Chapter Ten #3
“A pity.” Sebastian shook his head. “I’ve only recently arrived in this part of the country, you see, and am trying to learn as much as possible about…
well…” He lowered his voice. “I just found the reporting in the Dispatch to be reassuringly thorough. The article comparing the effects of various sleeping pills and powders!” His expression turned appreciative.
“Admirable research! Just the sort of journalism I like to support.”
“Well,” Miss Lettercross said, watching him carefully, “I believe there will be a new issue on Monday morning.” A canny gleam lit her eye. “If you should feel the need to return to Bramble-in-the-Vale to procure a copy…”
“What a delightful prospect.” His smile widened even further.
“Why,” Georgie asked, causing both of the others to start, as if they’d forgotten her presence entirely, “would he need to return to Bramble-in-the-Vale?”
Miss Lettercross turned to her, her flirtatious smile vanishing. “I’m sorry?”
“To get a copy of the Dispatch,” Georgie said. “The newsagent in Buncombe-upon-Woolly always has copies. Why should he return here?”
“Oh.” Miss Lettercross looked, briefly, a bit flustered. “Well, I believe we get our copies earlier—”
“And why is that?” Georgie asked, suddenly very curious.
“I, er—I heard someone speaking of it. A tourist who had been in Buncombe-upon-Woolly, who retreated here in search of a bit more…” Here, a delicate pause. “… upscale, refined entertainment.”
Georgie was tempted to snort. It was hardly as if Bramble-in-the-Vale were Paris, after all.
Sebastian, meanwhile, seemed to think that a bit of smoothing of ruffled feathers might be in order, for he directed the full force of his smile once more upon Miss Lettercross. “Have you lived here all your life?”
“Yes,” she said, tearing her eyes from Georgie after another long moment had passed. Her expression—which had turned a bit wary under Georgie’s line of questioning—softened once more now that she was looking at him.
“And you’ve worked for your father for… how long?” he asked, his tone still casual as he turned to look out the window at the high street beyond.
“Four years—just since I finished school,” Miss Lettercross said.
Sebastian glanced over his shoulder at her and smiled. “He must feel very fortunate to have you.”
Miss Lettercross preened a bit. “I like to think so.”
Georgie watched this exchange with a sour taste in her mouth. It struck her that, when explained in simple terms like this, her own biography and Miss Lettercross’s sounded virtually identical.
“Do you still live at home, then?” Sebastian asked, his attention still focused on Miss Lettercross.
She nodded. “My father says he’ll be devastated when I marry and set up my own household—not,” she added hastily, her gaze upon Sebastian turning worried, “that there are any candidates for matrimony.” The unspoken yet was so loud and clear that it was nearly deafening.
Georgie felt a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth and hastily attempted to smooth it.
Sebastian’s smile widened, and Georgie watched as Miss Lettercross flushed further under his regard.
Georgie decided that the moment was ripe to commence the next step in their plot, and so gave a bit of a wobble, emitted a faint “oh!” and—as the eyes of the other two turned toward her—proceeded to collapse into an armchair.
“My dear Miss Radcliffe,” Sebastian said, all solicitous concern. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” Georgie said, making her voice a bit faint. “I suddenly felt unwell.”
Sebastian crossed the room to her in a trice, crouching down by her chair, raising a hand to her brow.
“I’m not feverish,” she muttered to him under her breath.
“Be quiet and act like an invalid,” he muttered back, in a voice entirely different from that of the polite, worried companion he’d been acting a moment before.
She tossed her head fretfully against the back of the chair. “I suddenly felt rather dizzy…”
Miss Lettercross, by this point, had risen from her desk and was hovering behind Sebastian, watching the proceedings.
“Would you like some tea, Miss Radcliffe?” she asked, and Georgie gave a weak nod.
The English were such a reliable people—the moment a spot of trouble arose, they could be counted on to offer to prepare tea.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, attempting to make her voice a bit feeble.
“Not at all,” Miss Lettercross said with a nod, and then she vanished through a small door in the far corner of the room.
“How much time do you think we have before she returns?” Georgie asked, straightening in her chair as soon as the door closed behind Miss Lettercross.
“A few minutes, at least,” Sebastian said, already moving toward the open doorway directly behind Miss Lettercross’s desk, which presumably housed Mr. Lettercross’s office.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Stay there—for deniability. I’ll take a poke around his office, and you can let me know if you hear her returning.
” With that, he disappeared into the room beyond, leaving Georgie alone in the antechamber.
Feeling she might as well make herself useful, she wandered toward Miss Lettercross’s desk, with the vague thought that she might have been responding to some piece of correspondence on her father’s behalf that would somehow be damning.
She wasn’t certain what she expected to find—or what proof she thought Sebastian might stumble across in Mr. Lettercross’s office—but the desk’s contents were decidedly dull, simply stationery and pens and stamps and tiresome letters to and from various constituents.
She peered closer at one of them, frowning—one of the villagers appeared to be complaining that this spring’s crop of kittens were insufficiently rotund and adorable.
She shook her head, then stilled, listening carefully.
She’d thought, for a second, that she’d heard the sound of footsteps.
“Georgie,” Sebastian hissed, poking his head back into the room. “You need to come see this.”
“What is it?” Georgie asked, glancing over at him in surprise from the stack of papers she had resumed flicking through, which now appeared to be several pages of notes written in Miss Lettercross’s hand; there was an air of barely concealed excitement hovering around him.
