Chapter 3 - THE LEDGER BENEATH THE FLOORBOARDS
Clara returned to her room after midnight.
The servants' wing was quiet.
She locked her door.
Then opened the battered wooden box beneath her bed.
Inside were the few possessions her mother had left behind.
A recipe book.
A silver thimble.
Three photographs.
And a small brass key.
Joanne had worn the key on a chain beneath her clothes for as long as Clara could remember.
After her death, Clara had found it wrapped in a handkerchief.
There was no label.
No explanation.
Only a number engraved along the side.
17.
Clara had spent two years trying to discover what it opened.
Now, for the first time, she wondered whether the answer was somewhere inside the Costello estate.
***
At breakfast, Damian did something unprecedented.
He entered the servants' dining room.
Every conversation stopped.
Gerard nearly dropped his coffee.
Damian looked at Clara.
“May I speak with you?”
She stood.
“About my mother?”
“Yes.”
Clara followed him into the corridor.
He handed her a folder.
Inside were copies of old employment records.
Joanne Hughes.
Hired in 1998.
Dismissed in 2006.
Reason: theft.
But the dismissal form had never been signed by Joanne.
Clara studied it.
“My mother would never have stolen anything.”
“I believe you.”
She looked up.
Damian continued.
“The records don't support the accusation.”
Clara felt tears rise.
For twenty years, her mother had carried the shame of a crime she hadn't committed.
Now a man she'd feared for eleven months was telling her the accusation might have been false.
She swallowed.
“What happened to her?”
Damian's expression darkened.
“I found something else.”
He opened the folder.
A photograph.
The Costello estate's former chief accountant, Samuel Voss.
Clara recognized him immediately.
Not from the house.
From her mother's old photographs.
He stood beside Joanne outside a bakery in Albany.
The photograph was dated three months before Joanne's death.
Clara stared.
“He knew where she was.”
Damian nodded.
“Yes.”
“Did he come to see her?”
“Apparently.”
Clara felt cold.
“Why?”
Damian looked at her.
“That's what we need to find out.”
***
That afternoon, Clara returned to the old kitchen.
It had been renovated twice since Joanne worked there.
But one section remained unchanged.
The pantry.
The narrow room with stone floors and oak shelves.
Her mother had described it often.
She'd said the pantry had a loose floorboard near the back wall.
A place where she used to hide birthday gifts for Damian.
Clara knelt.
Ran her fingers along the boards.
Found one that shifted.
Her heart accelerated.
She lifted it.
Beneath was a shallow compartment.
Empty.
Except for a folded scrap of paper.
Clara opened it.
A single sentence.
If they come for the book, remember the seventeenth door.
She stared.
Seventeenth.
The number on the key.
Footsteps sounded behind her.
Clara turned.
Victoria stood in the doorway.
May you like
Her expression was cold.
“What exactly are you looking for?”
