Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity and the Duke

“ Rats ,” she hissed. Her heart began to thud and her knees turned to water and Derek’s strong arms were all that kept her from fleeing headlong down the stairs.

“No, no, no,” he whispered urgently, his breath warm on her face. “Computers.”

“Wh-what?” Emma slowly turned her head to peer again into the room. Raising a hand to straighten her glasses, she saw that the red and orange pinpricks punctuating the darkness weren’t beady rodent eyes, but the telltale lights of a bank of electronic equipment. Beyond the thunder of her pounding heart, she heard the steady hum of computers at work, a sound she’d heard every day for the past twenty years. Limp with relief, she laid her cheek on Derek’s chest and murmured, “Sorry.”

“No need for that,” Derek soothed, his hand floating lightly through her hair. “Be still a moment, get your bearings.”

A strange, halting note in Derek’s voice made Emma tremble. Raising her face to his, she saw him wince, and it was only then that she realized she’d jammed both his flashlight and hers directly into his rib cage.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry, Derek,” she said, but though she tried to pull away, he only drew her nearer, and the kiss, when it came, was so sweet and so surprising that she forgot about the flashlights altogether.

Derek remembered, fortunately, and when at last they paused to take a breath, he caught both flashlights neatly before they clattered down the stairs. As Emma’s senses swam back into focus, she murmured muzzily, “We shouldn’t, Derek, we really shouldn’t.”

“Quite right,” he breathed, burying his face in her hair. “Not here, at any rate. You’ll break both our necks. What do you wash your hair in, Emma? Incense?” When Emma made no answer, he wrapped his arms around her and closed his eyes. “I know,” he whispered. “Not the right time or place. May never be, for us. I never expected to find you, and I know you weren’t looking for me.”

“It could never work,” said Emma.

Derek took a deep breath, then blew it out in a long sigh of resignation. He straightened, and looked down at Emma. “I know,” he said softly. “It’s just a dream.”

“Just a dream,” Emma murmured. She pulled away, touched a finger to her glasses, then turned unsteadily toward the colored lights. “Let’s take a look.”

The room they entered was unlike any Emma had seen in Penford Hall. Not a single painting hung on the stark white walls, no carpet covered the tiled floor, and although the furnishings were expensive and extremely well made, they weren’t priceless antiques. As her flashlight glided over computers, printers, fax machines, photocopiers, and telephones, Emma felt as though she’d stepped into the nerve center of a modem office building.

“Oh my,” she breathed, as the beam of her flashlight came to rest on a sleek black computer at the center of the room. She approached it slowly and rested one hand on the monitor, watching in awe as numbers, graphs, and complicated charts scrolled rapidly across the divided screen.

“What is it?” Derek whispered.

“A Series Ten,” Emma replied. “I’ve read about it, but I’ve never gotten my hands on one before.”

“Latest thing?” They stood a little ways apart, and carefully avoided each other’s eyes. Emma’s voice was too businesslike, Derek’s too chipper, and they both spoke much too quickly.

Emma nodded. “It’s based on a new, high-performance chip. Five times the speed, more capacity than you can imagine.”

“What’s it doing?”

“Monitoring ongoing transactions.” Emma studied the screens. “Looks financial to me. Money transfers. Deutsche marks, pounds, Swiss francs, yen.” She frowned. “Wait a minute. There should be ...” Shining her light around the room, Emma spotted a wall-mounted rack covered with wires. “I thought so. High-speed data lines. He’d need them to keep current with international markets.” She bit her lip, perplexed, then gestured for Derek to return to the spiral staircase. When the door was safely shut, she asked, “Why would Grayson need that kind of setup? It’s powerful enough to run a fair-sized corporation.”

“Why don’t you ask the machine?”

Emma shook her head. “Too risky. It’ll report any interruptions in its automatic functions. And I think it’s safe to assume that Grayson’s done what he could to protect his data. We’d need a password, maybe even a series of passwords, to do anything at all.”

Derek nodded thoughtfully. “Does this prove that Grayson could’ve fiddled Lex’s accounts?”

“All it proves is that he knows a lot about computers. What it suggests is that, if Lex’s accounts were kept electronically, Grayson could’ve made them dance. Oh, damn.” Emma rattled her flashlight, which was beginning to fade. “Don’t suppose you have an extra set of batteries?”

“Sorry.” Derek switched off her flashlight and hung it on his belt. “Take mine. It’s not much better, but it’ll last long enough to get us where we’re going. No need to turn it off. The next stop on our tour is a bedroom, but it is definitely unoccupied.”

A dozen steps took them to another long, low corridor that led away from the silent heart of the hall to a second door, identical to the first. Again Derek braced himself to tug on the iron ring, and when the door swung open this time, Emma recoiled from the howl of the wind. It seemed deafening after the stillness of the staircase.

“Good Lord,” said Derek. “Hope the Tregallis boys’ boat is safely into port. Not a night to be out fishing.”

“I hope Bantry’s harvested the runner beans,” said Emma. “That wind will strip the arbor bare.” She peered into the room, but her view was blocked by some kind of heavy fabric. “A tapestry?” she asked. She lifted the edge of the cloth, then ducked under it. Closing the wooden door behind him, Derek ducked under the tapestry after her.

There was nothing stark or modern about this room. It was sumptuous, crammed with furniture that looked as though it had been there for a very long time. The canopied bed was hung with richly embroidered black satin curtains, and a pair of caryatids held up the marble mantelpiece. The painting on the ceiling featured a dozen languid, buxom beauties whose thin gowns left little to the imagination. They reclined on facing couches, waited on by plump cupids who flitted through a pristine blue sky.

A pair of gold brocade chairs faced the hearth, and four dainty green velvet chairs were grouped around a gaming table. A green velvet divan sat before the draped windows between a pair of ornately carved end tables, and there was a low, cushioned bench at the foot of the bed.

A dizzying array of objects crowded every table and shelf: vases, candlesticks, paperweights, porcelain figurines, lacquered boxes, photographs in silver frames. Paintings large and small covered the walls, each featuring a different garden scene. Emma turned eagerly to Derek, then lowered her eyes and tried to sound casual. “Is this Grandmother’s room?”

Derek nodded. He crossed to open the drapes, then stood with his back toward Emma, as though mesmerized by the intermittent flashes of lightning. “I’ve exceeded my brief by coming here,” he admitted. “Grayson asked me expressly to leave her room alone.”

“Isn’t it the most logical place to look for the lantern?” Emma asked.

“Grayson assures me that they’ve searched it thoroughly. It’s clean, as far as the lantern is concerned.” He glanced over his shoulder with an unexpected twinkle in his eye.

Emma was unable to suppress her excitement. “Come on, Derek, show me.”

“Don’t suppose I should take such pleasure in this,” he said, crossing from the windows to stand before a lute-strumming marble angel perched upon a marble pedestal, “but it’s really quite wonderful. Watch.” He grasped the angel’s head and tilted it forward, and the wall behind the pedestal swung away into darkness.