She recognized it, after a moment, as the same sort of energy that she herself had experienced during her previous investigations, once she’d realized that she’d stumbled upon an important clue.
He shook his head. “His desk drawer isn’t locked, and—well, just come look.
” He waved an impatient hand, and Georgie followed him.
Mr. Lettercross’s office was a bit of a mess; Georgie found her hands nearly twitching with the desire to organize the haphazard piles of papers and teetering stacks of books.
“Look,” Sebastian hissed, reaching for a large brown paper envelope that he thrust toward Georgie. “Look at this!” Georgie reached into the envelope and pulled out a large stack of newspaper clippings. She frowned down at them as it took a moment for their contents to sink in.
“These are all of Arthur’s stories in the Register about the murders,” she said.
“And The Times, too—see?” Sebastian pulled a clipping from deep in the stack to show her. “He’s saved everything that made the news about the murders.”
“That’s… odd,” Georgie said, still staring down at the crumpled bits of newspaper in her hands.
“It’s suspicious,” Sebastian corrected her, his tone grim but his gaze bright and alert. She felt as though she were seeing an entirely different version of him to the one she’d known until now. She didn’t have time at the moment to pause to analyze how she felt about this.
“I suppose it is,” she said, then paused, her heart suddenly leaping into her throat.
This time, she was certain she heard footsteps.
Glancing at Sebastian, alarmed, she thrust the envelope back onto one of the piles on the desk, and then slipped from the office and back into the antechamber, Sebastian on her heels.
“Oh, wait—” She whirled. “Can you intercept her? I wanted to look at one last thing on her desk.”
With nothing more than a nod, he was off, taking long strides toward the door that Miss Lettercross had vanished through.
Georgie darted back to the desk and seized the stack of papers, flicking through it with increased haste, scanning the words before her as quickly as possible, her eyes widening.
“—some help with that?” she heard Sebastian say, his words growing louder, and she just had time to arrange the papers back in some semblance of the neat stack they’d been in when she’d arrived, and then fling herself back into her armchair.
“I could have managed it myself,” Miss Lettercross said to Sebastian, who was bearing an enormous tea tray laden with a teapot and cups, along with a tin of biscuits.
“Nonsense,” he said cheerfully, depositing the tray with great care on the desk, which was the only available flat surface, and directing the full, radiant force of his smile on Miss Lettercross.
“You’ve already gone to the trouble of preparing all this for us; the least I can do is the heavy lifting. ”
“It was no trouble,” Miss Lettercross said, dimpling at him. “I wouldn’t want you to return to London thinking our village inhospitable, after all.”
“I could never,” Sebastian assured her, his own smile widening even further, and Georgie was annoyed to discover that she felt like a bit of a third wheel at the moment.
She cleared her throat, and Sebastian crossed the room toward her, laying a cool hand on her brow, once more the solicitous companion to an ailing young lady.
Miss Lettercross busied herself with the teapot, and Georgie watched a frown furrow her brow for a moment as she glanced at her desk, but a second later the frown was gone, leaving Georgie to wonder if she’d imagined it.
Miss Lettercross poured two cups of tea, then reached for the sugar bowl, calling, “One lump or two?”
“Two,” Sebastian said, revoltingly, as Georgie said, “One, please.” She was tempted to ask for none, just to make a point, but, since she didn’t actually enjoy unsweetened tea, thought that might be cutting off her nose to spite her face.
Miss Lettercross handed the two cups of tea to them. She and Sebastian sat for some minutes, sipping, making idle chitchat, and casting significant looks at each other. Georgie realized that they hadn’t worked out a way to make their escape without appearing suspicious.
“How long do you expect Mr. Lettercross to be out?” Sebastian asked Miss Lettercross after about a quarter of an hour; she was seated behind her desk, sharpening one of her pencils, and glanced up at him.
“He didn’t say—did you need to be going?” She sounded extremely disappointed.
“It’s just that if Miss Radcliffe isn’t feeling well, I wonder if perhaps I ought to take her home, and we can return another day,” Sebastian explained, his voice soothing and very reasonable. Georgie thought, wildly, that he was likely quite good at calming animals.
She took another sip of tea and stifled a yawn against the back of her hand. “That might be for the best….”
“I don’t want you to overtax yourself,” Sebastian said, turning to her with wide, concerned eyes. He yawned, too. “It’s been an exhausting few days, dear Georgie.”
“I’m not your dear anything,” Georgie muttered, the words coming strangely slowly. She felt rather as though, in attempting to speak, she was swimming against a current, feeling sluggish and unwieldy.
“So you say,” he agreed amiably, stifling another yawn, and dimly, as if at the very corner of her brain, Georgie began to register a feeling of vague alarm.
She glanced over at Miss Lettercross, who was watching them closely. Her mind flicked back to the contents of that stack of papers—or what she’d managed to absorb of them in the scant time she’d had to look through them—and her eyes narrowed as they met Miss Lettercross’s gaze.
“Miss Lettercross,” she began, and Miss Lettercross was now rising from her seat and walking toward her, her expression concerned.
Sebastian, who had reached for the tin of biscuits, was now helplessly stifling another enormous yawn, frowning faintly. “Georgie,” he said, “do you know, I think there’s something odd afoot here?”
But by this point, Georgie felt as though she were at the bottom of a deep well, calling up to him—and then, shortly thereafter, she was aware of nothing at all.