Percy nodded. “I paid for his schooling. I got the reports back from the headmaster and his housemaster every year, and they said his academic achievement was excellent. He was a duffer at sport, though, and not terribly well liked. I wasn’t paying his fees for him to be liked, though, so I thought it was all right, really.”
“But he has always lacked direction. Who knows from where that lack of drive springs?” Theodore nodded at Doctor Netherfield. “Is it something in the blood that he inherited from his feckless father? Or a lack of a role model now?”
Percy interrupted angrily. “I say, I have tried to be that figure to him.”
“Indeed you have – when you have been here. But wait, listen. Now is not the time for recriminations. When you have been here, he has followed you around, has he not?”
“Yes. He was always something of a pest, if I’m honest. Could never shake the lad off, and just when you thought you’d evaded him, you’d turn around and there he’d be, lurking and watching, just waiting for a chance to come up to you and talk again.” Percy shuddered. “He is my sister’s son and my own flesh and blood. I ought to love him more. After all, he’ll be my heir if Felicia cannot...”
Doctor Netherfield held up his broad hand. He seemed to know exactly where things were going. “There are many more years yet ahead of you to consider such things and I am confident that your good lady can be returned to health.”
Percy thinned his lips and stared at the wall. Captain Everard looked from one man to another but wisely kept his own counsel on the matter.
Theodore pressed on, reluctant to talk any more about the sensitive topic. He said, “It is a fact, then, that Oscar Brodie has a lot of time on his hands and he is known to hide in hedges and eavesdrop and watch all that goes on in this household. Of that, we can all agree.”
The men nodded. “Even I have noticed this,” the doctor murmured.
“This time, Percy, has Brodie been as demanding of your time as on your previous visits home?”
“I do not visit home – I live here, and visit other places,” Percy said.
Theodore did not reply. He allowed his words to sink in until Percy went a little pink. Finally Percy said, “Perhaps I can see why you said that. Anyway, it is irrelevant. As to Oscar, he has seemed a little confused this time. He has followed my steps almost as much as usual but he has also tried to follow you. And he is certainly less – less, um, less keen to hang on to my every word in the way that he used to in the past.”
Theodore nodded.
The doctor said, “He is obviously looking for a father figure. Doctor Freud has a lot to say about this kind of thing.”
Theodore had read some of the mind-doctor’s wilder theories, and he had always felt obliged to hide the books in case Adelia stumbled across them. He said, hastily, “Indeed he has and that would be a discussion for a more appropriate setting, but not here and now. I suspect that it would baffle laymen.” As it often baffled him. “It is my suggestion that, in the course of his lurking and lingering, he has seen something to do with the lapis lazuli in the ice house that has interested him. Perhaps the house steward was using the space for other purposes such as the storing of stolen goods, but I have not yet found any evidence around that. It is my first sticking point.”
“The lapis?” Percy said.
“The fake lapis. The ice house is full of worthless rocks.”
Captain Everard gasped. Percy looked grim. “So your wife told me,” he said to Theodore. “Are you absolutely sure? I confess I doubted her.”
“Yes. I can show you with chemical experiments if you wish.” Theodore waved at the glassware and wooden racks that littered the tables.
Percy scratched his head. “No, no, I shall accept it, but it confuses me utterly.”
“Why? It makes more sense to me,” Theodore said. “Surely it is nonsense to imagine that you have been keeping valuable and saleable minerals in an insecure location? Why would you do that?”
Percy shrugged. “Because that is where it has always been, and the market collapsed, and so... I don’t know. I don’t know!” he yelled, suddenly. “I never questioned it! You don’t, do you? No one does! If it is something that your family does and has always done, you keep on doing it! I don’t know much but I sure as hell know that! That’s what it means to be an earl or a duke or a baron or anything! That’s the responsibility, isn’t it? That’s what I am supposed to do!”
He was quite red in the face. Everyone was silent, allowing his words to sink in. Theodore thought that the passion in his speech revealed the very core of Percy’s troubled character.
And perhaps it hinted at some of the things that they had not yet uncovered.
“I have to say that it does sound rather odd,” Doctor Netherfield remarked mildly.
Captain Everard snorted but once again kept his thoughts to himself.
“I have been looking through the business records and family records, such as they are,” Theodore said. Percy looked startled and began to protest but Theodore spoke over him firmly. “There are huge gaps. The records start to show gaps around 1820, actually, and it peaks with massive chunks missing around thirty years ago. The records return to what I expected to see from around five years ago.”
“Yes, of course, I take care to oversee the accounts especially now I am a married man
