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.