The Elizabeth Papers (13 page)

Around the mother, sat the daughters, and it was obvious that they must have individually sat for the artist as each looked quite different. Evie checked the note Charlie had given her. They were in age order in a semicircle around Elizabeth. Anne was tall and dark and wore a serious expression. Emma was round-faced and played a harpsichord. Frances was fair and, unlike the rest of the family, had blue eyes. Beatrice was curly haired and sat beside a small, black dog. Finally, there sat Victoria in the far right of the picture, holding a finely dressed doll in her small, plump hands. Of all the girls, she looked the most like her mother. Her pale skin was luminous, and her thick, wavy hair hung over one shoulder. She cannot have been older than five when the likeness was painted, and although she was dressed in a child’s clothes, there was an air of knowingness about her. Her shoulders were fine and straight, her limbs quite long and slim, her eyes laughing, confident, and almost challenging. Evie couldn’t place the room they were in. It was not the drawing room, but it was a large and richly furnished space, and the windows looked to give out onto the garden at the back of the house towards the lake. Charlie advanced behind her and stared up at the canvas.

“You like it?”

“I love it. It’s beautiful. I never expected it to be like this—to be so distinctive. I thought it would be like those dry, old group portraits. You know: the ones in the National Gallery that nobody ever looks at where all the faces are the same and the eyes look like marbles. This is completely different. It is so alive. You can feel them. It’s like they are about to get down from the wall and pour themselves tea. Do you know what I mean?”

She looked at him, and he nodded.

“I agree that it’s lovely…she’s lovely,” he said looking at Elizabeth Darcy’s face and letting her eyes lock with his. “Right. So let’s start looking around in here. There are a lot of books with blank spines. We need to check what is inside them—and behind as well because stuff could be easily hidden at the back of the shelves. You can discount anything that is typed; what we are looking for is handwritten.”

Evie stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending. She had almost forgotten why they were there. She soon recovered her memory, and fuelled with tiny cups of tea, they began the search, each at one end of the room. Great clouds of dust brushed their faces as they upset books that may never have been moved. Drawers were pulled out and rummaged through and cabinets opened, and Evie found herself crouched on the grate, feeling around the tiles. Every corner was breathlessly investigated, and Evie’s heart was in her mouth. Would they be discovered? Would they strike lucky? What were they even looking for? In the end, it was all for nothing. If Elizabeth Darcy’s lost document was in the house, it was not in that room.

Later, supper passed contentedly. They sat at one end of the vast dining table, the four of them dwarfed by their surroundings and the great table like an ocean between them. It was obvious that James and Honoria enjoyed having guests to entertain, and as the light slipped from the sky, they ate salmon, drank wine, and talked about the house and its history. They had, it turned out, been married for fifty years and had two sons and grandchildren who visited in fine weather.

“Fifty years? That is quite some achievement, Mrs. Darcy,” said Charlie.

“Yes, fifty years indeed. We were married in Lambton Church. You probably passed it on your way in. Lovely spire. And the children and grandchildren were christened there as well. Of course, in the past, they would have been done in the chapel, but it was decommissioned during the war, and my husband’s father didn’t apply to renew the licence after that. Even before then, it had fallen into almost complete disuse. It’s a bit of a shell now.”

Charlie became visibly more alert.

“There’s a chapel?”

“Yes, of course. All of the Darcy girls you see in your painting would have been christened and probably married in there. It was still in use then for special occasions. It’s a bit of a shame, but really, there are no private chapels left in England. They are quite a thing of the past, even in grand houses. There is simply no call for them.”

“So what happens in the Pemberley chapel now?”

“Nothing, Mr. Haywood. I’m afraid it’s rather mothballed. I know”—she stood, slapping her napkin down on the table, and it occurred to Charlie that she may have had too much to drink—“I’ll give you the guided tour now. You will be all right in here, won’t you, James darling?” She stroked her husband’s shoulder, and he nodded.

In no time at all, they were bombing down draughty corridors, straining to keep up with the old lady. Honoria had promised Evie that they didn’t dress for dinner, but she had changed into a fresh blouse, and Evie noticed now that her flats had been replaced by an elegant pair of blue courts that presently clipped along the floor ahead of them. Not quite knowing the form and not wishing to do the wrong thing, Evie had put on the linen dress she wore to her exhibition. The chilly air of the windowless corridors deep in the heart of Pemberley cooled her bare legs as she scampered to keep up. When they arrived at the mahogany double doors, Evie assumed they were about to give on to another corridor, but no. Honoria flung them open, reached inside for a switch, and there before them was illuminated the dried out, unvisited former glories of the Pemberley chapel.

