She would have to look, though not with Barbara. Her new friend ought not to be drawn into this mess. Marietta would figure it out herself, or perhaps with Walker’s help. She would check the perimeter of the house. The cellars. Perhaps even search Lucien’s study again for some clue she had missed before.
It was there, obviously, some entrance other than the tunnel they had found, which had likely been built as a secondary escape route from the main lair. She would find it.
Slade Osborne might already be initiated, but there was no reason to entrust it all to him, was there?
Fifteen
Slade eased the study door shut behind him and exhaled slowly. He had begun to think Hughes would never leave this morning, satchel in hand for his trip and trunk strapped to his carriage roof. But the man had finally gone after one more sober warning to keep an eye on Marietta and Mrs. Hughes.
As if Slade intended to let a band of marauders gallop through and steal them away.
Then he had left the detective free to go about his business, praise be to the sovereign and Almighty God. A more perfect answer to prayer he could never have envisioned.
Later today he had to head to Washington, but for now he was determined to find a few answers. And as he’d already discovered there were none to be found at Hughes’s house, he had sauntered across the street and snuck in.
The pages that had been in the book of Aquinas were in his inner pocket, as taunting as they were alluring. Marietta’s script matched the slip of paper from the Augustine. But though his pulse had kicked up to near euphoria when he clapped his gaze upon that list of names, he had forced it back to rational.
For all he knew, she had deliberately miscopied the information. How did she even get it to copy if she’d given him the key? That didn’t make sense, unless she also had the other key, the one Hughes kept on him. Which would mean Hughes had been the one to open the drawer for her and instructed her to feed him false information.
But that would mean Hughes was on to him. Possibly, but he didn’t think so.
Which left him with one itchy conundrum when it came to Marietta Arnaud Hughes.
He turned to survey the now-clean study, sunlight shafting through the open drapes and pouring its precious illumination onto each surface. He headed straight for the drawer, withdrew the key from its place with the folded papers in his pocket, and crouched to open it.
Making himself comfortable on the floor, he pulled out a handful of leaves from the front of the drawer. And frowned. The list was gone. Hughes could have moved it to another place in the drawer, he supposed, but it was nowhere in this first stack. Or maybe Marietta had taken it.
No, she wouldn’t be so stupid. Unless she were trying to set him up to be caught…
Another page caught his eye. One of the ones from the selection she had given him, he was fairly sure. He pulled out his copies and flattened the sheet in question beside the original.
Identical. Other than the handwriting, exactly identical. Wherever Hughes had put a note in the margin, the same one appeared in the same place in Marietta’s. Each random scratch of ink from a slipping pen, each space, each crowded squeeze of a forgotten word had been duplicated.
For the life of him, he didn’t know what to make of it. Not of the information itself, which seemed to be the transcription of an encoded telegram, but of the fact that she had made one for him—an accurate one—and slipped it to him.
His thoughts rampaging like those nonexistent marauders, he returned the drawer to its usual state, relocked it, and set to pacing. He needed to figure out if he could trust her. And with what he could trust her. How much she knew and who in blazes the woman really was, beyond the name all of Maryland knew.
Father, I could use Your wisdom here. He passed a hand over his hair. Show me if she is an ally or an enemy. Show me, please, what I am to do, with her and the whole situation.
He felt a whisper of wind touch his neck, sending a chill down his spine. In part because it felt like an answer, and in part because it was a literal, icy draft. He eased back a step—there. It came from…the wall?
Interesting. Turning to face a massive curio cabinet, he lifted his hands, feeling for that cold touch of air.
The break in the paneling wasn’t so much visible as just discernible when he studied it enough. A push against the section in question didn’t budge it, though. So he spent five tedious minutes pressing every section, every nearby decorative piece of molding, before finally reaching behind the cabinet.
When he heard the click of a lock releasing, a prayer of gratitude swelled through him. Now he could swing the panel open, outward, like a door.
Pitch-black stairs greeted him, heading down. No cobwebs obscured the passage, so Hughes must use this whatever-it-was fairly regularly.