“Yes, no one said,‘Ah, he was a bit of a rogue, but we never thought anyone disliked him enough to murder him.’A bit of a rogue would be a good starting point.”
“I think hewasa bit of a rogue,” Sandy said. “He was said to be lucky with the cards, but a man cannae have the luck with him always, unless he’s making his own some of the time, it seems tae me.”
“And flirting with the maids in his own home may suggest something more when he is away from home,” Neate said.
“He was seldom away from home, though,” Michael said with a frown. “York occasionally, for shopping or church business. Trips to Pickering once or twice a month. He belonged to a political society there.”
“A chaplain, attending a political society?” Luce said. “That could have been an excuse, to cover up something nefarious.”
“No, he actually attended the meetings,” Michael said glumly. “Sir Hubert knows one of the members and made enquiries. They keep attendance records, and Nicholson was often called upon to make the speech of thanks to the speaker. He dined with several of the group beforehand, then stayed at a cheap lodging house overnight, returning the next morning. He used to go with the 10th Earl, but since his death he continues to go alone, and the only part of that which tickles my suspicious nature is the cheap lodging house. To go from the splendour of Corland Castle to a room in a less than salubrious part of town seems unlikely, somehow.”
“The footmen say he was tight-fisted, Michael,” Neate said. “He never laid out his own blunt if he could help it. Any sign of Mr Eustace?”
“He is still with friends at Doncaster or some such place,” Michael said. “His father has written to request he return, for no one else knows anything about the weapons, and nothing appears to be missing, so where did that axe come from? AndI have still not exchanged a single word with the widow. One does not like to intrude on so much grief, but she is still the most likely murderer.” He sighed. “So we are in exactly the same position as when we arrived. All this diligent work, and we are not an inch further forward.”
“I cannot believe that Lady Alice murdered her husband,” Luce said. “Why on earth would she?”
“That I cannot begin to guess until I talk to her,” Michael said. “One of the usual reasons — love, hate, money, jealousy, revenge. Who knows? What I should like to know is why, if it was her, she chose to use an axe.”
“Now that’s easier tae explain,” Sandy said. “How else can she do it, without eyes tae see? She cannae shoot him, can she? Nor stab him, for that needs precision. She cannae arrange an accident. She cannae poison him. So she waits until he is fast asleep in bed and she knows precisely where he is, and then lays into him with an axe. He wouldnae know a thing about it.”
“Then she screams and pretends she just found him like that,” Neate said. “It does make a queer kind of sense, Michael.”
“Or perhaps she truly did just find him like that,” Luce said. “She hears something, wakes up, gets out of bed, walks round to his side of the bed, trips over the axe, picks it up, realises it is covered in blood and screams.”
“No, no, no,” Sandy said. “If she woke while her husband was being attacked in her own bed, she’d have screamed then, and I cannae believe she slept through it all and only woke up after it was all over. Did they share a bed anyway? These aristocratic couples rarely do.”
“This is why we need to talk to her,” Michael said tersely. “If she has a good explanation—”
There was a knock on the door and a footman poked a head round. “Gen’leman to see you, Cap’ain, sir. A Mr Wilton-Forth.”
Michael laughed. “Willerton-Forbes. Send him in, do.”
But the man who crept into the old nursery behind the footman was not the self-assured Mr Willerton-Forbes Michael had left behind in London some months ago. He was as fashionably dressed as usual, and no one would ever suspect that he was a lawyer, but all his customary insouciance was gone. He wore the most woebegone expression he had ever seen.
“Pettigrew? Whatever is the matter? And what are you doing here anyway? Surely a letter would have done?”
Willerton-Forbes glumly shook his head, accepted the glass of sherry Sandy pushed into his hand, downed it in one and held it out to be refilled.
“Ah.” Michael steered his friend into a chair, and waited.
“It is dreadful, Michael,” Willerton-Forbes said. “When you wrote, telling me of the letter from the Bishop of Winchester, I imagined it would be a routine matter of checking the dates. A day of travel, an hour or two in the bishop’s office, a day home, or perhaps even home the same day. But it was not so simple.”
“He was not ordained when he came here,” Michael said, filled with foreboding.
“I can find no evidence that he waseverordained. You understand the import of that, I am sure.”
“The earl’s marriage is not valid. Well!” Michael exhaled slowly. “I wanted to discover that Nicholson was a bit of a rogue but this is more — far more — than I had bargained for. What a devil of a coil.”
“Exactly. The Earl of Rennington is not, and has never been, married, his children are all illegitimate, his heir cannot now inherit and how on earth are we to tell him?”
***
The earl graciously agreed to receive Michael and Willerton-Forbes in his study the following morning, where Michael introduced Pettigrew.
“Mr Pettigrew Willerton-Forbes, my lord, a distinguished lawyer from Markham, Willerton-Forbes and Browning. Also the youngest son of the Earl of Morpeth.”
“Hmm. Willerton-Forbes? Any relation to Sir Rathbone?”
