“I hope so,” Sarah replied.
Stone had a thought. “Monica, do you by any chance have a key to Lance and Erica’s house?”
“Why, yes,” Monica replied. “Why?”
“I think it might be a good idea for me to go over there and make sure everything is undisturbed.”
Monica went to her desk, opened a drawer, and handed Stone a set of keys. “There’s everything,” she said, “front door, garage across the road, even the wine cellar.”
“I’ll talk to you later,” Stone said to them both, and he headed for the street to find a taxi. He couldn’t let an opportunity like this pass. He left the gallery and, in the pouring rain, started looking for a taxi.
Chapter 32
STONE GOT OUT OF THE CAB AT THE bottom of Farm Street; he might as well have walked, he reflected, it had taken him so long to get a cab. The rain was still falling steadily, and the sky was unnaturally dark for the time of day. Lights were coming on in the houses of Farm Street.
He moved slowly up the little street, looking for men on foot or in cars. He did not want to encounter the two large men in the black car again, if he could help it. The street was empty of people, and all the parked cars were empty. With a final look around, Stone ran up the steps of the house and let himself in.
Grateful to be inside again, he stuck his umbrella into a stand to drain and hung his wet raincoat on a peg inside the door. The house was quite dark, with only minimal light coming through the windows from outside. Stone drew the curtains on the street-side windows and switched on the hall light to get his bearings, then switched it off again.
He had a brief look at the drawing room, switching the lights on and off again, then turned to the study, where he figured anything of interest to him would most likely be. He switched on a lamp on the desk, and the beautiful old paneling glowed in the light. There were many books, most of them bound in leather, and the desk seemed quite old, probably Georgian. Stone tried the drawers and found them unlocked. He sat down at the desk and began to go methodically through the drawers.
The contents were what might be expected in any prosperous home—bills, credit card statements in Erica’s name, but none in Lance’s. In a bottom drawer he found several months of bank statements, this time in Lance’s name. They were from The Scottish Highlands Bank, of which Stone had never heard, and he learned from examining them that Lance wrote very few checks. There were no canceled checks in the statement, but the printout identified each payee, and they were mostly for rent and household expenses. Those that weren’t were in larger amounts—five to ten thousand pounds—and were made payable to cash. Lance seemed to walk around with a lot of money in his pockets. All the deposits into the account were from wire transfers from two banks—one in the Cayman Islands and one in Switzerland. Lance would transfer twenty-five thousand pounds at a time into the account. These were substantial amounts, but not those of a multimillionaire; Lance, apart from his high-end address, seemed to live rather simply. There was no evidence of car ownership, clubs, or expensive purchases.
Erica’s credit card statements revealed mostly purchases of clothing and small household items. Her deposits came from a New York bank and were more on the order of ten thousand dollars at a time, and less frequent than Lance’s. Stone returned everything carefully to the drawers, leaving them as he had found them. He looked around the study again. There were no filing cabinets, and a small closet held only some stationery and a fax machine.
Stone switched off the study light and went upstairs. There were two floors of bedrooms, and the ones on the top floor seemed unused. The second floor contained a large master suite only, with a king-sized bed, two baths, and two dressing rooms. Though Erica had accumulated a lot of clothes, Lance seemed to own no more than he could pack into two or three suitcases. He switched off the lights and went downstairs, disappointed.
He had expected to find something—he wasn’t sure what, but something that would tell him more about Lance’s business dealings. There was so little as to seem unnatural, not even a briefcase, and Lance had not been carrying one earlier in the day. Nobody could do any sort of business so lightly equipped, which made Stone think Lance must have an office somewhere else in London.
He checked the kitchen and had one final look around, preparing to leave. Then, looking at the keys Monica had given him, he found one labeled “wine cellar,” which she had mentioned. He looked around for a door and found one under the stairs. The light switch gave no joy, and he felt his way down the steps to the bottom, where he found another door. Feeling for the lock, he inserted the key and turned it. As he stepped into the cellar, something brushed against his cheek, and he grabbed it: a string. He pulled it, and a single light bulb came on. The wine cellar was about twelve by fifteen feet and quite full of bottles. He checked a few and found some lovely old clarets and burgundies; whoever owned the house had been laying them down for years; you couldn’t just walk into a shop and buy them anymore.
He stood in the middle of the cellar and looked at each of the four walls. Why was the cellar so small, when the house was so much larger? He examined the walls, which were covered by racking from floor to ceiling. Walking slowly around the room, he checked between each stack of racks, and finally he came to a pair that seemed somehow unlike the others. The racks were all fixed to the wall, except these two, which moved when he shook them. Pressing an eye to the crack between one rack and its immediate neighbor, he saw the dull glint of dim light on metal. A hinge, maybe?
He moved along one rack farther, peering into the small spaces between them, and he saw a flat piece of metal that seemed to connect two racks. It was recessed too far to reach with his fingers, and even his pen was too fat to fit between the racks. He looked around and saw a small table containing a decanter and a corkscrew.
He picked up the corkscrew, which was of the waiter’s type—small, flat, with a folded knife blade at one end. He opened the knife and poked it between the two racks, finding the strip of metal. It moved when poked, and he tried inserting the blade underneath the strip and pushing upward. Almost to his surprise, the metal strip moved easily. It had been holding the two racks together; now, with it out of the way, Stone pulled on the two racks and they quite easily swung into the cellar like double doors. He could now see that each rack had a solid wood back that was fixed to the wall by four heavy hinges.
Behind the two racks was another door that, surprisingly, seemed to have no lock. Stone turned the knob and pushed it open, revealing a small room of about eight by ten feet. He found a light switch, and a fluorescent fixture brightly illuminated the space. He had found Lance Cabot’s office. The room was equipped with everything a home office requires—office supplies, file cabinets, and a multipurpose printer/copier/fax machine, connected to a substantial-looking computer with a flat-screen monitor.