them. But the awareness of it was there, as was the knowledge that the woman to whom Sebastian had lost his heart so long ago was now free.
Saturday, 26 September
Sebastian’s dreams took him many places. To a wild, windswept Cornish hillside overlooking a rocky cove; to hot, fever-racked nights beneath a West Indian sky aglitter with a universe of unfamiliar stars; to a dry, sun-blasted land of smoke-blackened walls and vacant-eyed women and the desiccated, bleached bones of long-dead men.
But that night, Sebastian dreamed of demure ladies in gowns of heavy velvet and brocade, their wimples white in the spring sunshine. He wandered crushed-gravel paths shaded by leafy chestnut trees; breathed in the scents of lavender and apothecary roses, vervain and lemon balm. Climbing the steps to a broad, freshly swept terrace, he entered a graceful sandstone house, its leaded windows unshrouded by ivy or cobwebs or the grime of ages.
The flagstones beneath his feet were well scrubbed and unbroken, the newly whitewashed walls hung with rich tapestries and crossed swords. As he moved down the passage, he heard the distant lilting notes of a pipe, a child’s laughter, a man’s chanting voice suddenly hushed. And he awoke with a start, legs swinging over the edge of the bed as he sat up, the icy air of the pale morning biting his naked flesh.
“What’s wrong?” asked Hero sleepily, rolling over to lay a hand on his arm.
“There’s something about Eisler’s house that has been bothering me for days now.”
She sat up, her dark hair tumbling about her bare shoulders as she hugged the quilt to her against the cold. “What about the house?”
He pushed to his feet. “Something in the proportions of the rooms is off. I can’t quite put my finger on it. But I want to take another look at it.” He glanced back at her. “Care to come?”
“Do you think Perlman will agree to let us search the house again?”
Sebastian smiled. “I don’t intend to ask him.”
The door to the crumbling old Tudor house in Fountain Lane was opened by a sour-faced woman in black bombazine and a yellowing cap. She was as stout as her husband was lean and a good fifteen to twenty years younger, with thick, bushy gray brows, a bulbous nose, and small dark eyes half-hidden by fat, puffy lids.
“Good morning,” Sebastian said cheerfully. “I’m—”
“I know who you are.” She sniffed. “Campbell’s off to market this morning—thanks be to God. Ever since you come here the other day, he’s done nothing but crow about how he ‘helped’ the great Lord Devlin with one of his ‘investigations.’ Humph.”
Sebastian and Hero exchanged glances.
Hero said, “We’re here to look at the house again,” and brushed past the housekeeper without giving her a chance to object. Just inside the entrance, Hero drew up in undisguised astonishment. “Good heavens.”
“Sure, then, the place ain’t as clean and tidy as it could be,” bleated Mrs. Campbell, her manner changing instantly from challenging to wheedling. “But then, Mr. Eisler was ever so particular about his things, preferring to see them disappear beneath dust and cobwebs rather than have me lay a hand on them.”
“And did he take the same attitude toward the floor?” asked Hero, her gaze focused on the ancient flagstones half-buried beneath decades’ accumulation of dried leaves, dirt, and debris.
“It’s only me now, you know. And I’m not as young as—”
Sebastian said, “Thank you, Mrs. Campbell. That will be all for now.”
The housekeeper sniffed and disappeared toward the kitchen, muttering beneath her breath.
Hero turned in a slow circle, her eyes widening as she took in the jumble of exquisite, dust-shrouded furniture, the row after row of grand old masters, their heavy gilded frames mildewed and flyspecked.
“The entire house looks like this,” said Sebastian.
“And you think the proportions of the rooms are off? How can you even see the proportions through this mess?”
Sebastian led the way through the stone-cased archway to the corridor. “First, look at the size of the chamber Eisler used as his office.”
She peered through the door at the chaos wrought by Samuel Perlman’s determined search for his uncle’s account books.
Sebastian said, “Now come back through here”—he strode to the long parlor and pushed aside the curtain that covered the second door—“and look at where this room ends.”
Frowning, she went back and forth between the two rooms several times, then came to stare thoughtfully at the parlor’s back wall. “I see what you mean. It’s as if there should be another small room between the two chambers.