Chapter 31: : Chapter 30

A bizarre mosaic of images swam before Charles’s eyes. A tuft of graying light brown hair. The gleam of midnight-blue superfine. The red-black sheen of blood—spilled over the floor, spattered on the steps, clinging to the remnants of hair and coat and twisted limbs.

Someone had bashed in Kenneth Fraser’s skull, reducing the sardonic features to a pulpy mass. The congealing blood told its own story, but Charles dropped to his knees and reached for his father’s wrist. Cold, dead flesh, no trace of a pulse. Charles got to his feet and pulled his sister away from the wreckage on the ground before them. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it looks as though it is Father. He’s been dead for some time.’

Gisèle’s breathing sounded like cracked ice. She spun round in his hold, flung her arms round his neck, and buried her face in his cravat.

Charles stroked her hair. ‘We should move him. Andrew—’

Andrew touched him on the arm. ‘Belmont and I can see to it.’

‘It’s all right, I’m—’

‘You’re not ‘fine,’ Fraser.’ Tommy brushed past him. ‘You wouldn’t be human if you were. Last I checked, you were still human. Barely.’ He bent over the body, as did Andrew.

Mélanie squeezed his shoulder. ‘Darling.’ It was all she said. It was all he could take. He managed a brief glance into her eyes. He could handle the others, but he feared Mélanie’s comfort would shatter him. ‘Mel, can you take Gisèle—’

‘I’m not a baby, Charles. Don’t.’ Gisèle jerked out of his arms. ‘I have to go check on Ian.’

‘I’ll go.’

‘You can come with me.’ Gisèle started up the stairs.

Charles ran after her. ‘Examine Father,’ he said over his shoulder to Mélanie. ‘See what you can learn.’

He followed his sister up two flights of turnpike stairs, worn by centuries, to the old solar. The light of his torch showed the old wooden ladder still in place beneath the trapdoor that led to the top level of the tower. He caught Gisèle’s hand. ‘Let me go first. Just in case.’

She looked at him for a moment and then nodded and stepped aside. ‘Don’t be alarmed, Ian,’ she called as he climbed the splintery ladder and pushed open the trap door.

‘Miss Fraser, are you all right?’ said an anxious voice from above. ‘I heard—’

The voice died as Charles climbed another rung of the ladder and lifted his torch into the close damp of the top tower chamber. A startled pair of eyes looked at him from across the room.

‘You must be Ian,’ Charles said. ‘I’m Gisèle’s brother Charles. We haven’t met, at least not since you were a boy. It’s all right, Gisèle told me what happened last night.’

Some of the tension drained from the young man’s face. He was probably no more than seventeen, with pale skin gone paler from shock and clear eyes that gleamed green even in the shadows. His right leg was stretched before him at an awkward angle, bound round with several lengths of lint, the lower half of his trouser leg cut away. ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Fraser. I told Miss Fraser she shouldn’t involve herself—’

‘My sister is a very strong-willed woman.’ Charles climbed into the room, ducking his head beneath the low ceiling. The ladder creaked as Gisèle followed.

Ian’s gaze darted to her. ‘I thought I heard voices down below. I couldn’t make out the words, but they sounded angry. Then there was some sort of crash. I thought Wheaton had come for me. Then I was worried something had happened to you. I tried to get to the stairs, but I couldn’t manage with my leg.’

‘It wasn’t Wheaton.’ Charles knelt beside the young man. ‘Someone bludgeoned my father to death at the base of the stairs.’

‘God in heaven.’ Ian’s gaze went back to Gisèle. ‘I should have got downstairs if I had to roll all the way.’

‘He’d have been dead before you could have got down,’ Charles said. ‘How long ago did you hear the crash?’

‘Three hours. Perhaps four. I haven’t much sense of time since I’ve been here.’

‘Could you tell if the voices you heard were male or female?’

‘I thought they were men. But truth to tell, I couldn’t swear to it.’

‘Let’s get you downstairs, lad. The cold won’t help you heal, and my wife should look at your leg.’

Between them he and Gisèle got Ian down the tower, Charles half carrying him a good part of the way. The need for action, too strenuous to leave room for thought, was a welcome tonic.

