Chapter 26

WHAT FOLLOWED WAS TRULY the most bizarre story that William had ever heard. And yet, somehow, it all made perfect sense.

Charles cleared his throat. “Lady Sinclair explained that her father had set her up with a bad match. One that was, thankfully, over almost as quickly as it had begun. Within the year, her husband was dead. She had no children, and the late Lord Sinclair had no male relatives to come knocking on her door, demanding the estate. It left her with a life of independence, one that she thought she’d never have. And she certainly had no intention of returning to your father. In fact, she never gave him another thought until a very peculiar letter arrived a couple of years later from your father’s butler, Mr Black.”

William had hated Mr Black. While most of the servants had done their best to simply ignore William, lest they suffer his father’s wrath, Mr Black had been loyal to his master and had actively gone out of his way to torment William as a child, always reminding him that he was a bastard of no worth.

Charles continued, scooting to the end of his seat, “It was Mr Black who initially found your father when the symptoms first overcame him. According to Mr Black’s letter, the symptoms began with an intense pain in the stomach and severe bowel movements, the likes of which he’d never seen, sometime in the late evening. A doctor was called, and he declared gripping pain. He administered laudanum, and by the next day, the Viscount’s symptoms seemed to have eased. This was only a brief reprieve, for the day after that, the Viscount was in so much pain that even laudanum could not ease. By that night, your father was dead. I believe that was sometime in mid-March, on the day of your nineteenth birthday?”

William nodded.

Charles cocked an eyebrow, as if the date held a particular significance. He continued, “Unhappy with the doctor’s diagnosis, Mr Black interrogated the staff, asking if they had noticed anything odd on the days leading up to the death of the Viscount.” Charles opened the strip of leather and flicked through the papers, finally producing a yellowed letter. He cleared his throat and began reading. “Mary, a maid, had noticed the silver cutlery was missing, claiming the wee folk had been stealing them one by one for weeks, and they’d finally taken the lot of them. Dorris, a milkmaid, believed the goats knew something was amiss, for they wouldn’t eat from their favourite bramble bush by the pond, and thought the wee folk that lived at the fairy tree had been tormenting them. Martha, a maid, claimed foul play as she’d read it in her tea leaves. Simon, the cook, reported a bunch of wild garlic appearing when he didn’t recall picking any and fully believed fairies had been visiting his kitchen and playing tricks on him.”

William sucked in a breath. “Murder,” he whispered.

Charles cocked his head at William. “It took me a full nine months to figure it out, and a heinous amount of man hours, not to mention copious amounts of supporting information. If you can guess it simply from that list, then I’m hanging up my coat as an investigator.”

“Of course I can’t figure it out from a list of superstitions. But Martha followed me to my estate after my father died. If she read foul play in her tea leaves, then I believe her.”

Charles looked rather relieved that his tremendous efforts were not in vain. “Yes, well, that is exactly what your sister said too. Martha must read my leaves some day. Anyway, on its own, this document reads as a bunch of superstitious servants claiming fairies were to blame. But with everything else I found out, it proves someone murdered your father.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” William said.

“Your sister received this correspondence from Mr Black shortly after your father’s death. At the time, she thought nothing of it, except for the fact that she too believed in Martha’s tea leaves. But with nothing other than suspicious ramblings to go on, the local magistrate laughed her out of his office. She put it to the back of her mind, until this January, when she received a letter from Lucius asking that she come back to visit the family home. She had, of course, no intention of returning to her childhood home. But the invitation from her brother was the first correspondence she’d received from the estate since Mr Black’s, and it piqued her interest once more. She’d heard of my investigative skills through the grapevine and requested my services. I agreed to meet with her, and she presented me with the letter. I was very honest with her from the start that the likelihood of solving a suspected murder, with nothing but her insistence that if Martha thought foul play, then it was, was practically zero. But she offered me a sum that I couldn’t refuse, just to try, and the same sum again if I did indeed solve the case. The only thing was that it came with a single condition.”

Both William and Benedict were leaned in, fully invested in the story. “What condition?” Benedict asked, his voice barely a whisper.

“If I found out that the murderer was you,” his eyes flicked to William, “I was to never report it.”

William didn’t know whether his heart was swelling from the love of his sister’s protection or swelling from hurt that she thought he might be capable of murdering his father. He leaned towards the former, the thought that Catherine still felt a sisterly love for him after all this time overshadowed everything else. “And how did you figure it out? And why come all this way to see me?”

“I’ll start at the beginning of my investigation and lay the facts out as I discovered them, particularly as there are a few loose threads that I think you might be able to help me with.”

William nodded as Benedict settled onto the armrest beside him.

