THE EMPTY STUDY
1099 Words
Chapter One
The study door was open.
Clara stopped in the hallway. She had walked past her father's study every morning for the eighteen years she had lived in this house and the door had never once been open at seven in the morning. Roland Hargrove did not believe in open doors. He did not believe in being accessible before nine.
She pushed it wider.
The study was empty. The desk lamp was on — had been on all night, by the look of it, the light flat and stale in the grey morning. Roland's reading glasses were on the desk beside an open book. His pen uncapped. A glass of water half full. The chair pushed back at an angle, the way a chair looked when someone had left it in a hurry rather than at the end of an evening.
Clara stood in the doorway and looked at all of this for a moment.
Then she went upstairs.
---
His bedroom door was closed. She knocked. Nothing. She knocked again, harder.
"Father."
Silence.
She opened the door.
The bed was made. Perfectly made — corners tight, pillows straight, the good wool blanket folded at the foot exactly as Dorothy left it every morning. It had not been slept in. The room was cold in the way rooms were cold when they had been empty all night.
Clara stood in the doorway of her father's bedroom and felt the first cold finger of something she couldn't name run down the back of her neck.
She went to find Dorothy.
---
Dorothy was in the kitchen. Of course she was — Dorothy was always in the kitchen at seven in the morning, had been for as long as Clara could remember, would probably be in the kitchen at seven in the morning at the end of the world. She was at the range with her back to the door, and she turned when Clara came in with the unhurried ease of someone who had heard the footsteps and was not surprised by them.
"You're up early," Dorothy said.
"His bed hasn't been slept in."
Dorothy turned fully. Her expression shifted — something moving behind the stillness, something that looked like concern. "What do you mean?"
"I mean exactly that. His study door was open, the lamp was on, his glasses were on the desk. And his bed hasn't been touched." Clara sat down at the table. "When did you last see him?"
"Last night." Dorothy came away from the range and sat across from her. "After dinner. He came to the kitchen for his evening tea. Around half past nine." She paused. "He seemed — distracted. I thought he was tired."
"Did he say anything?"
"He talked about the will reading. Said he wanted everything to go smoothly today." Another pause. "He seemed anxious about something. I didn't push."
Clara looked at her. "And you didn't hear anything in the night? Nothing unusual?"
"I sleep at the back of the house. You know that." Dorothy folded her hands on the table. Her voice was steady, her eyes clear. "Clara. I'm sure there's an explanation. Perhaps he went for a walk and lost track of time. You know how he gets when something is on his mind."
"His coat is on the hook."
Dorothy was quiet for a moment.
"His car is still here," Clara said. "His coat, his glasses, his phone — I checked the study. Everything is there. He isn't." She looked at Dorothy. "Something is wrong."
Dorothy looked back at her. "Yes," she said quietly. "I think you might be right."
---
They searched the ground floor together — the drawing room, the dining room, the library, the small sitting room at the end of the east corridor. Dorothy moved through each room with the calm efficiency of a woman who had spent forty years knowing every corner of this house, opening doors, checking rooms, saying nothing that wasn't useful.
It was in the library that Clara stopped.
"Dorothy." She was looking at the portrait wall. At the group photograph at the end of the bottom row. "That young man. Dominic Crane. Do you know why he's really here?"
Dorothy came to stand beside her. She looked at the photograph for a moment. "He said he was family. A cousin of some kind."
"He's not on the family tree. I checked when Father told me he'd agreed to let him stay." Clara turned to look at her. "And Margaret told me last night she saw him coming out of the corridor near Father's study. Just before midnight."
Dorothy looked at the photograph. At Dominic's face — the easy smile, the relaxed posture, the look of a man entirely comfortable in a room where he had not been invited.
"Did she," Dorothy said.
"Near midnight, Dorothy. And this morning Father is gone." Clara watched her face. "You've been in this house forty years. You know everyone who comes through that door. What do you think?"
Dorothy was quiet for a long moment. She looked at the photograph. Then she looked at Clara with an expression that was careful and grave and entirely unreadable underneath.
"I think," she said slowly, "that we should find out exactly what Dominic Crane was doing near your father's study at midnight."
She paused.
"And I think we should do it before we call anyone."
Clara looked at her. Something in Dorothy's voice — the weight of it, the precision — made her feel, for reasons she couldn't articulate, that Dorothy was already three steps ahead of her.
"Why before we call anyone?" she said.
Dorothy held her gaze. "Because once we call someone," she said, "we lose control of what happens next." She stood up straighter. "And in my experience, Clara, it is always better to know the truth before other people start deciding what it means."
Clara looked at her for a moment longer.
Then she nodded.
"All right," she said. "Let's start with Dominic."
Dorothy picked up the tea towel from the oven rail and folded it with the same precise fold she always used and hung it back exactly where it always hung and said: "I'll make breakfast. Ask him to come down early. Before the others."
She turned back to the range.
"And Clara," she said, without turning around. "Don't tell him what you know. Not yet. Let him think it's just breakfast."
Clara stood in the kitchen doorway and watched Dorothy's back and thought: she is so calm. How is she so calm?
She went to get Dominic.
- Writer
