Martha, looked up from where she studied the paintings. ‘He copied your hand. To learn.’
‘Very successfully,’ said Thea. ‘Isn’t it uncanny?’
‘Quite astonishingly like your own.’ Martha’s voice was dry. She stared at Thea and an understanding passed between them. This was how they had been betrayed.
‘Why would Knatchbull do it?’ asked Thea, looking back to the painting. ‘He is so dismissive of me.’
‘He knew you were getting good specimens somehow,’ said Martha. ‘And just because he is dismissive to your face it doesn’t mean that he isn’t threatened by you. He would think nothing about the impact it would have on your life.’
Thea’s fingers tightened on the parchment and she vowed that she would take revenge. This was no longer only about the plants. This was about two years of missing the woman she loved.
Two days later, Thea and Martha found themselves rattling out of London in a carriage bound for Hampshire, and Hawkdean House.
‘Do you think it was only him?’ asked Thea. It had been playing on her mind since their chat with Fletcher. ‘Just James? You trust your staff with the details of your life, and this seems like such a betrayal.’
‘Who knows,’ said Martha. ‘It would be silly of Knatchbull to involve too many people; he does need to maintain a relationship with George. Perhaps he was quite content to stop you receiving your fair share of plants and to take ownership of the intercepted packages. I stopped sending them after I tried to visit you, but he could have had a bundle before it happened.’
Thea thought for a moment. ‘Were there many before that? They had been slowing for some time.’
‘Since when?’ asked Martha.
‘Let me see.’ Thea counted on her fingers. ‘For the first two- and a-bit years there were lots. But I struggled with being away so much, a difficult glasshouse and no good gardener. I received a small packet at the end of 1762 and another at the beginning of 1763, but then nothing.’
Martha’s eyes danced around the carriage. ‘You should have had plenty around that time. I posted six to you from India earlier that year, and another five or so when I got to Cape Colony.’
Thea thunked her head back against the carriage wall. ‘I can’t believe they did this to us. I thought you had stopped sending them because you were disappointed in me. Because I had told you that I had trouble in growing.’
‘When really they were being stolen from you.’
‘And then James went and died and spoiled his plans,’ said Thea, scowling to herself. ‘That must have annoyed him at least.’
Martha only looked at her.
‘What?’ asked Thea, not understanding.
‘It seems convenient, doesn’t it, that James was the one to go?’
Thea’s blood ran cold. ‘You aren’t suggesting...? But he was clearly doing what Knatchbull wanted.’
‘He was,’ said Martha, raising one shoulder. ‘But what if he got cold feet? What if Knatchbull got greedier and asked him to do something he could not stomach? What if he got to like you and felt guilty? What were the circumstances of his death?’
Thea pursed her lips as she thought. ‘George had a shooting party. He had left the day before, but his favourite German flintlock and his box had been left behind. He insisted that it was delivered to him, and James took it. It was too bulky to go on a horse, so he hired a carriage.’
‘So, no witnesses?’
Thea shook her head as her blood ran cold. ‘Only the coach driver, but who knows who he could be – nobody would ever remember. Surely Knatchbull wouldn’t stoop to murder in the name of his plants?’
Martha lifted an eyebrow. ‘I believe that men like Knatchbull will go to great lengths to grow their status, and we know that he has little regard for the lives of those who he deems beneath him.’
Thea knew she was right. ‘He is a man who trades in the kind of wares used to subdue a whole population, it isn’t unthinkable that he would consider his staff similarly expendable.’
Martha was thoughtful. ‘Mmm. And nothing has happened since. There have been no letters and no plants gone missing.’
‘But no opportunity for them to do so,’ said Thea. ‘The two of us had… lost contact by then. Perhaps that was the only goal, and no further action was needed. They had succeeded in gaining new material and limiting my growing efforts.’
‘Nothing more to do.’ Martha’s voice held only bitterness.
‘If he killed James. How will we ever know?’
