To Mourn a Murder Read Free Page A

Brunei's letters?" Prance asked.
    "Well, they're pretty warm," she said with a blushing simper. "He was half French, you know, and they know how to sweet talk a lady. Unlike English gentlemen. Present company always excepted," she added with a leer at Byron.
    "When did you discover they were missing?" Prance asked to deflect further diversions.
    "I didn't! That's the strange thing. I have kept them hidden at the bottom of my stocking bag forever. I didn't know they were gone until I received that horrid letter. Then, of course, I ran straight upstairs and they were gone!" She tossed up her two white hands in dismay.
    "When was the last time you saw them?"
    "It must be two years ago. After a while, you know, one stops looking at old love letters."
    "When did you actually receive them?" Prance asked.
    She furrowed her brow and after much mention of social events–"The year before young Algie went to university, and Sukey wasn't married yet, for she visited us that year and was much courted," she said rather uncertainly. "Seven years ago last spring. I daresay I might have noticed they were missing sooner, but whoever took them was so sly! He folded up some of my own stationery and shoved it into the bottom of the bag so that I just felt the paper there from time to time when I was rifling through my drawers, and Semple the same. Semple is my dresser. She's been with me forever and would never steal them. I exonerate her completely. Her papa is a curate," she added as a clincher.
    "Your house hasn't been robbed, I take it?" Byron asked.
    "Only of the letters."
    "Then it must have been someone of your own household who took them. What other servants would have access to your room?"
    "Oh any of them, I expect, if he was bent on mischief. I mean one doesn't set a guard on one's bedchamber all day long. There are weekends in the country when the servants are here alone, to say nothing of a month in the Lake District this past summer. So lovely, but I didn't care for what they call the fells, and the rain was very wet. God only knows what the servants get up to when we're away. I know Jergen always takes the keys to the wine cellar with him when we go away."
    "May we see the note you received?" Prance asked.
    "I burned it! Because of Jergen, you know. I was afraid he might see it, but I can tell you exactly what it said. It demanded that I take five thousand pounds in cash to the corner of Oxford and Duke Streets tomorrow at midnight. Such an awkward hour! A hackney cab would be waiting. I was to get in, give the money to him and he would give me back my letters. That's all. Oh, and he signed it with a little sketch of a honey bee. So Odd!"
    "A bee? Does that have any special significance to you, Adele?" Byron asked.
    "Only that a bee makes honey," she said with a shake of her head.
    "And in this case, stings," Prance added. "So you are to meet this bee tomorrow at midnight. That doesn't leave us much time. Do you have the money?"
    "Yes, I received the note two days ago. I sold my Consols, the only money I have in my own name. I don't know what Jergen would say if he found out I lost it."
    Byron looked a question at Prance and said, "We could be waiting at the corner of Oxford and Duke, armed. Go after the coach and nab the fellow."
    "After I get my letters back," Lady Jergen said.
    "Yes, of course. In fact, there's no need for you to go at all, Adele. There won't be two hackneys waiting at the corner at midnight. We'll take care of it for you."
    Prance frowned and said, "It seems so ridiculously simple. Surely any thief worth his salt would have foreseen that possibility."
    "I daresay he thought I wouldn't tell anyone," Lady Jergen said, "and a lady could hardly go after him herself. He did specify I must go alone. I could hardly ask Jergen to accompany me."
    "I don't believe you have anything to worry about, Lady Jergen," Prance said. "The whole arrangement is so crude it can only be some simple servant who arranged it. It seems no