“I’ll get all the lights on for you—just a minute,” muttered Honoria, her heels dragging on the floor and her arms searching behind a great velvet curtain for switches. “There…” she said as the yellow light fell on them, illuminating it in sections like the stage of a theatre.

It smelt like a place that nobody went, and the air inside was cold, damp, and thick with unknowns. Wooden pews sat expectantly and looked empty and sad. The altar had no cloth, and the candlesticks had no candles, albeit that they were spattered with wax, the telltale signs of former life. Up the walls climbed great marble reliefs, figures sporting with animals entangled with plants like an allegory of creation. The roof was domed and beamed with colourful lettering and images of Christ and the apostles. The sound of their feet moving around echoed in the great, empty space.

“Mrs. Darcy, this is amazing,” said Charlie, eyes turned to the ceiling in wonder.

“Isn’t it? Nobody comes in here now, which is awfully sad. James and I go for our Sunday service in the village, and the children aren’t interested really. So there you are.”

When all the lights were on and the dust had settled around them, Honoria begun cantering around, pointing out plaques and effigies and polishing the lectern with the edge of her silk scarf.

“The rood screen, you know, is pre-Reformation! How about that?”

Evie wondered what a rood screen was and, not for the first time, was grateful for Charlie.

“It’s remarkable, Mrs. Darcy. There can’t be many of those left in England. And it is in very good condition too. Thank you for letting us see it. It’s a real privilege.”

“Oh, you’re welcome, Mr. Haywood. Whatever is the point in having such a dreadful, old mausoleum if we don’t occasionally let in the light?”

Chapter 19

April 3, 1821, Pemberley

It is that part of the morning that feels like night, and I am at my desk in my outside cloak. My hand shakes slightly as a write, and I can hardly credit that events have turned out as they have. Beyond the wall, I hear Fitzwilliam’s voice rumbling away indistinctly to his valet, no doubt with some last-minute instructions, some explanation of sorts. Will it be believed, I wonder? What shall be said of us in our absence, and how shall the speed of our departure be accounted for? Some hours ago while I paced the room, Fitzwilliam sat in this seat and wrote to Galbraith with the basic facts of the matter and a promise of more detail later.

“We must have somebody in our confidence, Elizabeth.”

“But can we trust him?”

“Of course. I would not tell him if I did not know that he could be trusted.”

I knew this to be true and slowly exhaled. I had a notion that we should tell Georgiana, but my husband would not hear of it. He had reasoned that, although she would never mean to betray us, she would have to tell Lord Avery, and her sweetness was so great that one day she, inadvertently, may let down her guard. Thus, it was decided that between us, Lydia, Galbraith, and Hannah there would be fixed a ring of silence, never to be broken. That was some hours ago in the pitch of a night in which neither of us slept.

Presently, Hannah, who has also gone without sleep, has entered the room and is collecting underskirts into a trunk. She has packed, with her usual foresight and good sense, only plain, warm, and serviceable clothes. This is not a time for finery; this is not a time for show. In a moment, I shall have to give her this book. It shall be placed in the trunk and unpacked I know not where.

“Hannah, are you going to be warm enough in that cloak?”

“I’m sure I shall, madam. Thank you.”

I considered it for a moment and tried to focus on her slim figure in the half-light.

“No, we have no idea of the conditions, and I fear that we may be treated to storms and I know not what. You shall take my old, green cloak. You know—the one I had made the first winter I was married?”

“That is very generous, madam, and unnecessary, I’m sure.”

“Nonsense, Hannah, take it. It is thicker than yours, and the lining is very warm. I cannot have you catching a chill.”

She smiled, bobbed a curtsy, and left me to myself. The sounds of the house creaking to life began to moan around me. I heard a door opening down the corridor and the sound of clanging pales in the hall beneath. It does not escape me that I would usually be sleeping in great comfort while a world of people work around me. At some point, and soon, I must put down my pen and seek out my sister. What sort of condition shall she be in this morning, I wonder? I cannot credit that she has stolen more than a wink of sleep, and although it cannot be good for her to undertake the journey before us, there is nothing else for it.

