boot, turning it over in his hands to examine the supple leather. “Perhaps ‘fine’ isn’t the right word, but rather ‘appropriate.’ For I certainly wouldn’t wish to make a tramp across open country in the garments this fellow was wearing, no more than I would want to attend a ball in them.”
I contemplated the boot, as well as Anderley’s earlier questions about the location of Lord Helmswick’s valet. If the body in the wine cellar was indeed Helmswick, then where were all of his traveling trunks? Everyone we’d spoken to claimed that Helmswick had departed Sunlaws Castle after escorting his wife and children here, but was that true? Had he returned for some reason, or had he never left?
“What of the earl’s belongings?” I asked. “Did he leave anything behind before he left for France?”
Lady Helmswick looked up from the spot she had been staring at on the floor, seeming to be much struck by this. “I suppose he could have.” She glanced toward the door on her right. “These chambers are kept for us, so that they’re available whenever we should choose to visit.” She dipped her head toward the door. “You’re welcome to search his rooms.”
I nodded, struggling to mask my confusion, for I had anticipated that her husband’s chamber lay on the opposite side of this room—through the second door leading off the landing. Who occupied that room then? One of her brothers? I’d overheard someone discussing the aptly named bachelors’ tower, which the three unwed brothers inhabited, but that didn’t mean the two married brothers and their wives didn’t utilize that suite.
“As for your question about which gentlemen have visited the castle in the past month, you could simply consult our hall porter’s ledger,” Lord Edward supplied, sinking deeper into the settee. His sister nodded at this suggestion, but Lord John frowned.
“Does your porter keep a record of all your visitors?” Gage asked.
Lord Edward nodded. “And a meticulous one at that. Every arrival and departure of both the family and any overnight guests or callers. It’s kept in the porter’s lodge, just beyond the guardroom. I can instruct Mr. Hislop to allow you access to it, if you like?”
Gage and I exchanged a speaking glance, both of us silently wondering why no one had mentioned this before. “Yes, that would be tremendously helpful,” he said.
A visit to the porter’s lodge would also give us a chance to examine the armaments adorning the walls of the guardroom for any potential murder weapon.
“When you’re ready, then.” Lord Edward tipped his head toward the wall. “I assume you wish to examine Helmswick’s rooms first.”
He assumed correctly. Gage and I rose from our seats and moved toward the door they’d indicated. It led into Lady Helmswick’s bedchamber, and I allowed my gaze to travel over its feminine contents in curiosity as we crossed toward the door on the other side. So feminine, in fact, were its contents that the stark black stocking draped over the pale pink dressing table stool immediately drew my eye. Knowing that the duke’s children were listening from the other room, I did not remark on it, but followed my husband into the next room.
Helmswick’s bedchamber was as decidedly masculine as his wife’s was not. Decorated in dark colors and austere furnishings, its empty drawers and bare wardrobe also suggested it was scarcely used. It even smelled vacant, not having absorbed any of the typical scents of inhabitation. While his wife’s chamber next door was permeated by a profusion of fragrances—her perfume and rosehip soap, the bacon and eggs from her breakfast, the must of burning coal, the lavender-scented papers used to pack her gowns in their cedar-lined trunks—Helmswick’s rooms smelled of naught but dust and stale air.
Gage parted the drapes to allow in a bit of the hazy winter sunshine while I proceeded through the next door into a sitting room proportional to Lady Helmswick’s. It exhibited the same cold signs of vacancy as the bedchamber. The hearth was even swept spotlessly clean and the silver dustbin gleamed.
Curious where the door on the opposite side of this chamber led, I opened it to discover a narrow corridor lined with several other doors. I suspected many of these led to guest chambers, though if my orientation was correct, the door to the right led into a suite of rooms that occupied the turret above the stunning Amaranth Saloon below. That suite was likely inhabited by the duke’s heir—Lord Traquair—and his wife. Which meant that Lord Richard