“You are very sweet to be so distressed on her behalf, but I promise you it is not necessary,” he says lightly, stepping away from me to approach the bed. “Eleanor had nothing to do with my father’s steward. She was not engaged in a torrid affair with him, and she most certainly did not murder him because he had refused to give their child his name.”
A fond brother, he cannot bring himself to accept the truth, and my heart aches for him as he withdraws a slim volume from his sister’s night table.
“As it is a gross violation for us to pry in Eleanor’s private affairs, we are not going to read a single word in her journal,” he says, opening the book to the first spread and placing it on top of the magazines on the occasional table. Then he holds out his hand to me and asks for the letter from Eternally Devoted. “I assume you brought it with you to make a comparison, as that is how you meant to prove your theory.”
I stuff my hand inside my pocket, as if to hold the missive in place, and beg him to reconsider. “Once you do this, you cannot undo it. Let us go now and pretend nothing ever happened. My, it is a lovely day for a walk. Pray, be a dear, Sebastian, and take a turn with me around the garden.”
His patronizing laugh is at once heartbreaking and infuriating.
He truly has no idea of what is in store.
“As I said, it is kind of you to worry, but it is for naught. Eleanor has done nothing wrong. Now, please hand me the letter,” he says.
Gaining a new appreciation for the plight of Cassandra, I recognize the futility of further argument and comply with his request. I cannot save him from himself; all I can do is stand nobly by his side and console him in his grief.
Even so, I cannot bear to watch it happen.
Glancing down, I examine the stitching on the edge of my sleeve and brace myself for the gasp of horror. Given how easy the previous analyses were made, I expect to hear it on three…two…one…
But there is nothing.
No sharp inhalation, no audible catch of breath.
Bewildered, I look up and find him smiling at me.
Holding out his hand, he says, “Come, my dear, see for yourself. The two styles of handwriting are not remotely similar. Eleanor’s letters are small and squished together. You can barely differentiate one from the other, which makes reading her correspondence hard, steady work. Believe me, nobody in the family relishes getting a letter from her, because it means you will spend the next half hour deciphering the text. That is how I knew she could not be the killer—well, that is, aside from loving her for eighteen years and knowing she does not have a violent bone in her body. Even if she wanted to disguise her handwriting with neat and legible letters, she would not be able to. It is simply beyond her capability. My mother despairs of her.”
The words make sense, as I know the immutability of penmanship, for my own awkward scribble has proved invulnerable to improvement, and yet I cannot credit them. Eleanorhasto be the murderer. I have already removed her sisters from suspicion, and there is no one else in the household who could reasonably be considered.
Unless—gasp—Eternally Devoted is Mrs. Holcroft!
Sebastian urges me again to come examine the samples. “I want you to see for yourself and arrive at your own conclusion. I have too much respect for your judgment to substitute my own. You see? All scratchy little marks,” he says, pointing to the line at the top of the page. “Without staring at it for several minutes, I cannot tell if the first word istreacleorchemist,and I know youthink I am exaggerating for effect, but I swear I am not. Do see for yourself.”
Although he steps aside so that I can stand directly over the examples, it is not necessary. The distinction is so pronounced that I can spot it from several paces away.
Even so, I draw closer to make the official confirmation, and it is a relief to have something to focus on that is not the homicidal tendencies of yet another member of his family. Now that Sebastian is aware of my investigation, I will have to work doubly hard to hide my new suspicion from him.
A challenge, to be sure, but it is my only option.
Having just accused his sister of murder, I cannot immediately turn in the opposite direction and point my finger at his mother.
It will look as though I am flailing about for any Holcroft to malign.
I am not selective! Any one of you will do!
Gently, Sebastian says, “I trust this makes you feel better. You poor girl, working yourself into a lather over nothing. I hope next time you will come to me with your concerns rather than worrying about them silently, though my greater hope is that there will not be a next time. To be candid, I still cannot believe there is athistime. It is commonplace by now to joke about the inordinate number of murders your cousin has encountered in the span of a single season, but maybe it is not so remarkable after all. In a few handful of months, we have chanced upon three. Perhaps we should simply consider ourselves lucky that the stack of corpses is not up to our noses, as dead bodies are far easier to find than any of us suspected.”
The words are light, but his tone is not, and I readily picture him conducting a comprehensive study to assess the extent of the problem and drawing up a chart to illustrate the prevalenceof cadavers in England. It would be arranged by regions, with each area colored a different hue.
He is so dear.
So dear and serious and thoughtful and kind.
Heis the sweet one, Holcroft the Holy, who has not issued a single syllable of rebuke despite the ugly allegations I lodged against his sister. Knowing the charge to be ludicrous, he would have been well within his rights to take a pet at the insult.
A lecture on the ills of bearing a suspicious mind would not be out of order.
Having narrowly avoided one crisis, I am not so foolish as to rush headlong into another and watch silently as he returns the journal to the night table. Implicating his mother in the crime—that is, identifying her as a killerandadulteress—would be to fling myself from the frying pan into the fire.
