Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1) - Maureen Johnson Page 0,25

room?”

“Yes, miss,” she said, and skittered off.

When the maid left to go to the kitchen, Flora turned quickly and silently to the ballroom, next to Albert’s office. These rooms had intentionally been built side by side because they were rarely in use at the same time, and both benefited from high ceilings.

The lights in the ballroom were off and the curtains all drawn. The motley black-and-white floor still felt rough and dirty from the weekend’s revels; the staff had not yet cleaned it. There, under the soft padding of her feet, were the paper streamers, the gravel from the drive tracked in on dancing shoes, the endless sticky patches of spilled champagne.

Iris had shown Flora a trick about these rooms: the mirrors in the room were interspersed with panels covered in wallpaper, in a pattern depicting the characters of the commedia dell’arte. On the last panel on the left side, there was a wall sconce in the form of a Venetian mask. Flora climbed quietly onto one of the gold chairs against the wall and stretched to reach it. She put her fingers through the eyeholes of the mask and pulled down sharply. The wall panel tilted, exposing a space behind. Flora pushed the panel, which swung open on a well-made hinge.

The ballroom and the office, while seemingly sharing a wall, actually shared a secret space, about two feet wide. The ballroom mirrors on this side were one way and could be used to watch goings-on in the ballroom. There were switches that could be used to make the lights dim and flicker, and tiny panels you could open to snatch a glass from a confused partygoer. The perhaps unintended second use was that it was a perfect place to listen to what was happening in Ellingham’s office. Flora slipped along until she found the little door that led into Albert’s office. The door was far enough away from the men and sufficiently hidden in the wall that she felt she could safely crack it open an inch without anyone noticing, exactly as Iris had shown her.

“Most of what I hear is very boring,” Iris said when she showed Flora the passage and the door. “I wish he’d get a mistress and give me something better to listen to.”

Flora had a feeling it would not be boring tonight.

“. . . the one that came on Thursday,” George was saying. “Do you still have it?”

“Of course.” That was Robert Mackenzie. “Here.” He handed George a paper.

“‘Look, a riddle, time for fun,’” George read. “‘Should we use a rope or gun? Knives are sharp and gleam so pretty. Poison’s slow, which is a pity. Fire is festive, drowning’s slow. Hanging’s a ropy way to go. A broken head, a nasty fall. A car colliding with a wall. Bombs make a very jolly noise. Such ways to punish naughty boys! What shall we use? We can’t decide. Just like you cannot run or hide. Ha ha. Truly, Devious.’”

“The envelope was postmarked Burlington,” Robert added.

A phone rang, and it was snatched from the hook before the ring could even complete. Albert Ellingham said a breathless hello. The men gathered around the telephone on the desk and the responses were difficult for Flora to hear, until George’s voice broke out of the cluster.

“We saw your man,” a voice with a strange, unplacable accent said. “You called the cops.”

“No,” Albert replied. “George is a friend. He just came to visit.”

“We know who he is,” the voice replied. “You’ve made this worse on yourself. This is what you do now. You gather up all the jewelry, all the cash, anything you’ve got. You put them in pillowcases. You send your friend there alone, in his car. He drives east on interstate two and makes the left toward West Bolton. We’ll take care of it from there and you’ll get them back. Better move it. You have one hour from now.”

The phone went silent. Albert said hello several times but no one replied. Flora chanced it and opened the door an inch wider to see what was happening. The men were standing around the desk, not moving and not speaking.

“I go alone,” George finally said.

“No,” Albert replied. “It’s my wife and daughter . . .”

“You heard them, Albert,” George replied. “They want me, so I go.”

Robert Mackenzie had produced a map and opened it over the desk where the men were gathered.

“Here,” he said. “They want you to go east on interstate highway two and take the left