
“Learn anything?” Harry’s voice was quiet, but it still made me jump.
“No! I mean, yes.” I cleared my throat and dared to sneak a peek at him out of the corner of my eye. He sported a roguish half-smile.
I turned away to study the two other portraits of Mr. McDonald leaning against the wall, both completed. One was signed R. Smith, the other was unsigned. I indicated the signed one. “This and the unfinished one on the easel are done by the same person.”
Harry turned to study the unfinished painting. “How do you know? The unfinished one is unsigned.”
“You can tell by how thickly the paint has been layered on both, as well as the hands and feet. They’re poorly rendered in the completed piece and left until the end in the unfinished one. Mr. Smith clearly struggles with them.”
Harry indicated the third painting, the other finished one leaning against the wall. “Who is that by?”
“It’s also unsigned, but it’s different to the other two. For one thing, the artist knows how to do hands and feet.”
Neither of us knew what any of it meant, except it was confirmation that Reggie Smith used this studio and liked painting nudes of Mr. McDonald.
We left the flat and I thought we would take the stairs down to the ground floor foyer where we’d have to hide until the porter’s back was turned. But Harry had other ideas. He thought it was time to reveal ourselves and get answers about our victim from those who would have seen visitors coming and going.
He started by questioning the lift operator as we slowly descended, but the fellow remained tight lipped. He was a good employee, loyal to the residents who perhaps tipped him well to keep their secrets.
After we exited the lift and before we reached the porter, I suggested to Harry that we ought to use an incentive too. Telling the staff we worked for the police was getting us nowhere.
He handed the porter some money after we introduced ourselves. “What can you tell us about the people who visited Ambrose McDonald on the fifth floor?”
The porter tucked the coins into his jacket pocket and glanced around. “I can tell you a lot of folks came and went from Mr. McDonald’s flat.”
“Do you know why they visited him?”
“Considering most didn’t want to be seen, I reckon they were his intimate friends. But I saw them.” He tapped the side of his nose. “I see everything.”
“Can you describe those who came regularly?”
“Let’s see. There was a man who visited a lot up until a week or so ago. Slim, handsome fellow, young, brown hair…”
It could have been Reggie Smith, but the description was too vague to be certain.
“There were other men, too. One in particular hated it when I greeted him. He always tried to hide his face. He was also slim, but shorter than the other fellow. Brown hair, nice clothes. I reckon he was a toff on account of the way he spoke, like he was better than me.” He shrugged. “The women were the same. All hoity-toity, the lot of ‘em.”
“Old or young?” I asked.
“Older than Mr. McDonald. I remember one who used to come regularly. She was rude to me. I complained to Mr. McDonald once, and he said not to feel inferior. All her jewels were fakes, and she and her husband were struggling to pay their bills. It surprised me that she was married. It was the first I heard that Mr. McDonald’s female companions had husbands. Maybe the men had wives, too.” He shrugged.
That had to be Lady Bunbury. Had she come to pay the blackmail money, or were they intimate friends, as the porter suggested? “You say she was a regular visitor,” I said. “How regular?”
“She came at least once a week for a while, but she stopped coming about three or four months ago.”
“What about a young lady?” Harry asked.
“There was only one. She came during the day, holding Mr. McDonald’s hand and giggling. Real pretty, she was. Fine figure, too, and dressed real nice. He never brought girls that young here, so I thought it odd. Maybe he was ready to settle down, I thought. But if he was considering marriage, he wouldn’t have brought her back here without a chaperone. Not a girl of quality like her.”
Indeed he wouldn’t. I was quite sure the girl in question was Amelia Livingstone. She must have snuck away from her chaperone and met up with Mr. McDonald before he brought her here. It sounded as though she was a willing participant in the dalliance. As Harmony had said, Amelia was probably just having some fun.
The consequences of her actions hadn’t occurred to her at the time. She knew them now. She must have been devastated when he started spreading the rumor about her losing her virginity, conveniently leaving his own name out of it. Not only had she had her heart broken, but she’d been betrayed by a man she trusted.
Harry handed the porter a business card. “If you think of something else, let me know.”
The porter flicked the card with his finger. “I’ll pass this on to the coachman. He ferries the residents around, and often drove Mr. McDonald about. He’s not here now, but I reckon he’ll have something to add.” He jangled the coins in his pocket.
