CHAPTER 1 #2
“I already work in conservation. Regret is part of the pension plan.”
Leo coughed suspiciously.
Romy checked the spacer herself, then crouched to inspect the lower fixing. Secure. Reversible. No pressure against the original plaster. She entered the condition note on her tablet.
Celeste hovered.
“Are you marking me down?”
“This is not school.”
“You have that expression.”
“I’m recording the agreed final position.”
“Why?”
“Because tomorrow somebody will forget we agreed.”
Celeste looked offended.
Imogen looked guilty.
Romy opened the camera on her phone. “Leo, time?”
“Six thirty-one.”
Romy stepped back into the doorway. She framed the upper fireplace wall, mantel, panel, and the visible dark line of the spacer gap. A second image from the side showed the panel standing forward of the grille.
She took both.
6:31 p.m.
Recorded.
“Done.”
Celeste frowned at the phone. “You conservation people document everything.”
“Only the things people later swear never happened.”
A man’s voice came from the corridor.
“Mind the doorcase. That mahogany chest costs more than my first flat.”
A porter backed into view carrying one end of a narrow campaign chest. Marcus Fenn appeared behind him.
Where Sebastian Pryce looked as though the world had disappointed him personally, Marcus seemed permanently delighted by it. He was broad, silver-haired, beautifully dressed, and successful enough to wear an old green overshirt to an event where everyone else had dressed for accidental photographs.
His company, Fenn Found, supplied architectural salvage and antique props to hotels, film productions, interior designers, and wealthy people who wanted their kitchens to suggest generations of inherited restraint.
Tonight, Marcus had apparently brought half a warehouse.
“Romy. Thank God. A person who understands old things.”
Celeste stepped into the corridor. “I understand old things.”
Marcus looked at her. “You put rechargeable candles in an eighteenth-century wall sconce.”
“They are safer.”
“I did not say you were wrong.”
“You implied it.”
“I often do.”
Another porter approached carrying a brass plate-warmer with curved feet and pierced sides.
Marcus pointed. “Dining room. Not on the parquet until someone puts something under it.”
He had something tucked under one arm.
A roll of burgundy wool felt, densely woven, perhaps thirty centimetres wide. A narrow gold stripe ran along one edge.
Romy noticed because Marcus almost never carried anything another person could be persuaded to carry.
“You’ve been demoted,” she said.
He glanced down. “To fabric mule?”
“To manual labour.”
“Emergency stock. The dining room designer has discovered antique metal scratches polished tables.”
“A revelation.”
“I tried not to overwhelm him with science.”
Leo looked at the roll. “That’s felt?”
“Proper wool felt,” Marcus said. “Not the fuzzy synthetic horror sold by craft shops. I use this under brass, bronze, stone, anything liable to misbehave.”
He turned the end outward. The gold edge caught the corridor light.
“Recognizable,” Leo said.
“Deliberately. Stops my staff throwing it away with packing material. Burgundy with the gold selvedge means Fenn Found. I had a mill do a ridiculous quantity years ago.”
“How ridiculous?” Romy asked.
“I may be protecting furniture with it until I die.”
He handed the roll to Leo while repositioning the plate-warmer.
It was heavier than it looked.
Leo nearly dropped one end.
Marcus laughed. “First day?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“You still look willing.”
Romy took the roll before pride damaged either Leo or the skirting board.
“Leo’s officially with Pattern House now.”
Marcus’s expression changed at once. “Is he?”
“Placement year,” Leo said.
“Then congratulations.”
Marcus shook his hand. No joke. No patronizing remark.
Romy liked him slightly more for it.
“Romy works too hard,” Marcus told Leo. “Your first duty is to make her charge properly for things.”
“I do charge properly.”
Marcus and Leo both looked at her.
She pointed toward the stairs. “Take your plate-warmer away.”
“Touchy.”
The porter collected it. Marcus reclaimed the felt roll and tucked it under his arm.
As he turned, the burgundy fabric brushed the doorframe.
Romy caught it. “Careful.”
He looked back. “Paint?”
“Original edge.”
“See? This is why you’re here.”
He shifted the roll higher, gold stripe outward, and followed the porter downstairs.
Celeste watched him go. “He’s lent Harriet Vale six pieces for the dining room without charging her.”
“Generous,” Leo said.
“Strategic,” Celeste replied. “Half the things will appear in photographs, and everybody will ask where they came from.”
“That sounded almost admiring,” Romy said.
“I respect good predation.”
A voice from farther down the corridor said, “Then you must adore Sebastian.”
Celeste’s jaw tightened.
A young man Romy recognized as the designer of the upstairs garden room emerged carrying a vase of white dahlias.
“Is he here?”
“Just arrived.”
Celeste muttered something Romy chose not to hear.