“With the first half of my payment and Mr Black’s letter, I made my way to your neck of the woods. Truth be told, at this stage, I wasn’t convinced that the Viscount had been murdered at all. But Lady Sinclair had paid handsomely for an investigation, and that’s what I intended to do. I kept a low profile at first, but aside from a few snippets of hearsay, the death of the former viscount was well forgotten. My initial thoughts were that if the Viscount had indeed been murdered, the most likely suspect would be you. According to your sister, your father had punished you from birth and kept you locked up for most of your childhood. That is pretty compelling motive to murder someone. My initial plan was to seek employment at your estate and sleuth until I found something. However, I quickly realised that you would not be in a position to employ another servant. So, I decided to seek employment in your brother’s estate. He was far less likely to be the murderer and had no obvious motives given the fact that he had been favoured by your father, was due to inherit the estate and title, and had a healthy line of credit from your father’s account. But I was hoping some of the old servants were still around to question about your movements on the lead up to the murder.”

“I take it you started your sleuthing by questioning Mr Black regarding this?” Benedict asked Charles.

It was William, however, that answered. “Mr Black died not long after my father. He was run over by a wayward cart. You don’t think ...”

“I did look into it, but no, I don’t think Mr Black was murdered. It was a very public affair. He’d been at the local tavern on his evening off and had stumbled onto the road just as a coach was passing. There were many witnesses, and not one suggested that he could have been pushed. Though it was very unfortunate for my investigation that it happened. In another stroke of bad luck, none of the older servants were still in employment at the estate. In fact, it became very clear, very quickly, that there was an incredibly high turnover of staff. Your brother and his wife had a habit of refusing wages over the most trivial of issues and often dismissed the staff if they argued about it. A maid was accused of stealing the Viscountess’s pearl necklace, even though she swore she’d never seen it before. I had only been in your brother’s employment for two weeks before I was docked two months’ pay after being accused of stealing the silver cutlery set.”

William’s brows knotted in confusion as he remembered his visit to his brother’s house.

We now keep the silver cutlery set in the other room, if that is what you were snooping for.

“That doesn’t make sense. When I visited my brother, he said the silver cutlery set was being kept in a different room. Yet he accused you of stealing it presumably prior to this?”

Charles nodded, but it was Benedict who spoke. “But didn’t the silver cutlery set go missing before? In the letter, a servant said it had been going missing piece by piece, and the whole set had disappeared just before the Viscount died.”

“Exactly!” Charles said. “It was very suspicious indeed. In fact, it was what prompted me to start looking into the fanciful superstitions that the other servants had claimed. But it was a dead end. I found the brambles by the pond that the milkmaid had mentioned, and the goats seemed perfectly happy eating through the winter brush at the time. And the kitchen was incredibly busy, with people coming and going all the time. It seemed more likely that the wild garlic was left by a servant and the cook had just forgot. The only thing that I had to go on was the fact that your brother was clearly in some financial trouble. ”

William scoffed. “Lucius had the entirety of the family wealth to fall back on. How could he possibly be in financial trouble?”

Charles cocked an expecting eyebrow in William’s direction. “You have recently visited the estate. Do you truly believe your brother was not in financial trouble?”

William thought back. Indeed, there were many cottages in states of disrepair, and the manor itself was in a bad way. William had put it down to storm damage ... but perhaps it had been more? Come to think of it, when he’d reached the interior of the manor, he had been very restricted in what he had been allowed to view, all of which appeared to have been scrubbed clean just moments before he arrived.

“Lucius is in financial trouble?” William repeated disbelievingly.

“Exactly. It was very curious. And with no leads for your father’s murder, I decided to investigate Lucius’s current predicament. It took months searching through the house, but eventually, I stumbled upon a ledger hidden among his possessions. Did you know your brother was a gambler?”

“Aren’t most gentlemen?” William asked.

“Not to the extent of your brother. It was his gambling ledger that I had found. He is in a substantial amount of debt to a nefarious man by the name of Alexander Holt. Your brother had been paying the debt off in installments, but he was barely covering the extortionate interest, and it was obvious that he was running out of the funds to keep up. Holt is an incredibly dangerous man, and if he cannot collect his payment in money, he will do it by other means.”

“Other means?” William asked.

“I have no doubt if the debt isn’t paid, the Viscount, his wife and his daughter will likely pay with their life.”

William felt fear flood his body at the thought of his niece being caught up in his brother’s dealings. He shot to his feet, his face contorting in panic. “We must get to Daphne!”

