“When you went on to school you did better than you did at home with the tutor...”
“School was rugby and rowing, wrestling and riding! How could I not excel? No one cared there if I could read Latin or not; it was not that sort of school. I learned not to care, too. I knew I would never make you proud though. That was clear from the start, from the very moment I could understand my place in the world. My place was not at your side. My place was not as your heir. I knew that I would always let you down; I would always reflect badly upon you...”
“You made some very stupid choices,” Theodore said, his voice hardening. Adelia understood his sudden defensiveness. It was impossible to ask Theodore to accept that he had been overlooking his son’s true nature for all of his life. “That cannot be denied. You struggled with book-learning, I can agree with that. But none of that made you do the things that you did. What of the times you were up before the beak? What of the time you stole a pangolin from the zoo? What of the time you humiliated the visiting Archduke’s daughter with that dreadful trick? She will be scared of lilies for the rest of her life. And I have heard worse – of women, of opium, of fights for money in seedy dens...”
“I have no excuse,” Bamfylde replied. “I have explanations, certainly. But the reasoning I might offer cannot and will not excuse any one of my terrible, shameful, evil decisions. Yes: I accept that.”
Adelia said, “I am interested – humour me, dear Theodore – what is your reasoning, Bamfylde?”
“It is flawed reasoning but that is something I am only lately coming to understand fully,” Bamfylde said. “I ... I have become friends with some clever people who are interested in the workings of the mind and so on. Through them and our discussions I realise now that I was playing the part of a rebellious son with nothing to lose, because that is what I had been told that I was. If you tell someone what they are, they believe it, eventually, you know. And even when other people were not telling me what a disgrace I was, well, I was still telling it to myself. You know, I got to believe it all so deeply that if anyone tried to see the good in me – I simply refused to listen to them! Truly I was irredeemable.”
“And yet here you are,” Adelia said. “Redeemed ... I think?”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Bamfylde said hastily. He looked at his father who was not speaking at all. “For the fact remains that I make my living entirely by my labour. I paint. I mix with unsavoury sorts; other artists, models, actresses.”
“We are not unsavoury sorts!” said Charlotte.
“No.” He smiled at her, a genuine look of warmth on his face. “No, you have been my rock, you and Robert, for which I will always be grateful.”
Theodore finally said, “You kept all this a secret from me because you thought that I would be ashamed of you.”
Bamfylde nodded, flushing red.
Theodore flexed his hands. Adelia watched his face contort, myriad emotions vying for supremacy. Anger was there, and she could only guess at its cause. Did he feel betrayed, lied to, or was it anger at himself and the time he had lost? Incomprehension, too; he was baffled. There was so much that he would need to consider and discuss.
But they didn’t have time for that now.
Adelia said, “Bamfylde, it was you they saw on the steps of Digby Nettles’ house the night that he died, was it not?”
Bamfylde nodded with another sideways glance at his father, gauging his reactions. “It was another reason I could not then come forward,” he said. “I urged Lottie to keep my secret for as long as she could, for I knew that I was a suspect in the case.”
“But you are still a suspect,” Theodore burst out. “Unless you can tell us exactly what you were doing there, of course. We saw you arguing and he ejected you. You have a strong motive to have killed him or so it seems to me at this moment.”
“It is true. Nettles and I were arguing. He had just discovered my true identity and wanted to use it against me.”
Charlotte hung her head in shame. “I am sorry.”
Bamfylde reached out and rubbed her arm briefly. “It no longer matters.” To everyone else, he said, “You know that he was a duplicitous scoundrel, don’t you?”
Everyone nodded.
“Good,” said Bamfylde, suppressing a shudder. “He sought power for the sake of power; he wanted to know secrets for the sake of knowing them.”
Adelia thought that also sounded very much like Lady Purfleet.
“He was threatening me,” said Bamfylde. “He said that he would expose me if I did not help him. It wasn’t blackmail for money – I could have done that, I could have paid him off. But he wanted my skills as a painter to aid him in his forgery and fakery, and that I could not do. I would not sully my art in that way.”
“Art is more important to you than money?” Theodore said with an incredulous tone.
“Why, yes,” Bamfylde answered, sounding astonished that anyone would even query that.
“Hmm.” Theodore pressed his lips together. Adelia could see his mind working.
“If he was threatening you, and you admit it,” Adelia said, “this looks even worse for you.”
“I know,” Bamfylde replied. “All I can give you is my word that I walked away from him that night, while he was still living, and I never saw him again. I had no part in his death. And I am fully aware that my word means nothing to you.”
“Not nothing,” said Theodore, quietly. “It’s not nothing...”
He was struggling. Adelia stepped in again, saying, “Who do you think