Andrew and Tommy had lain Kenneth Fraser on the sofa in the library, wrapped in Tommy’s coat. Mélanie was kneeling beside the body. ‘I’d guess he’s been dead about four hours,’ she said. ‘Judging by the marks, the weapon looks to have been a rock or something jagged rather than a cudgel. The initial blow probably knocked him out.’

Charles nodded. Perhaps later, when he was capable of feeling, he’d be relieved that his father hadn’t suffered. ‘You should look at young Ian,’ he said, pressing Ian into a chair.

Gisèle walked over to the sofa with deliberate steps. Andrew moved toward her, but she put out her hand to stop him. ‘No. It’s all right.’ She looked down at their father. ‘They didn’t let me see Mama after she died. I always thought it would have been easier if I had. It never seemed real somehow.’ She drew a breath. ‘This is real.’

‘Yes.’ Charles squeezed her shoulders and was surprised when she leaned into him for a moment. They stood together looking at their father’s body in the room in which their mother had died.

‘Do you want to wake everyone?’ Andrew asked. ‘Or wait until morning?’

‘To begin with,’ Charles said, ‘I want Glenister.’

Gisèle looked up at him. ‘You’re going to tell him about Father?’

‘I’m going to show him,’ Charles said.

‘Without warning him? Charles, that’s monstrous.’

‘So’s murder,’ Charles replied.

Glenister responded to Charles’s knock at his bedchamber door with a quickness that suggested he hadn’t been sleeping. Sick dread filled his eyes. ‘It isn’t Evie?’ he said. ‘Or the boys?’

‘No.’ Charles took pity on him thus far. ‘It isn’t anything to do with them. Come down to the library, sir. There’s something I want you to see.’

Glenister followed him downstairs without attempting to press him for more information. He paused on the library threshold, taking in the assembled crowd, then strode into the room and stopped short at the sight of the body on the sofa. He stared down at the man who had been his—friend? enemy? lover?—as though he could not take in the sight before him. Then he spun away. ‘Good God, what happened?’

‘I thought perhaps you could tell us,’ Charles said.

‘You think I had something to do with—’

‘I think it’s past time we discussed certain questions. Would you prefer to do it here or in private?’

Glenister held Charles’s gaze for a moment. Without another word he turned on his heel and strode into the study. Charles followed.

Glenister crossed to the velvet-curtained windows, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the library. ‘Someone killed him.’

Charles leaned against the closed door. ‘That much seems obvious. He was overheard arguing with someone.’

Glenister’s hands closed into fists. ‘Why the devil would I kill your father?’

‘Among other things, because you admitted you’d hated him for years in this very room just hours ago.’

Glenister drew in his breath as though to let lose a stream of invective. Then he sighed and regarded Charles with the look he’d used to wear when he’d stopped by the Dunmykel nursery with a box of chocolates. ‘For God’s sake, use your head, lad. Why the devil would I admit I’d sunk so low as to try to use my own niece to get my revenge on Kenneth and then turn round and kill him?’

‘Perhaps because you blamed him for Honoria’s death.’

Glenister’s eyes turned tiger bright. ‘Are you telling me Kenneth killed her?’

‘Do you think he did?’

‘If I was sure of it, I’d have broken his neck last night. You must believe that.’

Charles advanced a half-dozen paces into the room. ‘Who was the man in the secret passage last night?’

‘I haven’t the least idea.’

‘He was here to meet someone. I’d wager a guess that someone was Father or you.’

‘It’s your father’s house.’

‘In which you and Father have indulged in games for more than a quarter-century.’

Glenister dropped down on the sofa, pulling his dressing gown close round him. ‘I thought you believed this man couldn’t have killed Honoria.’

‘I do. But he may well have killed my father. It’s time you told me the truth, sir.’

‘The truth about what?’

‘The Elsinore League.’

Glenister’s fingers closed on the silk at the neck of his dressing gown. ‘What the hell are the Elsinore League?’

‘I was hoping you could tell me. Mr. Wheaton—’

‘Who?’

‘Wheaton. A smuggler who ran errands for you and my father. He says you drank and whored—’

‘Damn it, of course we—’

‘And smuggled works of art.’ Charles flicked a gaze at the Gentileschi painting of Cleopatra.

