CHAPTER 29
After easing the heavy door open, Peregrine peered through the narrow crack. The glimmer of moonlight outside the diamond-paned arched windows was just enough to show that the Lower School—a long, narrow hall where the younger students were given their lessons—was deserted.
He turned and beckoned for Raven to join him. “We need to stay alert,” he whispered. “The night watchman always checks in here right around this hour as part of his last round.”
Two rows of rough-cut oak columns created a center walkway that ran the length of the room. The wood was black with age.
“What are all those marks?” asked Raven as they crept up to the first set of columns.
“It’s a tradition for boys to carve their names into the walls and columns as a rite of passage when they move to the Upper School,” replied Peregrine.
After darting a look back the way they had come, he gestured for them to slip in among the rows of narrow trestle tables and benches. “Stay low and move quietly.”
“Oiy, did you really have to sit here for hours on end and listen to a schoolmaster drone on about Latin verbs or some ancient battle between Sparta and Athens?” demanded Raven as they paused before crossing to another section of the room.
“Yes,” muttered his fellow Weasel. “Why do you think I set off a stink bomb?”
“Ha! I would have been tempted to add gunpowder and blow a hole in the roof.”
Peregrine sniggered—and then sucked in his breath as the soft shuffle of footsteps came to life in the outer corridor. “The night watchman’s coming! Take cover.”
Both boys ducked under one of the tables and flattened themselves against the floor.
A minute passed, and then another.
The massive iron hinges groaned as the door swung open and a weak beam of lantern light swept over the room.
A cough broke the silence, followed by a wheezy warning. “If any of you little devils are in there making mischief, there will be hell to pay!”
Peregrine held very still.
The beam did another cursory probing through the shadows before disappearing. “Hmmph. Thank your lucky stars that you’re all fast asleep in your beds.”
A weighty thud echoed off the walls before the room settled back into silence.
Raven started to move, but Peregrine let out a soft hiss and waited another minute just to be sure.
“We really don’t want to get caught,” he explained as he rose to a crouch and began to creep forward. “Punishment is awfully severe for breaking any of the rules.”
Raven hadn’t pressed for details of life at Eton, as he had sensed that Peregrine was loath to talk about them. However, he couldn’t help but be curious. “Do they birch your bottom?”
“A birch rod leaves naught but bruises, so that’s not so bad. But some masters use thin, flexible canes, which flay the flesh.”
“What sort of perverted monster takes pleasure in beating a boy bloody?” Raven grimaced. “Surely such acts are illegal.”
A mirthless laugh. “Who is to stop them? We’re told it’s all part of turning us into men.”
Raven uttered a curse that would have earned him a caning had a schoolmaster caught wind of it.
Peregrine crept over to the raised lectern used by the teachers and checked inside its cubbyholes. He shook his head to indicate that he had found nothing.
“The beatings are bad enough, but all the boys live in fear of being sentenced to the Lockbox,” he continued, once he had rejoined Raven.
“What’s that?”
“A windowless stone chamber hidden somewhere in Lupton’s Tower.
” Peregrine came to the corner of the room and led the way into a storage alcove.
“It’s said to be cold and black as Hades.
” Peregrine repressed a shiver. “Rumor has it that several years ago one of Upper School boys went mad after being confined in there for a week.”
“I wager that we would find a way to beat them at their own game,” muttered Raven.
“I would prefer not to put that statement to the test.” Turning back to the task at hand, Peregrine squeezed between two stacks of wooden crates and felt his way along the wall until he came to a narrow, iron-banded oak door recessed into the bricks.
“Last year, I traded my gold pocket watch to one of the King’s Scholars in return for him showing me the ways he and his friends had discovered for exploring the school buildings without getting caught.”
“Where does this door lead?”
“It gives access to a hidden passageway through an unused part of the cellar and gives us access to the section of the school adjoining the Ante-Chapel. That has to be where Mr. Valencourt has his secret lair,” answered Peregrine.
“It’s the only place I never had a chance to explore, because the lock was too complicated for me to open.
But now that Wrex has taught you how to work the levers . . .”
He fiddled with the rusty latch and finally pried it open. “Let us hope we can find what Wrex and m’lady are looking for.”
“If the papers are in the secret chamber,” replied Rave, “we’ll find them.”
