Page 42 of A Murder in Mayfair
Phipps licked his lips. "The night before the ball, someone came to the house. Late. After midnight."
"Did you see who it was?"
"No, milady. I only heard the shouting. Lord Walsh's voice and another man’s. Angry. Real angry. I heard something about payment."
My heart quickened. "Payment for what?"
"I don't know, milady. I swear it. But afterward, Lord Walsh looked like he’d seen a ghost."
“Did you know about this visitor, Mr. Anstruther?”
“No. I’m sorry to say I was suffering from a toothache. But one of the footmen would have opened the door. Once I find out who, I’ll have a word with him.”
As I turned back to Phipps, he appeared ready to collapse. Miserable did not begin to describe him.
I offered him a reassuring smile. "You’ve been most helpful. Thank you."
After dismissing Phipps, I lingered in the library alone, pretending to examine a volume of Dryden’s poetry. But my mind raced as I considered the implications of everything I’d learned. Someone had confronted Walsh the night before his death over money. A large debt? A failed scheme? The pieces were beginning to shift, but the picture they formed remained maddeningly incomplete.
Maybe the study held some answers. Once I arrived there, I carefully inspected the desk. I ran my fingers along the edge of it. An elegant piece, though softened by years of use. I bent closer, inspecting its details with a practiced eye. On the underside of the top drawer, something had been scratched into the wood.
Curious, I tugged the drawer open and slipped my hand beneath the lip. My fingers brushed against something dry and crumpled. Heart pounding, I carefully drew it out.
It was a torn scrap of ledger paper. The ink had smudged, but several words remained legible—and damning:
"Transfer — E.L. Bank — to account #9431"
A hidden transaction, maybe of concealed funds. A trail Walsh had deliberately tried to erase.
I folded the fragment and slipped it into my reticule, my thoughts already racing. Steele would need to locate that bank. Trace the account. Maybe we’d find funds there.
After securing Julia’s permission to take the ledgers and documents I’d retrieved from the safe, I bid her farewell. One of Rosehaven’s footmen would deliver them to Steele with a note.
I was willing to wager that something in those pages had sparked the fire that led to Walsh’s murder.
And I had just caught the scent.
Chapter
Seventeen
A DOOR WITHOUT ANSWERS
The address I’d pried from a reluctant member at White’s was tucked along a quiet, grim little street in the less than desirable, but still acceptable, streets of Clerkenwell—one of those aging rows of brick where the city’s gloss had worn thin, and the business of men with sharp smiles and sharper deals thrived behind discreet plaques.
I had no great hopes as I approached. Men like Walsh didn’t leave their real sins lying about where any curious soul might stumble across them. Still, even a spider’s web left clues if you knew how to look.
A discreet brass plate beside the door read simply: “Great Western Silver Trust.”
I rapped once with my cane, sharp against the fog-muffled afternoon.
A young man—no more than five and twenty—opened the door. He wore a neat if threadbare jacket, a clerk’s ink-stained fingers, and the wary expression of a man accustomed to saying as little as possible.
"Good afternoon, sir," he said, eyeing me with cautious civility. "May I assist you?"
"I’m here about Lord Walsh," I said smoothly. "Your employer."
The clerk paled visibly, confirming more in that instant than he realized. "I—I’m not sure what you mean, sir. I only manage the post."
