Chapter Forty-Three Treasures
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Treasures
Try as she might, the ‘too much homework’ excuse didn’t get Morrigan out of the Darlings’ social rounds on Friday evening – dinner at the Mahapatras, a séance at the Yorks and a midnight chariot race alongside the Splendid Canal. When Saturday night rolled around, she was so determined to stay home she had to feign a headache, turning down endless offers from her aunts to stay and tend to her every need.
‘No, really ,’ she said weakly, waving them off from her ‘sickbed’. ‘I’m sure I just need a good night’s sleep. It’s such a big day tomorrow … the closing of the Winter Trials and my birthday party … I want to be on my best form.’
This seemed to convince the aunts, who were already in a slight panic about running late for the opera, and ten minutes later Morrigan watched from her window as they sailed off for yet another glittering evening. She waited until the small fleet of swan boats had disappeared around the bend of the canal before running from her bedroom all the way to the distant corner of Darling House where she’d last seen her grandmother.
She was determined to find some sort of proof to support her theory. To her great disappointment, Cadence and Hawthorne had been less than convinced when she’d shared her brain-wave with them, and they’d tried to poke holes in it all the way home. Cadence said she could think of about a million reasons why a job-shy aristocrat might have a typewriter, and Hawthorne wanted to know why Lady Darling would write two books that made fun of her own daughters – especially when Meredith’s scandal had had such a devastating effect on the family.
That question stumped Morrigan too, so she dealt with it the same way she’d decided to deal with her troubling encounter with Jupiter: pushed it to one side. Problems for future Morrigan to think about.
Reaching the hallway with the little narrow study at the end of it, Morrigan pulled back into the shadows when she saw three figures emerge from the lamplit room. The butler and a young housemaid were guiding a disoriented, agitated Lady Darling out into the hall.
‘I didn’t know what to do, Mr Hounslow! She weren’t in her bedroom so I thought she might be here. I only wanted to collect her supper tray. I think she were worried I’d come to steal her treasures, but I never! You know I’m an honest person, Mr Hounslow.’
‘It’s all right, Hannah,’ said the butler. ‘Why don’t you go and fetch one of the other girls to help tidy up the mess in there? I can assist Lady Darling.’
‘Are you sure, sir? She’s ever so vexed!’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Tobias …’ Lady Darling croaked.
‘Mr Darling has gone out for the evening, ma’am,’ said Hounslow, gently taking her bony arm to lead her down the hallway. ‘I’m sure he’ll be home soon enough. In the meantime, why don’t you let me fix you a fresh supper tray? Come along now, that’s the way …’
When the sound of their footsteps had disappeared, Morrigan ran into the study to find that, once again, it was a mess. The photos and books had all been tidied away, but a silver tray had been knocked to the floor and there was smashed porcelain and splattered soup all over the place.
Other than that, the only thing out of place this time was an open cupboard right at the back of the long, narrow room. A little light shone from inside, and when Morrigan went to look, she found a black metal safe with its door wide open, and half its contents spilling out.
Morrigan glanced over her shoulder, listening for the sound of approaching footsteps. Hannah would be back any minute. There wasn’t time to be meticulous in her search, and if Lady Darling in her befuddled state had accidentally left the safe unlocked, Morrigan knew this might be the only chance she had to look inside.
She could see what Hannah had meant when she mentioned Lady Darling’s ‘treasures’. The safe was stuffed full of all sorts of things. She pushed aside velvet boxes filled with ruby and sapphire necklaces, pearl brooches, diamond rings and gold bracelets, and went straight for a small stack of promising-looking notebooks, leafing quickly through each one from beginning to end. Disappointingly, they seemed to be ledgers full of Darling House accounts and expenses written in indecipherable scrawl.
There were various official-looking legal documents Morrigan could make neither head nor tail of (but no publishing contracts), some old maps, and quite a few photographs of a young Lord and Lady Darling on their wedding day, as well as their four daughters as babies, toddlers and young girls, their names and ages all written on the backs. She found one of Meredith at age ten, wearing an identical scowl to Morrigan at age eleven in her portrait at Crow Manor. Feeling only the tiniest speck of guilt, she pocketed it.
There were various bits and pieces that could only be of a sentimental value. A tarnished silver compass. A strange little broken spear tip, gold-plated and caked with dirt or rust. An empty mother-of-pearl makeup compact. A thick stack of letters addressed to Lady Darling and tied with a velvet ribbon, a man’s watch with a worn leather strap, and a small, empty green bottle with a black-and-white label showing two crossed bones and the letters EM in an ornate typeface. Morrigan paused to stare at it for a moment, trying to figure out why it looked familiar, when she heard footsteps and murmuring voices from the hall.
She threw her reach into the darkest corner of the study and reeled in a shadow to cloak herself, hurrying to put everything back in the safe just the way she found it. Hesitating for just a moment, she reached back in to grab the bottle and slipped it into her pocket with the photo of her mother.
The tied-up letters flipped over as Morrigan tossed them into the safe, and on the back of an envelope she saw a flash of the sender’s name. It was a name so utterly out of context, it felt for a moment as if her brain was glitching.
She grabbed the whole stack without a second thought, just as the housemaids arrived to clean up the remains of Lady Darling’s supper. Holding her breath and keeping to the shadows, Morrigan crept past them unseen, ran all the way back to her bedroom, and opened the first letter with trembling hands.