Lady Agnes was nodding along to each point that he made. “All interesting questions, Lord Calaway.”
The Countess spoke, suddenly, her voice high and slightly creaky. “That Mr Knight did not know as much as he thought he knew.”
Theodore let his hand drop to his side. “My lady, what do you mean?”
She coughed. Lady Agnes looked at Theodore as if it were his fault that the elderly woman was now struggling to breathe, and he winced. Lady Agnes leaned over and put her hand on The Countess’s forearm. “Shall I fetch warm milk?”
“No – no. It ... passes. Do excuse me. You asked me what I meant? No more and no less than I said. Knight had been in this family for years.” The Countess spoke in short bursts, breathing hard in between, but her voice grew stronger as she went on. Theodore’s medical eye could detect nothing particularly wrong with her beyond the normal effects of extreme age. “Knight had been here for so long that he felt he knew everything there is to know about the family and our history. But...”
“But, he did not,” Lady Agnes finished for her. “He was an arrogant man with a lust for control and a lust for – well, you shall not mind me saying it, but a lust for women. We ought to have got rid of him a long time ago.”
“Why didn’t you?” Theodore asked boldly.
She snorted. “I am not in charge here.”
It seemed that no one was. Percy was away and Felicia was having attacks of hysteria and hallucinations in her room. Theodore bit his tongue but Lady Agnes smiled when the silence lengthened and he did not reply.
“I know what you are thinking,” she said. “But it was always thus. Our family has had its ups and downs. It will all come out right, in the end.” She shifted in her seat slightly, a movement designed to mark the end of the conversation as she returned her attention to the book in front of her. She had long since moved her hand and lost her place in the text.
The Countess was nodding. “Yes. Yes. They come and go. What do we care? But it will all be well. Curse, what curse?” She started to laugh as if someone had made the most brilliant of jokes.
Theodore felt profoundly uncomfortable. He had a dozen questions, all unsayable. He was not ashamed to admit later, as he spoke to Adelia, that he fled from the room and hid in the tower until he heard them leave the lower room. The two women with their secrets and their hints confused him, especially as he was more used to Lady Agnes being forthright. Her two natures – one forthright, one secretive – made his head spin.
WITH THE HOUSE STEWARD gone, the household was not running as smoothly as it had done previously. One of the small annoyances that hit them on Wednesday night was the sudden realisation that letters had been delivered earlier in the day, but no one had thought to alert the recipients. After dinner, Theodore was handed a slim envelope addressed to himself, and he excused himself to read it in his room. Adelia stayed behind for a short while. She seemed to be engaged in close conversation with Felicia, although he wasn’t sure what it was about.
Theodore settled in a deep armchair by the open window. He sniffed the air. He wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him because he was sure he could detect a freshness in the very light breeze that was twitching the thin gauze that hung artfully around the window behind the thicker velvet curtains. The room was growing dark and he had a lamp on the table by his elbow. He brought the letter close to his eyes then groaned and held it at arms’ length instead. Damn this cursed aging.
It was from Percy, at last, and it was a curious letter indeed. Theodore read it through once, and the contents made him go back to the beginning and double-check the date at the top. He was scanning it again when Adelia came in. She, too, was carrying a letter.
“Is that from Percy?” she asked.
“It is. Did you get one too?”
“No. This is the one that he sent to Felicia. It’s rather brief but I suppose that is only to be expected. He says he is coming home sometime during the week beginning the eighteenth – that was Monday just gone, wasn’t it?”
“Indeed. He doesn’t mention any dates to me in this letter. Were they sent at the same time?”
They compared dates. They were. And Theodore tapped the top of his own letter. “What do you notice about that?”
“Oh!” said Adelia. “He wrote and sent it before Hartley Knight was killed.”
“Exactly so.” He sighed.
Adelia sat down. “So what is bothering you about it?”
He hesitated. The contents were unsettling.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“He speaks about our Felicia. He says he has received an anonymous letter that was warning him of her potentially dangerous illness – in her mind – her unpredictability, her possible ... violence.” Theodore felt his mouth go dry. “It is a nasty, malicious sort of letter and Percy himself acknowledges the spite in it. But he also asks me if I might examine her, as a doctor not a father, when I come to visit. Naturally he knew we were visiting around this time. Here ... you can read it.”
He passed it over to her and watched her face as she read it through. She pressed her lips together and handed it back without a word.
“He seems to have had no idea who might have sent it to him,” Theodore mused. “And the accusations against Felicia are false, of course.”
“Of course they are!” Adelia burst out. “She has some problems but – violence? Never!”
“Never.” Theodore remembered how Felicia had frantically lashed out when confronted about the sewer gas she was convinced was everywhere; but that was understandable,