* * *
Too on edge to sit quietly, Charlotte stripped off her gown and donned her urchin’s garb despite the earl’s admonition to stay hidden in the rented house. Her fancy silks and satins had felt stifling. The rags made her feel ready for any exigencies.
An illusion, perhaps, she thought as she fetched a sketchbook and pencil from her valise. But it helped steady her spirits.
After heading downstairs, Charlotte entered the parlor. McClellan looked up from her knitting but made no comment on the change of clothing as Charlotte settled into a chair and turned to a fresh page.
She wasn’t quite sure of what she hoped to accomplish by sketching—other than distract herself from the painfully slow passage of time. Still she made herself put pencil to paper.
“Shall I go make some tea for us?” asked McClellan a short while later. She, too, appeared fidgety. Tyler had left earlier in the day to make further inquiries about the bridge engineer Brendan O’Connor, leaving her and Charlotte as the only ones without a specific assignment.
“I would ask for whisky, but I’d rather keep my head clear.” Charlotte continued her aimless doodling of bridges, hoping her imagination would come up with some brilliant insight on its own.
McClellan rose and came to look at the page. That she said nothing was an eloquent enough statement in itself.
“I know, I know, it’s a silly waste of time. I suppose I’m hoping for some sudden spark of inspiration,” Charlotte admitted. “Most crimes have a key to unlocking the motivation, and once one sees it, the whole picture snaps into focus.”
McClellan gave the squiggles another look and arched her brows in skepticism. “If you say so.”
“Milton’s murder is connected to bridges,” muttered Charlotte under her breath. “And bridges allow people and goods to move from here to there faster and more efficiently.”
The maid retreated to her own chair without further comment and resumed her knitting.
Charlotte turned to a fresh page, willing it to speak to her.
It stared back in taunting silence.
Closing her eyes, she exhaled, determined to relax and give her imagination free rein . . . and after a moment, she found herself drawing a gentleman on horseback trotting over a bridge, followed by a pair of farmworkers on foot, carrying sacks of grain.
“What am I missing?”
The coals in the hearth had burned down to ashes, though a sudden flare of firelight showed that a few embers were still burning.
She drew a circle.
“O,” whispered Charlotte, hoping to spark some new insight, though she had drawn the letter countless times over the last few days. She stared at the page for a moment before drawing a second half circle beside the first one to form a C.
Think!
The exhortation elicited no new inspiration.
Discouraged, she turned her thoughts back to the theme of transportation.
Vehicles were the backbone of commerce. Carts and carriages, wagons and drays. And they all moved on . . .
Her breath caught in her throat as she suddenly recalled Wrexford’s description of the marks Garfield had drawn on the floor with his own blood.
What if . . .
What if the line between the two letters wasn’t a random twitch of the dying man’s finger? What if it had been intentional? What if it was meant to be an axle.
Axle . . . Axe!
And what if the letters were really meant to be circles . . .
“Ye gods!”
McClellan looked up with a start. “What?”
Charlotte suddenly saw the truth with startling clarity. “I think Wrex and the boys may be in grave danger!” She shot up from her chair and rushed to snatch up her hat from the side table. “I can’t explain now—I need to run!”
* * *
Wrexford raised his brows. “I am aware that Sophocles said, ‘no one loves the bearer of bad tidings.’ But might I suggest that perhaps you are overreacting, Fenway.”
“Stubble the witticisms, milord.”
The earl turned to see Ezra Wheeler standing in the doorway.
“You—and your wife—have been far too inquisitive from the beginning,” continued Wheeler as he entered the room. “We had hoped to deflect your interest, but alas, you refused to be distracted.” A shrug. “Now you leave us no choice.”
The earl shifted his gaze back to Fenway’s weapon. “You can’t think that you’ll get away with shooting me here tonight. A number of people are aware of my visit.”
Fenway was no longer looking so genial. “He’s right, Ezra. We need to think of something—”
“My dear Hugo, I already have,” interrupted Wheeler.
He, too, was holding a pistol. “Lord Wrexford is known to have a penchant for sleuthing. God only knows what misguided curiosity about Eton led him to sneak up to the battlements of Lupton’s Tower in the dead of night.
” He turned to Wrexford. “As I mentioned when we were atop the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, one needs good balance and catlike footing in high places, especially when some of the ancient stones are loose and crumbling. One slip can prove fatal.”
“Ah,” murmured Fenway. “That’s diabolically clever.”