Charles waved his hand and gestured for William to sit down. “The moment I realised Daphne might be in danger, I made an executive decision to remove her from the situation. I forged a letter from your sister stating she would return to the family home in a month, but she would like her niece to visit her in the Highlands as company for the journey back. Your brother jumped at the opportunity, and he and his wife were ecstatic to have your sister come to visit, despite having never brought her up in conversation before, which struck me as odd. Alas, I was charged with escorting your niece to the Highlands the very next evening, so my investigation was, for the time being, coming to a close.”

Charles settled back into his seat, plucking at a metal stud in the armrest.

William’s mouth hung open in confusion. If that was all Charles had to report ... well, it was practically nothing! Of course, he would be eternally grateful that his niece had been saved. But he hadn’t even proved that his father had been murdered! Aside from the fact that his brother was a bad gambler and all the servants seemed to believe in fairies (William tried not to remember that he, too, had been convinced for many years that Mab was a fairy), he’d discovered practically nothing. William had been promised a tale so great that Charles could write a novel from it ... but this was barely worth a segment in the local newspaper.

He was about to say as much, but Benedict beat him to it. “Is that all?”

Charles’s lips twitched before he slowly leaned in towards the pair. With as much gravitas as a fisherman recounting a tale about landing a psychotic whale, Charles continued, “A series of events led me to the most ground-breaking discovery of my career. It began on the afternoon before I was due to leave with Daphne. The Viscount had ordered me to go into town to hire a carriage as his were in a state of disrepair, when I noticed a mad man dashing across the fields at the speed of lightning towards the Viscount’s estate.”

“That would be Martin. I sent him with a letter to ask for an audience with my brother,” William said.

“Indeed. I passed him again on my way back to the estate and found, on my return, the Viscount looking as pleased as ever. Not long after, you arrived. I don’t know if you recall, but I was the servant that escorted you to the room to await your brother.”

William unconsciously bit his lip. “You can’t possibly be. The servant who escorted me had red hair and a moustache.” Though, now he thought about it, the servant had been unusually burly for a house servant.

“A disguise,” Benedict whispered in awe.

“Indeed!” Charles declared. “When the Viscount eventually arrived, I listened at the door. I have to say, William, you did not help your case when you punched the Viscount in the face. It was deserved, yes,” Charles said, holding up his hands. “But it did paint you as a potentially violent man. Anyway, after you left, the Viscount penned a letter – though he handed it to a different servant, so I didn’t have the chance to check the contents. I did, however, walk with the other servant towards the village to deliver the letter, curiously, to an estate agent. On our way back, I happened to glance into the tavern, and low and behold, there you were! I made an excuse to the other servant that I had to pick something else up while I was in the village, stole a cloak off someone’s washing line, removed my fake moustache, and made my way into the tavern to watch you. I listened to the drunken ramblings of the patrons for what felt like forever before, many ales later, you finally took a seat near me in the corner of the room.”

William racked his brain, but he couldn’t for the life of him recall anyone in the tavern that looked like Charles.

“And then, yet another odd thing happened. Someone suggested that you employ the services of Aunt áine. Imagine my surprise when I followed you home, which also felt like it took forever on account of how incredibly drunk you were, broke into your house and waited for you to retire, that you had indeed written to someone who was supposed to be a tale to keep young girls virtuous. But when I read your letter, I was quite surprised by the contents. I have to say, it did rather shine a different light on the violent, cold killer I’d pictured you to be.”

William desperately wanted to know what exactly he’d written in his letter, but now was not the time. “So, you stole someone’s cloak, eavesdropped, stalked me, broke into my home and read my letters?”

Charles shrugged. “My investigations would go nowhere if I followed the letter of the law. Anyway, what transpired the next day was sensational. Now, where is it?” Charles flicked through his papers, finally finding the one he was looking for and holding it out to William. “Do you recognise this?”

William glanced over the document, his heart hammering in his chest. It was a valuation of his manor, the one his father had willed him.

Something tingled in the back of his mind. The morning after he’d visited his brother, hadn’t Martha mentioned someone had been out for a valuation?

“Lucius was the one who sent someone to value my estate? But why? Given what you’ve said, it’s hardly like he would have the funds to purchase it from me.”

Charles said nothing, but looked at William sympathetically.

It was Benedict’s sharp intake of breath that finally broke the silence. Grasping his hands across his mouth, Benedict glanced wide-eyed between William, the paper and Charles. “No,” Benedict said in an exhale.

“Yes,” Charles replied. At William’s confusion, Charles continued, “You’re unmarried and with no heirs.”

“Hopefully not for long, but yes, you are correct,” William said, bidding the image of Mab away.

