The window opened, and he stepped in, taking care to stand for a few moments and let his eyes adjust to the pitch-black darkness inside. Some moonlight came in through the window and lifted the worst of the gloom, and he could make out the silhouettes of furniture: the bookcases along the wall, the standing clock between them, then the leather chairs at the fireplace. The huge desk to his right, with the lamp on top. He could not see the lamp, but he knew it was there from his visit.
He smiled to himself. It always paid to know the territory well in advance. He rubbed his hands again, a habit as the gloves did not get sweaty. But he would never forget to make sure his hands were utterly dry as that determined the difference between life and death.
He took a step towards the desk.
His foot made contact with something bulky and heavy on the floor, and he stumbled over it. He tried to regain his balance by waving his arm in the air and putting his other foot some place. But it also hit the bulk and he fell forwards, half over it.
Cursing under his breath, he broke his fall with his hands. He was lying half on top of the thing, which had not been there during his visit. It felt almost like a sack of flour.
His gloved hands examined it, finding a round corner… It was warm and sort of soft and…
With a cry he straightened himself, inching back. The thing was…alive.
Or rather not. It had been alive, but it was no longer.
He sucked in a breath as he realized what he had just fallen on top of.
A dead body.
His mind whirled. As he meticulously prepared each aspect of a job, he was always taken aback by change. He was especially taken aback by the panic that washed through him at the realization he was in a room with a dead person.
He wanted to force himself to stay calm and focus on the stones, but for a few moments he could not even hear their call over the pounding of his blood in his ears.
Then he clenched his hands into fists and regulated his breathing. He held his head back into his neck and stared up at the stuccoed ceiling. He counted to fifty, and then the panic had vanished and his mind was crystal clear again.
He pulled a lighter from his pocket and switched it on. He did not use it to peruse the dead body. He did not care who it was or what it was doing here. He used the light to look at the painting that hid the safe.
The painting was swung outwards, and the safe behind it was in full view. It was open.
He groaned.
He made for it with hasty steps, his eyes on it with a desperate insistence that it could not be the way he believed it was.
But it was that way.
The safe was empty. The stones that had been here for the taking were gone.
Taken already, by another who had left the dead body in his wake.
He turned and knelt beside the body. Despite his better judgement he had to make sure that this man did not have the stones on him. He reached into the pockets of the dead man’s jacket, even patted his chest and sides to feel for any unusual protrusion.
Nothing.
The door into the room was flung open, and light flooded over him as somebody turned the switch at the door. The butler, blinking with his red-rimmed eyes, stood staring at him. ‘Lord Winters?’ Then he caught sight of the body and gasped.
Someone pushed past him into the room. A tall dark woman raising her hands to her face. But instead of the piercing scream he expected, and perhaps a collapse into a dead faint, she looked straight at him and said, ‘He killed him! Look, his gloves are full of blood.’
He looked down and saw the dark stains on his gloves. That had to have happened when he stumbled onto the body and fell across it.
He opened his mouth to protest, deny, proclaim his innocence, but there was no time as more men came into the room, hauling him to his feet and pulling his arms behind his back. They were all shouting something different, but their general feeling was clear enough. He was a killer and he had to be handed over to the police as soon as possible.
Ironic.
Now the Scotland Yard fingerprint division would get his prints anyway.
Lady Alkmene Callender pulled the dark brown hat with the sequinned band over her hair and looked in the tall standing mirror. She tilted her head to the right and then to the left, admiring the reflection of the light on the sequins. Still, dark brown had never been her favourite colour. ‘Is the same hat available in blue?’ she asked, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear so she could see her new earring.
‘I think you should just be wild and splash out on the one with the ostrich feathers,’ her friend Denise Hargrove said, pointing at the black hat with the fan of feathers attached to the back. ‘Your father will only find out about it when he is back from his trip, if he even finds out about it. I doubt he will go through all the bills accumulated over months.’
‘You don’t know my father,’ Alkmene said, pulling the dark brown hat off her hair and resting it on her hand. ‘One of his great joys in life is sitting down to check the bills and trying to find one little detail that is not in order. Like too much money paid for fish for a dinner or a mention of pineapple while he is sure that we never ate any since New Year’s Eve.’
‘If he has been away for months, how can he know what you ate?’ Denise asked with a hitched brow.
‘Oh, before he leaves, he hands out strict instructions to all the staff to run the household as frugally as possible in his absence. I am to be fed on nothing more extravagant than soup, meat with vegetables and a fruit dessert of the indigenous variety. Pineapple is out of the question, and so are hats with ostrich feathers.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ an ironic voice said behind her back.
Alkmene spun on her heel to meet the speaker’s inquisitive gaze. Since her adventure with Jake Dubois in Dartmoor looking for a missing heir and a cold-blooded killer, she had only seen him once, during a charity luncheon where she was representing her father, who was one of the charity’s patrons. Dubois had covered the event for his paper. He had barely acknowledged her, as he had been busy following an actress around who had become interested in the charity recently and was contemplating staging a play to benefit it.
Feeling thoroughly ignored, Alkmene had decided she did not want to see Dubois any time soon, and now seeing him perusing her hatless persona in what was supposed to be man-free territory, goaded her to no end.
‘Here to buy a hat for your sister?’ she asked sweetly.
Jake opened his mouth as if to ask since when she believed he had a sister, but then he noticed Denise’s wide-eyed interest in him and said meekly, ‘Just handed in the order at the desk. I would like to speak to you if it is at all possible. It is about…’
‘Phalaktae pelopenosensis,’ Alkmene said with a charming little smile. ‘Father will be so delighted that you managed to solve the mystery of its origin. I will write your results to him this afternoon. Denise, I am so sorry, but I have to run.’
She leaned over and gave her friend two air kisses, hovering before each cheek, so as not to disturb her make-up. Then she waved a hand and ran out of the store, Dubois in tow.
‘Phalaktae what?’ he asked outside.
‘Oh, I have no idea. I only made it sound like some Latin