Page 18 of A Treacherous Treasure

Rebecca relieved the servant who had been keeping vigil beside Arthur’s body. The poor girl might have sat there all night and Mrs. Heywood would have still expected her to carry out her full duties the next day. For that reason, Rebecca was glad to be able to sit with the body tonight.

And yet, she was contemplating doing something no relative of the deceased should ever do, which was to leave the body alone while she went to search Arthur’s grandfather’s library.

It was almost a superstition, this sitting with a dead body at all times until burial. Rebecca even wondered if she’d be able to leave it. But the ritual had arisen from the very real possibility that the deceased was not dead at all, but only in a deep sleep, and keeping vigil could prevent them from being buried alive.

When Rebecca was sure no one was stirring about the house this late, she got up and stared down at Arthur where he lay inside the black velvet-covered coffin. He was not covered in the shroud as of yet, so his face was fully visible. His body had been washed and dressed by two of the menservants, one of whom Mrs. Heywood was particularly fond of, and she had insisted that he be put in charge of preparing the body.

No amount of preparation could disguise the hole in Arthur’s forehead where the bullet had entered. And there was certainly no way that Arthur was only in a deep sleep, as she’d heard the servants speak of the much larger hole in the back of his head where the bullet went out.

No, it was safe to leave his body alone.

Carrying a single candle in a candlestick, Rebecca slipped from the drawing room. She went up one flight of stairs and down the hall until she could see that the crack under her mother-in-law’s door was dark.

She walked as soundlessly as possible in her thin slippers back down the stairs to the library. The door was closed. She half expected it to be locked, but when she turned the knob, it opened.

Rebecca went inside and closed the door most of the way, leaving a small crack. She still felt raw from everything that had happened, and leaving it partially open made her feel safer.

She glanced out the window, which was in the direction of where Thomas Westbrook would be watching for any digging that might be taking place.

The moon was full and was shining out of a mostly clear sky. Rebecca found herself listening for the sound of a gunshot, fearing Thomas would be shot as her husband had been.

Rebecca had liked coming into this room when she and Arthur were first married, but only to choose a book from the shelves. One day when she had been perusing the shelves, she looked up to find Mrs. Heywood standing in the open doorway staring at her. The look on her face was so disapproving, Rebecca instantly felt as if she was doing something wrong.

“What are you doing in here?” Mrs. Heywood asked.

“I was looking for a book.”

“A book?” She looked as if Rebecca had said she was looking for a scorpion. She had never seen her mother-in-law with a book in her hands.

There was an awkward silence and then she said, “I was looking for a book to read while I—”

“I had an aunt who read books constantly,” Mrs. Heywood interrupted her. “She died a spinster, living off the charity of her siblings. I don’t suppose that will happen to you, now that you’ve married my son.” She raised her head so that she was looking down her nose at Rebecca. “This was Arthur’s grandfather’s favorite room. See that you don’t disturb anything.”

“Of course. I was only looking at the books.” Feeling like a scolded child, Rebecca had taken her book and fled the room.

Remembering that encounter and how it had made her feel, Rebecca’s blood began to boil, sending heat up her neck and into her face. If she could do it over again, she would tell Mrs. Heywood that she had every right to be in any room of the house that she pleased, and no one could make her feel as if she was some kind of intruder. This was her home just as much as it was anyone else’s. And now it was solely hers.

She wouldn’t dwell on that. She needed to focus on finding something about that silly treasure for which Arthur had been murdered, and for which she very nearly had been killed. Perhaps she would even discover that the treasure did not exist. Or that Arthur’s grandfather had spent it all building this house.

She started with the old desk that was sitting by the window, which had no shutters or curtains. As she went toward it, she only hoped no one was outside, or they would see her candle, and her in its light, snooping through someone’s things who had been long dead.

She set her candle on the desk, which was a massive wooden thing full of drawers and cupboard doors, not fancy or decorated, but heavy and spacious. She opened a drawer and pulled out its contents, spreading the papers on the desk, along with a couple of old quill pens and an inkwell.

Only interested in the papers, she put the pens and inkwell back in the drawer and bent over the papers, holding them close to the candle.

One was a letter from his son. She perused it quickly but there was nothing of interest in it. Another appeared to be a list of items to bring back from the shops in London. A third was a letter that was still sealed, which had apparently gone unsent for many years, as the paper was yellowed. The address on the outside was to an M. Pipken in London.

Who was M. Pipken, and why did Arthur’s grandfather never send the letter?

Rebecca stared at the wax seal. She wanted desperately to open it and read it, but she just couldn’t bring herself to break the seal. It was someone else’s letter, after all, and if she did open it, anyone in future might see what she had done.

But they would not knowshehad opened it. And there was no one alive to care, besides Mrs. Heywood.

She held it a moment longer, then put it back in the drawer.

The rest of the papers were equally as uninteresting as the shopping list and the letter from his son, so she put the papers back and closed the drawer, leaving the sealed letter on top.

She opened a cupboard door that looked large enough to hold three cigar boxes stacked on top of each other. But inside was only a small snuffbox sitting by itself.