“She didn’t share a room with her husband?” Cordelia asked.
Bennett shook his head, and his jowls wiggled. “It was not so uncommon in that time for couples of a certain position to keep separate rooms.”
“And yet she had four children,” Eustace quipped in a bawdy tone.
There was an untraceable flash in Bennett’s eyes before he changed the subject. “Your aunt, of course, took the room across the hall.” He opened the door and gestured but made no move to show it to them.
Cordelia stepped through the door, and Eustace followed. Bennett started to press on.
“Shouldn’t we see it?” Cordelia asked him. “Our aunt’s room?” She’d been in there already, but he didn’t know that.
He paused, clasping his hands in front of him. “If you must,” he said, before moving to open the door. “It’s plain enough. Your aunt had rather simple tastes. Though it was another’s room first,” he added with a marked look at the music box. “Your mother’s, in fact.”
Cordelia had felt as much the day before, but having it pointed out by Mr. Togers bothered her. It was the second time he’d hinted at an intimate detail of their mother’s life, and it felt a shade too close for someone technically outside of the family. She turned and smiled tightly at the old attorney. “Can you tell us what happened to our aunt?”
“Her heart stopped,” he said patently. “In the night.”
“A heart attack?” Eustace gave him a curious look. “I didn’t know heart disease ran in the family.”
“That’s because it doesn’t,” he told her, closing the door. “It was not a constriction of blood flow to the heart muscle, but a cessation of all function.” He started again down the hall. “It was rather unexpected, but the medical examiner insists she did not suffer.”
It sounded plausible, and yet Cordelia couldn’t shake that dislodged fingernail from her mind. Was that the action of a woman who wasn’t suffering? “The groundskeeper said she didn’t leave her room.”
Bennett stopped abruptly. He turned to stare at her. “Did he now? Yes, well, she was rather tired toward the end, quite on in years, as you both know. Time does take its toll.”
“Sure,” Cordelia agreed, casting her eyes downward. “On the mind as well. We wondered if senility ran in the family?”
Bennett studied them before responding. He cleared his throat. “As not only her legal counsel but a lifelong friend, I can assure you your aunt was of sound mind until the day she died,” he told them. “You’ll find nothing to contest to that end. And her wishes would be respected in any court of law.”
Cordelia realized he thought they were questioning the will, though they had yet to learn anything about it. “Oh yes, of course,” she said to reassure him. “We’re really just curious about our own medical history, you understand?”
He nodded perfunctorily, before striding off again.
“Did she ever complain of headaches?” Eustace asked, picking up Cordelia’s inquiry as she tried to keep pace with him.
Bennett’s teeth gleamed in the gloomy hall. “Headaches? Heavens, no. She was fit as a fiddle. Just weary when it came down to it,” he said, escorting them on.
Moving to the room Cordelia and Eustace had shared, he opened the door and told them, “This room belonged to Morna, from the portrait downstairs.”
Cordelia and Eustace peered into the space through new eyes. The shades of blue seemed grayer somehow, sadder, everything a touch more dismal.
“She was a great lover of animals,” he added dryly.
“That explains a few things,” Cordelia said, indicating the stuffed ravens with a nod of her head. It seemed Eustace wasn’t the only one in the family with a penchant for animal husbandry.
Turning back across the hall, Bennett smiled. “And this was the bedchamber of Erazmus Bone himself.” Before Cordelia could stop him, he flung open the door, revealing rich green paint now spattered red and the stag bed cluttered with furry, lifeless bodies.
“Good heavens,” the attorney exclaimed as he looked inside. “This is most unusual.”
Cordelia cringed as she saw the morbid scene for the second time, and looked away.
“Wasn’t this your room last night, Cordy?” Eustace asked.
“Before the bats chased me out. But they were most definitelyalivethen,” Cordelia told her, voice going flat.
Bennett closed the door and turned to face them with wideeyes. “I suggest you choose a different room tonight,” he said gravely. “I’ll get someone to take care of this.”
“I’ve already spoken to Gordon about it,” Cordelia told him. “He’s going to come by later.”