‘If that were true, we wouldn’t be the only people in Britain to do so. Damn it, Lord Elgin was hardly aboveboard with those marbles of his.’

‘Aunt Frances thinks you were lovers.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a reasonable assumption,’ Charles said. ‘David would like to think acts of debauchery only take place between people of the opposite sex, but I’m not so naive.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. I didn’t even like your father.’

‘As Aunt Frances would say, liking has very little to do with it. And then there’s Castlereagh, who thinks the Elsinore League were a spy ring begun by French revolutionaries.’

‘I’m not a traitor.’

‘That doesn’t precisely answer the question.’

‘The question is a bit of damned impertinence I shouldn’t have to listen to from my godson.’

‘Do you deny you were part of an organization called the Elsinore League?’

‘I could deny it if I wanted, but I see no reason to do so.’ Glenister spread his fingers on the sofa arm. ‘Kenneth and I were certainly never lovers in any form of the word, and we never did anything to betray our country. The Elsinore League were a sort of club your father and I formed at Oxford.’

‘For what purpose?’

Glenister turned his head and let his gaze drift over a Fragonard oil depicting a young man about to unlace a young woman’s bodice in a garden lush with ripening spring. ‘All the amusements one might expect of young men with healthy appetites.’

‘So you chose the name Elsinore because something was rotten at its core?’

‘Let us say because it seemed to our undergraduate ears to symbolize indulgence in vice. We used to have house parties. At one or the other of my estates. Here after your father bought the property.’

‘I think I found the rooms Father built for the purpose. In the caves off the secret passage.’

Glenister’s brows lifted. ‘You’re quicker than I thought. I suppose we should have been grateful you never stumbled across them as a boy. Though the door has a lock. Rather a good one.’

‘I have a set of picklocks. Rather good ones. Not all the League’s members were English, were they?’

‘Some of our Oxford friends were foreign born. We met others when we made the Grand Tour who became part of the Elsinore League. As might be expected, they ended up on various sides in France in the war. But neither Kenneth nor I ever did anything to betray our country.’

‘Were any of your fellow Elsinore League members involved in the French Revolution in any way?’

‘As far as I know, lad, you’re by far the most radical thinker ever to grace your father’s door.’

‘Was your brother a member of the Elsinore League?’

‘Yes. But Cyril’s revolutionary sentiments were too romanticized to be taken seriously. And most of the time he knew better than to drag politics into convivial gatherings.’

‘Was the shooting party where he died one of the Elsinore League’s gatherings?’

Glenister’s face twisted. ‘A gathering I wish to God we’d never held.’

‘Who else was present for it?’

‘William Cathcart. Billy Gordon. Tony Craven, I think. I’m not sure of the others.’

‘Aunt Frances thought two of them might be French.’

Glenister stood and took a turn about the hearthrug. ‘Yes, all right. A couple of the members had slipped over from France on one of Wheaton’s smuggling runs. It was after the war started, so they had to come under assumed names. No harm in revealing the truth now, I suppose.’

‘What were their names?’

‘Du Bretton. They were brothers.’

‘Aunt Frances also remembers an Irishman with cold blue eyes.’

‘Christ, I haven’t seen some of these men in ten years. I couldn’t tell you their eye color. Arthur Donnell may have been there. He was Irish.’

‘You’re sure there wasn’t another Frenchman present called Coroux?’

Glenister jammed his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown. ‘Never heard the name.’

Charles couldn’t be certain of whether or not his godfather was telling the truth. ‘What about the man you and Father had smuggled out of France a fortnight ago? Who was he?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Wheaton remembers receiving the orders quite clearly,’ Charles said, neglecting to add that Wheaton’s account of the events had not included Glenister.

Glenister wandered over to the card table and absently turned over one of the cards. ‘I had nothing to do with smuggling anyone out of Paris. I don’t know about your father, though I can’t imagine why he would have done so.’

Which meant that Glenister wasn’t going to fall for the bluff. Or, just possibly, that he was telling the truth. ‘Do you think it’s possible any of the members of the Elsinore League could be Le Faucon de Maulévrier?’

