A Dangerous Collaboration (Veronica Speedwell #4)(82)

“I don’t think so, Trenny,” Mertensia replied, giving her a little gesture of dismissal. As Mrs. Trengrouse closed the door gently behind her, I turned to Caspian.

“Has there been any word from Malcolm?”

He shook his head. “No, but I am certain he will turn up. The locals said he is forever wandering about the island. It is part of his responsibility as master of St. Maddern’s,” he said.

“Is it part of his responsibility not to sleep in his own bed?” I asked.

Caspian choked slightly and Tiberius murmured, “My dear Veronica.”

But Mertensia stared at me as she stirred sugar into her tea. “How do you know where my brother was last night?”

“Because Tiberius and Stoker and I took the liberty of searching his room. He did not sleep there last night.”

Mertensia put her spoon into the saucer, rattling it a little. “This is bad,” she said.

Caspian protested. “Don’t be silly, Mertensia. The weather was vile last night. What if he went to check on one of the islanders? He might well have stayed through the storm.”

“But the rain had stopped by this morning,” she pointed out. “He would have returned.”

“The storm is rising again,” Caspian said with a nod towards the rain-spattered windows. “He might well have decided to remain right where he was, snug and warm.”

“Would he not have sent word?” Stoker asked.

Mertensia nodded. “He would. He is terribly responsible in that way. He knows we would have worried. Besides that, someone in the village would have seen him. Unless you never actually asked them, Caspian? How do we know you looked for him at all?”

“Of course I looked!”

Mertensia shrugged. “So you say. But if anyone had a good reason to wish Malcolm ill, it is you.”

The four of us turned curious eyes upon him and he looked to each of us in turn, his eyes rolling white. “I—I say, you all don’t believe I had anything to do with this nonsense! You can’t. I didn’t even know Rosamund, not really.”

“You stood to lose your inheritance if she produced a Romilly heir,” Mertensia went on. “That would have been motive enough to do away with her.”

“Do away with her?” His eyes turned heavenwards and then he looked to the rest of us in mute appeal.

“The lady has a point,” Tiberius said evenly.

“I was still a boy when she disappeared,” Caspian protested. “I hadn’t even left school yet. Do you really think I would have murdered my uncle’s wife just to inherit this cursed pile of stone? And who the devil said anything about murder before Mertensia’s imagination went galloping off of its own accord? For all we know, Rosamund left of her own free will and is living in the Argentine right now.”

He finished this rejoinder with a magnificent arch of his brow, the sort of gesture that Tiberius had mastered in the cradle. But Caspian did not have quite the nerve to pull it off. His voice had quavered a bit at the end, and the look Stoker gave him was not unkind.

“Steady, lad, no one’s accusing you of murder.”

“She is,” Caspian said with a jerk of the head towards Mertensia.

“Yes, I rather think I am,” she replied.

“You damned, beastly—”

“Now who’s being insulting?” she asked with a triumphant air.

“You are both being tiresome,” Tiberius pronounced. “And, Mertensia, with all due respect, the greater sin lies with you as you are the elder.”

“By a considerable amount,” Caspian put in.

Her upper lip curled. “Prick my vanity if you like, boy, but it means nothing to me. Our values, my dear Caspian, are nothing alike. I care for the land and the people here, the history, and the life we lead. You will never understand that.”

“You’d better hope I do, or when I am master here—”

Mertensia leapt to her feet, pointing an accusing finger. “There it is! An admission of your ambitions.”

He jumped up, squaring off to face her over the tea table, nearly upsetting the dish of clotted cream. “I merely said—”

They shouted for a little while, hurling invective at one another over the scones as Tiberius and I watched. Stoker sat, contentedly eating his way through the sandwiches before moving on to a rather appetizing-looking cake decorated with marzipan.

“Should we stop them?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Why bother? This has clearly been brewing for a while. Perhaps it will clear the air.”

“It’s not helping us to find Malcolm,” I pointed out.

“That doesn’t seem to be anyone’s priority,” he observed.

At the mention of Malcolm’s name, Mertensia and Caspian fell silent, both of them looking slightly abashed. “Poor Malcolm,” Mertensia murmured. “I wonder where he can be?”

Tiberius took the opportunity to seize the reins of conversation. “While we were in his room, we examined the traveling bag. He was quite right about it. It was most definitely Rosamund’s and full of what seem to have been her most prized possessions.”

Stoker and I had carefully hid the traveling bag back in the priest’s hole before restoring the panel. There seemed no reason to take the evidence from its place of concealment as it seemed far safer there than elsewhere.