“And your sister. Her husband was old. He died over a decade and a half ago, and with no male heirs, he left your sister widowed and childless, the last of the Sinclair fortune in her hands. ”

William nodded.

“And if you and Catherine were to die tomorrow, who inherits both of your estates?”

William’s skin prickled as his eyes fell once more on the valuation addressed to Lucius. “He ... he planned to murder us to pay off his debts?”

“That is why he had a valuation done of your estate, and why after so long without contacting your sister, he asked her to visit him. I truly believe that if you hadn’t come here, or your sister had decided to visit, one or both of you would be dead by now.”

Fire flooded William’s blood. “I hope Holt kills him, because if not, I will be accountable for the death of a viscount.”

“That brings me on to the final matter, who actually killed your father. While I was certain that your brother was plotting to murder you and your sister, I still hadn’t found any evidence that would suggest he had a hand in your father’s murder. Still, the only person who had motive was yourself.”

William’s lips pursed. “I did not murder my father.”

Charles waved his hand dismissively. “All I knew was that I had one brother who was certainly capable of murder but with no motive, and another brother, who proved he could be violent should the occasion arise and who certainly had a motive. With just moments before the coach arrived, I stole every scrap of evidence I could find. I took all the letters that had been delivered that afternoon, which included the valuation of your property, Lucius’s gambling ledger, and practically everything contained within his desk drawers – even down to the love letters between him and his wife. I was determined to leave no stone unturned. And so, I took off in the carriage with little Daphne. That’s when I noticed something incredibly peculiar.”

William scooted to the end of his seat, desperate to hear more.

“I glanced out the window of the carriage towards the fields and spied the fairy tree and the pond. To my utter surprise, not a single goat was eating from the brambles! I called for the carriage to halt, leapt out and ran across the pastures until I got to the pond. And do you know what I found nestled in among the brambles?”

“What?” Benedict asked, his voice barely a whisper.

“Clusters of little purple flowers.”

“Oh ...” Benedict breathed, somewhat deflated. “What do flowers have to do with the murder of the Viscount?”

“Absolutely nothing. Or so I thought.” Charles paused for dramatic effect, which Benedict dutifully filled with a shocked inhale of breath. “So, I walked back to the carriage, disgruntled at having found nothing of note, clutching a cluster of flowers. When I got in, I handed them to Daphne as I noticed she had been reading a book on British wildflowers and thought she might like them. She then said something that cracked the case wide open!”

“What was it?” asked Benedict, who was so engrossed he was now teetering on the edge of the arm rest.

“Daphne said thank you for the bunch of autumn crocus and asked if I was aware that it was incredibly poisonous, and that’s why the goats avoid the brambles at certain times of the year. Interest piqued, I asked her what times of the year. She said now, of course, as that’s when the flowers bloom, and Spring, as that’s when the leaves appear, and one must be very cautious of the leaves. Do you know why?”

“Why?” Benedict asked breathlessly.

“Because they are almost indistinguishable from wild garlic.”

Benedict clapped his hands across his mouth in shock before, voice muffled, saying, “The wild garlic the cook had found!”

“Indeed! So, it was Daphne that solved how the former viscount was murdered. Someone had left a sprig of poisonous autumn crocus leaves in the kitchens in the hope that they would be used as ingredients in the Viscount’s next meal. An incredibly callous and careless way to do it, as they could just as easily ended up in the servants’ broth. When I’d first arrived on the estate, the leaves hadn’t yet sprung, and the goats were happily eating their way through the brambles, so I naturally dismissed the milkmaid’s account. Your father was murdered in mid-March, when the leaves would have been out, which is why the goats were then avoiding the brambles once more. And now I had the how, I just needed the who and why. As I was travelling to Scotland and away from both you and your brother, I decided that, just in case there was some semblance of truth to the Aunt áine fable, and your letter was accepted, I would write one too. At the very least, if you so happened to get a place here, I might be able to continue my investigation on at least one of the brothers. I put your sister’s address as my correspondence and dropped it off at a Post Office, as the man in the tavern had suggested. Imagine my complete and utter surprise that only a week or so after arriving at your sister’s estate, a black, windowless carriage arrived to pick me up!”

“What I don’t understand is that you claim to have come here to investigate me, and yet you’ve not interrogated me once,” William said.

