by Issy Brooke
“No,” muttered Brodie. “He betrayed me and I ... don’t know anymore.”
That was all they could get out of him for the remainder of the short journey.
THE ENTOURAGE OF POLICE coaches and carriages went straight to the main police station house in Plymouth where Brodie was dragged out, still half-strapped to the stretcher. Doctor Netherfield accompanied him, and Inspector Wilbred left too. Theodore continued on with his friend Rhodes and they were driven back to Rhodes’s own house.
Felicia was sitting at the window in the upstairs room, playing a round of cards with the matron assigned to her care. She jumped to her feet when she saw Theodore.
“Papa!” She started towards him then stopped, unsure of what was happening. Her nervous glance darted between Theodore and Rhodes.
“Don’t be daft,” Rhodes said brusquely. “You’re free, so get yourself gone. Let me have my house to myself again, what!”
“Free?”
Theodore held out his hands. “Come home, my dear girl. Come home.”
THEODORE’S HEART WAS bursting with joy and relief. They engaged a cab to drive them back to Tavy Castle immediately. Rhodes had offered Theodore all manner of refreshments but Theodore could not wait and Felicia was keen to get back to her home. Clearly she was feeling better, as he had half-expected her to revert to her previous hysteria and loathing for the castle. They bundled back into a carriage and as they rumbled back on the well-worn road, Theodore told her everything.
At first he tried to keep things light and spare his daughter the worst details. What would it profit her, he asked himself, to know that someone hated her so much that they tried to kill her – and not outright, but by slow and steady degrees, causing as much pain and distress as possible? It made Theodore sick to even think of it.
But as he spoke, his bright-eyed daughter asked him probing questions. Her sense had returned to her. She admitted she still felt weak, and her limbs tingled at the extremities, and her throat was sore, but in spite of all that, her mind was clearing. “It is like the sun coming out at the end of a dismal grey day,” she told him. “And I thank the Lord that this all had an outside cause. I truly feared I was losing my mind. And my soul.”
So Theodore revealed everything that he knew and she nodded along. “I cannot remember much of the past few months,” she said. “Even the year has blurry patches. I tried to befriend Oscar in the early days, you know. He resisted my attentions. Still, I persisted, for Percy’s sake.” She shook her head sadly. “I can see now that every overture of friendship that I made towards him would have made him feel even more antipathy for me.”
“What about Lady Katharine?” Theodore asked. “I am now rather worried about her. Do you believe that she had absolutely no idea about her son’s true nature?”
Felicia’s eyes widened as she considered the question. “Goodness, papa, that is a difficult thing to answer. Perhaps you know better than I do. Can a parent truly see their own child as a stranger does? Does not paternal or maternal love cloud one’s judgment?”
Theodore found himself shifting uncomfortably on the seat and it wasn’t due to the potholes in the road. He had believed his own daughter to be mad at one point, and though he liked to think he had never really considered that she could have been a murderess – yet he had, hadn’t he? He’d not blamed her, not at all ... but he had started to accept she might have done it in her insanity.
He had not seen her truly.
“Love and one’s own nature clouds many issues,” he admitted at last. “Lady Katharine has suffered many problems in her life and that seems to have affected how she has been able to live her life. Doctor Netherfield will have more ideas on this topic, I am sure.”
“But is she blameless?” Felicia asked.
“I think so. I hope so. Certainly she was shocked but I am not sure how she is now. She has seen her son taken off by the police. I am sure your mother will be looking after her,” he added.
“Oh, mama!” Felicia looked out of the window. They were now rocking their way along the driveway and approaching Tavy Castle. “Oh! Percy!” She pressed her hand flat on the glass and began to smile.
It was the sweetest smile that Theodore had seen.
THEODORE JUMPED DOWN from the cab. Mrs Rush came forward from the house, clutching some coins to pay the cab driver, taking the role that would have fallen once to the house steward. She bustled with a new purpose and it was good to see.
Felicia did not wait for her father to help her out of the carriage. She half-stepped, half-slid to the ground and rushed forward into her husband’s arms. Percy gripped her tightly and put his head close to her ear. Theodore looked away discreetly, somewhat embarrassed.
When he looked back, he was surprised to see that Percy was leading Felicia away from the castle and into the grounds. They disappeared into the trees. He looked around but Mrs Rush had gone back into the castle.
