In Like Flynn (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #4)

Theresa shook her head. “I didn't think it wise at the time when you ate such a big breakfast. I've always found one must treat the stomach most delicately after episodes like yours.”


“I suppose I'm not as robust as I thought I was,” I answered. “But if you will excuse me, I think I'll forgo lunch today. The sight and smell of food will only make me feel worse.”

“But you will at least take some beef tea in your room today?”

“Later,” I said. “For the moment I think I'll just lie down quietly. I may feel well enough to join you for tea.”

I went upstairs and dutifully laid down on my bed, just in case she decided to check on me. Then, when the lunch gong sounded, I watched and waited until Miss Emily and Miss Ella arrived and they were all safely in the dining room. Then I crept down the stairs and out of the front door. Instead of taking the most direct route to the cottage, which would be up the driveway, in full view of the dining room windows, I went around the other side of the house, past the Senator’s study and the library and then the back wall of the kitchen where Clara had attempted to plant her sorry-looking flowers.

From there I cut across the kitchen garden, finding a path between tall rows of beans and peas. It came to me that Bertie Morell, or whoever took the child from the house, could have taken the boy this way without being observed from any of the rooms except the nursery or the other back bedrooms, in which Belinda and Qara now slept.

The cottage door opened with a simple latch, like ours at home, and I tiptoed inside. I don't know what I expected to find— a den of black magic perhaps. I do know that my heart was thumping alarmingly. I think part of me still believed in that Indian chief and the floating spirits and the ectoplasm. And with all that inbred Irish superstition of fairies, ghosts and goblins, part of me also believed those spirits might be inhabiting this house.

Instead, it was a perfectly neat and tidy room that met my eye. It was comfortably furnished in a country cottage style, with a big whitewashed fireplace in the middle of one wall, two chintz-covered armchairs and a gate-leg table in the window. Apart from a book and a pair of spectacles on the table, there was no sign that the place was inhabited. A door at one side opened into a kitchen that the sisters had obviously not used, apart from a kettle on the stove, and off a narrow hallway behind it was the bedroom on one side, a bathroom on the other. These, at least, showed signs of being lived in. There were hairbrushes and pins and face powder on the dressing table and a pair of black lisle stockings over the back of a chair. The dresser and wardrobe both contained items of clothing—black silk evening dresses, shawls, shoes, all very ordi-nary things.

I went through one drawer after another, finding nothing. No walking hands, magic lanterns or any other devices for carrying out magic tricks. I rooted around some more, but came up with nothing.

The strange thing was that there was no sign of any trunks or suitcases. Surely they must have traveled with luggage? I prowled the cottage once more and even looked into the lean-to at the back, but found nothing. I was about to admit defeat and consider the possibility that the Misses Sorensen might be genuine spiritualists who really did communicate with the dead, when I noticed a trap door in the ceiling of that dark and narrow hallway I pulled on the cord that hung from it and a crude ladder unfolded. I hoisted my skirts and climbed up into a dark and musty attic. Above me was the thatched roof, probably infested with all manner of creepy crawlies. One dormer window provided enough light for me to see my way and to make out shapes around me. There were various humps and bumps hidden under dust sheets.

I stood, breathing in the dusty air and wondering if this investigation was a waste of time. Surely the stout and aging Misses Sorensen would have had no reason to come up here. Then I noticed something. Neat footprints across the dusty floor. Someone had been up here recently. I followed the footprints and lifted the dust sheet from one of the objects. It was a trunk.