Chapter 40
My wife is out tonight.
Want to come over?
Message from Richard Darlington to Vivian Edwards
Ethan
“I’ll start on the left, you take the right,” Grace said, her voice low, though I was sure no one could hear us regardless.
We were in Claude’s study, which we’d managed to get into easily thanks to Kate’s nimble fingers.
We had originally agreed we wouldn’t leave the party at the same time, but we’d lost a lot of time getting hold of the key, and who knew when the evening would be over.
Sometimes these events ended as early as ten o’clock; other times, they went on deep into the night.
But neither Grace nor I wanted to risk being kicked out before we’d had a chance to look around, so we had scrapped our original plan and set off for the study together.
I nodded to Grace, and we got to work. Claude’s study looked just like my dad’s—antique furniture, dark wood, heavy cabinets.
Who knew why these men all seemed to have the same taste, but if I ever had a study, I’d make it bright and cosy, with a rug and plenty of plants.
There definitely wouldn’t be a mahogany desk.
I pushed aside my interior-design daydreams and opened the first filing cabinet, which was packed with folders from the past decade—mostly insurance papers and documents relating to the household staff.
I closed the cabinet, not interested in the old stuff, and moved on to the next one.
Bingo! I’d found the current files. I glanced over at Grace, who sat at the desk, opening one drawer after another.
She looked harried, her movements frantic.
My heart was already racing, and I didn’t want to imagine how nerve-racking all this must be for her.
And yet, she’d kept her composure all evening.
She’d even taken the time to talk to Nate and James, which meant a lot to me.
The two of them—especially James—were an important part of my life, just like Grace.
I wanted them to get along, and I silently hoped that James would still be my friend after all this.
I turned back to my search, not entirely sure what I was looking for.
I started with the folder of December invoices.
Even though I worked quickly, scanning each page for just a few seconds, it felt like it was taking forever.
Nothing suspicious jumped out at me, so I moved on to the next folder: the invoices for this January.
I was grateful for Claude’s assistant’s orderly filing system, without which my task would have taken a lot longer.
“I’ve found something!” Grace suddenly called, forgetting to whisper.
I spun around.
She tapped the wood. “This drawer has a false bottom.”
I hurried over to her. She had emptied the entire contents of the drawer—pens and other office supplies—and was now trying to open the false bottom but couldn’t find a way in.
“There must be a mechanism that opens it. Let me try,” I said, pushing aside the office chair Grace was sitting on and crouching down next to the desk.
I examined the drawer from every angle until I found what I was looking for.
A tiny notch, no bigger than the head of a pin.
I pointed to it. “Do we have anything that fits in there?”
“Yes, here! This was in the drawer,” Grace said, handing me a small Allen key. “I wondered why it was in there.”
Carefully, I slid the tool into the tiny opening, and with a click, the false bottom popped open.
Grace grabbed the documents hidden inside.
My gaze, meanwhile, wandered to the grandfather clock in the corner.
We’d already been here for fifteen minutes, and technically, it was time to go if we wanted to avoid drawing attention.
But one look at Grace’s face told me she wouldn’t leave now.
I took some of the papers and helped her sift through them.
The first thing I laid hands on was a will.
The second, a draft patent application. And the third . . .
Holy shit!
I tapped Grace on the shoulder and pushed the document I’d just found towards her.
“Oh my God,” she breathed. “Is that . . . ?”
“Yep,” I replied. It was proof of an illegal transfer of two million pounds from a Swiss account, made at the end of last year. The recipient wasn’t listed, but the discovery only made me more suspicious of Claude.
“Take a photo,” Grace instructed.
I pulled out my phone as she frantically searched through the remaining papers.
She found a few older, also seemingly illegal transactions, some going to the same account, others to different ones.
Some of these transfers—clearly bribe money—went back years, which didn’t surprise me.
Men like Claude Asterdam and my dad hadn’t become filthy rich through moral superiority.
It sucked, but that’s how our capitalist society worked.
There were no ethical millionaires, and certainly no ethical billionaires.
“Let’s get out of here,” I urged after photographing the important documents.
We’d already been gone for far too long.
I was certain that by now, Henry and James would have at least noticed our absence.
Although we hadn’t found anything about the sold Rolls-Royce, I hoped we had enough evidence to bring our investigations to a close.
We hurriedly returned the papers to the secret compartment, pressed it shut, and replaced the rest of the drawer’s contents. Just as Grace slid the drawer closed, the study door flew open, and an angry voice shouted, “What the hell are you doing in here?”