Captain Everard was waiting for him. He was leaning on a stick, his hands bandaged up, and he had a sickly pallor to his face. But he was grinning widely, and Lady Agnes was by his side, standing with a closeness that suggested a certain degree of familiarity had been reached between them. Adelia emerged from behind them, looking as confused as Theodore felt.
“What’s going on?” Theodore asked.
“Oh, everything seems to be going rather well, all things considered,” Captain Everard replied. “The old chap seemed to think that his good lady wouldn’t want to be sleeping inside, under the circumstances. I mean, we’ve stopped any further seepage of poison but you know it will linger. At least in memory, if not in reality. So he’s cobbled together one of his outdoor sleeping arrangements and I believe he intends to begin introducing her to the ways of the explorer. They are playing at safari in the woods.”
“But she is a lady!” Adelia gasped in horror.
“I rather fancy that she needs to get used to the new style of living.”
“Why?”
“I think he wants her to travel with him.”
“She is unwell!”
“You can be unwell at home or you can be unwell somewhere else. It is all the same, in the end. And she won’t be unwell any more, will she? She was unwell because of the castle, that’s my understanding of the matter.”
Adelia looked at Theodore and mouthed, “Do something!”
He shrugged.
Lady Agnes and Captain Everard retreated back into the castle. Theodore held out his hand. “Come along. Let’s see what sort of ‘arrangements’ this man has made for our daughter. Are you sure you chose the right sort of husband?”
She grimaced at him, and they sneaked off, as best they could, into the woods behind Felicia and Percy.
And in the end, they needn’t have worried.
A tent of the sort used on safari, tall and wide and quite capable of providing all one’s home comforts, was set up by a sheltered cove in a slight hill, and there was a campfire already merrily burning, and lanterns ready in the trees, and a tea kettle hanging on a metal pole above the fire, and a faint smell of crumpets in the air.
They could not see Percy or Felicia.
But they didn’t need to.
Carefully, quietly, they retreated and left them in privacy.
Thirty
Adelia and Theodore had been back at Thringley House for a month. And she was still grateful to wake up in her own bed every morning. The year had been an eventful one and she felt as if she had traversed the very length and breadth of the country. Of course, having seven daughters married to seven very different men did rather impact on one’s own previous social obligations and conversely it widened one’s social circle greatly.
Especially when one of them was an explorer.
She was reminded of that when she found a letter from Felicia in amongst her correspondence. She had asked for her letters to be brought into the breakfast room that morning. Theodore was hidden behind a vast newspaper, which was the best place for him when he was eating
eggs so messily. The October day was promising to be one of those very chilly and very clear ones, with golden sunlight already streaming in through the windows. Outside, the trees were turning orange and yellow, and today with the dazzling light behind them, they seemed to glow. It was the sort of day that reminded one that though the year turned and ageing and loss were inevitable things, yet there was a beauty to be found in things still. The layers of memory that a long year or a long season or indeed, a long life, added to a view brought more depth and meaning, perhaps. A consolation of impending dotage, Adelia thought, feeling serenely wise for a moment.
It didn’t last, of course. She shook her head before maudlin sentimentality could seize hold of her, and she turned to the uppermost letter of the pile alongside her. She recognised the handwriting at once. The envelope was battered and marked with many stamps, and that alone told her that it had come from a far-flung place.
It was a bright, cheerful, chatty sort of letter. Felicia wrote with breathless enthusiasm about their four-week tour across the continent as they worked their way south towards the Mediterranean. Percy, it seemed, was easing his wife into the travelling life. They sounded as if they were taking some very slow and comfortable forms of transport. River cruises, sleeper trains, hired coaches. “I cannot wait to get to Egypt, however,” Felicia wrote, and Adelia thought that she would be in for a shock when she swapped paddle steamers for camels. “I do so wish to see the pyramids.” She went on to say she had no idea when they might return. “Perhaps in the spring?”
Adelia closed her eyes for a moment and thought about the dreadful year Felicia had endured. She sounded happy now, and if being away from Tavy Castle was what it took to make her happy, then Adelia wanted her daughter to stay away for ever. And after all, Lady Katharine was now firmly ensconced in the castle itself, having moved out of the gatehouse and into her true role as the overseer of the day to day life of the place. It had been semi-mothballed, but was still inhabited and staffed, and no doubt would be inching its way through a series of improvements to the accommodation.
