Three long days later Curtis spit into the snow, then said, “Night after night of throwing to these bloodhounds the most expensive caviar and liquor money can buy, soirees to rival pre–Civil War slave auctions, and all Belgadt’s sales talk—and we’ve whittled our ‘guest list’ to seventeen.” He spit again as though he couldn’t get the nasty taste from his mouth. “Seventeen men who would willingly sell their sisters for a price, and some who’ve already sold their wives to brothels.”
“But no progress on our end.” Joshua followed close on Curtis’s heels, the picture of the manservant obediently trailing his eccentric master during a midday constitutional, but also providing their only opportunity to speak freely.
“No.” Curtis marched faster, fury evident in his stride.
“I’m at the beck and call of the lot of them, so I’ve had no opportunity to look for ledgers or accounts or where they keep the women. Maureen’s found nothin’.”
“Nor have I,” Curtis sighed. “Belgadt sticks to me like glue.”
“And Harder to me. I’m thinkin’ that’s his assignment.”
“No doubt.”
“Some are scheduled to leave by tomorrow mornin’s train. It’ll not be easier to search when they’ve gone.”
“No.” Curtis slowed. “We need some sort of distraction—an upheaval of sorts, to throw things off-kilter—to give you and Maureen freedom to search. And we need it tonight.”
“Somethin’ they’re not prepared for,” Joshua mused.
“Exactly.”
“Leave it to me.”
“You want me to what?” Maureen gasped, her hot iron in midair.
“You’re not deaf, lass; we need a distraction,” Joshua insisted, slipping her a small vial.
“Well, that will distract them, if it doesn’t kill them. Not that they deserve better.” She pocketed the vial and shook the shirt she’d been pressing for Curtis.
“Just a little in the soup and the cuttin’ of the trunk wires in the attic. I’ll show you after we serve drinks. You can meet me there,” Joshua pushed, leaning closer. “Can you manage it?”
“I suppose. But if I’m caught, Mrs. Beaton will kill me before that demon Belgadt ever catches me!”
Joshua winked and kissed her on the cheek. “Well then, we’ll dance from the gallows together, Miss Carmichael.”
Maureen might have slapped him, but he was out the door before she could think to raise her hand. Instead, she touched softly the place of his kiss upon her cheek.
It was half past six when the winds of a violent snowstorm howled through the lanes of the estate, whistling and rattling panes of glass as Maureen ladled creamed oyster chowder from the stove pot into china tureens under Mrs. Beaton’s watchful eye. She’d half filled the first, smiled at Mrs. Beaton, innocent as a babe, then looked sharply again, spreading her eyes wide in horror at a point just over the woman’s left shoulder. Her bloodcurdling scream rent the steamy kitchen air. The sturdy woman jumped and turned as Maureen’s ladle flipped high, showering scalding soup over Mrs. Beaton’s arm and hand, then sent the first tureen crashing to the floor.
Mrs. Beaton bellowed in agony. Nancy dropped to the floor in terror, desperately trying to corral the spreading rush of imported oysters with her tea towel. Maureen deftly tipped her small vial into the pot.
“Look what you’ve done, stupid girl!” Mrs. Beaton screamed again, dousing her hand in water. “That tureen’s come from France—part of a matching set! It’s worth more than three years of your wages!”
“I’m ever so sorry,” Maureen cried as mortified as she could be. “I saw a rat run across the shelf—just there.”
“There are no rats in my kitchen!”
“But I saw one, and I’m that terrified of them!”
“Stupid, stupid girl! How you ever made it out of the scullery and above stairs is beyond me.”
Maureen began to sniffle. “I said I’m sorry, and I’m sorry.” Then penitently, she retrieved the ladle from beneath the stove and handed it up. “Perhaps you’d best do the soup, mum. I’ll help Nancy clean up.”
Cook jerked the ladle from Maureen’s hand. “Call Harder to come for the tureen. Shorthanded or not, I’ll not trust either of you simpletons to carry it up the stairs.”
“Yes, mum.” Maureen lowered her head, curtsied, and turned to do as she was bid.
“And when you’ve done that, get out of my kitchen! Don’t come back until the meal’s done, clumsy girl! We’ll save you the pots to scrub!”
“Yes, mum.” Maureen hid her smile until she was out of sight.
“Well, their families will have to manage without them! You should have insisted the live-out staff remain with a storm brewing. We can’t afford to be shorthanded tonight,” Belgadt berated Harder.
“I should have thought ahead, sir.”
Belgadt waved him away in contempt. “Get every maid and groom on duty. I want you and Carmichael in the dining room at all times. Bring up some of those girls with domestic experience and put them in uniforms—the strongest ones not dancing tonight. I want the house to look staffed to the rafters. Now that we’ve skimmed the less than committed, I intend to convince our potential investors we’re wallowing in diamonds.”
