All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred thirty-one)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Eight

Things Relative

(part two hundred thirty-one)

Demrose had not wanted to be a father. Would a lie be advantageous, more sympathetic? Monaghan would want to know, in that event, why he did not pursue the adoption?

Unmarried persons do, I suppose, acquire children. The truth is I did not expect, from Father Baker’s visit…setting onwards from there…anything better than the boy’s growing on me over time. Regina would have managed most of the rearing. Or not.

“I think she might actually have found excuses. I shouldn’t say it.”

One could not unsay a thing ventured before Monaghan, so Élucide added: “Getting the travel urge again, deciding on a boarding school.”

“I wonder if you’d noticed that he called himself unmarried.”

“As opposed to a widower? Which would be very circumstantial. Or whatever legal term accounts for grasping at straws.”

Her adversary—he was becoming that, somewhat—smiled. “I doubt much is to be made of it. I asked him how his finances struck him now, with these alterations.”

We are close to the point where I speak to you only through my lawyer. I don’t care, Mr. Monaghan, what ugly twists you would like torturing my words into. I can’t be civil to a policeman whose questions verge on indecency.

Élucide’s father gave a sharp nod.

“Remind me,” Ebrach said.

“Demrose,” Phelan said, “minus the lad, would have his late wife’s fortune, and her real properties, some of which, as mentioned, he would shed to clear her debt. He would not be saddled with Alarica, the care of it, which by the first will remained Miss Buckley’s concern.”

“But Demrose would effectively have controlled what his wife intended as the boy’s.”

“Yes, Mr. Ebrach. I don’t put store by Demrose plotting the murder to elude the obligations of fatherhood.” Monaghan let this sit a moment. “Not to order you in your own home, but refreshments, eh? I’ll carry on, then, with what I believe did happen. Mr. Thacker, it will all of it be speculation…make a note of your complaints. I shall ask you to bear along as I lay the case out.”

“The difficulty with the excellent Miss Zucker is her good conscience. I take you back to the matter of the unbolted door. That, and the ointment, are the two things of particular weight, among all evidence and testimony. A great confusion, you will recall, attended the emptiness of the bed. Miss Zucker knew what the murdering pair did not, a thing supported by the clean state of the carpet in the passageway…”

“No ointment stains.” All were bright enough pupils to divine this, but it was Ebrach who said it aloud.

243

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred thirty-two)

(2025, Stephanie Foster)