“Let’s get right to the heart of the matter,” Mr. Brassel said. “Did you kill Sophia Burnley?”
“No!” Thomas looked affronted. “I thought this man knew the truth,” he said to Adelia.
Mr. Brassel remarked, “I know what your sister has told me. I want to hear it from you.”
“There is nothing to tell because I don’t know anything about the murder.”
“Did you know the lady at all?” the solicitor queried.
Adelia waited while Thomas filled Mr. Brassel in on the same thing he’d told her.
“I think you’d have to be an idiot to give your sister the dead woman’s perfume, my lord, and you don’t strike me as an idiot.”
“Thank you,” Thomas said.
“The next question is your whereabouts on the day and night of the murder.”
Thomas sighed. “If I wasn’t at home with my sister, or at the Reform Club or Teavey’s—that’s my boxing club—I would have been at a dinner or a ball with Adelia.”
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Brassel said, “we came straight here, but we shall ask the detective for the exact date, and I assume you can look at your social schedule.”
Thomas looked at her. “I usually let my sister keep our calendar.”
“You keep a diary of the events you’ve attended?” Mr. Brassel asked her.
“I do.”
“If it was not a night of a ball or dinner party, where would you have been?” he asked Thomas.
Her brother’s cheeks flushed slightly.
“Tell him,” she insisted.
“I have a female friend who lives off of Whitechapel High Street.”
“I see. And that’s close to where the murder occurred?” Mr. Brassel asked.
“As far as we know,” her brother said quietly.
“Might this friend have been jealous of Lady Sophia, lured her there with the note on your behalf, and killed her?”
Thomas blanched, and Adelia gasped.
“Positively not,” her brother exclaimed. “Miss Moore didn’t know anything about the lady’s death until Burnley interrupted our evening last night.”
“In any case, the detective sergeant on the case will speak with her at some point. I shall get notes from him to give the barrister,” Mr. Brassel said.
He had been scrawling upon a tablet while standing. “Be warned, however, whatever your friend says, even if she provides you with an alibi, it will be of little interest to the court. They will consider her to be your lover, and hence, biased in your favor and likely as not to lie for you under oath.”
“That’s unfair,” Adelia said.
“That’s the way of it,” Mr. Brassel said.
“Then let us hope the murder was on a night of a dinner party during which everyone saw my brother, all night long,” she said. “Surely, the police won’t discount the word of multiple members of theton.”
“They would be believed,” the solicitor agreed, “if they’re willing to speak for him.”
“Why wouldn’t they?” Adelia wondered.
