“If you’ve time, Dragan,” she called, pulling open another drawer, “look under loose floorboards or wall paneling near his bed.”
“I hope Mrs. Dashet is deaf.”
“No, but Mr. Gabriel said she was hard of hearing.” She picked up a notebook in his drawer and quickly rifled through it. It seemed to be columns of numbers, income and expenditure, both now and projected figures for after his marriage. His salary was clear, and so little, she didn’t know how he could afford even two rooms in such a good location as this.
Because there was some other income listed, perhaps from investments.
“Griz,” Dragan called, and she quickly replaced the notebook, closed the drawer, and hurried into the bedroom.
He stood before a large, open wardrobe, staring downward. When she joined him, she could see why. He had lifted a panel on the wardrobe floor, and inside the revealed cavity was a small, neat pile of banknotes and a half-open purse containing gold sovereigns.
Griz swallowed. “Perhaps he does not trust banks.”
“Perhaps he does not want anyone knowing what he has salted away or speculating how he acquired it.”
“That does seem more likely in the circumstances. There is a notebook, too, that lists various incomes—he has more than his salary, and he projects spending a good deal when he is married, on a new house and entertainment. He’d have Miss Derryn’s dowry, of course, but —” She broke off, hearing footsteps on the stairs, and darted into the other room, throwing herself into the armchair by the empty fire.
“Haven’t you found it yet, Chris?” she demanded as Mrs. Dashet arrived, panting with the tea tray. Griz beamed at her. “Oh, how kind of you. This is just what I need. The document, apparently, isn’t where Mr. Gabriel told Chris it would be. And it isn’t in his bedside table either. Chris is looking in his other coat. Oh, and there’s his overcoat, Chris, I’ll wager he left it there! Thank you so much, Mrs. Dashet, don’t let us keep you…”
“Utterly vile,” Dragan said from the other room when Mrs. Dashet’s footsteps sounded on the stairs.
Griz gulped down the scalding tea and hurried back to join him. “Did you look under the mattress?” she asked, pushing her hand beneath it and sliding it up to the pillows.
“No.” He was standing right beside her, watching her, and suddenly, the scene seemed unbearably intimate. They were alone in a man’s bedchamber, and she found herself wishing it was his. She wanted this intimacy, imagined it every day.
But not in the shadow of the man she was afraid had killed Nancy.
She straightened. “He wouldn’t leave anything there, would he? Not when Mrs. Dashet could find it when she changes his sheets or turns the mattress.” Hastily, she pulled open the drawer in the bedside table and wasn’t surprised to see nothing in it.
Or was there? Something slid forward. A hairpin with a pearl at its head.
Slowly, her heart beating fast, she picked it up.
“A token from Miss Derryn?” Dragan suggested.
She shook her head. “No.” She raised her gaze to his face. “It was Nancy’s.”
Triumph flared in his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I gave it to her. At Christmas, because she had taken on the extra work of looking after me. She admired it, and I thought it was something pretty she could wear without causing too much comment…”
“Would she have given such a token to him?”
She flushed in spite of herself, trying not to look at the bed. “If she did, he would surely have hidden it with his money. I think she wore it to their…tryst. I imagine he found it after she left, and he slung it in here in a hurry, probably on his way out the door, and just forgot about it. Nancy was his tool, not his beloved.” She swallowed hard and dropped the pin back where she had found it. “I think we should go.”
Dragan was already walking toward the door. Feeling guilty for her character’s behavior, Griz swiped up the tea tray and took it with her, a minor courtesy that seemed to stun Mrs. Dashet into silence as they made their escape.
She would tell Gabriel about this as soon as he came home, warning him to get rid of the one piece of evidence that incriminated him.
On impulse she turned on the doorstep. “Mrs. Dashet, I have a confession. We weren’t looking for office documents but for a place to hide a small wedding gift. It is to be