That evening, over an elaborately planned banquet, Belgadt announced, “With our mutual investments, gentlemen, we can more than double our playing fields. Morrow has agreed to match us dollar for dollar and inventory for inventory, the proceeds to be divided by all.”
Murmurs of surprise and approbation ran both sides of the banquet table.
“All that you see, gentlemen—” Belgadt spread his hands before the lavish feast and wider, to include the estate—“is but the beginning for all of us.”
Glasses were raised.
The first course had just been served when the lights flickered from the storm. Belgadt motioned to Harder, who nodded to Joshua. The two butlers produced candelabras for the sideboards and along the banquet table. Before they had set them all in place, the electric lights went out.
Once accustomed to the change in lighting, Belgadt initiated toasts. Half jests, vulgar boasts, and running speculations regarding the extent of financial possibilities and the necessity for personally “testing new merchandise” peppered the second and third course.
It wasn’t until the fourth course was removed that the stomach cramping began—a grimace here, a puffing of the cheeks there. After the second man excused himself from the table, Belgadt received wary glances from his remaining guests.
The fifth man to clutch his stomach exclaimed, “What is this, Belgadt? You trying to poison us?”
Belgadt smiled and huffed at the insult but was taken aback by Curtis’s furious and accusing glance as he clasped his napkin to his mouth, excused himself quickly, and motioned for Joshua to follow.
When retching was heard from the hallway, Belgadt called Harder to his side and ordered that the remaining Sedgebrook staff abandon their duties and attend their guests.
The order was barely given when Belgadt clutched his stomach and stumbled from the table.
Washbowls and seldom-used chamber pots, sloshing and stinking with the leavings of heaving guests, flew up and down the dark stairs between the arms of a frazzled staff. Indoor toilets, flushed too many at a time, backed up into bathrooms.
“Can you give me a hand, Carmichael?” Harder called from the upstairs landing, a chamber pot in either hand.
“When I’ve attended Mr. Morrow,” Joshua called back. “You’d best bring in a doctor, lest your employer boast a houseful of corpses!”
A door flew open at that, and a guest, stripped to the waist and clutching a towel before his mouth, ordered, “Tell Belgadt he’d best get a dozen doctors out here at once! Tell him I’ll sue for this!”
“Make the call, Harder,” Belgadt ordered weakly as he topped the stairs, his face ashen, just before his stomach emptied upon the landing.
Harder slammed his lamp onto the marble-topped table in the downstairs hallway and madly tapped the telephone’s cradle. “Operator . . . Operator!” He swore, then tried again.
“Is someone coming?” Joshua demanded from behind him, not sorry that the contents of the bowl he carried slopped onto Harder’s livery and shoe.
“The lines are down!” Harder raked his hands through his hair, not seeming to notice that he reeked. “Do the best you can. I’ll get the groom and send him for a doctor.”
“I just saw him below stairs. He’s down with it too—must have sampled the feast. Where’s the rest of your staff, man? We can’t manage alone!” Joshua challenged, barely able to hide his glee.
Harder looked desperately from Joshua to the front door and back.
“I’ll have to go for the doctor myself. I’ll bring the women to help you.” He swore beneath his breath. “At least the swells’ll die smiling.”
Maureen had searched Belgadt’s room during the first course. Finding no ledgers, no safe, no secret panels, and no women, she’d visited two of the guest bedchambers during toasts and Harder’s room after cutting the trunk and telephone wires coming in through the attic.
As the men took to their rooms, groaning and swearing, she waited silently in the small storage room beneath the stairs, the door barely cracked to let her observe the comings and goings of all who passed through the open hallway.
She never moved until Harder had thrown the telephone receiver against its cradle and, taking up his lamp, pushed open his employer’s study door. She shadowed Harder, just out of the lamp’s range, and crouched behind an overstuffed leather chair, watching him fumble before the fireplace. Awkwardly, he turned the right andiron. A single bookcase slid smoothly open behind another. Harder passed through, turned, and raised his hand somewhere beyond Maureen’s line of vision. Less than a moment passed before the bookcase slid back into place.
Holding her breath and a flashlight, Maureen searched the bookcase for a seam, a sign of the hidden door. There was none.
Having no idea how long before Harder might reappear or if she’d have warning, Maureen searched the drawers of Belgadt’s desk. The very fact that not one drawer was locked convinced her that she’d find nothing incriminating. But she paid special attention to the dimensions and depth of each drawer, in search of secret compartments, as Curtis had instructed her. She ran her hands along the backs, seats, and bottoms of his chairs, along the chair rail that ran round the room. She was halfway through reading the spines of his books upon the shelves when she heard the shuffling of feet beyond the bookcase. As the bookcase opened, Maureen clicked off her flashlight and slid beneath the desk.