Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [26]
“Looks pretty amateurish,” I remarked.
“They might as well have set a chisel to it,” he agreed.
By habit, I hooked my finger-nails under the edge of the drawer in case of finger-prints, and tugged. It slid open freely, releasing a faint odour of cedar and revealing a handful of small coins, a set of black shoe-laces, some pen nibs, and an assortment of collar-studs, the normal débris of the male animal. If there had been anything of import in the drawer, it was not there now.
I swivelled on my heels to study the prints. The people who made them had spent some time gathered around my father's steamer trunk, then one of them—the smaller feet—had investigated his bed-side table. Not, however, my mother's, which was decidedly odd. Unless, of course, they were not simply sneak-thieves, and had already found what they were after.
“When do you suppose those footprints were made?” I asked.
“Within the past month, or two months at the most.”
“Did you find where they got in?”
“Judging by the traces of soil there and here, I should say they came in through the kitchen door.”
I twisted to look up at him. “I saw no fresh soil there.”
“You were . . . distracted.”
“I did see the soil, but I'd have said it was old. And I'm certain the kitchen door showed no signs of tampering.” That I definitely would have noticed.
“No,” he agreed.
I slid the drawer shut, let the cloth fall over it, and got to my feet. “Which means that either their locksmith's talents deteriorated, or they had the one key and not the other. I shall have to ask Mr Norbert just how many sets of keys there were.”
The rest of the house held neither ghosts nor clues. Even my bedroom might have belonged to a stranger, its fittings and knick-knacks curiously apt rather than familiar. I picked from a shelf a tiny porcelain baby-doll, all unruly brown hair and a lacy robe, which fit most satisfyingly into the palm of my hand. I had not been a child who played with dolls, but I vaguely thought that a friend had given me this one; perhaps I had kept it through affection for her rather than for the object itself. I put it back on the shelf, dusted off my hands, and continued through the upstairs rooms.
Each room showed signs of a recent passage through it, with disturbed objects and footprints in the dust. And not just footprints.
I went back downstairs and found Holmes in the library with a book, sitting in the leather chair I had uncovered. He had carried one of the candelabras in here from the dining table and filled it with candles; drips of wax on the floor-boards traced his progress along the shelves. The candles, half-burnt, now stood on top of the desk, but still gave sufficient illumination to the shelves that I could see that the dust-lines where the books had stood no longer coincided with the edges of the books.
I picked up the candle-stick and held it close to the shelf: dust along the tops, faint disturbance along the top ridge of some of the spines—the intruders had pulled the books back to look behind them, but not removed each one to rifle through the pages. It was something of a relief, for to have laboriously searched each book, then scrupulously replaced it on the shelf, would have indicated a particularly organised and potentially dangerous sort of mind. These people were just looking in the more obvious places.
But for what?
I put the candelabrum back on the desk, pinched out the flames, and gently pulled back the wrap of the other chair, allowing the cloth to slump gently to the floor. I sneezed and sat down.
“Any idea what they were searching for?”
“Something of his rather than hers. There is no safe in the house?”
“Not so far as I know. I know they kept Mother's jewellery in the bank, and had to remember to retrieve it in time when she wanted to wear it.”
“I should say your intruders did not know that, going by the universal disturbance of the picture-frames.”
And I'd thought time had misplaced them. As if to redeem myself, I asked, “You noticed that the two guest-room beds had been disturbed?” In response, he patted his suit