Page 56 of A Rogue at Stonecliffe

She turned and saw him standing a few steps down at the place where her father had fallen. “What?”

“Come here.”

Normally she would have bristled at his peremptory command, but there was something so peculiar about his expression that she went to join him.

“This board was unsteady because it’s missing some nails,” Sloane began. “I think your father stumbled on it and fell against the railing.”

“Yes.” Her voice was slightly questioning. That seemed pretty obvious.

He pointed to the ends of the banister, where it had broken off. “This railing isn’t splintered and jagged. It was sawn through. I think your father was meant to fall.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“SOMEONE KILLED HIM?” Annabeth stared at Sloane, eyes wide. Her face went pale, and she started to crumple.

Sloane grabbed her, pulling her to him, before she could topple down the stairs. He wanted to continue holding her like that, but he carefully lowered her to a step. He sat down beside Annabeth and curled his arm around her—only to hold her up, he told himself. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that.”

The truth was Sloane had been too stunned himself to even think of holding back the words. Hunter had been murdered. Why had that never occurred to him? Why had he never questioned the story that Annabeth’s father had accidentally fallen?

The war had been long over by the time Winfield died, and Annabeth’s father would have been useless to the French after Sloane took away the damning paper they’d used to force him to spy for them. Sloane had been out of the country when it happened, but even so, it didn’t excuse his not looking into it after he returned to England. The reason he hadn’t was doubtless because he’d done his best not to think about Annabeth and her father.

“But why?” Annabeth turned her head to look at him. “He had no enemies. He was a good, sweet man. Why would anyone have wanted to kill my father?”

Sloane knew exactly why. If, as Asquith had suggested, Winfield was going to confess, obviously the traitor he named in that confession would not have wanted it revealed. Winfield’s death would have ensured that he stay quiet. But Sloane couldn’t tell Annabeth that.

He said carefully, “It seems to me that the person who caused your father’s death might very well be the same person who is after you.”

“After all this time? How could the two be connected?”

“Someone murdered your father, and now someone is pursuing you, even trying to kill you. It seems unlikely, doesn’t it, that these are two different men with different motives? You ask, why would anyone want to kill your father? Well, why would anyone want to kill you? Yet here we are. Someone arranged your father’s ‘accident,’ and someone tried to shoot you today.”

“All because of this document you’ve been talking about? What is this thing we’re looking for?” Annabeth narrowed her eyes at him. “And don’t say you can’t tell me. I deserve to know why someone is trying to kill me.”

“I don’t know exactly what is in this document,” Sloane hedged. “I’m not even sure that it exists.” That much was true; even Asquith had doubts that there actually was a confession.

“Why would anyone be so eager to get it if it doesn’t exist?”

“Obviously someone must believe that it does.”

“But it’s been several years since my father died. Why would this person have waited so long to look for it?”

“I’m not sure why they started this search now. Asquith—that’s the man I used to work for—was told that your father had written a letter and that someone was trying to find it. That is when he started looking for it. Suppose your father knew something that would ruin a person, we’ll call him Lord X, and your father was going to reveal it. Lord X killed your father to keep him from revealing his secret. He searched your father’s workshop and maybe your home, but he couldn’t find the letter. So he decided that it either did not exist or that it was hidden away somewhere where it would never be found. He thought he was safe.”

“But when I started looking through my father’s things in the town house, he was afraid I might find it.”

Sloane nodded. “Or perhaps it was because my old boss heard about this information your father had and he set Verity to looking for it, and Lord X caught wind of that.”

“Then why didn’t he try to kill Verity?”

“Verity is not easy to kill.” Sloane shrugged. “And, remember, he did kidnap both of you. There’s nothing to say he won’t try to do in Verity as well. However, you seem the likeliest target because you’re the likeliest person to find it. You know where your father hid things. Maybe your father could have even told you specifically where he’d put it. So our villain tried to kidnap you to make you tell him. When that wasn’t successful, he decided that he would have to kill you, too, to keep you from finding the letter.”

“But why would my father have known anything about this person? Lord X. Why would he have written a letter and to whom? I loved Papa very much, but in the eyes of the world, he was not an important person.”

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t know something that was important.” Sloane was again on dangerous territory. It twisted a knife of guilt in him to lie to her, but neither could he bear to ruin her father’s memory. A partial truth would have to do. “Asquith believes that there was a man in England working for the French, the head of their spy ring. He thinks your father wrote a letter that would expose that traitor.”

Annabeth stared at him in astonishment. “You think my father found out someone was a spy? How could he have possibly known that?”

“Mr. Winfield had a great many friends.”