I, Richard - Elizabeth George [12]
The Germans, in the meantime, were protesting heartily. The doctor led them. “You have no business with us,” he said. “That man was a stranger. I insist that we be allowed to leave.”
“Of course,” Thomas Lynley said. “I agree. And leave you shall, just as soon as we solve the problem of the silver.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It appears that one of you took the opportunity of the chaos in the gallery to remove two pieces of rococo silver from the table by the fireplace. They're milk jugs. Rather small, extremely ornate, and definitely missing. This isn't my jurisdiction, of course, but until the local police arrive to start their inquiries into Mr. Tucker's death, I'd like to take care of this small detail of the silver myself.” He could, of course, only too easily imagine what his aunt Augusta would have to say about the matter if he didn't take care of it.
“What are you going to do?” Frances Cleary asked fearfully.
“Do you plan to keep us here until one of us admits to something?” the German doctor scoffed. “You cannot search us without some authority.”
“That's correct, of course,” Thomas Lynley said. “Unless you agree to be searched.”
Silence ensued. Into it, feet shuffled. A throat cleared. Urgent conversation was conducted in German. Someone rustled papers in a notebook.
Cleve Houghton was the first to speak. He looked over the group. “Hell, I have no objection.”
“But the women…” Victoria Wilder-Scott pointed out with some delicacy.
Lynley nodded to his companion, who was standing by a display of copper kettles at the edge of the group. “This is Lady Helen Clyde,” he told them. “She'll search the women.”
And so they searched: the men in the scullery and the women in the warming room across the corridor.
Both Thomas Lynley and Helen Clyde made a thorough job of it. Lynley was all business. Helen employed a more gentle touch.
Each of them had the individuals in their keeping undress and redress. Each of them emptied pockets, bags, rucksacks, and canvas totes. Lynley did all of this in a grim silence designed to intimidate. Helen chatted with the women in a manner designed to put them at ease.
In neither case did they find anything, however. Even Victoria Wilder-Scott and the tour guide had been searched.
Lynley told them to wait in the tearoom. He turned back to the stairway at the far end of the kitchen.
“Where's he going now?” Polly Simpson asked, hands clutching her camera to her chest.
“He'll have to look for the silver in the rest of the house,” Emily Guy pointed out.
“But that could take forever,” Frances Cleary whispered.
“It doesn't matter, does it? We're going to have to wait for the local police anyway.”
“Hell no, this was heart failure,” Cleve Houghton said. “There's no silver missing. It's probably being cleaned somewhere.”
But this, alas, was not the case, as Lynley discovered when he made the report he did not wish to make to his paternal aunt. Augusta was all suitable horror and compassion when told that a visitor to her home had died on the premises. But she was vengeance incarnate when she learned that a “sneaky little criminal” had had the sheer audacity to take possession of one of her priceless treasures. She expounded for a good five minutes on what she intended to do to the perpetrator of this crime, and it was only by assuring his aunt that the Law—in the person of himself—would work tirelessly on her behalf that Lynley was able to prevent the woman from accosting the visitors herself. He left Augusta to the ministrations of her three corgis, and retraced his steps to find the tour group.
They had left the buttery and were being held in the courtyard, and Lynley could see them from the windows in the private wing where his aunt now lived. He studied them, taking note of the fact that even in crisis people tended to adhere to cultural stereotypes. The Germans stood grimly in tiny clusters of people with whom they were already intimate. Husbands with their