The Newmarket office was of this sort, Charles saw, as he looked around. The room was dark, but enough light filtered through the draperies over the front window to see that it was carpeted and furnished as a gentleman’s club, with large sofas and stuffed chairs, elegant mahogany breakfronts and bookcases, tables and chairs for gaming and other tables and chairs for catered meals. The walls were hung with gilt-framed paintings of horses and various landscapes and portraits, the high ceiling sparkled with crystal chandeliers, and the lingering odor of cigar smoke hung on the air. The whole interior spoke of gentlemanly leisure and luxury and good taste. Whatever the actual condition of his financial affairs, Mr. Alfred Day had at least succeeded in making a great show of success.

But the room was empty, and Charles could see there was nothing more to be learned beyond the general impression. Back in the hall, he tapped on the door marked Office. Hearing nothing, he opened it.

This room was far more utilitarian than the club room in the front. There was a large blackboard on one wall, scrawled with hierglyphics that Charles could not read; the other walls were papered with calendars of sporting events and announcements of various kinds. There was a desk, a wooden cabinet, and bookcase.

But these things were not what caught and held Charles’s attention. It was the litter of papers on the floor; the desk and cabinet drawers pulled out, and spilled; the books torn and tossed; the two overturned chairs; and the general chaos that had resulted from a violent and haphazard ransacking by someone who was bent on destruction.

Behind Charles, Jack Murray made a low, growling noise.

“Yes,” Charles said without turning. “It appears that someone was here before us.”

“D’you suppose Sobersides is up there?” Murray asked. He nodded toward a steep, open flight of stairs, almost like a ladder, at the back of the room. “Shall I have a quick look, sir? He might be dead.”

“He might be alive,” Charles said, “and armed. We’ll both go.” Carrying his stick, he climbed the stairs. At the top, he put his hat on the stick and lifted it just above the level of the opening in the floor. When nothing happened, he withdrew his hat and climbed up onto the second floor, which proved to be an open loft, with windows at either end.

There was no need for caution, he saw immediately, for the loft room had no human occupant, alive or dead. There was a bed in one corner, the covers flung back, and a square deal table by one window, in the center of which stood an unlit paraffin lamp with a dirty chimney. On the table were the remains of a shepherd’s pie and an empty bottle of ale.

Murray went to a wooden dresser and pulled open the drawers, revealing a jumble of shirts and stockings and underclothing, then to a makeshift corner closet, where he jerked aside the hanging sheet to reveal a well-worn black coat and two pairs of black trousers. An empty satchel and a pair of Wellingtons sat beneath.

“Doesn’t look like he took his clothes,” Murray remarked. “Either he left in a hurry, or he means to come back.”

Back downstairs, Charles poked around in the litter of papers and torn books. There was a small safe in the corner, gaping open. If it had once contained ledger books or the records of betting transactions, they had vanished.

Murray looked around with a frown. “I’d say, sir, that we’re left with a question or two. D’you suppose Badger was killed because he failed to pay up on a bet?”

“It’s possible,” Charles said. “It’s equally possible that he was killed because he wanted to collect. But I doubt if we’ll find any answers here.” He took out his watch. “I’m off to visit the doctor who has possession of Badger’s body. Why don’t you see what you can learn about Sobersides, and where he might have gone? Baggs, too-we’ll certainly want to have a word with him. And anything you might discover about how our victim spent his evening will no doubt be useful. I suppose we shall want to interview the widow.”

Murray nodded, agreeing. “I doubt if she knew much about his business, though. Women don’t, as a rule.”

Charles glanced at his watch. “Shall we say two o’clock, then? At the pub across from the clock tower?”

“Two o’clock,” Murray said. He was almost smiling. “Yes, sir.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

For Amelia, the occasions when Lady Charles went visiting were almost like a holiday. This morning, for instance, she had only to fetch tea and the Times upstairs, assist with her mistress’s toilette, and prepare the other outfits to be worn that day-an easy matter, since her ladyship liked to dress in the morning and change only for tea and dinner if necessary-two or at the most three changes of costume, rather than the four or five changes to which other ladies were accustomed. Once these slight chores were finished, Amelia might do as she liked until required to help her mistress bathe and dress.

After the servants’ supper the evening before, Amelia had chatted with Margaret until Mrs. Langtry rang and Margaret scurried upstairs to help her mistress dress for dinner at the Rothschilds’. Then Lady Charles left for the evening. With her ladyship’s permission, Amelia locked the bedroom door and spent the best part of an hour luxuriating in a hot bath, feeling like the Queen herself, then went off to her own tiny cubicle to read.

Amelia had grown quite proficient at reading in the last several years. Her ladyship encouraged all the servants at Bishop’s Keep to read in their spare hours, even providing newspapers and books-and not religious literature, either, as did Lady Kennilworth, Amelia’s cousin’s employer, who had taught her staff to read so that they could study the gospel tracts she pressed on them. No, the books Lady Charles left on the shelf in the servants’ hall were about faraway places and exotic customs, and sometimes even novels, a few of which her ladyship had actually written herself, under the name of Beryl Bardwell. When it was first whispered that Lady Charles indeed was Beryl Bardwell, the knowledge had caused a great stir in Dedham, and some concern among the servants who had early on discovered the author’s true identity and guarded it carefully. It was now a matter of pride, however, because Beryl Bardwell had actually become quite famous, and Lady Charles was the only authoress that any of them had ever known.

But Amelia had not been reading one of her mistress’s fictions last night. She had, instead, shed many tears over the final moving chapters of George Moore’s novel, EstherWaters. As a young woman, the heroine, Esther, worked in a household entirely given over to racing. Seduced and abandoned, she was forced to go to London to give birth and courageously raised her son alone, eventually marrying the child’s father. He had become a bookmaker and was sent to prison when he was convicted of taking wagers in his pub, leaving Esther alone once more. Esther’s plight reawakened in Amelia her unhappiness about her husband’s betting. For it wasn’t just the crown Lawrence had laid and lost on Gladiator at the Derby; he fancied himself a betting man, and Amelia sighed to think of the several lost crowns that might have otherwise gone to pay for Baby’s boots.