Mr. Hislop must have seen me approaching, for he swept it open almost before my second knock sounded.
“M’lady, you’ve thought o’ somethin’.” His eyes gleamed with gentle humor.
“Indeed I have.”
He stepped back so that we could enter, and I immediately turned toward the visitors’ book open on his desk.
“The ledgers you keep. They’re only for the main entrance to the castle, through the guardroom. But what about the other entrances, the ones for servants and tradesmen? Is there any ledger for their comings and goings?”
“Nay, my lady. T’would be too much o’ a hassle. No’ to mention, no one cares.”
I turned to Gage, and from the look in his eyes I could tell he realized what I was after.
“But that doesn’t mean everyone who enters through those doors is of those classes,” my husband deduced and then frowned. “Though I can’t imagine someone like Helmswick not being noticed.”
“True.” I frowned, puzzling over the matter. There were servants everywhere in a household this size. “But given his potential motive for entering that way, stealth would have been required. Maybe he was slyer than we imagine.” I paused. “Or the staff lied about seeing him.”
I glanced up to discover that Mr. Hislop’s brow was furrowed, his head turned to the side as if in concentration. My nerves tightened in anticipation. “Now, you’ve thought of something.”
His brow still crinkled, he nodded once. “I have. Though I dinna ken if it’s any help to ye.”
“Tell me anyway.”
The corners of his lips quirked upward at my eagerness. “Only callers o’ sufficient rank and respectability are allowed through the main entrance, ’tis true. But that doesna mean no gentlemen are ever turned away.” His sparse white eyebrows lifted. “If they’re rough or disreputable in appearance, Mr. Tait has been known to block their entry, or send ’em to the tradesmen’s entrance wi’ a flea in their ears.”
Gage’s gaze met mine. This, then, was how a man dressed as a gentleman might have entered the castle, but not been included on the ledger. He needn’t have come through the tunnel from the abbey, but through the tradesmen’s entrance. Though how that helped us, I didn’t know. In all likelihood, the body was still Helmswick. But it presented a curious new possibility.
I thanked the sprightly hall porter and returned to Tait, who stood waiting for me near the entrance. His expression was inscrutable, and I suspected it would require great provocation to induce a reaction from him.
“Yes, my lady,” he intoned.
“Do you recall in the last month or more whether the castle received any visitors you turned away? Men dressed as gentlemen who perhaps were not behaving as one?”
“Actually . . . yes, I do.” His voice registered surprise, even though his face did not. “He called three or four weeks ago, on or around the fifteenth, on horseback. Though how he was able to maintain his seat, I dare not speculate.” He lifted his nose into the air. “He was coarse and uncouth, and smelled strongly of the ale sold down at the village pub. I wasn’t about to let him step one foot further into the castle, despite his threats.”
“What threats?” Gage asked, moving closer.
“Oh, the usual nonsense about his having my head for not doing as he bid. He was naught but a trumped-up mushroom. Certainly not a gentleman, no matter the quality of his clothes.”
Gage and I exchanged a look. “So you simply sent him on his way, and he went?” he clarified.
“Not precisely. He stormed out of here and then around to the servants’ entrance, where he tried to slip past.” His brow furrowed with displeasure. “But I had anticipated just such a thing, so I sent a footman there to forestall him.”
“Who was it he was so anxious to see?”
“Lord Helmswick.”
I was hard-pressed not to react to this information, and the butler nodded in recognition.
“Yes, I know. I should have remembered it sooner.”
“And yet by that point, Lord Helmswick was no longer in residence?” Gage asked, choosing not to linger on this oversight.
“That is correct. And when I told the gentleman . . .” he emphasized the term witheringly “. . . this, he insisted on speaking with Lady Helmswick instead. Well, I was not about to subject her ladyship to his vulgar petition, especially when he would not even give me his name, so I elected to take it to one of her brothers instead. Lord John was the first I located, and he requested that he be allowed to meet