Page 82 of Murder at Hambledon Hall
I couldn’t work out why. “Is something the matter, Mrs. Browning? Have I offended you?”
“I don’t know why you think me a fool, Miss Fox, but clearly you do.”
“Pardon?”
“You sit next to the one person in this room you don’t like very much, and who doesn’t particularly like you, when there are several other places available.”
“I like you.” It sounded lame, even to me. “You intrigue me,” I added with a little more confidence.
“You pretend to engage me in conversation with the sole purpose of finding out more information about my family, in the hope of pinning Esmond’s murder on one of them.”
“That’s not?—"
“Stop it,” she said with pained effort. “Why do you care so much about the death of a man you never knew?” Her breath suddenly hitched. “Did something happen between you before his death?”
“No! I only met him once, in Lord Kershaw’s office. He was reading a book while he waited for his lordship, but left before he arrived. Our encounter was brief and a little odd, if I’m honest.”
“Liar.”
I blinked rapidly. “I assure you, that’s what happened. That isallthat happened. Not every woman found him attractive.”
“It must be a lie. You can’t have caught him reading. He can’t read very well. He would not pick up a book while he waited. He’d hum a tune or do a jig, anything but read.”
I turned to face her fully. “Are you saying hecouldn’tread? Not at all?”
“He could a little, but not well. It’s not for lack of trying over the years. He went to school with the village children. My father even paid for my brother’s tutor to teach him, but Esmond didn’t progress. He was sensitive about it and didn’t want people to know. It wasn’t common knowledge. I tried helping him to read and write, too, but he just couldn’t grasp it. He’d jumble up the letters and write them back to front. He’d get cross from frustration, so I gave up before we had a falling out over it.”
I’d heard about word blindness. It had nothing to do with a person’s level of intelligence. It was simply a phenomenon that happened to a few and meant they couldn’t read as well as others.
“Esmond wasn’t stupid.” Mrs. Browning sounded protective. Despite everything he’d said and done, she still loved him enough to ensure falsehoods weren’t spread about him. “He just needed time to concentrate on the words to make sense of them.”
A slow reader would want to read an important document at their leisure. They would take it home to read in a comfortable and familiar environment without others around.
That’swhy Esmond had torn out the pages in the registers—to read them properly and carefully in his own time. They were proof of his legitimacy, and his right to be the earl. Understanding them was of vital importance.
I thanked Mrs. Browning. Not only had she inadvertently given me the reason why Esmond had taken the pages, she’d also given me a possible location of where he’d hidden them.
Unless, of course, they’d been found and destroyed.
I spent the next little while chatting to Lady Kershaw. After half an hour, I’d scored an invitation to accompany the family back to Hambledon Hall the following day. Under the pretense of being a keen art lover, I said I wanted to take a closer look at the masterpieces acquired by several generations of Kershaw earls. Not only would such an excuse get me back inside the house, it would also allow me a measure of freedom to wander around.
My evening was cut short when the gentlemen returned. Aunt Lilian wanted to retire and asked me to accompany her upstairs, to use my steadying arm for support. Since my arm was not as sturdy as her husband’s or son’s, I braced myself.
I was right to be worried.
Once we stepped out of the lift on the fourth floor, she let go of my arm. She turned to me, her once-clear eyes full of despair, the shadowed skin around them bearing evidence of her exhaustion. “Does loyalty mean nothing to you, Cleopatra?”
“I, er…yes, of course, it does.”
“Your uncle and I took you in. We didn’t have to. We could have let you fend for yourself in Cambridge.”
“I know, and I’m grateful. Aunt, what?—?”
“This is how you repay us? By accusing our friends of murder?”
“I haven’t accused anyone.”
“You will. I know you will. You have that air about you.” The muscles in her face twitched before distorting with a myriad of emotions that were too fleeting for me to identify.
