Chapter 16 #2
“Exactly. And he brought her here, where she thought she’d finally have a home and family.
Only he didn’t want anything to do with her, not really.
He wanted her silver to make the repairs and keep up the estate so his parents would stop writing and begging him to come home to do his duty, and then he wanted the rest for his adventuring while she stayed and kept a home.
And when she put her foot down, well, he died.
Then everyone else in the house got sick and died, exactly like her parents and sisters.
She spent the rest of her life believing she was cursed. ”
Lizzie felt like wilting under Sally’s directness. She had nearly forgotten one of the trickiest things about any case—there
were two sides to every story. And in this telling, Lizzie was starting to feel as though Honoria Bingley was less eccentric
and more downtrodden than Lizzie had ever entertained.
“I’m sorry,” Lizzie said finally. “No one deserves to feel as though they’re at fault for all the misfortunes in their life.”
Sally huffed but said nothing more on the subject. She turned and stepped out into the main corridor of the east wing. “Come
along.”
“Is it safe?”
“If you follow me, and step where I step. Now, call your dog.”
Lizzie gingerly stepped onto the moth-bitten, soot-stained carpet precisely where Sally had and shouted, “Guy? Guy, here boy!”
She paused to listen, and when she didn’t hear anything right away, she called again. This time, she heard a sad little yip,
somewhere to her left and . . . above?”
“I know where he is,” Sally said darkly. “Come on.”
Lizzie followed the young woman, listening for ominous creaking or the sound of boards splintering.
Nothing happened, however, as Sally led them down the hall in the opposite direction from where she and Charlotte had gone the other day.
When they reached the end of the hall, Sally slid open a concealed door, revealing service stairs that went up.
Guy’s barking sounded much closer. “Guy!” Lizzie called out. “Guy, we’re coming, boy!”
“Careful—”
Sally’s warning came too late—Lizzie placed her weight on one step and heard a groan followed by a snap, then felt the board
give way under her foot. She leapt to the next step, bracing her hands against the walls of the narrow stairs. The stairs
were so steep she nearly lost her balance, but Sally grabbed her forearm, steadying her. There was strength in Sally’s calloused
hands. “Are you all right?”
Lizzie nodded. “Thank you.”
Sally released her. “Come on, he’s close.”
The second floor was not nearly as nice as the first. The floors were bare and the walls were a simple whitewashed plaster,
and the ceilings weren’t as tall as they were on the ground and first floors. Sally noticed Lizzie taking it all in and said,
“This used to be the servant wing. But no one has lived here for a very long time.”
Lizzie shivered, thinking of all the poor servants who’d taken sick and died, never to be replaced. There was something unnerving
about the empty hall, with its diffused light. “Is the floor stable up here? Did the fire . . .”
“I wouldn’t go farther down that hall, but he should be—”
Sally reached for the closest door on the right, and it opened soundlessly. A small cream-colored bundle barreled into Lizzie’s
ankles. “Guy!”
The dog made pathetic whimpering noises, and his entire body wiggled with excitement to be reunited with Lizzie. He jumped
up, scrambling at her knees, and she bent down and swooped him up. “Oh, I’m so sorry, boy. How on earth did you get up here?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?”
Lizzie turned to look at Sally. The other young lady was regarding her with a strange expression—half wonder, quarter confusion,
and a quarter . . . suspicion? “What is it?”
“You’ve been here before,” she said. No, she didn’t just say it—she accused Lizzie. “Haven’t you?”
“What?” Lizzie shook her head. “Charlotte and I were here in the east wing, yes, but that was an accident. I found the service
corridor and wanted to see where it led. The door shut on us, so we had to find another way through. But we didn’t come up
here.”
Sally took a step forward, and for one heart-stopping moment Lizzie was afraid of her. What was she accusing Lizzie of, exactly?
What was she going to do next?
But Sally stepped around her, and into the room Guy had been closed into.
The implication of that settled around Lizzie—Guy had been behind that door. But how? Unless . . . someone had deliberately
shut him in there.
She followed Sally, holding Guy. The room was a large, open space.
An ancient cradle sat in the corner, as well as miniature beds with musty, moth-eaten bedding.
Old, broken toys were piled in a heap, and there was a single rocking chair poised tilted to look out the windows.
They offered a view of the front lawn, sloping down toward the magnificent gates.
“A nursery?” she asked. “All the way up here, with the servants’ quarters?”
“It was the servants’ nursery,” Sally said, voice sounding strangely hollow. “In a different time, I might have grown up in
this room.”
Sally’s words reminded Lizzie of what she and Darcy and Charlotte had uncovered that morning, about Sally’s father—or lack
of evidence of one. Something about this room had rattled Sally.
Lizzie had no sooner realized this than she noticed something else: The room itself wasn’t covered in dust and grime. The
bedding in the corner didn’t look at all inviting, but the floor was swept clean, and as she took a few timid steps to the
fireplace, she saw the mantel had been recently dusted. There was no sign of fire damage, either. Almost as if the whitewashed
walls had been scrubbed clean of whatever smoke damage or soot might have reached this far.
