his hand in mine, and I watch him, and my heart breaks as I see him putting the pieces together.
“You say you saw Harold . . .” He swallows. “You saw him with a young woman’s body. Carrying her into the moors.”
“Yes.”
“You found . . .” His eyes close, and he shudders.
“I found the body that Harold buried,” I say softly. “He carried her wrapped in a shroud, and that is what I found. Her body in a shroud.”
He shakes his head. “The private detective I hired . . . He was lying to me, wasn’t he? Giving me scraps and promising more if I kept paying his fees.”
I nod. “It was Cordelia I found, William. This was on her finger.” I lift the ring I took from Cordelia’s body, and the jewels catch the midday light. “Is it hers?”
“Yes. It’s part of a set. I got the necklace for my future wife. She got the ring.” He trails off, as if remembering where I found this family ring.
“Cordelia . . .” he whispers.
In the silence, his hand grips mine.
“You fought with your sister,” I murmur, “and you told her to leave. You gave her money. You rode into the moors to get away from her, and when you returned, Cordelia and her things were gone, and Harold . . .”
“He was coming back from driving her to the rail station. Except that wasn’t where he took her, was it?”
He shudders, and again, it takes every bit of strength not to go to him. I just keep holding his hand as his thumb strokes mine.
I know now what his fight with Cordelia was about. I’ve felt the answer prickling at the edges of my mind.
There is a third solution to this puzzle, and it’s the only one that truly fits.
Did it make any sense that William sent Cordelia away after a simple argument? Didn’t tell her to get out of his sight temporarily but gave her enough money to leave forever?
Earlier, this had poked at my mind, whispering there was something wrong with William’s story, a whisper amplified by Cordelia accusing him of her murder. A whisper that wondered whether they’d fought, and there’d been a shove, a slip, some unintentional blow in the heat of the fight, and Cordelia died.
Yet there is another explanation. One I didn’t see until now. And the more I think about it, the more certain I am, with horrible clarity, that I finally have the answer. The terrifying, tragic answer.
“You fought,” I say softly, “with Cordelia.”
He says nothing, just keeps staring into the past. He’s lost there in a place I can’t reach him. A place he’s never entirely left.
“Can you tell me more about it? Please?”
His gaze lifts to mine, such dread and grief and sadness in his gaze.
“You need to tell me what it was about,” I say. “I think you realize why.”
He nods, the movement barely perceptible. Then he says, his voice a whisper, “I would never have let her leave if I thought she truly had . . .” He swallows.
“She killed Eliza, didn’t she?” I struggle to keep talking, to wrap my head around this new theory. “Cordelia led Eliza into the heart of the moors and left her there to die. That’s what you fought about. You’d found proof and confronted Cordelia with it.”
He shakes his head. “Not Eliza. August.”
“August?” I frown.
“Harold caught Cordelia taking rat poison from the stables. He warned me she had it. Warned me she was planning something, and it was not killing rats. I thought he’d lost his mind. And yet . . .”
He pauses. “And yet, I did not relieve him of his post, which proves that I was grappling with fears and doubts myself. The next day, Cordelia brought lemonade to the barn, a cold drink for August, teasing me that I could fetch my own. My suspicion sparked immediately. While bringing her fiancé a drink may seem a small and ordinary kindness, it was not the sort of thing my sister ever did. She was . . . ill-accustomed to considering the needs of others. Still, though, I told myself I was being foolish. I took the glass myself. As I lifted it to my lips, she knocked it from my hands. I quickly sent August away on some pretext. Once he was gone, I confronted her. She denied it, obviously, told me I’d gone mad. Then I demanded the truth about Eliza. I always suspected Cordelia lied when she