page one.”
I felt a bit irritated for some reason, though I wasn’t sure if it was Felix or Jocelyn Abbot that was making me feel that way.
“Can you imitate her style?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“Oh, yes. That’s easy enough. She’s got a distinctive hand, but her lettering is inconsistent. It won’t be difficult to mimic at all. But, Ellie, listen to this…”
I held up a hand. “I’d rather not hear it, Felix.”
His eyes came up to me then. “Why not?”
“I … I don’t know. It’s just so personal.”
“He knew we’d be reading them,” he said.
“Yes, but … I don’t know. I’d just rather not hear them.”
He shrugged. “All right. I just thought they might amuse you.”
I took my seat without comment. They might have amused me at another time, but not now.
The room settled into silence, except for the scratch of Felix’s pen on paper. I knew he didn’t require solitude to concentrate. He could jot off a letter in someone else’s handwriting without thinking twice. But I was lost in thought.
Why had things ended between the major and Jocelyn Abbot? It seemed to me that there were still some lingering feelings, so what had caused their parting and her subsequent engagement to another man? Did the letters hold the answers? If so, I wasn’t going to find out. Not that way.
I wondered where Major Ramsey had gone after he left us alone in the office. Had he been too embarrassed to stay while we looked over the love letters Jocelyn Abbot had sent him? I doubted it. He was not a man who was prone to embarrassment, and, looked at another way, such letters were only likely to improve him in Felix’s eyes. Men liked to boast of their love affairs, didn’t they?
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why he had avoided my gaze when he had brought the letters in.
Even more, I wondered why, if the relationship between the major and Miss Abbot had ended badly, he had kept all of her letters.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Oscar came in with the coffee perhaps ten minutes after the major had brought in the letters, and Felix drank three cups of the inky brew without ever putting down his pen.
It was fascinating to watch him work. In the same way that Uncle Mick was an artist where locks were concerned, Felix was a master of his craft.
He studied the letters before him and, on a blank sheet of paper, began to write various words, altering the slant and curves and spacing of the letters as he went until slowly the words began to look like the ones he was replicating.
He didn’t rush to copy particular letters or words, but took his time, as though learning the style. It was quite a thing to behold.
At last, Felix nodded, looking down at the paper before him, where several lines of script flowed evenly across the page. “I think I’ve got it,” he said, pushing it toward me.
I picked up the letter and scanned the writing, glad to see that he hadn’t decided to mimic a love letter while practicing the style. Though I hadn’t read any of Miss Abbot’s letters, I could see that the writing on Felix’s paper was an excellent match for the writing on the samples that lay strewn across the desk.
Not that I had doubted him. Felix had been brilliant at this sort of thing for as long as I had known him. As a boy he had written letters to teachers and other authority figures in parents’ handwriting, excusing himself and his friends from events they didn’t wish to attend.
“It’s excellent,” I said, smiling at him as I rose from my chair. “I’ll go and find the major.”
I went out of the office and back down the hallway to the foyer. Oscar was behind the desk in the sitting room, but he got quickly to his feet as I approached.
“No need to get up, Oscar,” I said. “I’m just looking for Major Ramsey. Has he gone out?”
“No, I believe he’s upstairs.”
I had never given much thought to the upper rooms of the house, but I supposed that must be where the major lived. It was strange, in a way, to think of him living alone in this house, to suppose that he walked around in his stocking feet on the floor above after a long day in his office.
I don’t know why the image of the major in stocking feet seemed endearing to me, but I