‘Le who? You mean that butcher from the Revolution? My God, if that’s the sort of thing Castlereagh’s going about saying, he has less wit than I credited.’

‘You admit some of your friends ended up on the opposite side during the war. You can’t know what they were all up to during the Terror.’

‘The era of the Revolution was our salad days when we were in closest contact.’

‘But you can’t rule out one of your friends being Le Faucon for a certainty?’

‘There’s very little in life that I can rule out for a certainty. I thought you were the one who was supposed to be getting to the truth of the matter.’

‘I’m endeavoring to do so. What were you and my father afraid of Honoria discovering?’

Glenister stiffened. ‘There’s no reason Honoria should have learned of any of this. Gently bred girls—young women don’t concern themselves with such matters.’

‘One of the things we seem to have established today is that Honoria didn’t play by the rules. She was asking questions about you and Father and possibly about the Elsinore League. She thought the whole thing had something to do with her father’s death.’

Glenister stared down at the card clutched between his fingers. ‘Cyril’s death was a tragic accident. An accident for which I blame myself, but only because as his elder brother I should have looked out for him. As an elder brother yourself, I’d expect you to understand.’

Charles saw the accusation in Gisèle’s eyes in the lodge kitchen and the horror beyond her years when she’d looked down at their father’s body. ‘I understand that. It doesn’t explain what you were afraid of Honoria learning.’

‘Honoria liked to pry into things. Sometimes I think she imagined things that weren’t there. Precisely as you’re doing now.’

‘How can you be sure I’m imagining things if you’re not aware of the full story yourself?’

The muscles in Glenister’s neck tensed. He dropped the card as though it burned him. ‘That’s enough, Charles. I’m going to bury Honoria tomorrow beside my brother. And then I’m taking Evie and my disgraceful elder son and my even more disgraceful younger son and going back to London.’

Charles stepped between Glenister and the door. ‘Last night you wanted to know who killed Honoria. You don’t care anymore?’

‘Of course I want to know. But not—’

‘Yes, sir?’ Charles said into the silence.

‘It’s been twenty-four hours since Honoria’s death, you’ve learned nothing, and someone else has been murdered.’

‘I’ve learned a great deal. Just not who killed Honoria.’

‘Nor will you, if you waste your time asking impertinent questions.’ Glenister stepped past Charles.

Charles grasped his wrist. ‘Do you really think David and his father will let the question of who killed Honoria drop? Do you think I’ll let my father’s killer go unpunished?’

Glenister pulled away from Charles’s grip. ‘Such a display of filial devotion. Kenneth would be impressed. Especially since he wasn’t even—’

‘Remotely fond of me,’ Charles finished for him.

Glensiter stared at Charles for a long moment. ‘Quite.’

But they both knew that that wasn’t what he had been about to say.

As most of the house party knew of Kenneth Fraser’s death, Charles decided it would be better to wake the others—Lady Frances, David, Simon, Evie, Val, and Quen—and tell them as well. Once again they gathered in the Gold Saloon, supplied with plentiful coffee. Mélanie presided over the coffee urn, still dressed in her breeches and grubby coat, uncombed hair spilling over her shoulders, a bruise beginning to show on her jawline. She managed to look as in command of the scene as if she wore muslin and pearls and white gloves.

The company greeted the news of Kenneth Fraser’s death with the numb horror of those who have been half prepared for some other calamity to befall and are only rather surprised that this is the form it took.

‘But—’ Evie stared round the room as if her brain had ceased to function. ‘Did the same person who killed Honoria kill Mr. Eraser?’

‘Not necessarily,’ Charles said. He was standing in front of the fireplace, where he had stood with his father and Glenister and David less than twenty-four hours before.

David stared into his coffee cup as if he wasn’t sure what it held. ‘Surely it’s stretching coincidence for the two murders to be unrelated.’

‘Probably,’ Charles agreed. ‘But that doesn’t mean the same person killed both of them.’

Lady Frances fingered a fold of her dressing gown. Her eyes were like glass. ‘The bastard. The bloody, careless, inconsiderate bastard. He was always miserable at goodbyes.’ She dashed a hand across her eyes. She was, Charles realized, the first of them, including himself and Gisèle, to express any grief over Kenneth Fraser’s death.

