Slapping Her Out of Her Delusion novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: What the Drawer Held

Kendrick's POV

I was standing six feet from the foot of the stairs when Gwen Cuyler whispered something to Lydia.

I couldn't hear it.

I watched Lydia's face instead, and I saw the color leave it all at once.

She had looked like that once before, five years ago, in the dark of the pantry, a half second before she kissed me.

I put that thought away, and I went to get the doctor's number.

Mrs. Aldercott found me in the library at ten that night.

She sat in my late employer's armchair with a glass of sherry she wasn't drinking.

"Kendrick, the lawyer comes Friday morning for the reading," she said. "I want the study cleared of Lydia's things by tomorrow."

"Lydia keeps a few notebooks in the desk, madam."

"She can fetch them from the boathouse if she begs."

"And the housemaid who spoke on the stairs?"

"What about her?"

"She's nineteen."

"She's disloyal." Mrs. Aldercott sipped. "She goes on Monday."

I said, "Yes, madam."

I always said it.

I had said it for twelve years, to a woman who paid my wages and never once learned how I took my tea.

I went up to the study with the key ring at my belt.

The room was cold and smelled of pipe smoke that nobody would smoke again.

Henry Aldercott's desk stood under the window with its green leather top, and his reading glasses still lay folded on the blotter where he had left them.

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