The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(66)

But behind the crumbled wall was a tiny room, barely more than a large cupboard, which he’d never seen before in his life.



Chapter Fourteen


The figures on the tiled feature wall in Henrietta’s office had one more moment to frolic in gleeful nudity, and then the sledgehammer smashed into a scene of three very happy-looking people, and ceramic body parts went flying.

Freddy and Griff both put up an arm to shield each other, and they all took a step back, out of the foreman’s way.

“I hope you’re sure about this, mate,” the burly young guy said over his shoulder, as he lifted the sledgehammer again. “We usually try to preserve...art.”

He’d just noticed the subject of the art.

“I’m sure.” Griff’s hand was taut on her. “Bring it down.”

There was enough of the thick concrete exterior still standing that they couldn’t get into the secret room from the outside, just see glimpses of it through the torn wood and broken stone, so the only way in was through the office. Thanks to the hidden compartment acting as a shield, the office itself was untouched. Earlier today, when Freddy had felt the same compulsion as Griff to head towards Tower Bridge, she’d wondered if she’d wandered into a ghost story; suddenly someone had flipped the pages and she’d ended up in a children’s adventure novel. And gee whiz, kids, if there wasn’t a treasure map and a smuggler or two in that room when they got through the erotica wall, she was going to be jolly disappointed.

Once it started to collapse, the feature wall came down fast. Structurally, Freddy could see it was a makeshift brick and plaster job. The space behind it was relatively shallow lengthwise, so it wasn’t difficult to see why nobody had ever noticed that the tiles weren’t placed directly over the exterior wall.

“Hallo,” the foreman said, knocking some of the fallen bricks out of the way to clear a path. “An honest-to-goodness treasure chest. Feel like I’m in Robert Louis Stevenson.” A man after her own heart. Swiping the back of his thick wrist across the drops of sweat on his forehead, he stepped back to let them past.

Freddy hung back as Griff and Charlie navigated the mess and knelt either side of a heavy-looking metal chest. It was locked, but one whack from the sledgehammer took care of that. When Griff forced the rusty hinges the rest of the way, the lid finally opened, and they all leant forward. It was starting to feel slightly comic.

“Oh,” the foreman said, disappointed. “Papers.” He’d clearly been hoping for doubloons. “If you don’t need anything else in here, I’ll get back to directing operations outside.”

Griff thanked him, but he was already engrossed in the first papers he’d pulled out, crouched down on his haunches, his sleeves rolled up. Freddy did realise it was an inappropriate moment to be enjoying the sexy scholar look.

Charlie was rifling through the chest with a lot less care. “What is it?” he asked, turning papers back and forth. They were mostly covered with faded scrawled ink. “Letters? Christ. Considering what old George felt comfortable literally plastering all over the property, anything he thought was so saucy it had to be hidden behind a mocked-up wall must be incendiary.”

“It’s not letters.” Griff turned another page. “I’m fairly sure it’s an early draft of The Velvet Room.”

Freddy caught her breath, and all her brimming amusement over the situation faded away. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t connected the dots as to what could be behind the wall, but the whole thing was just so bizarre she felt like she was spinning along in a riptide now, going where it pulled her, everything happening too quickly for thought.

“No way.” Even Charlie, who didn’t give a shit about the infamous play or the Wythburn Group shenanigans, sounded excited. “That’s got to be worth a mint, right? Would it bring in enough for what we need?”

Freddy’s gaze was fixed on Griff. She didn’t miss a single emotion that crossed his face, and she saw the dawning surprise, his knife-sharp brain working rapidly. “I doubt it. But it would be worth quite a bit to literary collectors, if it was the original draft. This seems to be a copy.” He flipped over another page. “The handwriting isn’t Henrietta’s.”

“Bugger,” Charlie said. “Whose writing is it? George’s stenographer, on loan to his lady love?”

“I don’t think so,” Griff said, slowly. “It looks like—”

“Violet’s writing?” Freddy spoke for the first time since they’d all crowded into the office, and Griff lowered the papers and turned on his heel to look at her, and the room seemed to grow still.

“When did you start to suspect?”

Griff stood leaning against the desk in his bedroom, one ankle tucked over the other, his hands in his pockets, and his gaze intent on her face.

Freddy curled her legs up where she sat in the middle of his big, comfortable bed. She was surrounded by pages of script and notes that they’d strewn across the covers. She’d said very little as they’d gone through it with their heads together, and Griff was Griff, he didn’t waste words. His occasional, disbelieving curse had said it all.

It was all in there, the whole creative process of the play, evolving from scribbled comments about characters to intricate plot maps. All in Violet’s distinctive looping handwriting with dashes instead of dots over her i’s, and e’s that dropped lower than any other letter in a line.