Harry nodded in understanding. “We’ll make it worth his time if his information is good.”
Our next steps were now clear. We had to take a closer look at the main suspects again, although instead of Mr. Livingstone, I wanted to speak to Amelia. I also didn’t think we’d get answers from Lord or Lady Bunbury, but their servants might be amenable if we paid them. And we also needed to learn about Lady Quorne’s past to know whether she was being blackmailed about that or about her painting being a fake, too.
I expected Harry to be thinking the same as me, but as we exited the building into the sunshine, he suggested we visit Reggie Smith’s boarding house again.
“If we’re going to be asking witnesses to describe who they saw with McDonald, we need to show them a photograph of our suspects. The only one we can easily obtain is Smith’s. There was one in his room.”
The landlady of the boarding house greeted us like old friends and escorted us up to Reggie Smith’s room. The door to Mr. Underwood’s room opened a crack before closing again. I thought he wouldn’t bother to come out, but he emerged a moment later, buttoning up his waistcoat with ink-stained hands. He wore no jacket and his hair hadn’t been combed. Perhaps he’d just got out of bed. It would seem he didn’t work, or if he did, not during the day. He’d been here both days we’d visited.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said as the landlady unlocked the door.
Harry ducked inside, but I remained to talk to Mr. Underwood.
“Any word on how Mr. Smith’s case is progressing?” he asked. “Do the police have enough evidence to release him?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you getting closer?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”
“Of course.” He sighed. “I do hope the real killer is found soon and he can return home.”
“Aye,” the landlady said as she relocked the door after Harry emerged. “I can’t hold his room for him forever.”
How does one ask a married lady whether she had an affair with a man who was murdered in her house? Lady Bunbury would slam the door in our faces if we confronted her. The servants would also refuse to talk, unless we paid them, and both Harry and I were short on funds. With no one paying us for our time, we would never recoup our losses.
We considered attempting to get the servants to trust us enough to talk, but that level of trust couldn’t be gained in one afternoon. Two of the servants already knew us, anyway. We’d met Lord Bunbury’s valet and one of the maids during our last investigation. We’d also learned that the Bunburys kept very few servants. Financial constraints had meant they’d let most go.
I proposed we sneak inside via the back door when both Lord and Lady Bunbury were out and search her rooms. The house was large enough that we should be able to avoid being seen by the handful of servants. To my surprise, Harry agreed.
“If we’re caught, we’ll come clean about the investigation,” he said.
“And risk them telling Lord Bunbury who will then inform his contacts at Scotland Yard? If you’re recognized, your father will be dismissed on the spot. I’ll go in alone.”
“No.”
“It’s easier for me.”
He rounded on me and grasped my arms, turning me to face him. “Don’t try telling me that you’re too unremarkable to be remembered. We’ve been through this and you forced me to say that you’re the most memorable woman of my acquaintance. Do I have to say it again?”
I wasn’t going to let his earnestness dissuade me. I tilted my head to the side to regard him. “Do cease with the flattery, Harry. It doesn’t work on me.”
His fingers sprang apart, releasing me. He straightened, swallowed.
I tried not to smile at the bewildered look on his face. “Besides, that’s not what I was going to say. I meant I’m smaller and can more easily find a place to hide if I hear someone approach.”
That heated gaze swept my length, lingered a moment on my chest, then returned to my face. He arched a brow. “I’d like to see you try to slide under a bed wearing that.”
A corset and new day dress weren’t the most ideal clothes for sleuthing, but I didn’t want to go home and change. I’d wager Harry would take on the role of sleuth in my stead, and that wasn’t ideal.
He eyed the townhouse on the opposite side of the street and sighed. “Very well, I’ll allow it.”
“I wasn’t asking for your permission.”
“But I’ll be inside, too. I’ll gather the servants together to keep them out of your way and ask some general questions about the ball and the murder. I’ll tell them I’m working for the police, tying up loose ends to ensure Reggie Smith’s conviction. As long as they think I’m going along with the status quo rather than looking for evidence that exonerates Smith, they won’t see a need to tell Lord Bunbury. Mr. Holbeck should remember me from last time.”
“The young maid certainly will,” I said wryly.
He chose to ignore me, as he often did when I mentioned his looks. He was rather sensitive about being handsome. That didn’t stop him from using it to his advantage from time to time. “Now all we have to do is find out if Lord and Lady Bunbury are home and wait for them both to leave.”
