Chapter 14: The Careful One

Mason's POV

I got to the main house in time to see Godfrey Prescott sit down on his own staircase.

He did it carefully, with one hand on the rail.

Emme stood in the hall with her green bag held against her chest.

Her father stood behind her, turning his cap in his hands.

She looked at me once.

"Not you," she said. "Not yet."

She took both men into the study and shut the door.

I stood in the hall for four minutes, and the long clock counted every one of them out loud.

In six years I had found lost cufflinks, a missing caterer and one escaped peacock.

I had never been told "not you" by someone whose face I could still feel under my hands.

So I did the only useful thing I could think of.

I took out my phone, started the recording, and put it back in my jacket pocket.

Constance was in the greenhouse, as she was every morning at ten.

She was cutting white roses into a flat basket, in her gardening gloves.

She did not turn around.

"Mason. You're early for Friday."

"It's Wednesday, Mrs. Prescott."

"Then you've come about the folder."

The shears clicked.

"Godfrey's drawer was open this morning. I assumed it was you. You were always the careful one."

"I read it," I said.

"Naturally."

She laid a rose in the basket and picked up another.

"There's a line in it about her coffee," I said. "Why does a woman with a foundation need to know how a payroll clerk takes her coffee?"

"I like to know the people I'm responsible for."

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