How could that be? Lapis lazuli released the stench of rotten eggs when tested with muriatic acid.
He sat down on a chest by the entrance and put his head in his hands.
Now he knew.
Everything here was fake. Every rock, every stone, every jar of pigment – there was not a single scrap of real lapis lazuli in the whole place.
He was beset by questions now.
Why would the family keep a massive stock of worthless rocks? Why would they say that it was all real? Why would Knight be here? What else had been stored here, if anything? Did Knight know it was fake?
If he didn’t know it was fake – did he die to protect it?
If so – from whom?
There was another explanation. Theodore had to consider that perhaps, just perhaps, Knight had tripped and fallen and twisted over and somehow been overcome by sewer gas after all.
Theodore shook his head. No. There were too many layers of secrets here, and he was only chipping away at the surface yet.
Eleven
Theodore sat in frustration for a little while before shaking himself and getting stiffly to his feet. He took up his notes and the maps of where he had left the coins, and stacked the lanterns by the door, ready for his next visit. He left, intending to walk around the grounds in spite of the oppressive heat. Walking helped to clear his head. He pulled at his collar to loosen it, and flapped his coat as he went, trying to help cool himself down a little. If he could have stripped to his shirt sleeves like a labourer or bohemian artist, he would have done. However, the Earl of Calaway had standards and he couldn’t quite bring himself to be one of those eccentric upper class men who seemed to get away with behaving in shocking ways. They always assumed they were protected by privilege and position – until the world turned on them anyway, and they found themselves splashed across the papers and refused entry to the better sort of salon.
No. It was still better to stick to most of society’s conventions. It was one of the things that both he and Adelia agreed upon very firmly.
A movement caught his eye and he froze. He was screened by a conifer hedge, and he stayed very still. The figure was not walking particularly suspiciously or furtively, but it turned out to be Oscar Brodie, wandering with no apparent aim along one of the curving paths around the shrubbery. Theodore felt bad, but he didn’t want to encounter the young man. He stayed hidden until Brodie had passed out of sight and then he revised his plan. He decided not to walk in the grounds any longer. Instead, he headed inside.
He headed to the room he had commandeered as his laboratory so that he could look over his notes and consider motives and means. The lapis lazuli – or whatever it was – was bothering him. To get to the laboratory he had to pass through the lower study-cum-library, which he had expected to find empty.
Instead, he was startled to come across The Countess sitting in an upright leather chair which had been dragged away from the fireplace and put near to a table. Lady Agnes sat on a more ordinary wooden chair to one side. Lady Agnes was leafing through a book, and they were silent.
Lady Agnes looked up, her finger resting on the book to mark her spot, and she blinked as her eyes adjusted. “Lord Calaway! You look flustered.”
He liked her for her plain speaking. “I am too hot.”
She nodded at the bundle of papers in his hand. “You have been looking around the ice house and thinking about the death, have you not? I am assured that the police found no evidence of foul play.” She cocked her head. “And you disagree.”
“Do you disagree?”
“That was not an answer to my question.” She glanced over at The Countess. She was so very elderly with her chin sunken onto her chest and her eyes clouded and dim. He was not sure how good her hearing was. Sometimes she seemed to be oblivious to everything and yet at other times she was the wittiest, fastest conversationalist at the dinner table.
The Countess stirred, her wrinkled hand tapping on the arm-rests of her chair. Something seemed to pass between them. Lady Agnes turned back to Theodore and said, “I am not sure if I agree with the police or not. Their explanation sounds plausible, so I am curious as to why you are still investigating.”
“Their investigation is indeed plausible.” Theodore was very aware that Lady Agnes’s name was at the top of his list of suspects, so he was not going to reveal too much. He was regretting being drawn into the conversation at all. This sort of thing was far better left to Adelia to deal with. Awkwardly, he began to walk through the room, heading for the narrow door that opened into a small space from where the stairs led up to the next part of the tower.
“If it was a case of foul play, there are certain uncomfortable questions that then arise,” Lady Agnes went on. “It would mean that a killer is present right here in the castle. Possibly right now.”
He stopped with his hand reaching out for the door. Was it a hint? Was she dropping information to him that he ought to be picking up on? He searched her face for a clue and found nothing.
“It could mean that. But some murders are accidental,” he pointed out.
“Indeed so. Yet what if Hartley Knight was targeted?”
“But why would the house steward be a target?” he asked. “What did he know? Did he have something that someone else wanted to take from him? Is it to do with the lapis lazuli? Because...” He stopped himself. Somehow he didn’t feel comfortable in revealing what he knew about the provenance of the