Quen leaned forward, chin resting on his clasped hands. ‘So what happens now?’

‘Honoria’s funeral will take place in the morning as planned.’ Glenister spoke before Charles could do so. He was standing by the windows, as far from Charles as the width of the room allowed. ‘Then you and I and Val and Evie will return to London.’

‘What?’ David sprang to his feet. ‘We had an agreement, sir. No one leaves until we know who killed Honoria.’

‘This changes things. There may be danger.’

‘You’re turning tail and running because you’re afraid?’

‘Of course not. But I’ve already lost one niece. I have to think of Evelyn—’

‘Evie can return to London with her maid if you wish. But so help me, sir, if you leave with this matter unresolved—’

‘You’ll what?’ Glenister surveyed the younger man, gaze cold with contempt.

‘I’ll refer the entire matter to Bow Street.’

‘You wouldn’t dare.’

‘Try me.’

‘I mink your father will have something to say about that.’

‘My father will want to know who killed Honoria. And why his co-guardian didn’t stay to face the consequences.’

‘Your father won’t want his niece’s name dragged through the mud any more than I do. We’ve already risked—’ Glenister let his gaze rest on Val for a brief, angry moment. ‘I’ll call on your father as soon as we return to town.’

‘No.’

The word, spoken with quiet emphasis, came not from David but from Quen. He, too, was on his feet, staring at his father.

Glenister’s gaze rotated slowly in his eldest son’s direction. ‘No, what?’

‘I can’t stop you from leaving, sir, but I have no intention of doing so myself until we learn what happened to Honoria. And to Mr. Fraser.’

‘Quentin—’

‘I’m not leaving.’

‘Nor am I.’ Evie went to stand beside Quen.

‘Nor I.’ Val got to his feet as well. He seemed rather surprised at himself for having spoken.

‘Right’ Quen reached for Evie’s hand and cast a brief glance at his brother. ‘We’re all staying. Assuming Charles will have us. It’s his house now.’

The words brought Charles up short. In the midst of everything else, he hadn’t yet considered this. ‘Lord Glenister knows that I’d prefer to have everyone stay.’

Evie went to her uncle and took his arm. ‘I know you’re worried after losing Honoria, Uncle Frederick, but surely the least we owe to her memory is to find out what happened. Think how shocking I’d feel if you made me the excuse for running off to London.’

Evie Mortimer knew how to handle her uncle. She’d neatly undercut the one creditable argument he could make for leaving. Run now and he looked like a coward. Or a guilty man.

Lady Frances pressed her hands over her lap. ‘I suppose you want to know where we all were last night.’

‘It’s possible Father was killed by someone from outside the house, but yes, I do.’

Not surprisingly, they’d all been alone in their rooms. That much established, the company scattered to dress for the day. Mélanie walked over to Charles, put out her hand, and then dropped it to her side without touching him. ‘David’s going to have more questions.’

Charles nodded. ‘I think it’s time for another council, one that includes Gisèle and Tommy. You talk to them. I want to go through Father’s papers before anyone has a chance to tamper with them.’

‘Charles—’

He summoned up the best approximation of a reassuring smile he could muster. ‘I’ll take Andrew with me. He’ll make sure I don’t have a nervous collapse. And he knows the accounts better than anyone.’

She scanned his face for a moment with a gaze like a lancet. Then she nodded and went to gather up the others.

He and Andrew walked to the study in silence. Charles struck a spark to the Chinese porcelain lamp on the desk and turned it up so the light fell over the tortoiseshell marquetry and gilded green leather of the desktop. His father’s desk. His father who was lying wrapped in a coat on the library sofa, who would never again flay him with his tongue or cut him with a cold stare or slice the ground from beneath his feet with the lift of his eyebrow. Or answer any of his questions.

Charles pressed his shaking hands down on the desktop and turned to look at Andrew. There was at least one dilemma revealed tonight that he could sort out. ‘Andrew. What Quen said—it’s true. Father never got round to changing the entail, so Dunmykel’s mine.’

‘Yes, of course, as it should be.’

‘And more important, I’m Gisèle’s guardian.’

