And he, an eight-year-old boy at the time, had been oblivious to it all.
This was all conjecture.
He would have to dig deeper and determine an accurate time line of events.
Tulip cleared her throat, drawing him out of his thoughts.“Do you think your grandfather knew of Mrs.Granger’s connection to Elspeth when he hired her?”
“I expect she hid that bit of information from him.He was already ill and dying when he hired her.It is also possible he confessed his secret to her, never realizing her connection to Elspeth.”
“And Mrs.Granger was so enraged by his confession that she sped up his death?”
Alex nodded.“It is quite possible.”
“But why harm the succeeding dukes?”
“Perhaps because they were as depraved and lecherous as the old man.Or I am wrong about all of it and each died accidental deaths because they drank too much and were sinful, reckless idiots.”
He thought about Harold Havers and his idiot brothers.
He had suspected them at first glance of bettering their odds by doing away with the next heirs in the Davenport line.
But this was too sophisticated for Harold and his brothers.
If anything, they would be next in line to die unless Alex figured out what was going on and how to stop it.
Tulip had been drugged last night, he was certain of it now.
This meant the vengeance against his family was not going to stop.
He really needed to get that brandy bottle in his bedchamber tested.After all, he was the one the killer was after.
But the testing would have to wait, for he doubted anyone in Burnham had the capability to run tests at this level of sophistication.Otherwise, wouldn’t the local coroner have found something when examining the bodies?
Alex had read the coroner’s reports and knew they were thorough…but obviously not thorough enough.
He would have to take his brandy bottle to Bath or Taunton, have it tested in a true laboratory.
Unfortunately, he did not have the time to attend to it just now.
Even if tested, would anything turn up?
His own amateur testing had turned up nothing when he’d taken a sip of Tulip’s cocoa and sniffed it.
If the drug was in the cocoa, then it was odorless and not discernable by taste, either.
But if the drug wasn’t in the cocoa, then how had Tulip ingested it?
CHAPTER 13
A WEEK HADpassed since their arrival at Thornwycke Hall, and Tulip remained insistent on helping Alex figure out what had happened to the predecessor dukes and finding the culprit responsible for doing them in.
They went into town to speak to the coroner, a man by the name of Dr.Harding, who also happened to be the only doctor in the vicinity.He had an earful to relate about Alex’s predecessors who had indulged in the old duke’s debauched ways among other sins of sloth and excess, but he firmly believed their deaths had been accidental.“Many people had reason to do away with them,” he said with obvious moral indignation, “but they did the work of others by cutting their own lives short with their outrageous behavior.”
As they walked out of his infirmary, Tulip brought up the matter of Alex’s untouched bottle of brandy.“Why did you not mention it to Dr.Harding?You might have changed his mind if he found something in it.”
“No, love.He has already made up his mind about the string of deaths and that brandy bottle isn’t going to change it.The poison is going to be something quite subtle that ordinary test instruments will not pick up.Dr.Harding would only become more entrenched in his opinion if his results turned up nothing.”
Tulip thought giving the bottle over to the doctor was worth a try, but respected Alex’s judgment.“All right, you’re the expert investigator and would know best.”
