mentioned the last time you were here that my uncle was foolish about his antiquities purchases. Perhaps there was a dispute with someone who cheated him?”
“Good thought, sir.” Hanks nodded his approval. “I en’t found any such thing, however. And I believe I’ve talked to near everyone he bought from.”
“Ah.” Alec’s momentary view of himself as a brilliant investigator receded.
“Here’s the thing.” Hanks hesitated.
“Yes?”
“Well, sir, your common footpad is no killer. He hits ’em, takes when he can get, and runs. Mebbe now and then he hits too hard, accidental, like. But this weren’t like that. Mr. Wylde’s head was beat right in.” Ignoring Alec’s wince, he added, “Murder is mostly personal.”
Chilled, Alec said, “Just tell me what you came to say.”
“I talked to that feller Holcombe.”
“A malicious man and, I suspect, a liar.”
“Yes, sir,” Hanks agreed. “I talked to the other servants as well. Tracked ’em down around the city. And what I learned, reading between the lines and making allowances, you understand, was that Mrs. Wylde was made downright miserable in that house. Just about tormented, I would say. Mebbe enough to… snap.”
Alec thought of things Charlotte had said, that he knew, about her former situation.
“She had every reason in the world to wish her husband…”
“Stop.” Alec struggled with his temper and a sudden fear. “You cannot be about to accuse a young woman of quality of murdering her husband?”
“Not herself, sir, no. She was seen at home that night. But hiring it done p’raps. And I en’t saying for sure…”
“Ridiculous! Outrageous!”
Hanks didn’t quail in the face of his anger. “In such a case, the wife expects to inherit, see, but your uncle’s will put a damper on that, and so…”
Neither man had heard the study door open.
“You’re asking me to believe that Charlotte Wylde hired a murderer, and then a thief…?”
“Well, I ’spect it would be the same man, sir. And I en’t saying fer…”
“What?” asked a quavering voice. Alec looked up to find Charlotte in the doorway, staring at him as if she couldn’t have heard correctly. “What?” she said again.
“Ma’am,” offered Jem Hanks. He didn’t look at all embarrassed. He simply watched her with his raptor’s gaze.
Alec, on the other hand, flushed scarlet. “It is an insane theory…”
“They told me the Runner was here. I came down to help. You are accusing me…?” Hand on the doorknob, she swayed a little. Her face was ashen. “Hiring…? You think that I would…?”
“Of course not.”
She didn’t seem to hear him; she was staring at Hanks. “How would I hire…? Henry gave me no money.”
“Hypothetically, a… person might promise payment from the inheritance. And then when there weren’t none to speak of…”
Charlotte clutched the doorknob like a lifeline. “A ‘person’ might, I suppose. I did not.”
Hanks continued to watch her. Alec suddenly wondered if he had come here to do just that. He looked from one to the other, shaken to the core by the last night and morning. An insidious inner voice suggested that he had taken a stranger into his home, where his young sisters lived. He had accepted everything she said without question. He actually knew nothing of her background, beyond her assertions. Of course these accusations were idiotic. There was no question of murder. Only misunderstanding and a creeping doubt… and encroaching chaos. “I think it would be best…”
“Do not say that to me!” Charlotte shrieked. “Don’t you dare! My father ‘thought it best’ to marry me off to a cold, cruel man. My husband ‘thought it best’ to treat me like a pariah. No one asks me! And you… you have no right whatsoever to ‘think it best.’ You have no authority over me.”
Alec was lashed by memories of his grandmother’s tirades. She’d terrorized the family—lied, pitted one relative against another, brutally manipulated. “You are a guest in my house,” he snapped. “That gives me some authority.”
“To be a household tyrant?” Charlotte glared at Alec. “You believe this of me?”
Anne and Lizzy were, blessedly, too young to remember much. He’d vowed they would never experience even the echo of those screaming rants. And here was this woman he barely knew, shouting at him.
“I see.” Charlotte stepped back into the hall and slammed the door behind her. The sound seemed to echo through the room, through the years. Alec felt as if it ricocheted inside his head.
“Hadn’t meant to do that just now,” said Jem Hanks.
“To…?”
“I prefer to have a bit of evidence before I confront the…”