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"What is it?" he asked.

"My mother once lived in a house much like this one," she answered. "Not because of its walls or its wealth. Because people who loved one another could be ridiculous together."

Georgiana came to sit beside her. She read the three inscriptions and smiled.

"Your uncle's family must have been very happy," she said.

"For a time," Elizabeth answered. "We are going to discover why that happiness ended. But I hope we may also remember that it existed."

Darcy stood beside her chair as Georgiana leaned against Elizabeth and pointed to a word in the old book. Elizabeth pronounced it for her; Georgiana tried again, boldly and badly. He listened to them both laugh and had no wish to interrupt.

CHAPTER 29

The West Terrace

The first substantial reply from Germany reached London in the latter part of October, about six weeks after Saye's inquiries were dispatched. It had travelled by circuitous hands, from Falkenried to a Baltic merchant correspondent, through Sweden, and at last across the North Sea. Herr Weiss, Albrecht's steward, enclosed a dated covering letter listing each document. He sent copies of relevant household accounts, the original books remaining in his custody, and a German statement taken from an elderly woman who had once served Princess Dorothea. An English translation, prepared by a competent German-speaking clerk engaged by the Matlocks' solicitor, accompanied the copy. The packet's journey and its witnesses were recorded; no one pretended that this alone transformed a foreign statement into evidence admissible before an English court.

Saye placed the packet upon the Earl's desk and looked toward the window. He had seen his father face political reverses, financial disappointments, and the deaths of friends without losing his composure. This inquiry was different. It touched a woman they had loved in absentia because Elizabeth had loved her, and a family whose present happiness had grown around a false account of the past.

"We should read the records before calling Albrecht," the Earl said.

"I agree. But I would rather he hear the whole account from us than discover fragments in a letter from his steward."

The copied household entries showed that Vogel had received an unusual allowance under the heading of confidential journeys. The sum exceeded by several times what an ordinary carriage journey would have cost. Herr Weiss identified the expenditure mark used by Adelheid's private household and supplied samples of other entries bearing the same mark for comparison. Another entry recorded replacement tack after the reported accident; nearby stood expenses for Friedrich's funeral. These were leads requiring examination of the original books, not yet a verdict upon their author.

The order of entries struck Saye more forcibly than any accusation could have done. A family had buried its eldest son and paid a coachman to take away its youngest daughter. In the narrow columns, grief and calculation occupied neighbouring lines.

Frau Margarethe Lenz's statement was harder to read. Once a companion to Princess Dorothea, she was now an elderly widow living with relatives near Rostock. Herr Weiss had arranged for her account to be taken down in German before a local official competent to witness her declaration; the official had marked the document with its date and the names of those present. She remembered the evening of Friedrich's death not because she had witnessed his fall—she had not—but because Minna had come to her immediately afterwards.

Minna's dress had been stained and the skin upon her hands torn. She was shaking so badly that Frau Lenz had to help her sit. She said more than once that Friedrich had not slipped and that Adelheid had been beside him. When Frau Lenz urged her to tell Albrecht at once, Minna answered that she had tried and had been prevented. Before Frau Lenz could fetch anyone, Adelheid entered, declared the young princess dangerously overwrought, and sent the older woman away. Frau Lenz heard, later that night, that the physician had ordered a sleeping draught.

The following day she sought Minna again but was told the young lady must not be disturbed. Within another day Minna had departed the house. Frau Lenz had been warned against repeating a grieving girl's accusation of a woman who had just suffered a family bereavement. She had obeyed. She had regretted it for twenty-three years. The solicitor reminded the family that this was Lenz's recollection of what Minna said, not Lenz's eyewitness account of the death; if proceedings required it, the original signed statement and the woman herself would have to be examined under the appropriate law.

"She never saw the fall," Saye said after reading the statement twice.

"No," the Earl agreed. "But she saw Minna's immediate distress and heard her account before she disappeared. That is no small thing."

A further note from Herr Weiss said that the family's physician, long since dead, had left some professional papers with his son. The son recalled a memorandum concerning a young patient distressed after a fatal accident, who might have been given more sleeping drops than her physician prescribed. Copies, if any survived, would take time to obtain. Nothing yet independently established that Friedrich was drugged or pushed. Frau Lenz's recollections gave urgency and context to a suspicion; they could not alone make it a proven fact.

The Earl consulted the solicitor who had handled Elizabeth's wardship. The man advised extreme care. A crime alleged to have occurred within a German territory decades earlier would need to be addressed by the appropriate local authorities. The English inquiry concerned the attack upon Elizabeth and the people who ordered or helped arrange it. Letters from Germany and admissions by an English resident might support further proceedings, but they would not make an English drawing room into a court empowered to judge Friedrich's death.

"Then we shall act within what the evidence permits," the Earl said. "I will not allow a desire for justice to encourage us into careless accusation."

Lady Matlock, on learning what the letter contained, asked whether Elizabeth ought to read it. The Earl looked at his wife with surprise.

"She is the person whose mother was driven from home. Why should she not know?"

"Because she has blamed herself for not recalling a childhood dream with sufficient precision. If she sees what Minna said when she was eighteen, she may imagine she ought somehow to have remembered it at eight."

They agreed that Elizabeth should be told plainly, with Albrecht present if he wished it, and that neither she nor he should be compelled to supply feelings for the convenience of the inquiry.

Albrecht came to Matlock House that afternoon. He had scarcely removed his gloves before he saw the papers and understood that the reply from Falkenried had arrived. Elizabeth entered from the morning room on Darcy's arm, careful not to raise her sore shoulder. Richard and Saye moved aside to give her space, and Albrecht rose to meet her.

The Earl explained Frau Lenz's account. Albrecht listened without interruption. Only when Minna's reported words were read aloud did he close his eyes.

"She tried to tell me," he said, his voice low. "She was there, and she tried to tell me. I let myself be turned away."

Elizabeth answered in German, because he had spoken from a place English could not easily reach. "You were grieving your brother, Uncle. The people who prevented her from speaking knew that."