Lady Katharine had risen beyond the shock and scandal that had emerged when her own son had been tried for a double murder. The other crimes had been dropped; murder was considered to be quite enough. Mrs Carstairs and her coterie had rallied round and led the way, ensuring that Lady Katharine was supported. She was not welcomed into polite society, of course; that could never happen again. But Lady Katharine was not going to miss what she had never had, after all.
Oscar Brodie was to hang.
The Countess had been shoved out into the gatehouse where she was attended to by a sour-faced nurse obtained through an agency in Plymouth. While Adelia didn’t think that they had deliberately requested “the most miserable attendant you have on your books” she also didn’t think that they bothered to hunt for a pleasant sort of companion. The Countess was going to have to put up with what she got.
The Countess had never written to Adelia.
But there was another letter for Adelia which had come from Plymouth. This one was a long thin envelope in ivory, containing an invitation on linen paper, written in large and exuberant calligraphy. She squealed and Theodore laid his newspaper down. There was egg in his whiskers.
“Good news? Or a mouse in the toast rack?” he asked.
“I believe the rodent issue has been dealt with. No, we have been invited to a wedding.”
He blinked. “They’re all married already.”
“Oh, do catch up, dear. Not our own daughters. Lady Agnes and Captain Everard are to be wed!”
He lifted his chin and gazed at the ceiling for a brief moment. “Of course they are. You knew that would happen from the moment they met. I do not think it is a squealing matter.”
“You have a heart of stone, dear. We shall go, of course, and you will be amiable and pleasant.”
“Yes, dear,” he said dutifully. “What’s this?” As he moved his newspaper to one side, he noticed that he, too, had some correspondence. He tore it open without examining the envelope.
She didn’t ask who it was from. He received all manner of letters. Some were from friends and acquaintances but an increasing number were from strangely eager members of the public who had read of his exploits in the newspapers.
But then he said, “Humph. Curious!”
“What is it?”
“Our nephew Wilson has written to me. Which is, in itself, rather odd.”
Wilson was the thirteen-year-old son of Adelia’s brother Alfred. She had been drawn into sending money to Alfred over the past few years and she had kept this fact a secret from Theodore. The longer that she had concealed it, the harder it had become to confess anything to him. Alfred had been sliding into penniless obscurity, and she was – if she were brutally honest – ashamed of him. And she was ashamed of being ashamed of her own brother. To make amends, she had paid for Wilson to attend a good school from September.
She felt cold as she realised that she was doing exactly what The Countess had done, all those years ago. Secrets. Unnecessary secrets. And that had ended with two deaths. She bit her lip.
Theodore tossed the letter over to her. “It doesn’t say very much. What do you make of it?”
She scanned it. It was, as Theodore said, very brief, and simply thanked Theodore “for his generosity.”
“Oh,” she said.
“What generosity?” Theodore asked in confusion.
“Maybe this was not meant for you. Perhaps it is the wrong letter in the envelope.”
“It is my name at the top of the paper.”
“Indeed so. Well, he is a young man, with many things on his mind.”
“What is it with young men these days? Don’t tell me he will be going the way of Oscar Brodie. I do feel that modern life is getting too fast, you know. Young people today have far too many things to think about and it’s all a bit much.”
“Stop right there. You were about to say ‘when I was a boy’ and frankly, dear Theodore, when you were a boy, Queen Victoria was barely on the throne and everyone thought travelling on a railway would cause one’s hair to fall out or something. Did they even have locomotives when you were young?”
Theodore subsided with a grumble. Adelia took the letter and scooped up the rest of her correspondence too, and excused herself swiftly, before the matter could be pursued.
Once she was out in the corridor, she paused and got her breath, trying to slow her pounding heart. For she had received one more letter, too. It was not from Wilson.
This one was from her brother Alfred. And she knew that her past was going to catch up with her very, very soon.
The End
Thank you for reading! This was book three in the series. The others are:
Murder at Mondial Castle (already available)
The Viscount’s Deadly Game (already available)
A Murderous Inheritance (this book)
And, coming on 26th June 2020, is The Earl’s Mortal Enemy. You can pre-order book four now! Just follow these links:
Click here for Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085WSR9CQ
Click here for Amazon.co.uk https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B085WSR9CQ
Click here for Amazon.ca https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B085WSR9CQ
Click here for Amazon.com.au https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B085WSR9CQ
THE END