“Ah, Oscar. And what of him?”
“He needs to find a path in life but he seems unwilling to accept advice, and certainly he lacks any ambition or motivation. He is a grown man, and we all treat him like a child, which means he behaves like a child. You don’t have to feel responsible for planning out his whole life. In truth, I think he ought to be thrown onto his own devices and then he will surely learn to stand up and act for himself. Don’t you think?”
“I am not sure what I think about him.”
Adelia idly stroked one of the fern’s long fronds. “Oscar’s alibi for the murder of Hartley Knight is false, you know. Has Theodore told you that?”
Percy wasn’t moving, but he seemed to go even stiller. She realised it was because he’d drawn in a breath, and was holding it. “I did not know. What are you saying?”
“I think you know what I’m saying.”
“Oscar cannot be a killer.”
“Why not?”
“Why would he?”
“It’s all tied up with the lapis lazuli in the ice house. The fake stuff.”
“The – what?”
“The lapis lazuli in the ice house is not real.”
“It’s blue rocks. It’s real, but there’s no market for it,” he said, frowning.
She thought that his astonishment seemed genuine. “Theodore has tested it. It was never worth much, even in the first place.”
He shook his head. “No, his tests must be wrong. Our family’s fortune was made on it.”
“And lost on it, too, when everything collapsed. Yet it wasn’t worth the speculation back then and certainly isn’t worth much now. I mean, it’s all out there in an insecure building – of course it’s not a pile of priceless minerals! Why would you even think so? Why did you ever think so?”
“Because that’s where it’s always been and that’s how it has always been and ...” Percy tailed off. “I don’t question things like that. Is he sure?” he asked again. “Sorry – sorry. Yes, of course he’s sure. Oh, for heaven’s sake. What now?”
“I don’t think it changes much,” she said. “Except that someone must have thought that it was worth killing over, and perhaps Oscar did.”
“But nothing has been taken – oh! Do you mean that Oscar killed Hartley for the lapis lazuli, and then he, too, discovered it was fake?”
“Possibly,” she said. “It seems likely to me but it does not explain why he’d go on to kill Parker – or mistakenly kill Parker. It’s even less clear why he would actually have wanted to kill you. He idolises you.” But she fixed him with a stern look, challenging him to disagree or reveal something that she had missed.
Because she was still convinced that she had missed something.
“He does, although I rather think your husband has supplanted me in Oscar’s affections.” He laughed but it quickly faded.
“I don’t want to think about the consequences of any of that,” she said quietly.
“My life is one long stream of consequences,” he said.
“So is everyone’s. Listen. You’re not trapped here. You have choices. You have far more possibilities than many people. You have money, youth, intelligence and influence. You are not happy here. Good heavens, man, are you deliberately making yourself miserable? That’s almost a sin, don’t you think, when countless others desperately want to change their situations and can’t, and you can change your situation, but do nothing?”
“Madam, I...”
She glared at him.
He stopped speaking. He half-closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Whether he was trying to master his anger, or restrain himself from an outburst of tears, she could not tell.
She had said everything that she needed to say. She quietly left him alone.
Twenty
The ball, the ball, the infernal Floating Ball – it was all anyone talked about in the last few days of that horrible, hectic, tense week. Adelia told Theodore it was because it was better than talking about the ever-present threat of murder, the ongoing illness of Felicia, and the hovering policemen that were still dogging Percy’s every step.
She also pointed out to him that the servants were not talking about the ball. He hadn’t really thought about them, but panic was simmering away underneath everyone’s tense, white face. They didn’t care about the choice of dress or the decisions to be made about fans and hats. The servants, in spite of the constant police presence and reassurances from Percy and the others, were worried – and quite rightly so. Inspector Wilbred was downplaying events as much as he could, which kept the press from the door of the castle, generally. A few reporters had been chased away by the liveried men and the policeman on duty, and there had been some crowds of onlookers gathered at the gates on the day immediately after Parker’s body had been taken away. The rain, however, along with the slight distance that the castle stood from the town, kept most people away.
Poor people and servants died all the time, of course. The death of first the house steward and then the valet only sent small local ripples through society – no one really cared, outside of the castle walls. If the victims had been young, beautiful women, it would have been a very different story, of course. If they had been wealthy victims, it would have been a tremendous story.
So the only people who were really concerned were the servants, and they were concerned for their own lives.
The person who should have been concerned, Theodore and Adelia agreed, was the intended victim, Percy. Yet he seemed to want to bury his head in the sand and ignore the danger that he was in.
Theodore had spent many long hours shut up with Doctor Netherfield. He liked the man, though some of his ideas had not quite convinced Theodore of their veracity. Doctor Netherfield had travelled extensively and spent many years training at various institutions in Europe; that was likely where he had picked up some of his more esoteric ideas about
