Chapter 1 #2
No one arrived as we announced ourselves with the bell pull, nor were there any lights within to be glimpsed through the glass-paned door panels.
“Out about the village?” I suggested the possibility.
“Perhaps,” Brodie replied, and then tried the latch at one of the doors.
“Or perhaps not,” he added as the door slowly swung open.
Brodie announced our arrival as we stepped to the entrance of the manor. Once again, there was no response.
A long hallway led from the entrance, with rooms on each side. Double doors to the left opened onto an elaborate dining room with a table and a dozen chairs for guests.
A carved door to the right of the hall stood slightly ajar. Brodie reached back stopping me as he opened the door to a large parlor. The room had been completely turned over.
A chair before the hearth sat on its side, the satin brocade seat cut, layers of horsehair padding gaping through the opening. A side table had been toppled to the floor, and a mahogany cabinet stood with glass doors ajar, the contents strewn across the carpet.
“Someone was looking for something,” I commented.
“So it would seem,” Brodie replied.
Whoever had been there, the search was not confined to the parlor. The small adjacent library had fared no better.
Books had been pulled from the shelves and lay scattered open on the floor. The drawers of a desk were turned out. Upholstered chairs with padded arms and seats had been cut open as we discovered in the parlor.
We both turned at a startled sound from a young woman who now stood in the doorway with a stunned expression. By the clothes she wore, she was obviously a maid.
“Are you with the police?” she asked. “I heard they were here.”
“We work with the police,” Brodie replied. “Who might ye be?”
“Bridget Dunham. I’m Miss Adele’s maid,” she replied.
She stood just inside the entrance still uncertain as she stared about the parlor.
“She’s gonna be right upset when she sees this,” she commented.
She seemed to lose some of her first wariness at finding us there.
She explained that she had been employed the past year by Adele DeMille. Who, it seemed, had disappeared.
“Did ye see or hear the intruders?” Brodie then asked.
She shook her head. “I haven’t been here. Me mum hasn’t been well and I needed to see to her. Miss Adele told me to take the days off and come back when she was better.”
Brodie turned a chair right side up for her.
“When did ye last see Miss DeMille?”
“It was four, no five, days ago,” she replied, looking at the chaos in the parlor with wide eyes.
“She had me help her get ready for guests she was expectin’ that night. That’s when she told me to take care of me mum. Has somethin’ happened to her?”
Brodie and I exchanged a look.
“Did she say who those guests were?” he asked. “A name perhaps?”
She shook her head. “She never talked about the men that came here, said it was not for me to know.”
“What can you tell us about her?” I inquired.
“She’s an actress, I heard, performed on the stage in London before she came here. Said it was better than living on a few coins she was paid. And then there were the men that came here.” Her cheeks colored.
“She liked the finer things. While I fixed her hair and helped her dress before they arrived, she would talk about plays she’d been in, the Paris theatre, and that she was never going back to that.”
I kept mental notes and asked more questions while Brodie searched the rest of the residence.
Had Miss DeMille spoken of being afraid of anyone? Had there been any other situations like this before?
“No, miss,” she replied.
What about other servants? A cook or housekeeper?
“She had a woman come in regular to clean, and Mrs. Haggerty prepared food when she was expecting friends. Jimmy in the village sees to it that she has a coach when she wants to go out.”
Adele DeMille had obviously disappeared, quite unlike her. “Was it possible that she had gone to London?”
“Oh, no, miss,” the girl replied. “She didn’t care for London proper, said more than once that everything she needed was right here.” She shook her head as she looked about.
“She’s goin’ to be upset about this. I hope there’s nothing gone wrong. She said she could help me get a part in a play. I’d like that. I don’t want to be a maid the rest of my life. I’d like to travel, work on the stage could provide that.
“I’ll need to let Mrs. Nesby know about this. Such a shame. And the lock will have to be fixed.” She shook her head as she left.
“What about the upstairs rooms?” I asked Brodie after she had gone.
“It could be useful to search them. There might something that might tell us what happened here.”
There were four bedchambers on the second floor. Brodie took the rooms at the far end of the hall, while I took the two rooms nearest.
The first room I entered was sparsely furnished, with only a bed, and did not appear to have been disturbed.
The second bedchamber was much larger and had been turned over much the same as the library and parlor.
Bed linens had been stripped from the bed, drawers searched, as well as the armoire that once contained ladies’ gowns and shoes, the entire contents now scattered across the floor.
On the dressing table were things a woman would keep—a lady’s hairbrush, a jar of cream, and other cosmetics, as well as a crystal perfume bottle with a label from Paris. The fragrance was subtle: lavender and rosemary with a hint of citrus and vanilla.
My friend Templeton was known to indulge in fragrances from France, this one among them.
“There are scents for...shall we say, encouraging one’s companion,” she had explained, that made me think of that somewhat explicit painting on the headboard of her bed at her country residence.
I also discovered a package of ‘French letters,’ protection for intimacy between a man and woman.
From what the maid told us, as well as what I had discovered, it did seem that Adele entertained ‘guests’ in that manner.
That would perhaps explain not only the discreet location but the richly furnished manor and obviously, guests of some financial means.
With at least one who paid for where she lived as well as those gowns and fine perfume?
As I turned to leave, something gleamed from the carpet at the edge of the bed in the light that spilled into the room through the windows of the bedchamber. A piece of jewelry lost amid the search for something in the room. It appeared to be gold.
I picked it up. It was a gold button with what appeared to be the embossed figure of an animal. Not the sort of button a woman would have on a gown, but the sort that a man might have on a waistcoat or long coat.
Not unusual, I supposed, as it was obvious Adele DeMille ‘entertained’ gentlemen companions.
Yet it could be important. Did it belong to an acquaintance whom she had entertained? Or had it been lost as the room was turned over?
I searched for anything else that might tell us something about what had happened in that room, but found nothing more. Only that gold button and the obvious items of an intimate nature.
“Did ye find anything?” Brodie asked from the doorway to the chamber.
“It appears that she lived quite lavishly, and there was at least one gentleman who made regular visits.” I held the package of ‘French letters’ aloft.
“Yer assuming it was a gentleman?” Brodie replied.
“So it seems. I also found this.” I showed him the gold button.
He inspected the button.
“It’s not the sort of decoration for a woman’s garment, but more for a gentleman’s waistcoat.”
“Aye. And most certainly not what a police inspector, merchant, or writer like those we saw earlier, might be able to afford.”
“Did you find anything that might be useful?” I inquired.
“The other rooms have been thoroughly turned over as well,” he replied. “It would seem that whatever the person was searching for, they failed to find.”
We returned downstairs.
“And it would seem that either the woman was aware there might be some difficulty or returned afterward and left. There is no indication of an assault.”
The question now was, what had changed regarding her obviously well-kept arrangement?
How was her disappearance and what we had found at that residence in St. John’s Wood connected to Burke? Where had Adele DeMille disappeared to? For what reason? What was she afraid of?