The connecting door opens, and Fitzwilliam stands before me without his jacket. Shadows fall across his handsome face, and he smiles slightly, maybe not as much as I would like.

“Are you ready, Elizabeth?”

I nodded, and together we walked out of my chamber down the carpeted corridor towards the night nursery. The door eased open without a sound, and Nanny, who sleeps on a small bed against the wall, startled awake and sat up. In the darkness, I felt my way towards her and touched my hand to her bed-warm shoulder as I spoke in a whisper.

“Shh. Do not trouble yourself, Nanny. There is no need to get up. I am sorry to disturb you thus, but Mr. Darcy and I have to go away. I am afraid I do not know how long we shall be gone, but it may be some months hence. I shall write often, and we shall return as soon as we can. Everything you need here shall be provided in our absence.”

The poor lady was plainly astonished, and I squeezed her arm in what I hope was a friendly and confiding manner. My soul screamed out for this dreadful matter to be concluded, but I know that it cannot be hurried. It will move at its own pace like the seasons of the year, and neither raucous noise nor quiet prayer shall speed it.

“Mr. Darcy and I just wanted to see the children before we left. We shall not wake them, and if you do not mind my husband’s presence for a moment, there is no need for you to get up.”

She nodded, blinked, and looked utterly bewildered. With that, I beckoned Fitzwilliam into the room, and together we looked at Beatrice and Frances in their cots, everything grey in the half dark. To see their tiny blanket-clad bodies shook the inside of me, and I began to feel unsteady. At that moment, his warm hand came around my waist, and I leaned forward. Holding my stray hair away, I touched an almost imperceptible kiss to each of their plump cheeks, and we left to visit Emma and Anne in their respective, adjoining bedrooms. Emma had thrown off a part of her blanket, and I tucked it about her narrow shoulders, stroking her hair—chestnut brown. In the next room, Anne stirred when I bent down to kiss her, and I froze in fear that she may wake and be distressed by our unaccustomed presence at such an hour. Her profile against the white of her pillow was so like Fitzwilliam that, in that moment, I wanted to weep. I gripped the side of the bed and told myself it was for the best and not for long.

When I stood, my husband’s arms were waiting for me. In the darkness of our daughter’s chamber, he embraced me and planted a kiss on the top of my head and then on the insides of my wrists. Quietly, he spoke. “Let us be away.” And we were.

Chapter 20

Pemberley, 18 September 2014

James Darcy sat at the head of the breakfast table, surveying his unopened post, removing the supplements from that day’s edition of the
Times
and tutting quietly as Charlie, Evie, and his wife contemplated the day.

“I have left all the sketches in the drawing room for you, Mr. Haywood. I hope that you and Miss Jones are comfortable in there?”

“Yes, thank you. Very comfortable. The light is great. I’m sure we will enjoy examining the sketches next to the painting itself.”

Mrs. Darcy smiled a broad smile and poured tea for them all. “Super! James and I have to go out this afternoon, but we’ll be back for dinner. It is your last night tonight, so I’ll ask Cook to really spoil us. Don’t forget that, before you leave, you must make sure you have a walk around the grounds. They are lovely at this time of year if I say so myself.” She glanced at Evie’s ballet pumps. “If you need footwear, Miss Jones, you are welcome to borrow from the boot room.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Darcy,” said Evie, regretting that a stable full of wellies, saddles, and wax jackets was an unlikely hiding place for the document they were attempting to find.

And so, pleasantries were exchanged, toast buttered, and tea milked, and they began to eat. Evie, worried that she was being too silent, was just about to ask about the history of the garden when James looked up from his letters.

“Good grief…Honoria, do we have cousins called Carter?”

Charlie, who was drinking his tea at the time didn’t flinch or turn a hair at the mention of the name.

“Carter? Not sure, darling. Don’t think so. There are the Carter-Arnolds in Buckingham but they aren’t cousins; they are Aunt Mabel’s in-laws.”

He shook his head and refocused on the handwritten letter in front of him.

“No, this letter is from a Miss Carter. Come to think of it, the name rings a bell, but I’m not sure why. Reckons she’s some sort of cousin. Lives in Shropshire. Finds herself up here from time to time. Wants to come and meet us when she’s in the area. Oh well. Why not I suppose…”

“Let me see that, darling.” Honoria’s hand shot out to take the letter. “It could be from any old Tom, Dick, or Harry.”