Andrew tugged open a desk drawer and took out a stack of papers. ‘That’s good. She needs you. She has for a long while.’

‘Yes. And while I don’t know her as well as I should, a few things were painfully obvious tonight. My sister is head over heels in love with you. And though you seem to have managed to convince her that you don’t return the sentiment, you can’t deceive your oldest friend. I can’t imagine a man I’d rather have as a brother-in-law.’

Andrew listened to his words with a face that was as closed and set as the fifteenth-century marble bust in the corner. Then he slammed his hand down on the desk, spattering ink from the ink pot and knocking the penknife onto the floor. ‘Jesus. You really don’t know, do you?’

‘Know what?’ Charles bent down to retrieve the penknife.

‘There’s no reason you should, I suppose. I didn’t myself until—’ Andrew strode across the room, gaze moving over the paneling, the curtains, the Gentileschi Cleopatra, the Fragonard oil, anywhere but Charles’s face. ‘Gelly—Gisèle—visited Dunmkyel with Lady Frances last Christmas. She was very concerned about how the tenants had been faring since the Clearances. She put Christmas baskets together and she wanted to go with me to deliver them in person. At first I didn’t think much of it, she always used to follow us about when she was a child and she was always kindhearted, when she wasn’t—’

‘Being a pest. It’s all right, I can say it. She’s my little sister.’

Andrew swallowed. ‘Yes. Then I started to notice that she wasn’t just being Lady Bountiful with the tenants, she was asking some very keen questions. She’d come to see me in my office and we’d end up talking for hours and I realized—’

‘That she’s not a child anymore.’

‘No, she isn’t.’ Andrew stood by the fireplace, shoulders hunched as though he were struggling against the force of some burden that was too great to bear. ‘You told me once—one of those nights when you were home from Oxford and we sat up drinking my father’s whisky—that you didn’t believe you were capable of falling in love. I thought that was a bit bleak. I never doubted I could feel it. I’d seen it. My—parents—loved each other. But I’d never felt it for myself, until—’ He shook his head, his eyes dark with unvoiced longing. ‘It’s a funny thing when it finally happens. And when you know you shouldn’t—I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. I tried to think of her as my employer’s daughter, my friend’s little sister.’ He stared into the cold grate. ‘I’m older than she is. More than ten years. I should have been stronger.’

Andrew had always had scruples, but Charles was surprised at the torment in his friend’s voice. ‘Andrew, if this has something to do with your guilt over Donald Fyfe’s death—’

‘That’s the least of it. Let me finish.’ Andrew’s voice had the bleak scrape of an iron shackle. ‘One night Gelly and Lady Frances dined with my mother and me. It started to snow during dinner and Gelly wanted to see it. We took a walk. She was wearing a white wool cloak and snowflakes caught in her hair.’ He drew a breath as though about to confess to a mortal sin. ‘I kissed her. My mother caught sight of us from the sitting room windows. After Gelly and Lady Frances had gone home, she told me—she explained why it had to end at once.’

‘Whatever she might have feared Father would say—’

‘It isn’t that. Or not for the reasons you think.’ Andrew moved to the window and stared at the sliver of night-black glass between the curtains. ‘Didn’t you ever wonder that Maddie and I look so completely unalike? We always used to be embarrassed because people would take us for sweethearts rather than brother and sister. She’s my twin and yet we don’t even look like siblings.’

‘A lot of siblings don’t.’

‘But you can see Mother and Father in Maddie. Mother’s mouth and eyes, Father’s nose and hair. They’re knit into the fabric of who she is. Now you can see it in her children as well. I look like I belong to another family. Which makes sense now. Mother wasn’t pregnant with twins, Charles. She didn’t give birth to twins. She went away to have Maddie. To stay with her parents, the story was. But the truth is she was paid to leave Dunmkyel and have the baby in secret. And to bring back two babies and claim they were both hers.’

‘Who?’ Charles said, though the answer hung between them, poisoning the air. ‘Who paid her?’

‘Can’t you guess? The same person who gave her the second baby and paid her to raise it as her own. Your father. Gisèle’s father.’ Andrew turned and looked Charles full in the face. ‘My father, brother.’