Silver Glass

Chapter VII: Five Letters

"Talking to you is like-- like talking to an eel!"
"No, is it? I've never tried to talk to an eel. Isn't it as waste of time?"
"Not such a waste of time as talking to you!"
-- Georgette Heyer, Black Sheep

Phil rowed back to the jetty in stunned silence. Yo-han stayed silent too. All things considered, the return journey was very uncomfortable.

When they reached the path that ran past Phil's house, she couldn't stand it any more. "I won't repeat what Miss Bennett said. Not even to Vi. Especially not to Vi."

"I didn't think you would, Miss Patton," Yo-han said in surprise.

"You may as well call me Phil. My sister does, and after Aunt Rachael—" Phil summarised that horrible situation with a wave of her hand "—you know as much about me as she does."

"Thank you, Miss— Phil. And you may call me Yo-han. But to return to Lord Kilskeery, I already knew. I realised after Çelik Bey made a certain comment." He stopped and looked up at Lennox House. "I intend to begin searching the male servants' rooms this afternoon. Would you help by searching the women's?"

Phil blinked. "But... I don't know what I'm supposed to look for."

"Honestly? Nothing. I know none of the women in the household were involved. But I don't want the second murderer to know that yet."

~~~~

Yo-han had pieced together almost everything that had happened from the moment he left the empty house. His current search was mainly to find evidence to support what he already knew.

First he questioned McCullagh the groundskeeper. That confirmed where the oar and rope had come from. Then he began his search of the servants' rooms. The footmen lived on the third storey. Each had a room to himself. The housemaids lived on the third storey too, but their rooms were accessed from a different staircase to prevent getting too friendly with the footmen.

There was no butler. Most of the footmen were teenagers, hired solely because they were cheaper than more experienced staff. None of them had anything incriminating in their rooms.

Well, nothing more incriminating than a box of stolen cigars. Yo-han examined them, decided they had nothing to do with the case, and said nothing about them.

He went down to the second storey. Most of the rooms here were guest rooms or completely unused. The master bedroom, which should have been Lord Kilskeery's, was at the top of the main stairs. Lady Kilskeery's room was beside it. On the other side were guest rooms, including the one occupied by Çelik Bey.

Yo-han went through it. He found some American newspapers, some letters in English and Turkish, and a note from Gwladys Lennox.

Well. It was supposedly from Gwladys Lennox. Yo-han compared the handwriting to a letter from her. It was too similar. No one wrote every letter exactly the same size and shaped exactly the same way. And it made an appointment for six o'clock outside the greenhouse.

Gwladys had probably received a duplicate. They'd been lured to their deaths by someone who had access to samples of their handwriting.

The guests who had been there on the night of the dinner had left the next morning, before the murders. Their rooms had been cleaned. Further along, separated from this part of the storey by a door that could be locked, was David Eames' room. He had his own staircase which led down to the servants' hall.

Yo-han tried the door. It opened at once.

At first he thought the room was empty. He took the main details in at a glance. It was an unusually large room for a valet. The window overlooked the stables at the back of the house. That meant neither the scene of the murder or the bodies were visible from here.