Page 35 of The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies

Iris leaned her head against Ginevra and sighed. “Thank you again for coming with me. I probably would have fainted at the prospect of digging around in that mess all by myself.”

“Of course,” Gin said. “I was delighted to accompany you.” Only now she was itching to know what exactly the librarian had been after in Marion’s room, or what he might have uncovered.

She stopped, glancing back down the street toward Mrs. McKibbin’s boardinghouse. “Tweety, I think I dropped a bracelet in Audrey’s room. I’ll be home in two ticks and make the tea.”

Iris nodded in absent farewell, and Gin hurried back up the street, keen as a foxhound on the trail of a new scent. She had been amused the impulse toward mischief still burned within her old friend, but Audrey’s skills with the lockpick also opened new avenues for Ginevra’s investigation—namely, to continue retracing Mr. Tolliver’s footsteps and uncover what he’d learned. For if he had found something, something not passed to the Rook perhaps, the librarian’s cottage was a prime location to search next.

And Gin dearly hoped her former partner in crime could teach the art of breaking and entering.

Chapter Twelve

Sidney hunkered under a tree in the cold rain and studied Tolliver’s cottage from down the street. There was no car parked outside, and the open curtains framed dark windows, which meant the niece likely hadn’t arrived yet. When confident the neighbors were asleep, he entered the front garden and followed a narrow footpath of stepping stones around the house.

Careful of his movements, Sidney took a quick survey of Tolliver’s back garden. There was a chair tucked under an arbor, a birdbath, and a small shed that contained tools and a broken footstool. As expected, the back door was locked and Sidney couldn’t find a hidden key, but a quick check of the windows revealed the one above an overgrown shrub raised with a soft jiggle.

Clambering through proved a struggle, however, and Sidney had to yank his trench coat free of the bush before he dropped into what proved to be a lavatory. As a precaution, he removed his wet shoes, coat, and hat and left them in a neat stack on the tiled floor before tiptoeing into the carpeted hall.

Sidney crept lightly from room to room, instinctively holding his breath, for it felt odd to be walking around an unfamiliar, dark house in his threadbare socks, like an overnight guest who’d forgotten their housecoat. He peered into the small rooms off the hall and found two bedrooms, one with stacks of books along the wall, the other as spotless and impersonal as a hotel room, and deduced these were Tolliver’s own bedroom and another for guests who didn’t crawl through the loo window.

He next entered a sitting room attached to a modest kitchen, and an adjacent dining room completed the small floor plan. Moonlight cast a waxen pall over the sparse furnishings, but Sidney dared not turn on the lights and arouse questions from neighbors. After a moment, his eyes adjusted to the dim light, and he decided to start his search in the dining room. The walls were paneled wood with an oil painting of sunflowers on the wall opposite the window and a large clock on another. A quick peek behind the painting and clock revealed no hidden safe, and Sidney next turned to the paneling. Running a finger down each groove, he searched for any kind of switch or lever but found only dust.

The kitchen had a daunting number of hiding places, but Sidney soon found that Tolliver’s cupboards and fridge were as austere as the rest of his household. It was easy to grope the cupboards’ innards for hidden compartments, and the linoleum was pristine—no cracks or seams that might conceal a compartment. By the time he had circled the sitting room twice, carefully examining the stuffing and underside of the love seat and wingback chairs, he was both relieved and frustrated. Perhaps there truly was nothing to find, and the Rook was only being cautious. Tolliver had been a retired code breaker, not a field operative. Spies’ methods of concealment might have been foreign to him.

Sidney hesitated, however, on the threshold to Tolliver’s bedroom. He wasn’t superstitious and didn’t believe in ghosts, but it was unsettling to enter the personal quarters of a dead man. The lingering touches of Tolliver’s final days were more apparent here: a suit laid on the bed, still in the cleaner’s wrappings, a comb and pomade tin askew on the dresser, a book on the nightstand’s corner as though just laid down. From the shoe collection lining the wall beside the wardrobe to the square edges on the bed, this room was as tidy as the rest of the house.

Only when Sidney entered, he immediately kicked over a pair of black wellies sitting in the shadows by the door. Their hollow rumble echoed through the room, and he carefully replaced them, wincing. A time check revealed that he had already been there nearly three-quarters of an hour, and he needed to pick up the pace if he were to make it back to Swithun before the porter locked up for the night. The book on the nightstand proved to be an appointment diary, and Sidney shifted closer to the window to read the tiny notations by moonlight.

There was a sharp poke in Sidney’s back and an even sharper order. “Don’t move.”

But reflexes were faster than good sense. Sidney swiveled, swiping the legs out from under his assailant. They landed with a hard thud on the wooden floor, and Sidney lunged over them, pinning down the right arm holding the gun.

It was then he caught the scent of jasmine and realized his captive was wheezing with stifled laughter. Sidney released her and pushed himself up. “What the hell are you doing, Bishop?”

“Same as you, I expect. Unless you’re considering the place for an investment property.” She extended her right hand, which held a tube of lipstick and not a gun, and Sidney tugged her up with perhaps more force than required.

“The Rook sent me.” Sidney crossed his arms. “Are you spying on me now?”

“I’ve no need to dog your heels,” Bishop said, straightening her clothes. “I happened across one of Tolliver’s leads and wondered if it might have turned up something the Rook didn’t know about.”

“How did you know where Tolliver lived?”

Bishop hesitated, moonlight illuminating a flash of grief across her face. “His niece held the wake here after the funeral. I suppose you didn’t attend.”

Sidney had not, and his memories of the librarian’s funeral were clouded. He’d still been struggling to reconcile that Tolliver had died in his hands so soon after their conversation in the hall. Sitting through the service had taken every bit of self-possession he could muster.

When he didn’t reply, Bishop cleared her throat. “I picked the lock on the back door just before you arrived and hid when I heard you clamber through the window.”

It was the last thing Sidney would have expected from a girl like Bishop. “Had much use for lock picking before?”

“A friend taught me,” she said airily. “Apparently, I’m a quick study. Anything of use in there?” She jerked her chin at the diary.

“I hadn’t time to read it before you attacked me.”

“It was I that landed on the floor,” she muttered. She offered him a minuscule torch from her pocket, and Sidney moved away from the window before turning it on. Most days inside the diary were blank, but once a month there was a small castle turret inked in blue.

Bishop snorted. “It’s a rook. Meeting days, perhaps? But what are these other items?”

Though less frequent, there were a few stars in red ink scattered throughout also accompanied by letters. JW, MK, SN, LH.