Mrs. Darcy’s pretty eyes scanned the letter, and Evie’s heart was in her mouth.

“Well, she writes nicely, and what attractive writing paper.” She put the letter down beside her and picked up her toast. “It can’t do any harm I suppose, darling, although I must say, I’ve never heard of her. Just goes to show, one doesn’t know where one’s relations are these days. I should make it a project of mine to do the family tree so that we don’t get taken unawares by these things.” She laughed and looked at Charlie who smiled back.

***

He felt, rather than saw, Evie stiffening beside him and fought the impulse to reach his hand out and touch her. Worry was cascading off her like steam. He wanted to reassure her that, if Cressida was writing to the Darcys, at least they knew that she wasn’t going to turn up while they were there. If she was invited to come for tea one day, it was hugely unlikely that she would be in the house long enough to be able to do the kind of searching they were doing. Even so, the knowledge that she was true to her word, that she had not given up, and that she was on his tail, bit at him. The clock was ticking, and they could not go away empty handed. Honoria Darcy’s kindly face came back into focus.

“I’m sure you’d find plenty of information, Mrs. Darcy, especially with the internet being what it is. You might enjoy it as well; I know my mother did when she researched our family.”

Before long, they were speaking of Charlie’s mother, the weather, the marmalade, and the traffic around Matlock on a Saturday. If it had not been for the fact that he saw him pick it up as they went to leave, Charlie would have thought James Darcy had completely forgotten Cressida’s letter. As it was, he tucked it into his breast pocket as he and Honoria left Charlie and Evie to get on with their day’s work. Absent the Darcys, they walked to the drawing room in an uneasy silence. As soon as they were safe in the room, Evie spun around to face him. Without thinking, he reached out his hand and held her shoulder still.

“Try not to worry about it. Focus on the positives. At least we know that she won’t just turn up out of the blue while we’re still here.”

***

The feeling of his hand against her stirred her, and although part of her wanted to move it away, she didn’t. She looked away instead.

“You’re so calm. But then I suppose, it’s not you who is about to lose everything!”

“You’re not about to lose everything either. We just have to think really logically.”

“Oh, Charlie, this is crazy! We are going to need more than logic to recover this thing. It has been lost for two hundred years, and we have no idea what
it
is!”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Elizabeth Darcy died in March, and at that time of the year, the house would have been full of fires. So, if it were just a letter or a couple of pages, Hannah would have simply thrown it in the fire. It makes no sense that she would have failed to get rid of it. No, I think that, whatever it is, it was quite large, and that is why she didn’t just burn it. For my money, it must have been some kind of diary or lengthy confession.”

Evie sat down on the pale chaise and looked up at Elizabeth’s glittering eyes in the painting.

“We have to try to get inside Hannah’s head. She is given this thing to destroy, and she knows that she has to do it. But it’s too big to burn. Elizabeth is dying or has just died. The place is likely to have been chaos, and Hannah was probably upset herself. She might have been starting to feel ill as well, who knows. She thinks…let’s hide it somewhere then return later and destroy it when there is more time. She didn’t know that she was about to die too. Question is: Where would she have put it?”

“Surely, she would have just hidden the thing in her bedroom.”

“No. Not enough privacy. Servants usually shared rooms, so there would have been at least another girl in with her—maybe more. And anyway, a woman in Hannah’s position would have had very few belongings: a couple of dresses, an outdoor cloak, her shoes. She would not have had any way of concealing it in her room. No, I think she would have chosen somewhere inside the house—not in the servants’ quarters—somewhere she thought would not be disturbed.”

“Okay, if you say so. But where? This place is huge. We can’t search it all; we only have today, and then we’re leaving. There just isn’t enough time.”

“I’ve got an idea where we can look.”

“Where?”

“Well, you might not like it, but—”

“Where?”

“Honoria’s bedroom.”

“We can’t do that, Charlie. That’s awful—”

“Hear me out. If you don’t want to do it, I’ll do it. You can wait outside.”

“But she’s an old lady, and she’s kind. We can’t go through her things. It’s just wrong.”

