Elijah agreed.
“Then I need someone who can create a reason for the house to be empty.” Jacob gave a dry laugh.
“The mistress might make the gentlemen leave, but she cannot command the walls to forget what they’ve heard.”
In the kitchen Elijah found Mrs.
Fenwick preparing a tray for Catherine.
He said he needed another look at the bedroom shutters.
The housekeeper studied him, then placed a folded linen napkin beneath the cup.
“Take the tray yourself,” she instructed.
“The colonel is meeting his lawyer in the study.
He will not come upstairs before supper.” Elijah understood that her cooperation was not accidental.
When he entered Catherine’s room, he noticed the napkin contained a tiny brass key.
Mrs.
Fenwick had slipped it there.
Catherine saw it and closed the shutters before asking what it opened.
“Not the cellar door,” Elijah said.
“Something your husband thought no one remembered.”
Chapter 9: The Nursery Register
The key belonged to a locked cabinet in the former nursery, a room Catherine had avoided since her only infant died years earlier.
The cabinet once held receipts and household correspondence.
Richard had ordered it sealed after Lydia’s disappearance, claiming mildew had ruined the papers.
Catherine waited until afternoon visitors drew Richard downstairs, then asked Mrs.
Fenwick to help her reach the nursery.
Her ankle would not bear weight, so Elijah moved a chair into the corridor while Mrs.
Fenwick supported her.
Each step reminded Catherine that she depended on people she had rarely considered beyond their duties.
Inside the nursery, dust lay thick on the sill.
A wooden rocking horse faced the wall, and a faded ribbon hung from the curtain hook.
Catherine sat beside the cabinet while Elijah turned the little key.
The lock opened at once.
Inside were household books, a box of infant clothes, and a register covered in blue cloth.
Catherine lifted the register and discovered that it contained names of children born on the estate, including their mothers and the dates on which they had been sold.
She had never seen such a list.
The final pages contained entries written in another hand, naming children from Baltimore, Harrisburg, and Wilmington.
Their supposed places of birth had been changed to Virginia counties.
One entry described a boy called James Bell, age nine, brought from Pennsylvania.
In the margin a clerk had written “Revised by direction of R.
Whitmore.” Catherine stared at it.
“These are children who weren’t born here,” she whispered.
Elijah pointed to the repeated word “certified.” “A paper can say a child belongs to a man, ma’am.