“Have I not?” Charles wiggled his eyebrows. “Your sister lives within a day’s ride to here. As we rode, and I was pondering how I would conduct my interrogation of you, we stopped for a relief break, and I noticed a little cluster of autumn crocuses by the side of the road. I don’t know if you recall, but when I first saw you here, I made a point of twirling the crocus at you. Then, when áine called me out on the stairs, saying the crocus was poisonous, I was sure it would illicit a reaction from you. But you just stared blankly. I had been almost certain it had been you that had murdered your father, and that if you noticed I was carrying the very plant that had been used to murder him, you would react. Imagine my disappointment when you did not. So, I went back to the stolen documents and studied every scrap for two nights. The only other clues that I found was that your brother had lost a substantial amount of money on a bet a week before your father was murdered. A few days later, Lucius had received a peculiar letter from his intended.” Charles riffled through the pages once more before holding out a letter with oddly familiar handwriting.

Dearest Lucius,

I believe the answers to all our problems lie within the pages of this gift.

Fortune and favour as always,

Drucilla

“I don’t suppose this means anything to you?” Charles asked.

Something tingled in the back of William’s mind, but he couldn’t quite pull it to the forefront. He mulled the words over in his head. Pages of this gift ... Fortune and favour ... autumn crocus ...

It was as if a lightning bolt struck him. “Actually, I believe I can help you. When you took off with Daphne, did the book she was reading have a green cover?”

It was Charles’s turn to look surprised. “I believe it had.”

“When I was waiting for my brother to grace me with his presence, I found Daphne hiding under a table, reading A Guide to British Wildflowers. There was a very curious note from Drucilla on the inside cover. At the time, I had only noted it as it referenced a rather painful memory of mine where Lucius and Drucilla had followed me down to the pond and pushed me in. However, Drucilla did mention coming across autumn crocuses on her estate and suggested that Lucius procure some by the pond for her wedding bouquet.”

“But they wed in April, a month after your father’s death,” Charles said, standing to his feet and gathering in his papers. “The flowers don’t appear until the autumn! I need to see the note in that book. Your brother is clearly not beyond murder to access more funds for his gambling habit. His fiancée couldn’t have come across the flowers on her estate in March time. It was clearly an attempt to give Lucius instructions on how to murder his father. Ah! Lady Catherine will be so very pleased that we can prove definitively that it was your brother and not you!”

William felt the corners of his eyes prick. He feigned a cough before asking, “What happens now?”

Charles finished tying the strap of leather around his papers before answering. “Firstly, I will return to your sister’s and retrieve the book and my final payment. Then we will hand everything over to the authorities. I will warn you, it’s been so long since the murder, the evidence is circumstantial at best, and your brother is a viscount, meaning he will be treated more leniently than most.” There was an edge of disdain to Charles’s tone. “The chance of a conviction is slim. However, if your brother isn’t charged with the murder, chances are that Alexander Holt will catch up with him, now Lucius can’t bank on yours or your sister’s estate to keep him at bay.”

“He will either see the end of a noose or be found dead in a ditch?”

“Him and his wife both. That would mean that the estate and title will transfer to you, William,” Charles said. William sucked in a deep breath. Great . Another crumbling estate to add to his collection. “And, of course, custody of your niece.”

He would have custody of his niece? Panic swelled over him at the thought of being responsible for a child, as did an odd sense of something else ... A single image of him, Mab and Daphne sitting in the drawing room crossed his mind, and a sudden feeling of wholeness suppressed the panic threatening to consume him.

“I really must get back to your sister, William, and find this book. I highly recommend that you don’t return to your estate until everything has been ... settled. I’ll let áine and Angus know of the situation.”

“And apologise for lying your way in here,” Benedict added.

Charles grinned. “I may have come here to interrogate William, but everything I wrote in that letter was true.” Charles offered them a final tilt of his head before hurrying out the door.

“Well,” Benedict said, slapping his hands on his knees. “That was all very exciting, but I have to say, a little anticlimactic at the same time.”

“Anticlimactic?” William asked, his brow cocked.

Benedict huffed. “You have just found out that your father was murdered by your brother and sister-in-law in an incredibly convoluted way that is only fit for a novel, as Charles rightly said. Not only that, you were being actively investigated for said murder, only for it to come to light that there was, in fact, another plot to murder both you and your sister. It’s perhaps the most thrilling tale of adventure that will ever happen in your life, William, and you weren’t even aware of it until fifteen minutes ago. As I say, a tad anticlimactic.”

William rolled his eyes. “I suppose you were hoping for a little bit more action?”

“At least a shoot-out,” Benedict said with a shrug.

William threw a pillow at Benedict’s head, before lying on top of his bed to digest the most bizarre event of his life. And, rather reluctantly, he had to agree with Benedict. The fact that all of this had gone on right under his nose was, perhaps, anticlimactic. But he now had his sister on his side and would most likely be custodian of his niece. Regardless of whether his brother met his end at a hangman’s noose or by the hands of Holt, William had gained a family.