“Sally,” Lizzie said in a voice that sounded more confident than she felt, “what is significant about this room?”
She didn’t think the other young woman would answer, but Sally responded as if in a trance. “I would find her here, often. Rocking in that chair, staring out the window. An entire manor full of luxurious rooms and the most comfortable seats you could imagine, but she’d come to this room.”
“Why?”
Sally went to the window. “That was the other thing—she wanted a child, but Mr. Bingley never gave her one before . . . well.
I think she liked the simplicity of this room—it’s not as nice as the nursery in the west wing, but the view out the window
is better.”
“Do you keep this room clean? In her memory?”
Seeing Sally in the window late at night suddenly made a lot more sense if Sally made regular visits to the east wing to this
very room for . . . sentimental reasons? Lizzie shook her head. Why risk the danger for sentimentality?
Sally still hadn’t answered, so Lizzie decided to take a gamble. “I saw you in the east wing. Four nights ago. When I took
Guy out at night, I could see a candle in the east wing, going from room to room.”
Sally’s head snapped back. “You saw that?”
“Yes.” Lizzie swallowed hard. “It was you, wasn’t it?” She didn’t like how her voice came out with a slight squeak.
Sally sighed, and in that one defeated sound, Lizzie knew she was right.
“Why?” Lizzie asked. “It’s so dangerous! I—”
“Your story about the service door closing and not reopening for you didn’t sit well with me. There is a way to latch the
door so it won’t open from the inside, but one can’t deploy it from inside the corridor.”
“Someone intentionally locked us in,” Lizzie said, adjusting her grip on Guy. She had already suspected as much, but it still unsettled her to hear her theory confirmed. “Why?
“I’m hoping you can tell me.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea!”
But of course, she was thinking about Lady Catherine. Lady Catherine, who’d threatened Lizzie in London and who knew she was
at Netherfield Park. Lady Catherine, who was as wily as they come and had gotten the jump on her multiple times.
Could she be here, in Netherfield Park? But how?
“I tried to get away all day to check the east wing,” Sally admitted. “But with so many people in the house, and a housekeeper
always wanting to know what I am up to, it was impossible. So I left that night, but waited until Mr. Grigson had gone to
bed, and then I came back.”
“How did you get in?” Lizzie asked.
Sally rolled her eyes. “I have a key. No one asked for it back after Mrs. Bingley died.”
“So you came in and went into the east wing and had a look around? In the dark? You could have fallen. Or set the house on
fire again.”
“Do give me a little more credit than that. But yes, I had to see if there were signs of the house being disturbed.”
“And were there?” Lizzie could scarcely breathe.
“It was too difficult to say,” Sally said. “But I’m certain of it now.”
“How?”
“Apart from the fact that your dog was in a closed room on the second floor? This.”
Sally stood before the window, which was framed with shelves and boasted a window seat beneath the ledge that Lizzie would
have coveted, under different circumstances. Lizzie looked down to see what Sally was indicating.
A large chunk of stone was missing from the outside facade, right below the windowsill. Lizzie could see a crack between the
window frame and the stone wall, the summer sun slipping in. Scrape marks on the surrounding stone and splinters from the
frame betrayed that the damage had been intentional.
Lizzie looked down.
Below them was the edge of the drive, where she and Darcy had stood just three days earlier, moments before a chunk of masonry
had nearly caved in their skulls.
“Oh.” Lizzie said, feeling faint. “Darcy was right.”
“About what?”
“He said . . .” Lizzie swallowed, her mouth dry all of a sudden. She wished he were there. “He said he saw movement in the
window, but he thought it was a trick of the light. If someone was here, and they purposefully loosened the stone . . .”
She relived the moment of the accident—no, not an accident. Darcy’s hard shove and the rain of debris, and the sharp thud
of the masonry making impact with the ground. “This is all my fault.”
Sally looked at her with genuine surprise. “What are you talking about?”
But Lizzie couldn’t—didn’t—have the time to explain Lady Catherine and her letters. “Do you have any idea who has been coming up here?”
“No,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s one of your lot. Whoever it was, they were able to move very carefully. And they know
a bit more about this house than I would have thought.”
Something in Sally’s tone made Lizzie pause. “What do you mean? What’s significant about this room, other than Honoria liking
it?”
Sally closed her eyes. When her response came, it was so quiet that Lizzie almost didn’t hear it. “Because . . . this is where
she hid her silver.”
Before Lizzie had a chance to react, Sally nudged her away from the window seat and knelt before it. Reaching under the tip
of the seat, she felt round for something. Lizzie heard the soft snick of a latch, and then the top of the seat swung open
on hidden hinges that were as silent as a secret. Lizzie gasped and stepped forward, looking down into the dark hiding space.
Sally made a surprised noise. “Now, that’s not what I expected.”