Merry gaped. “But you cannot be serious with your assumptions, Tiberius.”
“As the grave,” his eldest brother assured him.
“But you are accusing your friends ofmurder,” he said slowly.
“Not all of them,” Tiberius replied with a smile of devastating malice. “Just James and Pietro.”
At this, fresh histrionics broke out, this time with Augusta lending a coldly decisive opinion on the matter of People Who Are Clearly Unwell. “Perhaps you ought to examine his lordship, Timothy. I think he cannot be in his right mind atall,” she finished with chilly hauteur.
“I appreciate your concern, Augusta,” Tiberius responded politely. “But accusing your husband of murder does not fall within the realm of derangement. In fact, I rather like him for the crime. Pietro strikes me as a trifle too fastidious for so brutal a deed. If he meant to murder anyone, I think he would do it with the flourish of a Florentine—a stiletto between the ribs in a flutter of silk.”
He tipped his head as his gaze rested upon Timothy Gresham, who was perspiring heavily. “Now, I suppose, in fairness, I ought to include you, Timothy. After all, you were here then, and you were verymuch a part of our little group.” Gresham gave a strangled noise and Tiberius went on. “Although, I must admit, I cannot see that you have the stomach for it, to be frank. No, James has the grit and the—I do hope you will pardon any offence, for none is intended, I assure you—theearthinessfor such a killing. After all, whoever murdered Lorenzo must have actually put his hands upon him, a fellow we all considered to be a friend. Can you imagine the nerve it would take? The cold physical brutality to touch someone you have befriended, knowing you are about to take their life? To hold that life in your hands and then with a single, hard push...” He trailed off as he mimed the activity.
The count burst into passionate Italian again, a distinctly unmusical rage clipping each syllable sharply as he gesticulated to underscore his meaning. Sir James’ complexion was empurpled with anger as well. Timothy Gresham was pale with a faint green cast to his skin.
“Tiberius,” Stoker said softly. Tiberius gave a short nod, acknowledging he had heard and agreed the thing had gone far enough.
“I have shocked you, my friends, and I cannot apologise, for that was my intention. I only hope that one day the innocent will forgive me as we do our best to bring a murderer to justice.”
With that, he raised his wineglass and drank deeply. The others stared at him in varying degrees of horror. I lifted my glass and said in ringing tones, “To justice.”
The other two Templeton-Vanes joined me, and even the count calmed himself enough to drink. Elspeth did not touch hers, but Augusta put her glass to her lips and took a token sip, clearly relieved to have something more conventional to do. Timothy Gresham compressed his lips and touched nothing, while Sir James quaffed his entire glass in one go.
He set it down hard upon the table and I heard a distinctive crack. “I’ll not forget this, Tiberius. None of us will. It is a mortal insult.”
“Only to the guilty,” Tiberius returned in a silken voice.
It proved to be a provocation too much, and Sir James lunged for him. In the melee that followed, glassware was broken, candles upended, and a considerable amount of food and drink dashed to the floor along with several pieces of a particularly fine Sèvres dinner service. Augusta leapt to her feet, upsetting her chair as she shrank back against the ribs of the Megalosaurus. Seeing Sir James grappling with Tiberius, the count dove into the heart of the action, although whether it was to assist James in throttling their host or Tiberius in throwing him off, it was difficult to say. Gresham dove under the table, while Merryweather stared in disbelief and Elspeth quite competently dealt with the assorted candles, stamping out the rogue flames one by one.
I looked across the table at Stoker, dodging an arrangement of roses as an epergne went flying. “Are you going to do something?”
Stoker, who had been consuming his dish of abricot impérial throughout Tiberius’ antics, continued to eat. “Why ought I?”
“Because Tiberius is possibly outnumbered. Two to one,” I pointed out.
Stoker snorted. “It would take more than that to best him.”
“Well, if you won’t help him,Iwill,” Merry said stoutly as he jumped to his feet. He tore off his dog collar—doubtless feeling it inappropriate for a clergyman to engage in violence whilst dressed in the symbolic raiment of his profession. He darted around the trio now thrashing upon the floor before giving a whoop and throwing himself into the fight.
“Now you will have to go,” I advised Stoker. “Merry is going to get himself hurt.”
“That mightn’t be a bad thing,” Stoker replied calmly as he scraped up the last of the cream. “He would learn to look before leaping.”
Augusta reached down, the pearls upon her bosom trembling with emotion. “Go and put an end to this, Revelstoke,” she ordered. “You are the only one strong enough to head James off now he has a head of steam.”
Stoker did as he was bade—he was always considerate of the wishes of ladies. But he did so with an air of resignation, first licking the last of the cream from his spoon and then stripping off his coat. He did not warn them, merely waded into the fray as unconcerned as Moses striding into the parted Red Sea. He managed to put himself between Sir James and Tiberius just as a lucky blow from Pietro sent Merry flying. It is a point of generosity on my part to assume the blow was the purest good fortune. From the little I could see, Merry was fortunate not to have been knocked unconscious by the sauceboat the count had taken up to use as a weapon.
“Now, that is unsporting,” I said to no one in particular. “Gentlemen should only use fists in a friendly brawl.” By this point Pietro had turned his attention to Tiberius and was preparing to put his sauceboat to use once more. Stoker was occupied with Sir James and doing handsomely, I observed. But Tiberius had been addled by a considerable blow from a flying epergne and it seemed entirely unfair for Pietro to attack him under such circumstances.
Since the other gentlemen were all otherwise occupied, I rose to the occasion. Just as Pietro raised his hand, poised to strike, I hefted one of the candelabra, heavy and dripping with wax. It hit him in the hand, knocking the sauceboat over and singeing his sleeve before I blew out the flames.
He whirled around, spitting unprintable Italian phrases which I shall not repeat in these pages. (The gentle reader will never need to know how to tell a person their mother is the daughter of a whore’s pig in the Venetian dialect, I am certain.) Seeing it was a lady who assaulted him, he dropped the sauceboat and turned back to Tiberius, preparing to thrash him barehanded.
He landed a particularly nice left cross, opening a small cut on Tiberius’ browbone. Tiberius returned the favour, slamming one fist into Pietro’s nose and causing it to erupt like Vesuvius, blood pouringdown the spotless white linen of his evening shirt. He screamed in rage and I grabbed him by the coattails, holding him like a rearing horse. Matters had got entirely out of hand, I decided, and I was about to tell him so when a shriek rose, so loud and keening it nearly shattered the remaining glassware.
The scuffling ceased and we turned as one to the source of this new commotion. Beatrice was still in her chair, head thrown back, eyes glassy as she arched her spine in a violent spasm. Across from her, Augusta’s mouth was still slack with horror as she raised a hand to point.
Beatrice was convulsing.
