The inspector pottered around a bit. “Offhand, I can’t see anything here that would have a bearing on his being stabbed on the grounds,” he said. “I’ll get my man to go through everything with a fine-tooth comb after we’ve interviewed everyone. I should be getting on with that, I suppose. Can’t expect people to sit around all day, can I?”

It was only when he told me I was free to go that I realized that neither of us had mentioned the knife in Cedric’s back. It was the most important aspect of the murder, and yet we had both chosen to ignore it or skirt around it. I was glad because I should have had to identify it as Jack’s.

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

I heaved a sigh of relief as I watched the inspector return to the library, and I was released to go back to the others. The interview was at an end. I felt as if I’d been walking on eggshells all the time, terrified that something I said would be taken wrongly. Because when I examined it, there were so many things that could be misinterpreted at the moment—Jack’s arrival to claim his position as heir to the dukedom, Princess Charlotte’s séance, which spelled out “death,” Lady Irene’s row with her brother and his refusal to give her any money or let her use the family home in London and then Cedric’s stunning announcement the night before that he planned to adopt his valet, Marcel, and make him his heir. All incidents were in their own way incriminating. All were possible motives for someone in this house. And the inspector’s suggestion that the sisters might be “a bit dotty” and that insanity ran in families like theirs. They certainly were interestingly eccentric . . . And then the one salient detail that hadn’t come up yet, but would: that the knife in Cedric’s back belonged to Jack.

I started as a figure stepped out in front of me, pale and ghostlike in the gloom. It was Jack himself.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Where have you been?” I asked. “I’ve hardly seen you today.”

He shrugged. “I’ve just been wandering the halls, trying to come to terms with everything that’s happened.”

“I’m sure it must be a big shock to you.”