Her eyes narrowed. “My… mymarriage?”
“I am thinking of his will, Miss Nicholson. That seems to imply—”
“Oh yes, thewill!He leaves me his fortune, but only if I marry a gentleman! The presumption! As if I cannot choose for myself.”
“I suppose his intention was to protect you from fortune hunters, Miss Nicholson,” Michael said. Anger! That was something to work with! “How much is his fortune, do you know?”
Instantly, she was wary again. “I have no idea. It cannot be very great, can it? As a chaplain, his income could not have been large.”
“Perhaps he inherited something from his father?”
“No, I believe not.”
“Did he have investments? Money in the bank? We found only a thousand pounds in his safe, apart from your mother’s jewellery.”
“A thousand… then that is mine, is it not?”
Michael smiled. “Eventually, no doubt, but there are procedures to be gone through first. It is best to leave it to the lawyers.”
“But Uncle Charles is the executor of the will, so he has the power to release money to me,” she said with a quick smile. “I shall ask him, I think.”
“Since you are not yet one and twenty, there will be trustees to manage your fortune on your behalf,” Michael said.
Her eyes flashed again. “Only until I marry, Captain Edgerton. Then my fortune will be mine.”
“No, it will be your husband’s, and only if he is a gentleman.”
With an exclamation of disgust, she rose and would have left the room, but Luce reached the door before her. “Miss Nicholson, I am sure you wish to catch your father’s murderer as much as anyone… or more, perhaps. Will you not stay a little longer, and help us learn something of your father? Everyone agrees he was a good man, yet someone slaughtered him in his bed.Pleasehelp us to find out why… and who it could have been?”
Tess’s eyes slid from Luce to Michael to Sandy, assessing them. Then she said calmly to Luce, “I am very sorry my father died, and in such unspeakable circumstances, too. However, I cannot forgive him for leaving me money conditionally. What sort of man does that to his only daughter? What sort of father distrusts his daughter so much that he cannot allow her a free choice of husband?”
“One who loves you, and wants the very best for you,” Luce said at once. “Parents’ choices are often incomprehensible to their children, and it is only with hindsight that one understands the reasoning behind them. If your fortune is very great, then you will be besieged with men of ambition hoping to line their own pockets. Your father would have protected you from such men while he was alive, and he tries to achieve the same end now that he is dead. There are a great many gentlemen in the world, you know, so it is not a very restrictive condition. You are bound to find one who suits you well. Do not be angry with your father. He had your happiness at heart when he wrote that will.”
“No, he did not,” Tess said icily. “He was being vindictive and mean, and I hate him for it. Good day to you.”
And she was gone, leaving Michael oddly elated. At last, a sign that the sainted Mr Nicholson was not quite so perfect as allthat, and was thoroughly disliked by at least one person. “Sandy, add her name to the list of suspicious persons.”
“Michael, she is angry because of thewill,” Luce said. “She knew nothing of that before her father’s death.”
“So she says,” he said darkly.
9: About Axes
Lady Alice’s maid confirmed that the sofa in Lady Alice’s sitting room was always made up into a bed each evening, but not always slept in.
“Her ladyship suffered from the headache sometimes, sir, and then she liked to be alone and quiet until it passed off.”
“And did she have the headache on the night Mr Nicholson died?” Michael said.
“I cannot say, sir. Perhaps. She never complained, so it was hard to tell.”
“And was her bed slept in that night?”
“Yes, sir, it was.”
“Has she paid or pressured you to say this?”
For a moment, her mouth worked but seemed incapable of speech. When she found her tongue, her indignation waxed long and loud, involving the grave of her dead mother, the Holy Bible and God as her witness. If it was all an act, it was certainly one worthy of Drury Lane.
