But was he clutching at straws, blinded by paternal love to the truth of the matter?
“Who could be acting against her?” Adelia asked. “Lady Agnes, The Countess, Lady Katharine, Oscar Brodie, some wayward household servant ... none of this seems likely.” Hadn’t Oscar warned her, though? He had seemed to speak out of care and affection, not spite.
“Lady Agnes seems all too likely to me,” Theodore said grimly, and told Adelia all about the encounter with her and The Countess in the study earlier.
“She is a strange one but ...”
“But you don’t want to think badly of her. I know. It is the same with all of them. And strangeness is no crime. Perhaps the perpetrator of all of this is Lady Katharine, working through her son, conducting her evil plans from out in the gatehouse. What I cannot fathom is what she would gain from it all. She is Percy’s sister. Felicia is not a love rival and Lady Katharine does not lack for money, nor the chance to be part of society should she want to be.”
Adelia nodded. “I, too, struggle with finding a motive for them. Have you had any luck with discovering what Knight might have been hiding in the ice house?”
Theodore sighed even more deeply than before. “Ah. There is more to that, too.” He told her of the surprise at finding out that none of the lapis was true lapis. Her eyes widened and she shook her head in disbelief.
“But this is nonsense,” she said. “Why is it kept at all? Why is it a secret? Who knows about this? Why kill over it? You know, I really cannot contain myself. I am longing for Percy to return because there are so many questions that I feel only he has the answer to. Also...”
Theodore noted, with concern, that his wife’s face darkened and her eyes grew moist. “What is it?”
“You must not let Felicia know that I have shared this with you,” she warned.
“I promise.”
She took a deep breath. “I meant to tell you this the other day, when she finally unburdened herself to me. She was with child, and she lost it, very close to the birthing of it. The tragedy has quite undone Percy. Rather than stay to comfort his wife in her sorrow, he has reacted as if all the loss is his own, and fled from her side.” Her hands clenched and Theodore felt his own anger rise to mix with his shock, sadness and sympathy.
“He is a weaker man than I had thought,” he said. “Though perhaps it is not weakness, exactly, but if not, I am not sure what it is.”
“I would call it cowardice,” Adelia said thickly. “And I shall string him up for it when I see him.”
“No – you must see his point of view. He must be grieving too, and perhaps feeling helpless that he cannot help his wife.”
But Theodore could see that Adelia was in no mood to be mollified. She spat out, “No, I will not hear of it! He is not helpless. The greatest help he could give his wife would have been to remain at her side and face that dreadful time with her, as husband, as helpmeet, not run away to lose himself in adventures while she is stuck here with nothing but memories staining the stones of this castle.”
Theodore could still understand Percy’s reaction even if he disagreed with it. It was unusual for him to be the more perceptive person in the marriage but at this moment, he felt that he was. He decided not to try to persuade Adelia of that fact. He took her hands and comforted her. He didn’t need to win all the battles, after all. They shared a long silence.
Adelia broke it. She straightened up and set her jaw.
“There is one other person we have not considered as a potential murderer. Someone who is very much embedded into the fabric of this household. Someone who might have had motive, and someone who has the perfect alibi,” she suggested, speaking firmly. “Someone who had the means – perhaps – through agents or through the most cunning of subterfuge.”
“Who?”
“Percy, Lord Buckshaw himself.”
Twelve
Adelia could see from the moment she suggested it that Theodore did not countenance Percy as a possible suspect and she was unable to convince him, although he listened closely to her argument. And she herself thought it was deeply unlikely. She knew that there was part of her that wanted him to be guilty because she was so angry with him for his treatment of Felicia.
She could also see that Theodore seemed to have sympathy for Percy and an understanding of his behaviour towards Felicia. Adelia wasn’t having that for a moment. This was her daughter’s wellbeing and that love was utterly paramount in Adelia’s heart. She blamed Percy for abandoning Felicia in her time of need, and that was that. Logic didn’t even come into it. Percy might have had his own point of view but she just did not want to hear it. Those men, she decided, would never truly understand. Then she felt a little bad for dismissing Theodore’s feelings.
But not too bad. He was still wrong in his defence of Percy.
They talked it over anyway – how Percy could have paid for someone to kill Knight, or how Percy, even more implausibly, could even now be hiding in the local area and simply pretending to
