Percy was already shaking his head. “But you are a doctor. And a supremely capable one at that, are you not?”
“The symptoms range from physical to mental and I am not skilled in both areas. Furthermore, I am too close to her; too compromised with my emotions to see things clearly. There are things I cannot ask her as a father.”
“I did not have you pegged as a man that would be such a slave to his emotions.”
In any other situation, Adelia would have laughed and agreed with Percy, although it was but a common joke and a misinterpretation at that; Theodore had as many emotions as anyone else. He simply struggled to recognise them in other people sometimes, and didn’t always know what he himself was feeling. But he always felt something. He was no clockwork automaton.
Theodore replied to Percy, saying, “It is different when it is one’s own daughter; trust me when I say that rationality can fly out of the window. Do not ask me to do the impossible – have you no heart?”
A strange sneer twisted Percy’s face, making his moustache bristle. “Have I no heart? Do I fail to understand the role of a father? You clearly think so, as I have no children.”
Adelia clenched her fists. He did not add any blame against Felicia but Adelia heard it ring out in the silence after his words. She could not bear it, not this, not on top of all the worry that seemed to clamp around her. She spun around and stalked away. She didn’t say a word. She left with the sudden rudeness that Lady Agnes had done, all those days ago – it seemed like a lifetime now.
And she thought about Lady Agnes, and let her angry march take her to the quarters where the lady shared her life with her mother, The Countess.
She was ready to be angry with someone, and it might as well be them.
LADY AGNES AND THE Countess were sitting opposite one another at a small round table. Both were dressed in sombre grey and black, and there were half-drunk cups of tea in amongst the decks of cards, books, samplers, threads and pamphlets that littered the small space. The windows of the ground-floor room were thrown open but the dark red curtains were drawn, making the space seem dim and oddly close-feeling. They looked up alertly as Adelia entered, and sagged as soon as they saw who it was. It was an inauspicious welcome.
“Any news?” Lady Agnes asked dully.
“No. The police continue to poke at everything which makes them look busy but I am sure they have no routine or purpose to their poking. We are all still forbidden to leave. Inspector Wilbred says the murderer is here among us.”
“He might be,” said The Countess.
“He?”
“Yes, it was obviously a he. I heard how the man died. Bludgeoned to death from behind. That’s not a woman’s crime. Which surprises me. I suppose it’s not her, then. Do you know what weapon did it?”
“I have no idea. They are not saying.” Adelia knew, now, that The Countess despised Felicia. Her comments were spiteful and Adelia choose not to rise to them.
“It would be something heavy,” The Countess said.
“Hush, mother, are you a policeman now?”
“As much as they are, by the sounds of it.”
Adelia crossed to the window and peeked out through the curtains. From here, she had a direct view of the gatehouse and she wondered if Lady Katharine and Oscar Brodie were similarly confined to their house. She wanted to point it out to Inspector Wilbred, but another part of her didn’t actually want to help him in any way. She couldn’t help seeing him as an interloper into the investigation that her husband ought to be conducting. But then, Commissioner Rhodes’ letter of authority probably didn’t extend to cover Theodore investigating additional murders.
She sighed heavily. “Lady Agnes, earlier, when Felicia saw you, she began to scream. Have you any idea why?”
Lady Agnes sniffed haughtily. “She is – and I am sorry to speak so harshly – she is deeply disturbed and unwell.”
The Countess snorted with derision.
Lady Agnes frowned at her mother. She spoke with a little more sympathy as she went on. “She screams at random events, hallucinations, thoughts, fancies and dreams. I long for only the best for her, but I am dreadfully afraid for her future.”
“Are you, indeed?” Adelia searched Lady Agnes’s face for any hint of duplicity. Could Lady Agnes secretly wish ill to Felicia? Did she feel usurped in the household pecking order? Did she resent Felicia’s presence, and was even now conducting some kind of campaign against her? Could she have sent that letter to Percy when he was travelling, hinting at the depths of Felicia’s madness? Could she be acting on behalf of her mother?
Could she somehow be causing the madness?
Adelia had read books, lurid Gothic novels for the most part, where a female protagonist, invariably young and beautiful and naïve, had been sent mad by other persons in the crumbling castle where they all seemed to live. And Tavy Castle was very much a crumbling castle in the same vein. Could enemies be running around in the night, making strange noises and flapping at bedsheets, to trick poor Felicia into losing her mind?
Then Adelia tried to picture Lady Agnes as a fraudulent ghost painted with phosphorus like a trickster at a séance, and failed. It was a silly notion.
And yet there was something in it, perhaps. Adelia felt frustrations and fears building up in her and if she did not let them out, she’d burst. So she let them out. She crossed her hands in front of her, interlacing her fingers, drawing strength from the pressure of her wedding ring. She said, very sternly and with a hint of weariness, “Something has happened here. Something in the past. You two know it and you are keeping secrets, and this causes great harm – you must see that.”
The Countess’s