“I’m not going to go through her things, Evie. If this document were sitting in a drawer somewhere, it would have been found. I would just check behind paintings and around the fireplace for secret compartments. I’d check the floor for loose sections and look under the bed. The thing is, in these grand houses, the mistress’s chambers are handed down from generation to generation. The old widow goes to the dower house, and the new lady of the manor goes into her bedroom. So chances are that Honoria sleeps in the room that Elizabeth slept in. It’s an obvious place. We can’t go away without looking, especially with Cressida sniffing around.”

Evie imagined Cressida Carter arriving in that very room for tea and cakes and went cold at the thought. Her face whitened, and she shivered.

***

Charlie knew that he had forced her too far, that the sum total of dishonesty and trickery was about to push her over. He sat beside her on the chaise and looked straight ahead at
Mrs. Darcy and Her Daughters
.

“Look, I know you don’t want to do it, so I’ll do it. All you need to do is keep watch in the corridor. I’ll be in and out in no time, and nobody will know. I won’t disturb her things. I like her too. I know that you don’t believe me, but ransacking old ladies’ bedrooms isn’t my bag either.”

“Really?”

“Of course not.”

“But you do this sort of thing for a living. Doesn’t it ever bother you? Don’t you ever feel sorry for the people you prey on? Don’t you ever worry that maybe you shouldn’t be doing it?”

He paused and looked down at his hands. The truth was that until he had met Evie, he had never been troubled by it for more than a moment. His work was his work. He did it. He was good at it. There was nothing else to say and nothing else to think about. It had made him rich. It had saved him and Mum when the chips were down. It gave him some way of filling time between spending money and sleeping with women he didn’t love. Occasionally, he had thought of the heart-melting, soul-elevating goodness of his father and felt ashamed, but that was a fleeting thing. It was there in his mind, and then it was gone and worrying him no longer. Now, this woman had come into his life, uninvited, and turned the whole thing on its head.

“Of course, I do.”

His words appeared to startle her. She looked straight at him, and Charlie sensed that a question whispering around both of them for a long time was growing loud and starting to scream for an answer.

“Charlie?”

“Hmm?”

“Why are you doing this?”

A moment of quiet crackled between them.

“Can’t you guess?”

“I don’t want to guess. I might guess wrong. Tell me.”

“Well”—he looked down at his feet and laughed uncomfortably—“I’m doing this because I like you. I like you, and I want to be with you. I want you to be safe and happy, and I don’t want you to lose everything. I understand that you don’t feel like that about me and probably still hate my guts, but there it is. Even if I never see you again after tomorrow, I’m still going to do this for you.”

There was a slow, thick, eddying silence. Evie coloured, seeming to take it in. Eventually, she spoke.

“Thank you.”

It was decided that, since the Darcys were going out in the afternoon, it was the ideal time to tackle Honoria’s room. In between, they passed time in the drawing room, glancing through the sketches, Evie with her notepad out on her knee in case James or Honoria should come in. After a while and as the morning drew on, the sunshine blazing through the huge windows was too inviting, and they went outside. The green of the grass as it rose up to the edge of the wood was almost blinding, and when Evie looked back at the house, she thought it looked like an animal nestled in the landscape, lying in wait. The bloom of the summer had largely died, and there were some leaves falling and mixing with the freshly mowed grass that collected on the soles of their shoes.

Charlie had been worried that she would never speak to him again after what he had said in the drawing room and that her brittle “thank you” meant that she would speak but only as little as possible. Strangely though, and for reasons that he could not identify, saying it straight out like that had not done them any harm. Far from being angry or cynical or any of the other things he had feared, she seemed relaxed and happy. As they climbed the hill behind the lake, the sun on their faces, they talked and laughed, and he dared to wonder what it meant. At lunchtime, they returned to the house and took sandwiches onto the terrace outside the parlour. Charlie had wondered whether he should suggest they drive into Lambton for a pub lunch, but Honoria had been adamant that they should not fend for themselves. In any case, the beauty and isolation of Pemberley seemed to have cast a spell over Evie, and he did not want to be the one to break it.

She sat forward in her chair on the terrace, blinking into the pale gold of the sunshine and spoke without looking at him.

“I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided I don’t buy it.”

Charlie looked up, completely confused.

“Don’t buy what?”

“About Elizabeth. I don’t believe she was having it away with someone else.”

He closed his eyes and stretched before answering her.

