Page 56 of And Then There Was the One
“I think we’d have been fine,” Georgie said. “I’m a hardy sort. I could have lasted in there for days!”
Miss de Vere cast a significant look at Sebastian, who was licking a bit of melted butter off his thumb, as if to say,And him?
Georgie sighed. “Touché.”
Once the Murder Tourists had been deposited at the village hall, Georgie and Sebastian wasted no time in heading straight for Mrs. Penbaker’s house. She and Mr. Penbaker had shared a pretty, well-kept cottage directly opposite the village green; prior to moving to Buncombe-upon-Woolly and taking up local politics, Mr. Penbaker had worked as a solicitor in Bath, and had evidently done well enough for himself to ensure a quite comfortable retirement. The house was made of honey-colored Cotswold stone, featured mullioned windows that flanked the green front door, and had ivy creeping its way up its walls. A small but tidy rose garden graced the narrow space between the house and the street, and Georgie knew this must be entirely Mrs. Penbaker’s doing, because Mr. Penbaker had been almost comically useless at anything to do with horticulture. The annual garden show had been a yearslong struggle in which Georgie desperately tried to convince Penbaker to stop talking about plants he knew nothing about, with limited success. (At this spring’s edition, she had caught him proudly boasting about a particularly fine display of roses, which were actually peonies.)
Georgie and Sebastian ignored the front door, however, and instead cut around the corner down the narrow alley thatconnected the high street to one of the quieter residential streets that flanked it. A quick glance around confirmed that there was no one in sight, and they proceeded to hop nimbly over the low stone wall that bordered Mrs. Penbaker’s back garden. Georgie, holding her breath, reached for the kitchen door; it turned easily in her hand.
“Shame, that,” Sebastian said as he followed her through the door. “I was rather looking forward to getting to watch you do your lockpicking-with-a-hairpin trick.”
“It’s considerably faster if I don’t have to,” Georgie said over her shoulder, toeing off her shoes as soon as she walked through the door—it would be very annoying if they managed to successfully break into and search a house, but were eventually discovered because of a muddy footprint on a rug.
“I do love watching a competent woman at work, though,” Sebastian said with a sad shake of his head, removing his own shoes; something about the sight of him in his stocking feet made him look oddly vulnerable, as if he were incomplete if he were not the fully, immaculately dressed Sebastian Fletcher-Ford that she had come to know.
“Well, perhaps you can get your thrills from watching me rummage through some drawers,” she said, and couldn’t prevent her mouth from curving into a smile when he laughed.
The Penbakers’ house was small compared to Radcliffe Hall, but still fairly spacious for a childless couple—two bedrooms, plus a third, small room that it appeared Mr. Penbaker had used as a study. Every room in the house was clean to an almost obsessive degree, and Georgie’s heart sank; if Mrs. Penbaker were this meticulously tidy, what were the odds that shewould have left any potentially incriminating evidence lying about? Whereas Radcliffe Hall, despite Mrs. Fawcett’s best efforts, was such a messy shambles that there could be a bloody knife left under a pile of shoes or a stack of post, and it might go unnoticed for weeks.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” Sebastian asked as they entered the sitting room.
“I don’t know,” Georgie admitted. “Just anything that might seem… unusual.” This was, she realized, unhelpfully vague, but the truth was that she wasn’t certain what she was looking for—just that she’d know it when she saw it. Hopefully.
The next half hour taught Georgie a valuable lesson: Detective work could be veryboring.
“At least now I know that Mr. Penbaker preferred coffee to tea,” Georgie said ten minutes later as they were rummaging around in the study. She brandished a grocery list, the items carefully scratched out.
“And that he spent a shocking amount on footwear,” Sebastian said, staring down at a bill.
“A harrowing claim indeed, coming from you.”
Sebastian grinned at her. “I think you like my shoes.”
“Do I?” Georgie tried to sound waspish but wasn’t sure she’d managed it.
“No woman can remain unmoved in the face of tassels.” He waved his foot at her, seeming to only belatedly realize that he was in his socks. His face fell.
“I’ll take your word for it,” Georgie said, turning back to the desk.
A few minutes later, just as Georgie was ready to concludethat there was nothing of interest here and suggest they move upstairs to search the bedrooms, Sebastian frowned.
“Where’s the typewriter?”
Georgie blinked, looking back at the desk, which was organized within an inch of its life and—indeed—featured no typewriter.
“Maybe he didn’t have one at home?” she suggested. “Surely there was one at the village council office that he could use for official council business.”
“No, I think he must have—I found a spool of replacement ribbon in one of the drawers. And Miss Halifax mentioned that he was writing a novel, didn’t she? Presumably he’d need a typewriter for that.” Sebastian’s frown deepened.
Georgie was feeling a bit impatient. “Perhaps the typewriter is being repaired or—I don’t know. Are you ready to search upstairs?”
“All right,” Sebastian said, still looking troubled; this was an uncommon expression for his face, and did not suit him.
They made their way up the narrow staircase and emerged into a hallway featuring a number of landscape portraits depicting flocks of fluffy sheep. Entering the first of the two bedrooms, Georgie could tell immediately that this was the spare room; it had the slightly unlived-in feeling of guest rooms everywhere. A double bed with a simple white quilt occupied one wall; against another wall, a tall bookshelf groaned with leatherbound tomes (though Georgie could not help but notice that none of the spines appeared to have been broken), and a wooden dresser with a mirror above it was situated directly opposite the bed. There was a pretty blue-and-white rugon the floor, which looked to have been recently swept. What immediately caught Georgie’s attention, however, was a large wooden crate on the floor, into which Mrs. Penbaker appeared to have been packing a variety of seemingly unrelated items. There were manila envelopes stuffed to the brim with paperwork, various notebooks half filled with scribbles, but no sign of a typewriter.
Georgie sank to her knees, reaching for some of the paperwork, while Sebastian walked slowly around the room, opening and shutting drawers, sliding books off the shelf. At last, he eased himself onto his stomach, looking under the bed; Georgie glanced up at him, about to ask what he was doing, when he uttered a triumphant “Aha!” and reached forward. A few moments later, he pulled something from beneath the bed—a lumpy shape concealed in a tightly knotted burlap sack.
“What on earth is that?” she asked as he deposited the bag on the floor a few inches from her hip. Crouching down next to her, he worked away at the thrice-tied knot on the sack before finally loosening it. After a moment, he carefully lifted out a typewriter. He assessed it with an experienced eye. “An Imperial,” he said approvingly. “It’s clearly seen some wear, too.” He gestured at the faded letters on some of the keys. “I wonder why she hid it.”
