CHAPTER 6: A VISITOR WITHOUT A NAME
Eleanor spent the night sitting upright in a chair facing the bedroom door.
Ada had offered to stay beside her, but Eleanor insisted that the housekeeper needed rest before the next day’s work.
After midnight, someone passed through the hall and paused outside the locked room.
Eleanor listened for the scrape of a key.
Instead, she heard the soft sound of paper sliding under the door.
She waited until the footsteps faded before moving the desk enough to recover the note.
It contained four words written in a hurried hand.
The words read,
‘Do not trust Samuel.’
Eleanor had learned Samuel’s name only hours earlier from the letter in the wall.
The unknown writer knew that she had discovered something.
She wondered whether Daniel had been followed through the dressing room.
At breakfast Vane announced that a guest would be arriving from Richmond before evening.
He refused to explain the purpose of the visit.
Eleanor asked whether Richard had invited the guest.
Vane said the arrangement had been made before the master’s departure.
She asked whether the visitor was a physician.
Vane placed his cup on its saucer and said the visitor handled private family affairs.
Eleanor had heard Richard use the same description for attorneys who settled debts without letting creditors enter the house.
After breakfast she searched the unused drawing room for the old account books Richard had once allowed her to organize.
The shelves had been cleared since her last visit.
Only a cracked atlas and several ledgers concerning household purchases remained.
She found the initials L.W. written beneath a shelf in faint pencil.
Beside the initials someone had drawn three small circles.
Eleanor touched the marks and remembered the bracelet hidden in her bedroom wall.
The bracelet had three tiny round settings where blue stones had once been attached.
She wondered whether the marks meant anything or merely described a piece of jewelry Lydia had owned.
The drawing-room door opened behind her.
Ada stood outside carrying folded sheets.
The housekeeper asked Eleanor not to touch the eastern cabinet.
Eleanor glanced toward the locked cabinet that stood beneath the window.
Ada’s warning was too precise to be casual.
Eleanor asked whether something dangerous was stored inside.
Ada said the danger lay in who might discover it had been opened.
Then she stepped aside to let Eleanor pass.
In the corridor Eleanor asked why Ada had never spoken about Lydia.
The housekeeper said she had made a promise to a woman who feared for the people in her care.
Eleanor asked whether that woman was Lydia.
Ada nodded once.
She said she had been hired when Lydia still lived in the house, although Vane later changed the employment records.
Lydia had treated her as a person with judgment rather than a servant expected to carry out instructions without thought.
That kindness had earned Ada’s loyalty.
Eleanor asked whether Ada knew where Lydia had gone.
Ada said that she had never seen Lydia leave the ranch.
She had only seen the empty bedroom afterward and heard Richard declare that his wife was gone.
Eleanor asked why Ada had remained in such a house.
Ada answered that leaving would have meant abandoning people who were unable to leave with her.
She did not explain which people she meant.
A carriage rolled into the courtyard near dusk.
The visitor who stepped down was a neatly dressed man of about fifty with a narrow leather case.
Vane greeted him by the name of Mr. Edwin Marsh.
Eleanor recognized the name from a letter Richard had burned in the library two winters earlier.
Marsh introduced himself as an adviser responsible for certain neglected family papers.
He asked to speak privately about Eleanor’s health and the orderly management of Willow Creek.
Eleanor told him that her health was not his business.
Marsh smiled politely and said her husband had authorized the conversation.
He placed a document on the table and asked her to sign it.
The paper granted Vane temporary authority over her personal effects during Richard’s absence.
Eleanor saw a second clause permitting an inspection of every room she occupied.
She refused.
Marsh told her the document was only a precaution.
Eleanor replied that a precaution which surrendered her privacy was not harmless.
His smile vanished.
He warned her that refusing reasonable care might be recorded as evidence of emotional disturbance.
Eleanor looked directly at Vane.
She asked whether the same language had been used against Lydia.
Marsh’s hand closed over the paper.
He said he had not been retained to discuss a person from the past.
Eleanor stood and told both men the conversation was over.
When she reached the doorway, Marsh spoke again.
He said the blacksmith had been seen riding with Benjamin Rusk.
He advised her to consider carefully which strangers deserved her confidence.
Eleanor did not answer.
She walked upstairs with the knowledge that Richard’s absence was not the beginning of the danger.
It was the moment his men believed they could act without him watching.