“Well, that’s a nice thought, Evie, but are you sure you aren’t being blinded by the romance of the thing or by family feeling? I mean, she was your fifth great grandmother. Of course, you don’t want her to be unfaithful to her seemingly doting husband. But the fact is that there was something fishy about Victoria. Darcy’s letters prove that there was a secret—a secret Darcy was desperate to keep under wraps. Elizabeth in her dying days asked her maid to destroy some incriminating thing for her. There must have been a reason for that. Victoria Darcy was the only one of the Darcy children not to be born here at Pemberley, and that is really weird too. Why would Darcy have taken his pregnant wife all the way to Ireland? It would have been treacherous. It was madness. A secret must lie behind it. There were rumours about Victoria and—well—come on; there’s no smoke without fire.”

Her body straightened at that, and he feared he had angered her.

“Oh you can’t fall back on that one. Just because people think a thing, it doesn’t make it true. You have seen that painting. You can say whatever you like, but I look at her standing there with her daughters around her, and I just know it isn’t true. Fitzwilliam commissioned it, Charlie, and he never let it be displayed to the public. Can you imagine keeping an object as wonderful as that private? The whole thing is a celebration of Elizabeth and her daughters. It’s an act of worship on canvas. It is not the action of a man whose wife has been giving him the runaround.”

“Well, maybe he didn’t know. People can be blind to what is right in front of them. Maybe he did know, and he just really,
really
loved her. Maybe he was just a very rich guy who got a kick out of spending a fortune commissioning private works of art from the era’s foremost portraitist and then not letting anyone see them.”

“But that doesn’t square with the trust. If he was like that, he never would have set up the trust because it devalued the overall Darcy estate. If he was that kind of guy, he would have been worried about preserving the wealth for his sons, not the fact that his granddaughters and great granddaughters might need protection one day.”

“Evie…” He turned and looked at her face sparking with indignation. “You’re imagining a lot about these people. We can’t really know what was going on with them. It was too long ago. It’s lost. It’s gone. Time throws up a lot of dust, and you can’t expect to see through it all. We have to deal with the facts that remain, and you just can’t get away from the fact that there is a mystery surrounding Victoria Darcy—something that certainly Darcy and probably Elizabeth tried to conceal.”

With this, she stood up jerkily and with such speed that he thought she might run away. She didn’t run, but she did look away from him as she spoke.

“Well, we’ll have to see, won’t we? As far as I’m concerned, Elizabeth is innocent until proven guilty, so unless you find that smoking gun…speaking of which, don’t you think we should get on with it?”

She was right of course, and Charlie didn’t need to be asked twice. He walked around to the front of the house to check that the Darcys’ mud splattered Land Rover had not returned unexpectedly. When he saw that it had not, he found Evie and nodded, knowing that they could put the task off no longer. Silently, they padded down the corridors to the mistress’s bedroom.

“It’s this one,” he said as they approached the door.

“Okay.” Evie folded her arms across her chest and sprang from foot to foot with nerves.

“You just wait here and watch. You will see anyone coming up the stairs before they turn the corner. If anyone comes, knock twice on the door, and run to your own room. Don’t worry about me, I’ll get out somehow.”

She forced a smile.

“Sure. Be quick.” With that, he disappeared behind the great oak door.

Inside the room, he found a vast, floral maze of pastel colours and soft furnishings. An old-fashioned perfume dispenser sat on the dressing table alongside an array of small picture frames with smiling children, wedding parties, and engagement portraits staring back. It was so redolent of age and love that it stopped him in his tracks for a moment. He saw the tweed skirt Honoria had worn to dinner the previous night draped over the end of the bed and felt a surge of guilt. With that, he recalled Evie outside and got on with the job at hand. He made quick work of checking the wooden panels on the walls and around the tall windows. He lifted each of the heavy framed oils, one of a young Honoria, painted—he would guess—at some time in the sixties, feeling the wall behind for a cupboard or compartment. The fireplace was obviously never used, and he wrestled with an oversized display of dried flowers to feel along the tiled surround, finding nothing. He stood in the centre of the room, despairing. If he could not find the damned thing with an opportunity like this, then he knew it was a lost cause. In desperation, he got down on the floor and surveyed the polished surface for kinks and irregularities. He knew almost before he did it that it would be fruitless, and so indeed, it was. Standing and thinking of her jittery body and frowning expression in the corridor, he moved towards the door.