Patience wasn’t one of my virtues, so I paid a boy kicking a stick along the pavement a penny to find out whether Lord and Lady Bunbury were in. He made inquiries at the basement door and returned a moment later.
“His lordship has gone out and her ladyship is leaving shortly,” he said.
“How did you get the servants to tell you that?” Harry asked.
“I told them I was sent by their neighbor who wanted to speak to them about the noise.”
“What noise?”
“Well, I don’t know, do I? I’m just the messenger.” He picked up his stick and walked off.
Harry chuckled. “Either we’ve just been given a lesson in interrogation techniques, or we’re going to regret sending a boy to do an adult’s task.”
Ten minutes later, the Bunbury coach rounded the corner and stopped outside their house. The butler held the front door open for Lady Bunbury then he hurried past her to reach the coach first and held its door open.
“Shouldn’t a footman do that?” I asked. “They still have one.”
“They may have let him go, too.”
The coach drove off and the butler returned to the house. I headed behind the row of townhouses to the mews. I found the rear door to the Bunburys’ and, with a fortifying breath, opened it. As we suspected, it wasn’t locked. Servants came and went between the house and the mews, so it wouldn’t be locked until nighttime.
I slipped inside and listened. Harry’s deep voice came from within. He’d managed to get through the front door, but had he gathered all the servants? There weren’t many, but if just one was roaming the house, I could be discovered.
I had to trust him.
I tip-toed up the service stairs and emerged onto the fourth floor where I assumed the main bedrooms were located. I found Lord Bunbury’s first. After giving it a cursory search, I headed down the corridor and entered the next bedroom. It was Lady Bunbury’s with a dressing room attached.
I quickly searched all of the most obvious places, including the dressing table and writing desk, but didn’t expect to find evidence of an affair with another man. Lady Bunbury wasn’t a fool. She wouldn’t leave correspondence or photographs lying around for her servants to find. There’d been no signs that she shared her husband’s bed, and no sign of masculine things in her rooms, so I assumed their marital relations were non-existent. That didn’t mean he would accept her affair, but it might mean she wasn’t too concerned if he discovered she was with Mr. McDonald. The servants were another matter. They gossiped.
There were no loose floorboards or tiles around the fireplace. Nothing was stored under the bed except a few dusty cobwebs that the overworked maid had left. I checked inside coat pockets and empty boots, and between the folded clothes on the cupboard shelves, even though Lady Bunbury’s maid would most likely see something hidden there. I checked the pillows and ran my hand along the mattress, both above and under it, looking for split seams or lumps. Finding nothing, I remade the bed to the maid’s standard, which was as good as Harmony’s bedmaking skills.
I stood in the middle of the room and blew out a frustrated breath. Where would I hide something I didn’t want the servants to find? They touched almost everything. They didn’t lift heavy furniture, but I couldn’t imagine Lady Bunbury choosing a hiding place beneath something she couldn’t easily move.
Then it struck me. A single painting hung on the wall. It showed a lake bathed in moonlight, the shadows on its banks looming like creatures from a nightmare. It wasn’t something I’d want hanging near my bed as I tried to sleep. On closer inspection, it wasn’t particularly well done. The strokes were lazy, the colors too dark. It was probably a copy of an original.
It was neither large nor heavy and I easily took it off the wall. I turned it around and my heart leapt. Tucked into the frame at the back were three letters.
I removed them and quickly read each one. I could have kissed the painting when I finished. It was just the evidence we’d hoped to find. All of the letters were from Mr. McDonald. Addressed to “My dearest Ruth”, they were signed, “Your loving Ambrose”. They were filled with tender words of love and sprinkled with references to their trysts. They were brief but sensual. Luckily, I was alone and could blush in private.
The final letter was dated three months earlier—a mere two days before the first payment from the Bunburys’ as recorded in Ambrose McDonald’s coded blackmail register.
I was about to return the letters to the painting when I noticed something else common to all of them. They were crumpled. Although I’d found them folded in half, they all showed signs of having been scrunched up then flattened out. Had Lady Bunbury thrown them away after he blackmailed her, only to have second thoughts?
I returned the painting to the wall. How ironic that she’d hidden the private love letters from the man who’d known her paintings were fakes behind one of those fake paintings.
The door handle rattled as it turned.
My heart scudded to a halt. Someone was coming.