Seven for a Secret Read Free Page B

particular fellow feeling went beyond sympathy. I’ve Irish friends, Irish fellow copper stars, and I know what missing mealtimes feels like. Val and I once made a supper out of the mushy mass of vegetables a restaurant had strained from a stockpot, kernels scraped from a half-eaten husk of buttered corn, and three street-foraged chestnuts. My older brother had salted it, peppered it, plated it, garnished mine with two chestnuts and his with one, and deemed it salad.
    It was unconvincing.
    “When you locked up, did you notice anything amiss?”
    “It’s a pity, but can’t say as I looked. Last member of the household to use the room was Mrs. Millington, after breakfast.”
    “And the only way in is through those two doors and these two windows, unless a duplicate key exists.” I unlatched one of the bow windows.
    “Aye, sir. But you police types can tell, maybe, if a key’s been duplicated?”
    Biting my lip in annoyance directed almost entirely inward, I leaned out, the sudden chill making my eyes burn. The alley side of the building was brick, with a single ivy strand hauling its way upward, and we were on the second floor. The other window faced frenetic Fifth Avenue. Both difficult to reach without being seen, and both locked anyhow.
    Refastening the hasp, I returned my attention to what I’m good at: stories, and the people who tell them to me.
    “Do the Millingtons have children?” I asked, ruminating.
    “Not them. Just two sets of coronation china, a dozen Wilton rugs, five—”
    “Does the master of the house have any unsavory habits? Gambling, women?”
    Turley snorted. “His notion of sport is hauling in money as if it’s schools of sardines. Good at it too, as you can see. Better than most.”
    “Mrs. Millington. Suppose she had debts?”
    “I suppose she’d draw on her allowance. Comes to a hundred a month, excepting December. Then it’s two hundred, if you please, in the spirit of the season.”
    How convenient for her if she ever needs a tenth silver bud vase in the shape of a swan.
I glared at the nine arranged on the mantelpiece, fuchsia hothouse buds sprouting tortuously from the creatures’ throats.
    Then I caught sight of something more disturbing: a mirror had been hung over the fireplace.
    It isn’t that I was worthy of a block of marble being devoted to my face previous to the explosion. But faces are personal, and I’d preferred mine intact. The reflection gave me back my dark blond hairline with its sweeping double arcs, the downward-edged crescent stamped on my chin, the narrow but curving lips above, the straight nose, the deep-set green eyes. But it also gave me a healed-over torrent sweeping across my temple, as if a penny had been thrown in a pool.
    “The house servants,” I said, wrenching my eyes away. “Who are they?”
    “Myself, and at your service, Mr. Wilde,” he listed, counting on his fingers. “Mrs. Thornton, the housekeeper. Agatha, the cook. Amy, Grace, Ellen, Mary, and Rose, the maids. Stephen and Jack, the footmen. Lily, the scullery maid. That’s without the coach driver and grooms who bunk at the hostelry.”
    “Anything you’d like to tell me about any of them? Anything . . . interesting?”
    Turley dissected this. Hope shone like a distant lighthouse in my breast.
    “Agatha’s knee can tell her when a storm’s coming,” he answered me shrewdly. “That’s always terrible interesting. It acted up something fierce this morning, so we’re in for a parcel of trouble, Mr. Wilde.”
    He hadn’t the faintest idea.
    •   •   •
    By the time
I’d interviewed
all of the servants and trudged in defeat out of 102 Fifth Avenue that afternoon, I had, in fact, learned several interesting things.
    First off, the household had sunk into a clawing panic of self-preservationist accusations. According to Ellen (a downstairs maid), who was a breathless Cockney lass fresh from the Thames, it must have been Grace who took the miniature. Because,