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stacked there.
Lifting one out, he opened it and looked at the contents. Paintings
and pencil drawings of naked ladies in very naughty poses. Charlie
gave the body on the floor a wry look. ‘What a rascally
fellow.’
    ‘What did you discover?’
    ‘Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.’ Replacing the
folders, he shut the drawer hastily. Such pictures were not the
kind he wanted to be bandied about in front of genteel ladies.
    ‘You’re Mr. Lampforth, are you not?’
    ‘I am indeed. Charles Lampforth at your
service. Have we met?’ He didn’t think they could have for surely
he would have remembered. She was a pretty little thing even if she
did have a few stray freckles across her small nose and not a great
deal of figure to be seen beneath the costume she was wearing.
    ‘No, but my aunt has pointed out any
unmarried males under the age of five and forty who have a
reasonable fortune and most of their faculties.’
    ‘Good to know that I qualify. May I be so
bold as to ask your name? I mean, I know it is not a formal
introduction or anything but under the cir –’
    ‘Oh!’
    ‘What?’ he demanded quickly. ‘What is
it?’
    ‘Can you come and help me lift this picture
down?’
    Charlie hurried across and together, they
lifted down a large oil of an overblown female in Grecian costume
nursing a bunch of grapes while she fondled the head of a
particularly ugly dog. Hidden behind this was a hinged door that
had been cunningly fitted into the wall.
    ‘There you are then,’ his companion
breathed.
    ‘Good work,’ Charlie said approvingly. He
tried the handle. It came as no surprise that it was locked. ‘Where
do you suppose he keeps the key?’
    ‘I suppose the safest place would be on his
person.’
    They both turned to regard the body of Lord
Sutton, still lying exactly as he must have fallen in the middle of
the rug. It would have been a miracle – and rather a disturbing one
at that – if he had changed position.
    ‘Why do you suppose there is a rose?’ she
said musingly. ‘It seems such an odd thing to see beside… well,
beside that.’
    ‘I have no idea. Perhaps the fellow enjoyed
horticulture.’ Charlie hesitated for a moment more, then sighed. ‘I
suppose I’ll have to go through his pockets.’
    ‘Try his fob chain. A great many men keep
more than their fobs on it.’
    ‘Good idea.’ He had taken two steps forward
when a voice spoke from the doorway, sounding both flabbergasted
and – paradoxically – extremely annoyed.
    ‘What the devil is going on in here?’
    Charlie and his companion froze in place and
looked to the latest interloper in what was fast becoming a crowd
scene.
     
    Aubrey had not had one of his better
days.
    Incensed at discovering that Lord Sutton had
the nerve to try and blackmail his sister-in-law, he had left the
house in a rather thunderous state of mind, which stood him in good
stead when he had taken his lesson with Jackson who went so far as
to commend the viscount on his wicked right hook. Aubrey suspected
his right hook had more to do with temper than skill but had
thanked the man anyway.
    After sparring, he went in search of Sutton,
determined to have it out with him. He was increasingly inclined to
give him a taste of that same right hook for if ever a man needed
to be thrashed, Aubrey had come to believe that man was Arthur
Sutton. Unfortunately, his search seemed destined to fail. The
fellow wasn’t at his usual haunts; not his club, not promenading on
Bond Street, not tooling around in that ridiculously showy phaeton
that he fancied himself in so much as he went through Hyde Park,
trying to impress females that should have more sense.
    Aubrey, determined to have words, had called
around to Hill Street after luncheon, only to find his lordship
out. As the day wore on, his patience had worn thinner and by
evening, he was a bundle of unaccustomed frustration. Aubrey liked
to go about life with an untroubled outlook and could usually
manage this without any