Stalwood took a seat and glared up at him. “Please do.”
Lucas sank into the chair across from his superior and said, “I have gone over every paper, compared every note and taken into account all the things I know, all the things I’ve learned from Diana, and I’m coming to one conclusion over and over.”
“Which is?”
“George Oakford may have been involved in the acts of treason,” Lucas said, though his voice felt slow and sounded far away as he forced himself to say those awful, terrible words. They rang in the air around him, and Stalwood jerked to his feet.
“George Oakford,” he repeated, his lined face twisting with the same horror that burned in Lucas’s chest. “No. That cannot be. What is your evidence?”
“He was there that day,” Lucas began. “Unexpectedly, uninvited. He gave an explanation at the time and I cared so deeply about the man that I fear I might not have dug deeply enough. But how would he know my location? It was a secret that was jealously guarded, considering the nature of my investigation. I suppose it is possible he did overhear my plans from someone else. Or perhaps…”
Stalwood shook his head. “That is not enough to convince me.”
“Nor me,” Lucas reassured him. “So there is the rest. Diana told me that Oakford brought another spy into their home two years ago. That she believed that this man was working with her father on a case. But you told me that Oakford was not given cases. I know that idea troubled you.”
Stalwood paced a moment and then nodded slowly. “Yes. I admit, that Oakford would work behind my back raised my suspicions. We were old friends and I was his superior. If there were an innocent explanation, then he could have and I think would have talked to me.”
“I agree,” Lucas choked out. The words came harder now. “Diana also mentioned a special knot her father used to close the bandages on wounds. Something complicated and not easily learned. Yet that was the knot on the bandage wrapped around my leg when I woke up after my injury.”
Stalwood wrinkled his brow. “But you believed Oakford to be dead when you saw him lying on the ground. He could not have tied off your wound.”
“I would think not. But perhaps his partner, the man who shot me, did. Although why he’d try to save me after shooting me twice and causing me to fall ten feet is beyond me. Or perhaps…”
“Perhaps?”
Lucas got up now. He hated to say the next. “What if…Oakford was pretending the initial injury?” he suggested. “He wasn’t hurt at all, but he wanted me to think he was in the event that I survived. What if he came to my aid? We were…I thought we were close. Diana said he thought of me as a-a son. Even if he were a traitor, it doesn’t follow that he truly wanted me to die. He might have even thought that my injuries would close the case.”
“But Oakford did die. We had a body.”
“Mutilated, which you didn’t tell me,” Lucas snapped.
Stalwood let his breath out in a long sigh. “I’m sorry you heard about that. I did not want you to carry even more guilt. His body was damaged, yes, but we identified him through his clothes and personal effects. We buried him.”
“I have reason to believe Oakford might have come to despise his partner.” He cleared his throat. “A personal reason. If that man turned on me, tried to kill me, and George intervened, they might have quarreled…”
“You think that was when hetrulyshot Oakford, along with all the other servants, in the scuffle,” Stalwood finished. “But why would he hate the partner?”
“Diana,” Lucas said softly.
Stalwood blinked a few times, his expression heavy with shock. “Diana,” he repeated slowly and in a tone thick with understanding.
Lucas winced, for he hated to reveal even a sliver of the secrets she had whispered to him in confidence. But this was a traitor. A murderer. A man that had turned against his own and caused Diana’s father’s death. That had to justify what he was doing…somehow.
“I do not wish to get into the details,” he said, and hoped Stalwood would respect that. “I will just say that Oakford believed that Diana had been…harmed by his partner. To know that would rot him out. Drive him to rage, even. They were in deep together, but if Oakford hated him…”
Stalwood nodded to show that he understood the path of Lucas’s thoughts. His expression was grave. “Very well, let us say that is true. That still leaves us with an unidentified man in our ranks.”
“Not unidentified,” he said. “Diana named him. And the name matches even more of our evidence. Boyd Caldwell.”
Stalwood swayed slightly at the invocation of that name. “You said the men guarding the estate that day said part of their employer’s name that day. Cal—”
“You looked into Caldwell with all the rest, I know. Did you eliminate him?” Lucas asked.
Stalwood shook his head slowly. “He was one of the men we couldn’t exclude by an alibi at the time of your attack. But we couldn’t find anything especially suspicious about him, either. But if he is linked to Oakford…and Oakford was there the day you were shot…”
“It’s a good lead, as much as I hate it,” Lucas said, and rubbed a hand over his face. “I cannot tell you how much I hate it. To think that George Oakford could be a traitor, in league with a killer…it turns my stomach.”
Stalwood was pale as paper. “Everything in me wants to shove this information away. Burn it from my mind if I could. But I know you’re correct. There are pathways here that the evidence reveals. And until we prove them wrong or right, we cannot dismiss them. Even if it breaks my heart and yours.”
