“So, we have just wasted the last three hours searching a house only for the person we are looking for to be outside all the time,” Isaac snorted, his anger building once more. As before, he whirled an accusatory glare on Estelle. “What do you know? You said we should go and search downstairs. Were you giving us hints of where to find your friend?”
“The killer is no friend of mine,” Estelle replied hurriedly. She instinctively backed away from the menace on Isaac’s face and walked straight into Myles, who placed a supportive arm around her waist.
Isaac didn’t say anything else but the look he gave her chilled her to her core. Estelle felt her cheeks burn.
“I was with you all morning. How could I have anything to do with this?” she demanded.
Isaac remained silent because they both knew she was right. She had been with a member of the household since she had first woken up this morning. He had watched her leave her bed ch
amber.
“Look, we are here to deal with Gerald’s body and take another look at his bed chamber. Then we can all go downstairs and have a nice cup of tea while everyone settles down. It isn’t going to solve anything to continue to throw wild accusations at each other. All it will do is cause offence, and we cannot start infighting right now. We already have a killer in our midst,” Myles warned them all.
Before any further disagreements could break out, he nudged Estelle to Gerald’s room.
Estelle shivered. The last thing she wanted was to go back in there but there was no choice. She had to stay with everyone else.
“First things first, we need to get some footmen to move him down to the cold store in the cellar,” Barnabas sighed as they all entered the room.
Once the door was closed, a stilted silence settled over everyone.
“We need to deal with the knife first. It isn’t right that he has to lie face down because of that,” Myles sighed.
“Should we take it out?” Beatrice murmured, completely unperturbed by seeing her arch-enemy, even if he was her brother, dead.
“Well, he can’t stay face down, and we can’t turn him over with that in his back, can we?” Barnabas snapped.
Sympathising with his father’s emotional state, Myles carefully studied the room before he did anything with the body.
“There wasn’t a struggle. This room is as neat as a pin,” he murmured.
“Well, there couldn’t have been a struggle. Someone stabbed him in the back, the bounders. They would hardly announce their arrival. The blackguard waited until his back was turned and then-” Barnabas broke off and hissed a breath.
Given the lack of any other significant detail giving them any clue as to who had killed Gerald, Myles couldn’t argue with his father’s deduction.
“Do you think they were lying in wait for him?” Beatrice asked rather nervously.
“I don’t know,” Barnabas murmured. “I don’t think Gerald would have allowed anybody in here for a chat. He was a stickler for his own personal space. Whoever did this must have crept into the room before Gerald came down for breakfast, while he was still getting ready. From the look of his clothing, he was ready, he just hadn’t left yet.”
“Who was about this morning?” Myles asked his father.
“Well, the maids had all been a couple of hours earlier to light the fires,” Barnabas explained.
Myles clutched his head, his thoughts whirling around in a confusing jumble of chaotic emotions, doubts and questions. He wasn’t sure where to begin to make sense of it all. Ruthlessly pushing aside as much of the emotion as he could, he paced around the room, searching for anything, any small clue that would give him some hint as to who did this. When nothing became obvious, he knew it was time to set all of that to one side and do what they could for Gerald.
Shaking his head, he resumed his position beside the body, carefully positioning himself so he blocked his father’s view from what he was about to do. Slowly, he withdrew the long, serrated edge of the hunting blade out of his uncle’s back. Wrapping it in his cravat, he placed it on the dresser and then rolled his uncle’s limp and lifeless body over until he was on his back. Carefully lowering Gerald’s lids to cover the deathly stare, Myles swept a throw off the bottom of the bed and draped it over the body.
“From the look of it, he was heading toward the dresser,” Beatrice murmured. She didn’t look at anybody or wait for instruction and began to poke about in the drawers. “Apart from clothing, there is nothing in here,” she murmured several minutes later.
“He isn’t wearing his cravat yet,” Isaac said with a nod to the body. “He must have been going to fetch it to put it on before he came down to breakfast.”
Myles searched Gerald’s pockets but they were completely empty. Isaac scoured the rest of the room once more but came up empty handed.
“Nothing,” he murmured when he had satisfied his curiosity.
Gerald was dead. Murdered. In cold blood. By a knife in his back. In his bedroom, and there were no clues as to who killed him, or why.
“Well, I think we need to go downstairs and draw up a list of culprits. You know, like who is most likely to have done this, and why,” Beatrice suggested.