Chapter 16 #2
The confrontation she owed him and he owed her was still there between them.
Unaddressed. Present. It was going to stay unaddressed because there was no time for it.
She was too frightened to speak about something so mundane as betrayal.
He was too ashamed and too determined to fix the immediate situation to speak first.
“We will find him,” Nicholas said.
He said it without the inflection that would have made it reassurance, because reassurance was a show and he had none available.
What he was saying was simply true. Mr. Metcalfe was a man in his late sixties with a progressive decline and had been in his chair earlier and now was not.
He was in the streets around the house. Oxford was a navigable city, and there were four of them and they would find him. Must find him.
He turned to Pike. “Did Cresswell say where he was going?”
“Said he was passing and called in to leave a note,” Pike said. His accent was flat and South London and entirely undisguised, a man who did not bother acting like a butler and was simply himself. “There weren’t one.”
Nicholas noted this. Then moved. He left Millie with Betty and Pike to search the streets to the east of the house and went to find out where Cresswell lived, starting at the Bodleian.
Because the Bodleian was minutes from the house at his current pace and its administrative staff would know where to find a Fellow of Oriel and Deputy Keeper of Manuscripts and would tell the brother of a baron.
The Bodleian produced it in less than ten minutes.
A staircase in Oriel College, as expected.
Nicholas walked to Oriel with his attention narrowed to the destination and ignoring all else.
He found the staircase, one of the narrow exterior doors set into the quadrangle that opened onto a private flight of rooms above.
He found the door. He raised the knocker and registered it in the peripheral, automatic way his mind registered things when his full attention was elsewhere.
It was a large circle in aged bronze. A shape within it which he faintly recognized without examining, because examining it was not what he was here for. He brought it down twice and waited.
He heard footsteps descending and then Cresswell opened the door.
He was relaxed and entirely untroubled by the interruption. Coat removed. Shirtsleeves and waistcoat. The ease of a man settled into his rooms.
“Mr. Scott,” he said, with mild pleasantness, adjusting to an unexpected caller without any evident difficulty. “This is a surprise.”
“Mr. Metcalfe is missing,” Nicholas said. “He was in his chair with you in the library when Pike left the room. When Pike returned, he was gone.”
Something flittered through Cresswell’s face in sequence. Smoothly. Regret first. Then concern. Each stage arriving in the right order, at the right interval, the way it did when playacting the receiving of difficult news and knowing the appropriate progression.
“I am very sorry to hear it,” Cresswell said softly, with affected sympathy.
His long fingers held the door at an angle that suggested he was prepared to admit Nicholas if necessary but had not yet decided it was necessary.
“I cannot think how it could have happened. He seemed quite settled when I left him.”
“When precisely did you leave?” Nicholas said.
“Not too long ago. I had an engagement at four and wished to allow time to walk.” He paused. “I assumed Pike would return momentarily. The house was perfectly quiet.”
“And Mr. Metcalfe was in his chair when you left.”
“He was. In the library, with his reading.” Cresswell’s pale gray eyes were attentive and sympathetic and revealed nothing that was not intended to be revealed.
“I spoke with him briefly. He seemed content and was quite lucid, which I was pleased to see. We exchanged a few pleasantries … he asked after some manuscript matters at the Bodleian, the usual subjects. Nothing that seemed significant at the time.”
“How long did you stay?”
“A few minutes.” He said it with the smooth, even certainty of a prepared answer.
I do not trust this man. Nicholas could not have said what made it feel prepared rather than recalled, but it did.
“I would have stayed longer, but the engagement could not be moved. I left him reading.”
“You did not leave a note for Miss Metcalfe,” Nicholas said.
Something flickered very briefly in Cresswell’s eyes.
Too quickly to name. “I intended to. I found I had left my writing materials at the Bodleian. I thought I might call again later in the week.” He produced a small, regretful inclination of his head.
“I realize now I should have waited for Pike regardless. I am deeply sorry for any distress this has caused Miss Metcalfe. She has enough to manage without this additional worry.”
He said this last with a contrived warmth, with polite concern for Millie’s burdens.
He had refined his glib manners to a considerable artistry.
It was warm. It was sincere in its manner.
It was offered at exactly the weight that made it appropriate without making it excessive.
Nicholas received it and said nothing for a moment, watching Cresswell’s face and registering what was being said alongside that which was not being said in equal measure.
Living with his venomous mother had well taught him to read the unsaid.
“And when you left, he was in the chair?”
“He was in the chair,” Cresswell said, with the gentle, patient firmness of a man repeating something he considers adequately established.
“Reading. I said goodbye and he nodded and I left. That was the last I saw of him.” He opened the door a fraction wider.
“I will of course help anyway I can. If you would like me to inquire at the Bodleian, the staff there know Mr. Metcalfe by sight. They would notice if he had been seen in the precinct—”
“That will not be necessary,” Nicholas said. “We have the search in hand.”
Cresswell accepted this with gracious ease; his offer had been declined, and he was not taking any offense. “Then I will not keep you. Please do give Miss Metcalfe my sincerest regards. I hope he is found quickly and safely.”
Nicholas thanked him and turned and went back into the street and began walking back toward the blocks where he had last seen Millie and Betty.
Something settled at the edge of his attention as he walked and remained there.
Sitting just at the very periphery of what he could bring into focus.
Not quite nameable and not quite dismissible.
He turned the conversation over in the manner of worries that had not resolved.
Every sentence reasonable. Every answer reasonable.
The even tone of answers that have been thought about before they were required.
The note not left because the writing materials had been left at the Bodleian, which was the kind of explanation that was perfectly credible and entirely unverifiable.
The way he had said Mr. Metcalfe was in his chair.
The stoic firmness of a man repeating truth was not the same as the stoic firmness of a man repeating something he has decided to say.
Nicholas could not locate the sharp edge that was catching his attention, but he knew it was there.
It dogged his heels and reminded him uncomfortably of his mother.
He just could not name it yet.
He walked through the cold Oxford streets with his cane on the cobbles and his leg conducting its emphatic inventory of all it had been asked to do today.
The nameless thing tickled the edge of his mind and would not resolve itself into anything he could act on.
The streets moved around him with the indifferent continuity of a city that had been doing so for eight centuries. And he kept walking.
It was cold and would grow dark soon, and Mr. Metcalfe was not well. They needed to find him. Quickly.