“I think,” he replied, “that this is a working estate of some size, with a large household and associated staff. There’ll be wages to pay and supplies to be bought and so on.” He glanced at Vincent. “This doesn’t seem excessive. More like the usual amount one might expect Underhill to have on hand.”
Stokes turned his gaze on Vincent. “Your father dealt with the estate, didn’t he?”
Vincent nodded. “Well, him and the estate manager, Simms. But Simms lives in Wallington and only comes in once a week to meet with Papa and go over the books and what’s happening in the fields. Papa was always the one who held the money to pay for things.” Studying the contents of the safe, Vincent tipped his head. “From what I recall seeing before, at this time of the month, that’s about what I would have expected him to have in there.”
“Right.” Stokes swung the door shut and locked the safe.
Vincent asked, “Can I have the key?”
Stokes pulled the key from the lock and slid it into his pocket. “The key will be handed to the executor of your father’s will.” At Vincent’s faint frown, Stokes added, “You might speak with your mother, and if she hasn’t already done so, send word to the family solicitor. They will need to attend the funeral, whenever that’s held, and bring and read your father’s will. The police will hold the key until we can hand it to either the solicitor or the will’s executor.”
Vincent digested that, then glanced at the clock on the mantel. “I’ll go and speak with Mama now, before she starts dressing for dinner.”
Penelope had wondered whether Pamela would rejoin the company and decided Vincent was probably correct. Pamela would want to know how her guests were reacting to the situation.
Vincent nodded to Penelope, Barnaby, and Stokes and left the study, closing the door behind him.
Stokes regarded the door, then shook his head. He looked at Penelope. “Was he the one who did the searching?”
“I seriously doubt it, and only if he’d searched before, and I don’t think he did.” She gestured to the desk. “Whoever went through here was thorough and reasonably careful.Ican see they’ve pushed things around, and they’d just dropped the key back in the drawer on top of everything else, but in general, if one didn’t know what signs to look for, the searching wouldn’t be obvious.”
“So whoever it was,” Barnaby said, “they weren’t in a tearing rush.”
“No. They were thorough and deliberate, and if Vincent had done this earlier, I can’t see why he would have been standing in the middle of the room for us to walk in on.”
“More telling,” Barnaby said, “is that it seems the searcher found the key to the safe and, presumably, opened it.”
“Yet all that money,” Stokes said, “is still there.”
Barnaby nodded. “Exactly. So whatever our searcher was after, it wasn’t money. Or jewelry.”
Stokes grunted. He looked at the shelves of ledgers. “So, what now? If this place has already been searched—and I suppose we can assume the searcher was also the killer—what are the chances that there’s anything incriminating still lying around for us to find?”
Barnaby had also been glancing around. “There’s no sign our searcher grew frustrated, but can we therefore assume he found what he came for?”
Penelope hummed, then replied, “I’m not sure we can. He was careful and methodical, presumably intent on leaving few clues that he’d searched at all. So even if he was unsuccessful, he might be clever enough not to have let his temper get the better of him. He might well think to come back and continue his search later.” She surveyed the myriad ledgers. “He can’t have searched all those. He can’t even have pulled each of them out and looked behind them. That alone would take hours.”
“True,” Stokes said. “So we know the desk, at least, was thoroughly searched and the safe as well, but we can’t tell whether our searcher found what he was after.”
Penelope nodded. “That’s the situation in a nutshell.”
Barnaby glanced at the clock. “Time’s caught up with us. I vote we call it a day and head for the Red Lion. We can eat and think through what we know to this point and clarify what our next steps should be.”
“That,” Penelope said, “is likely our wisest course.”
“Even wiser,” Stokes stated, “given that our murderer is very possibly in the house, and just in case there’s something in here he hasn’t yet found, I’ll leave a constable on guard overnight.”
Barnaby nodded. “An excellent idea.”
He waited while Stokes organized for Walsh to remain in the study with the doors and windows locked, with Morgan to relieve him in the early hours via the external doors. Meanwhile, Penelope idly sifted through the papers piled on the desk, but as with the safe, there were no clues to be found as to why Monty Underhill was murdered.
Barnaby sat beside Penelope on the settle in the comfortable private parlor they’d hired at the Red Lion and stretched his booted feet toward the fire. The serving girls had just gone out, ferrying away the plates and platters that had previously held a succulent dinner of roast beef and vegetables and a scrumptious apple pie.
Replete and content, the three investigators relaxed and turned their minds, individually and collectively, to their latest case.
Her gaze on the flames leaping in the hearth, Penelope opened the discussion. “Could Vincent be our searcher? Theoretically, he could have searched the study while we were examining the body or even earlier and simply gone back to make sure he’d left nothing incriminating behind, and then we walked in on him.”
Barnaby shook his head. “I can’t see it. Why would he wait until his father was dead to go searching? Even if there was something he wanted to remove from the study—regardless of whether he murdered his father, something he thought would implicate him or that he simply didn’t want us to see—why risk searching during the day? When he knew we were around? He’sin the house overnight, every night, and he couldn’t have known we would leave someone on guard.”
