Page 37 of The Villain's Fatal Plot
Verity set the kitten down and tried to stop her whirling thoughts. Blackmail—didn’t that meanextortion? She couldn’t make sense of it. Miss Edgerton extorting...? “Who? We saw noevidence that she had any extra income. The men are unidentifiable. Who would believe a painting? Why would she want me toseethis?”
Minerva had produced a pair of spectacles and was reading the burned scraps more carefully. “The letter contains words likefraudand what appears to beembezzlement. The legal paper contains the phraseamendment to my last... If this is your father in the portrait, can we assume she saved these papers for you? If so, she may be saying that someone in your life was written out of a will due to illegal activities. Although why she would have hidden them instead of providing them to you or a solicitor or...” She shook her head in dismay.
“So her dying words may have just been to Verity, telling her where to look for information she wished to pass on?” Mr. Upton asked. “They didn’t indicate who killed her?”
Verity clung to that lifeline. Buttea... Her friend had known she’d been poisoned.
“Are you certain this is your father in the painting?” Rafe asked. “Which man?”
Verity blinked at this suggestion and replied in ire. “My father wouldnevercommit fraud! My father was attacked by a thief, robbed, and killed over ten years ago!”
“How do you know this?” he asked carefully. “You said you were only fifteen. Might they have hidden the truth from you?”
The large soldier who tramped through the house like an earthquake, had flung a grown man from the tavern, and thundered through the kitchen, spoke with such gentleness, that she wanted to weep.
She shouldn’t deceive him, but there was nothing he could do now. Nothing could bring back her father or her home. They were all gone, along with dead Faith.
They had no way of tracing an ancient story. She could give them that much.
“I overheard people talking,” she whispered, reluctantly recalling that awful night. “I was in my room when a messengerarrived. I heard my mother weeping and ran downstairs. They didn’t know I was there. She and our butler and some stranger were discussing arrangements for abody. The next day, she told me my father died at the hands of a thief. I attended the service but I never saw him again.”
She didn’t have to recall the horrible days that followed. They were etched in her memory with such pain that the words might as well have been carved into her skin.
“And Miss Edgerton was there?” Mr. Upton asked.
Verity nodded and found her handkerchief to wipe her tears. “My mother wasn’t well. The physician confined her to bed. Miss Edgerton held my hand and explained what I must do and when. She helped dye my clothes. I don’t know what I would have done without her.”
“And then she left?” Minerva asked.
Verity didn’t want to talk about this anymore. She wanted to fall into bed and bury her head under a pillow. And even she knew that was a childish thing to do. She wasVeritynow, a young woman with a sensible head on her shoulders, no longer that helpless child.
Even if her worldhadexploded once more— She’d survived the last two. She would do so again. The first time, with her father’s death, she’d had to fight hysteria, present a calm demeanor, be the young lady her mother needed... The second time, with the fire, she’d been left hollow. But even with hollowed insides, she knew how to do this. She simply had to edit the story.
“Some days after my father’s funeral, my uncle arrived with solicitors, and told Mother that without Father to operate his company, it would have to be closed. Without income, we had to reduce expenses. I came home from church one Sunday, and Miss Edgerton and almost the entire staff were gone. Mother said she had no choice.”
“There should have been funds from selling the company,” Rafe argued, sounding puzzled.
“Not if he owed the bank for anything,” Minerva suggested.
“I don’t know more. My uncle inherited everything and moved in. My mother took to her bed. I looked after her. He started using the ground floor for his business. Life went on, just not as it was before.” Verity stared at the painting. “If my father was murdered, why would she not have told me? Perhaps the painting is metaphorical, representing the killing of life as we knew it?”
“Where was Miss Edgerton on the night your father died?” Rafe demanded harshly.
Verity shook her head in denial of the direction of his thoughts. “She couldn’t possibly have concealed such an event from us!”
But the memories were there, as clear as the explosion that had rocked her world mere weeks ago. She took them out to look at them again. “It was her day off. She usually went to the shops and bought painting supplies and books.” Verity considered what she remembered. “I believe she came in late, probably after the messenger. My mother had taken to her bed. I was sitting on the stairs, crying, when she returned. What does it matter?”
And then she realized... Miss Edgerton had been out on those empty, rainy streets when her father had died. She shuddered and shoved the painting away.
“No,” she whispered. “She could not have. Why would she not say?”
“Who would she tell? It doesn’t look as if she recognized any face but your father’s.” Rafe studied the painting. “Who wouldwetell? Would it have made you feel better to know your father died by carriage and not by thief? That’s just a different kind of murder, and no one did anything about it, did they? Was your mother in any state to hire a thief taker? Would there have been any point?”
Verity shook her head. Her hearty, healthy father had thought he’d live forever. She’d come to terms with the monetary loss long ago. He’d wanted his family to have everything they desired. He’d pampered them, given them luxuries, expected them to goout into society the way her mother deserved. He had not prepared them for a future without him.
“Do you happen to know your father’s solicitors?” Minerva asked.
If she did, she couldn’t say without giving her father’s name. Verity shook her head, even as an ugly suspicion crawled under her skin.
