get off to sleep and needed a book to read if he wasn’t fully clothed.
Torch in pocket, he stood behind his bedroom door, listening, before slipping out into the corridor. Keeping to the side of the stairs – he didn’t want them to creak – he walked down into the moonlit hall and along to Sherston’s study.
The door was locked but, to his surprise, the key was in the lock. He wouldn’t need the bunch of picklocks in his dressing-gown pocket.
The moonlight shining through the study window was very bright, making deep pools of sharp-edged blackness. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for but hoped that somewhere in this room would be a note, a message, some record of contact between Sherston and the enemy.
Sherston was, Anthony knew, a methodical man and, at a guess, would keep his notes at home rather than his office in Sherston House. It was probably safer here than in his London office. As far as he knew, Sherston and his secretary were the only people who came in the study.
The walls of the study were lined with box files. A whole section concerned the house and estate but the ones which interested him were the press files, each labelled with a name of a newspaper or magazine.
The Sentinel, Sherston’s flagship paper, had four boxes, which were, according to the notes on the spine of the files, split between a record of contributors and their specialities, a note of special features the paper had run, circulation figures arranged by region and an account of money paid and received. Anthony guessed these papers would be duplicated at Sherston House together with more extensive records. He was looking at information Sherston needed at his fingertips. It was a digest of his entire business.
Anthony flicked his torch along the shelves, looking for the Beau Monde. There it was. He pulled it down and opened it on the desk. Here, separated into Manila folders, was information classified as it had been on the Sentinel. In the record of contributors was Frankie.
Frustratingly, that was the only name she appeared under. Anthony spread the papers out, looking for a note of payment, but there wasn’t any. He wanted some evidence that Patrick Sherston knew who Frankie was and how she was using the ‘Letters’.
He put the papers back in the file and returned it to the shelf, and, sitting on the chair at Sherston’s desk, forced himself to look methodically round the room. He needed something out of place, something that didn’t seem right. He used the picklocks to open the desk drawer. The right-hand side contained a cash box and chequebooks. The left-hand side drawer was unlocked and contained stationery.
He really needed to examine every piece of paper in the place but he couldn’t see Sherston letting him do— Bloody hell!
It was there. Anthony put the torch down on the desk beside the typewriter and a wedge of light shone on the papers beside the machine. The top sheet had a neatly typed title. ‘Frankie’s Letter’.
He picked up the typed sheet and read it through. ‘Frankie’s Letter’. Frivolous, inconsequential and apparently trivial. And new.
He stared at the piece of paper. Veronica O’Bryan had written ‘Frankie’s Letter’. Veronica O’Bryan was dead. This was a new ‘Letter’ so Veronica couldn’t be Frankie. They’d been wrong.
His name was in the ‘Letter’. Anthony couldn’t read the code, but there was a reference to ‘babbling brooks’. He’d eat the damn thing if that didn’t mean him. Sir Charles had to see this right away. He picked up a pencil and turned to find a piece of blank paper so he could copy it out.
Anthony froze. The window was outlined in moonlight on the floor and, cast in clear silhouette, was the shape of a man’s head and shoulders.
He kept very still, leaving the torch on the desk. Although the man could see there was a light. Anthony didn’t think the man could see him. He slid off the chair and crept into the shadows, working his way round the walls, out of the study and into the hallway. The garden door, he knew, would bring him out onto the terrace. As quietly as he could, Anthony unlocked the door and stole round the corner of the house.
The man was crouched by the window. Anthony had no weapon apart from his fist, but he knew that one sharp blow in the right place was as effective as a cosh.
He was at arms’ length before