Page 116 of A Fearless Heart
“Wait, you’re saying that all of these deaths aremyfault just because I didn’t marry you?” Cady could hardly believe this man was the friend she’d always known.
“I did what I had to do to protect you, Cady. As your husband, I could have shielded you from all the cruel things life threw your way. I hoped that your father’s removal would have made things easier, but alas, I was unable to anticipate the local reaction. Idiots.”
“My father’s removal?” she echoed.
“Yes. I was at the house the morning he died. Don’t you remember? Anyway, it was during a round of drinks that I slipped him the clephobine.”
“You killed my father? Why?”
Addison looked annoyed. “You know why, little Cady. That man was a beast. The things he said to you, the way he was starving your spirit. You forget that I knew you as a little girl. I watched you grow up while I worked alongside your mother. You were such a darling creature, all smiles and curiosity. A joy to know. But after Lady Calder died, I watched all the light drain from that house. He drove the boy away, but what he did to you was worse. Kept you shut up inside those walls with him all the time, pruning you into his vision of the perfect daughter so he could marry you off to just the right titled gentleman…with no care at all for what you might want. A breeding program of one.”
“He was my father! And anyway, you breed roses!”
“Breeding plants is one thing. Breeding humans is disgusting, and no less so because it’s been done for centuries. You know what happens when breeding stock doesn’t expand? Disease, derangement, death.”
Cady hated to admit that the man had a point. Still… “It’s not an excuse for murder.”
“It wasn’t murder. It wasjustice.You have a brilliant mind. You’re a botanist and a chemist without parallel. I wish my own experiments were half so successful.”
“Oh, my Lord. You were there the whole time, watching me. And you never hinted that you cared for a thing beyond roses.”
“Any idiot can grow a rose,” he snarled. “Collecting new specimens was hardly more than a game to pass the time while I watched over you. If everyone thought of me as a harmless rose-head, then no one looked to me when it came to the cultivation of poisonous plants. I followed every breakthrough you made, Cady. I admired you for it. But when you synthesized the clephobine, I knew that I needed it. To take care of the people who were in my way. When you mentioned in passing that you’d made a dangerous chemical and you were giving it to Trevor to dispose of, I knew I didn’t have much time to secure it for myself.”
“But wait a moment. Howdidyou get it?”
“My dear girl, you were not always as watchful as you got in the past several months. During one of those interminable teatimes with Pollack and the vicar’s wife, I excused myself. And I used that time to go to your laboratory and open your cabinet of wonders. There was the clephobine, nicely labeled. I poured all of it into another bottle and refilled the original with a bit of water mixed with spirits to mimic the smell. I didn’t think you’d use it again before you handed it off to your brother, and of course he wouldn’t know it was a different substance altogether.”
“And you killed people with what you stole!”
“Just the ones who needed to be removed.”
“Tell me how,” a new voice said.
Cady looked over her shoulder to see Gabe leaning against the doorway. He seemed as if he’d collapse at any moment, except for a certain hard glint in his eye.
“Mr Addison, you’ve caused a lot of trouble,” he said. “When did you realize I was searching for the killer and the poison?”
“Not until you both left for London,” Addison replied. “At first, I thought you were merely another shiftless worker, and that you’d be gone in a few weeks. While you were employed as a gardener at Calderwood, Lady Arcadia seemed to keep her distance, at least as far as I could tell. But Vernon did mention to me that he saw both of you alone together one afternoon. I didn’t like that at all. But I had no proof that something untoward had happened, so I let you live.”
“Why, thank you,” Gabe said. “I suppose that it was the dinner party at Cady’s London home that sealed my fate.”
“I recognized you, of course! You did look very different with the dark hair and beard and your rough attire. Perhaps if your names hadn’t been so close—Court, Courtenay—I might not have matched your old appearance with your new look as the son of a lord. But once I realized that you were the same person, using a disguise, it was quite logical to guess that you were at Calderwood to learn about the poison.”
“Which you had procured long before.” Gabe sighed. “Let’s make this easy. I’ll say the name of the victim, and you tell me why he died. The first death besides Lord Calder was Sir Michael Montgomery.”
“He was a friend of Lord Calder. He’s always wanted the property of Calderwood, and he mentioned the idea of marrying Cady to her father. This was even before Calder requested the change in the letters patent. I didn’t trust Montgomery a bit. He didn’t have Cady’s best interests at heart. He had to go. I arranged to call upon him on some pretext—I can’t even remember what I said. We had drinks at White’s and I dropped a little clephobine in his glass. He was found dead the next day, seemingly in the night, of natural causes. It was marvelous.”
“If you’d stopped then,” Gabe said, “it was likely that death from natural causes would have remained. But then there was John Worthham a month later.”
“Ah yes, he worked with the Crown Office, did you know that? He learned about the letters patent request from Calder, and he grew interested in the idea of a young and marriageable Lady Calder. He’s a member of White’s too, and we happened to be chatting one evening and the subject came up since I’m a neighbor of the Osbourne family. Well, he was easy to dispatch and I saw no reason to let him linger.”
“How efficient. Now, Baron Murol. What did he do?”
“He’s a cousin to Mr Heath, and he met Cady at tea once, several months ago.”
“My goodness, I didn’t remember meeting him until now,” Cady breathed. “He was visiting Mr Heath for a month and did come to tea once or twice.”
“Well, he made some very crude remarks about your appearance, Cady,” Mr Addison told her. “So when he casually mentioned that he might visit again with the goal of pursuing you, I decided to nip that in the bud. Gave him the poison in a bottle of whiskey I offered as a parting gift when he left for home. The man liked his whiskey. He died within the week.”
