Nelson squished in beside her to get a good look at the sheaves of parchment, almost breathless with excitement as she read out the details as they unravelled. Squinting along at the hard-to-read handwriting, he pulled a disgusted face at the footman’s sordid secret, as Eloquence faltered for a moment.

The footman had done it to shut him up. He stepped back a pace in the revelation of it, his imagination repainting the picture of the bloodied candlestick and the body they’d learned of in this new light. And to think this had happened in their house!

(He would never admit it, but it did seem like fodder for nightmares, waking up in the middle of the night to find the shadow of the footman looming over him with a candlestick in hand like a beater’s bat.)

He nudged his sister thoughtfully in the arm to say huh, you’re not a bad detective, glancing at the missing paper again and wondering what had happened to Mr. Belflor the footman after disposing of his blackmailer. He tapped the footman’s name on the paper to ask it. If the incriminating page had stayed hidden for so long, had he weaseled his way out of the circumstances, and gotten away without being apprehended?

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