“Do it,” he ordered, his mouth grim.
With as much care as if I were mounting Priam’s Bird-wing, I opened the bag and extracted the items inside. A toiletry case marked with the same initials, some underclothes, beautifully embroidered, and two dresses. A pair of shoes and a florilegium of Restoration poetry. The things were all damaged, the clothing stained and smelling of damp, the book pulpy, the soles of the shoes coming away from the leather. I peeled back the cover and saw a signature inscribed in a flamboyant hand.Rosamund Aylesworth.
Tiberius said nothing and I repacked the bag silently. When I had finished I sat back on my haunches.
“It would appear Malcolm told the truth, at least with regard to the traveling bag,” I said gently. “This is indeed proof that Rosamund never left the island on her wedding day.”
Without a word, Tiberius strode to the door, closing it quietly behind him. I think I would have preferred if he had slammed it.
CHAPTER
16
Malcolm had still not made an appearance by teatime, and as we gathered about once more in the drawing room, we were a solemn group. Helen made no appearance at all, sending word that she preferred a cup in her room. Mrs. Trengrouse, pale and fretful as a mother hen, had ordered heartier fare than usual, fruitcake and sandwiches thick with roasted beef to stand with the scones and pastries, and she lingered as Tiberius, Stoker, Mertensia, Caspian, and I settled to it. The rest of us seemed to have little appetite, but Stoker helped himself to a liberal assortment of sandwiches, giving a happy sigh as he bit into the first.
“Is there anything else you require, miss?” Mrs. Trengrouse asked Mertensia. Caspian might be the heir presumptive, but her loyalty clearly lay with her master’s sister in his absence. Mertensia flicked her eyes to Caspian, but he seemed lost in thought.
“I don’t think so, Trenny,” Mertensia replied, giving her a little gesture of dismissal. As Mrs. Trengrouse closed the door gently behind her, I turned to Caspian.
“Has there been any word from Malcolm?”
He shook his head. “No, but I am certain he will turn up. The localssaid he is forever wandering about the island. It is part of his responsibility as master of St. Maddern’s,” he said.
“Is it part of his responsibility not to sleep in his own bed?” I asked.
Caspian choked slightly and Tiberius murmured, “My dear Veronica.”
But Mertensia stared at me as she stirred sugar into her tea. “How do you know where my brother was last night?”
“Because Tiberius and Stoker and I took the liberty of searching his room. He did not sleep there last night.”
Mertensia put her spoon into the saucer, rattling it a little. “This is bad,” she said.
Caspian protested. “Don’t be silly, Mertensia. The weather was vile last night. What if he went to check on one of the islanders? He might well have stayed through the storm.”
“But the rain had stopped by this morning,” she pointed out. “He would have returned.”
“The storm is rising again,” Caspian said with a nod towards the rain-spattered windows. “He might well have decided to remain right where he was, snug and warm.”
“Would he not have sent word?” Stoker asked.
Mertensia nodded. “He would. He is terribly responsible in that way. He knows we would have worried. Besides that, someone in the village would have seen him. Unless you never actually asked them, Caspian? How do we know you looked for him at all?”
“Of course I looked!”
Mertensia shrugged. “So you say. But if anyone had a good reason to wish Malcolm ill, it is you.”
The four of us turned curious eyes upon him and he looked to each of us in turn, his eyes rolling white. “I—I say, you all don’t believe I had anything to do with this nonsense! You can’t. I didn’t even know Rosamund, not really.”
“You stood to lose your inheritance if she produced a Romilly heir,”Mertensia went on. “That would have been motive enough to do away with her.”
“Do away with her?” His eyes turned heavenwards and then he looked to the rest of us in mute appeal.
“The lady has a point,” Tiberius said evenly.
“I was still a boy when she disappeared,” Caspian protested. “I hadn’t even left school yet. Do you really think I would have murdered my uncle’s wife just to inherit this cursed pile of stone? And who the devil said anything about murder before Mertensia’s imagination went galloping off of its own accord? For all we know, Rosamund left of her own free will and is living in the Argentine right now.”
He finished this rejoinder with a magnificent arch of his brow, the sort of gesture that Tiberius had mastered in the cradle. But Caspian did not have quite the nerve to pull it off. His voice had quavered a bit at the end, and the look Stoker gave him was not unkind.
