Page 16 of The Highland Heist
Grace gave Zahra and Miss Cox a quick look. When neither objected, she thanked her sister.
“I’ll alert Mrs. James, the housekeeper, to ready the rooms for you once she arrives in an hour or so. She takes her half day on Tuesdays.” Lillias took a few more steps toward the hallway, Thomas’ discontent growing in volume. “And I do have a favor to ask of you, Grace.”
Grace stepped forward instinctively. “Of course.”
“Since you know the town better than Lord Astley, I’d like you to deliver a letter to Louisa’s house this afternoon.”
“Louisa?” Grace frowned and cast a quick look at Frederick before turning back to her sister. “Your maid?”
“Former maid.” Lillias corrected, opening the door to a hallway just off the room. “I want to make sure she’s prepared for Detective Johnson’s visit tomorrow. It’s a kindness I can show her that she doesn’t deserve.”
With that, Lillias slipped through the doorway and up a slender stairway.
Deliver a letter to her former maid?
Why did that seem … odd? Grace shook off the unsettled thought. Too many odd things had happened since they had first arrived at her father’s house not even three hours ago. Why not this as well? After all, poor Lillias had been hit with one wound after another.
“Detective Johnson was not too keen on Miracle, was he?” Frederick stepped nearer the settee, his attention on the closed door behind Lillias.
Oh, what must he think of her family now? After all her teasing about haunted manors and terrifying mothers-in-law, she’d brought him into a drama as tangled as his own. And this was only the beginning. The potential for further disaster was staggering.
“What do you suppose that was about?” Grace asked.
“I don’t know.” The words came slowly as he turned his attention back to Grace. “But it certainly changed the man’s disposition toward us, and we could use as many allies at the moment as possible.”
“Perhaps he’ll warm up to us after a little while. We certainly aren’t in competition with him. And why would that bother the man, anyway? Where murders were concerned, wouldn’t the more help be the better?”
Frederick’s expression darkened the slightest bit.
“What is it?” Grace asked.
He hesitated, his gaze flicking to Zahra and Miss Cox.
Zahra had been part of their adventures long enough to handle whatever they discussed, and Miss Cox’s history certainly made her no stranger to darker subjects. Apparently, Frederick reached the same conclusion.
“One question Lillias never answered,” he said.
Grace’s mind whirred with her own list of unanswered questions: her father’s bankruptcy, the elusive Scottish inheritance, Lillias’ jittery demeanor about Miss Steen’s interview. “Which one?”
“She never said whether her husband had enemies.”
Grace blinked, her mind snapping to attention. That hadn’t even occurred to her. “You think the killer had a grudge against Tony? Perhaps that impostor—Officer Clark?”
“He wore fakesharib.“
All eyes turned to Zahra. She sat cross-legged on the edge of the settee, her solemn face framed by her dark hair.
Frederick crouched beside her. “What did you say, Zahra?
“The false police.” Zahra continued. “I saw him from the car before he came inside. He put on a”—she gestured to her upper lip—”Sharib?”
“A mustache?” Frederick touched the clean-shaven area above his own mouth. “Here?”
Zahra nodded earnestly. “And glasses.”
Grace leaned forward, her pulse quickening. “So not only did he lie about being an officer, but he came in disguise. No wonder he looked so poorly put together. And that accent—honestly, it was dreadful.”
Then she wondered for a moment if Edward Rochester’s accent sounded anything like Fake Officer Clark’s when he’d dressed up as a gypsy to trick the truth out of poor Jane Eyre.
