Page 37 of And Then There Was the One
Georgie waved an impatient hand. “But it’s hidden—so noone would see her using it. I wonder how she’s been distributing them to all the shops; it’s not as if she could just waltz in herself with a stack of them….” Her eyes landed on a wooden crate whose lid had not been refastened, and she moved closer, crouching down to slide the lid back enough to view its contents.
“See?” she hissed, reaching inside to pull out a single sheet of paper, full of cramped print, none of which she could make out in the darkness. She glanced around. “Is there any chance there’s a torch—or even just a candlestick—down here?”
They spent several minutes making as thorough a search as they could manage of the surrounding shelves, which were piled with all sorts of clutter, before Sebastian muttered a triumphant “Aha!” and brandished what appeared to be a Christmas-themed candelabra, the base wrapped in paper ivy and papier-mâché holly berries. He produced a matchbook from his pocket—“Never know when an attractive woman will need a light from a handsome gentleman!”—and a moment later, newly able to see, they leaned forward to begin readingThe Deathly Dispatch.
“… grisly hotbed of crime,” Georgie muttered, her eyes scanning the page. “… can only speculate about what dark forces are at work here… perhaps it is the police themselves, trying to create work…” She looked up at Sebastian, who was, she realized, trying not to laugh. “For heaven’s sake. These areconspiracy theories.”
Sebastian nodded, schooling his expression into something approaching gravity. “They are. Though, in the interest of fairness, I suppose that one could accuseyou, dear Georgie, of harboring similar ones.”
Georgie gaped at him. “That’s not remotely the same! I was just—”
“Asking questions?” he asked innocently, pointing to the bottom line of the newsletter. Georgie squinted down at it in the dim light, and read, “?‘We do not profess to accuse anyone of a crime—we are simplyasking questions, as concerned citizens. And we wonder how long it will be before the residents of Buncombe-upon-Woolly realize that their lives might be easier in a neighboring, less violent village.’?”
“I wonder if they’ve real estate holdings they’re trying to hawk,” Sebastian said thoughtfully.
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” Georgie said darkly. “This is lunacy. This entire village is full of lunatics.”
“Feels a bit pot-kettle,” he said. “I don’t notice any resident sheep ontheirvillage green, after all.” For some reason this made Georgie laugh—trulylaugh, the sort of loose, unconstrained sound that she hadn’t thought him capable of drawing from her. She saw surprise register on his face for a moment, replaced just as quickly by slow-dawning delight. He began to smile, and this made her laugh harder for another second or two before she got herself under control. Even when her laughter ceased, however, his smile lingered.
“Fair point,” she managed, once her laughter had subsided. “Shall we try to escape, then?”
“I expect we ought to,” he agreed, and this time theybothlaughed.
Within a few minutes, however, they were feeling decidedly less amused.
“It shouldn’t be so hard to break out of a cellar,” she said,standing with her hands on her hips and scowling at the door at the top of the stairs they’d been trying to force their way out of without any success for a few minutes now. “It’s not as though it was designed to hold captives!”
“We’re hardly operating under optimal circumstances,” Sebastian pointed out. “You went out without a hairpin, which I believe ought to be illegal for any lady claiming to be an amateur sleuth—”
“All right, then, if you’d like to produceyourhairpin any second now, I’d be delighted,” Georgie said, nettled.
“And there’s a dead bolt, in addition to the lock on the doorknob. Hardly ideal for an easy lockpick.”
“I expect Arthur and Miss de Vere and Miss Singh will raise the alarm once they notice we’ve vanished,” Georgie said, before a horrifying thought struck her. “Unless—oh God, you don’t think Mr. Lettercross has murdered them, has he?”
“Definitely not,” Sebastian reassured her, and he reached out, for just a moment, and squeezed her hand, the strength and warmth of his hand strangely soothing. “They’re Murder Tourists—the golden goose! He’s no doubt hoping they’ll up sticks and settle in the village; he’s not going tomurderthem.”
“But when theydoraise the alarm,” Georgie said, “do we really think that Miss Lettercross will say, ‘Oh gosh, we didn’t realize Miss Radcliffe was with theMurder Tourists, let’s let her out immediately!’?” She shook her head. “We could be trapped down here for ages.”
She sank down on the bottom step and, after a moment’s hesitation, patted the spot next to her. He took the invitation; the steps were narrow enough that their bodies were pressedagainst each other, the heat of his skin evident through both her clothing and his. Nonetheless, she didn’t shift away, and neither did he.
“I expect Fitzgibbons has been in dozens of situations like this and made his way out,” she said, feeling a bit glum. If she couldn’t escape from a cellar, she honestly didn’t think she was cut out for the life of a detective.
There was a slightly longer pause than she expected, and she slid a sideways glance at him; he was frowning.
“He has,” he said at last, and Georgie looked at him expectantly. She knew that he must be aware of her head turned toward him, her gaze on his face, but he continued to look straight ahead and at last heaved a sigh—the sound was weary, and resigned, and completely out of character for him. Or, at least, for who shethoughthe was; she was beginning to think her impression of him might not be at all accurate.
“Fitzgibbons is… well, he’s been doing this a long time,” he said, still not looking at her. “When I began to work for him, his prior secretary warned me that Fitzgibbons was, if not precisely work-shy, then certainly uninterested in any investigations that were overly taxing.”
“But,” Georgie protested, “all those famous cases! He solved the Case of the Acton Arsenic Ring! And the Strand Shoplifting Spree!”
“Yes,” Sebastian agreed. “He did—fifteen years ago, or more. He’s too much of a spendthrift to retire—you should see what he spends on pipe tobacco alone—”
“Alarming testimony, indeed, coming from a man with a jumper for every day of the year,” Georgie interrupted, butthere was no heat to the words, and a quick glance showed that Sebastian’s mouth had curved slightly at her interruption.
“—but he’s no interest in taking on any complicated cases.”
“Complicated,” Georgie repeated.