The atmosphere changed before Sebastian Pryce appeared.
Conversation sharpened. Assistants straightened cushions already straight. Someone closed a cupboard door. A florist removed one flower from an arrangement, reconsidered, and put it back.
Sebastian came up the main staircase without hurrying.
He was sixty, perhaps a little older, thin, immaculate, and wearing a charcoal suit without a tie. His silver hair had been cut with more care than most people gave their gardens.
He paused on the landing.
His gaze entered the garden room before he did.
The young designer with the dahlias smiled. “Sebastian.”
Sebastian looked at the flowers. “Those are unfortunate.”
The smile disappeared.
Sebastian continued.
Five steps later, he glanced through the Yellow Bedroom doorway.
“Who chose that lamp?”
A woman inside said, “I did.”
“Why?”
He kept walking before she could answer.
Leo leaned slightly toward Romy. “Two.”
“Do not keep score.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Sebastian reached the Blue Study.
Celeste stepped forward. “Sebastian.”
He looked at her room.
Silence.
Romy watched Celeste try not to react.
Sebastian entered, walked toward the sofa, touched nothing, then turned slowly.
“The wall colour is good.”
Celeste’s shoulders eased by half an inch.
“The sofa is too large.”
They tightened again.
“The lacquer tables are trying very hard.”
Leo glanced at Romy.
Three.
Romy warned him with a look.
Sebastian crossed toward the fireplace.
“Those books are absurd.”
Celeste said, “They are nineteenth century.”
“They are blue.”
“They happen to be both.”
“No library in England has ever happened to contain fourteen books in precisely the same shade.”
“This is not a library.”
“No. It is a photograph of one.”
Celeste went still.
Romy wished he would leave. Tomorrow was for criticism. Tonight was for finishing fixings, checking protections, and getting everyone out before exhaustion produced irreversible decisions.
Sebastian reached the fireplace.
His gaze lifted.
He saw the silk panel.
And stopped.
The change was so complete Romy noticed before she understood it.
The boredom left his face.
So did the cruelty.
He stared at the panel.
Celeste noticed too. Whatever retort she had been preparing disappeared.
Sebastian moved closer.
Romy instinctively stepped between him and the mantel. “Please don’t touch it.”
His eyes stayed on the silk. “I wasn’t going to.”
The panel showed birds among curling leaves, painted in muted blue, ochre, and faded red. Celeste had described it earlier as a reclaimed decorative textile sourced through a dealer who specialized in fragments.
Sebastian studied the upper right corner, then the lower border.
His attention sharpened.
“Where did you get this?”
Celeste blinked. “The panel?”
“Yes, Celeste. The panel.”
“Marcus sourced it.”
Sebastian looked at her. “Marcus Fenn?”
“Through one of his suppliers.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Last month.”
Sebastian turned back to the silk.
Romy felt Leo shift beside her.
“Why?” Celeste asked.
Sebastian did not answer.
He stepped closer again.
Romy held her ground. “The panel stays where it is.”
His gaze flicked toward her. “I remember you.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Pattern House.”
“Yes.”
“The Staveley business.”
There it was.
Romy felt the old tightening behind her ribs. Not fear. Not anymore.
Recognition.
Murder changed the temperature of introductions.
Leo moved half a step nearer.
Romy did not look at him.
“We’re the conservation consultants here,” she said.
Sebastian returned his attention to the panel. “Then you documented this?”
“The installation, yes.”
“The textile?”
“Condition only. It isn’t part of the building.”
“Who authenticated it?”
Celeste’s irritation returned. “It doesn’t require authentication. It is decorative.”
Sebastian smiled.
It was not pleasant.
“Everything requires authentication once somebody lies about it.”
Celeste flushed. “I haven’t lied about anything.”
“I did not say you had.”
“You were about to.”
“If I meant to accuse you, Celeste, you would not need to infer it.”
Romy had spent enough time around wealthy clients, nervous trustees, angry contractors, and police officers to recognize a room tipping toward trouble.
She recognized something else too.
Sebastian was not performing now.
He was interested.
More than interested.
Unsettled.
That made Romy look at the panel differently.
Not as an obstruction. Not as Celeste’s expensive flourish.
As an object.
Painted silk. Old enough to show wear. Mounted recently. A border pattern of leaves and narrow red berries. Tiny holes along one side suggested an earlier fixing arrangement.
Sebastian leaned toward the edge.
Romy said, “You know it?”
He did not answer immediately.
From downstairs came laughter, followed by Marcus calling for somebody named Harriet.
Celeste folded her arms. “Sebastian?”
He finally looked at Romy.
His expression had changed again, but not back to disdain.
Now he looked like a man doing arithmetic he did not enjoy.
“That did not come out of somebody’s warehouse last month.”