TGOH Chapter 5

Ian Hamilton approached the elderly woman carefully, bending his knees to kneel before her and meet her eyes.

"Mother. Please return to your room with Sister and the child. If you feel unwell, ring for Finley at any time. Try to avoid moving about on your own, as much as possible."

The old woman nodded slowly. Clutching near her heart, she rose from her seat gradually, and departed leaning on the support of two women.

Four remained. The estate physician and the cook, and Veronica and Ian.

"Finley."

The physician raised his head.

He was a man of roughly thirty, with long blond hair tied back and a monocle fitted to one eye. His name was Finley Mobinston — he had introduced himself as having come to the estate after graduating from a medical college in London. Quiet and composed by nature, he was someone the household had come to rely upon greatly.

"You'll stay with Hugo."

"Understood, Mr. Hamilton."

Veronica found the title rather bitter to hear. There was now only one person left to be called Mr. Hamilton in this house — Ian Julius Hamilton, her old childhood friend.

The friend who, in ordinary circumstances, would have asked playfully which Hamilton — he only offered a thin, joyless smile.

Once again, it was just the two of them. Only after the others had gone did Ian let out a deep sigh and come apart. The rigid straightness he had held his back to all evening buckled, and his head bowed toward the floor. He looked very much like a man about to fall.

Veronica reached out in alarm to take his arm. Beneath her hand, a faint trembling ran through him. Ian steadied himself against the dining table and gathered his breath.

"Are you alright?"

"...I'm fine. I'm just a little... tired."

"Let's go up to your room."

"...Yes."

That's what we should do. Ian murmured it again, as if reminding himself.

Who could have known that overnight, every man in the household save himself would be gone? Veronica watched him with quiet worry. The slender figure stood lost in thought, staring into the dying fire in the dining room hearth — as though, if he only looked long enough, an answer might emerge from the embers.

Sealed lips, no words. He looked less like a man and more like a piece of statuary. The only difference between Ian Hamilton and a carved figure, in that moment, was that he breathed and blinked. Veronica feared, irrationally, that the fire might draw him in entirely. She pulled at his arm again, and only then did he turn his head toward her.

"What are you thinking?"

His answer came after a beat.

"...About you."

The sky had been low and grey all day. By afternoon, the rain came in earnest.

Rain was not common in the region where Hamilton estate stood, which made it feel all the more unsettling — as though the weather itself were conspiring. Had Joseph reached the village safely? Had he managed to convey what had happened here?

After that strange exchange in the dining room, Ian Hamilton had not spoken. Unable, it seemed, to bring himself to invite Veronica into his own bedroom, he chose the study instead.

They spent the remaining hours there together. The door was secured; they checked twice, then three times, that no one lingered nearby. Only after confirming they were entirely alone did they allow themselves to settle.

Where had the killer gone.

Why had he killed Edmund.

By the 'normal' standard of London society, the answer would be inheritance — the estates of nobility and gentry alike passed only to the eldest son. By that 'normal' calculus, Ian Hamilton was the most obvious suspect.

Had Veronica arrived at the estate later than she had, she might have suspected him herself, if only slightly.

But the reason she believed in Ian absolutely was this: from the moment she'd arrived, Ian had been with her every hour without exception. There was, of course, also the matter of his character — he was simply not the sort of person who would stroll calmly through a greenhouse after murdering his own brother.

'Don't suspect him.'

He was grieving so deeply.

She said it to herself. Grief and innocence have no necessary relation, she knew — but right now, she wanted to believe in Ian Hamilton. With the seeds of suspicion beginning to germinate throughout the estate, if she herself did not believe him, it seemed no one else would.

Had she been staring at the page too long? The letters refused to enter her eyes.

The rain against the windows was growing worse. There was no sign of it stopping. The sky was black as spilled ink, dark cloud stretched to every horizon. If it went on like this, the road would become impassable. Carriages would not get through.

Veronica carefully lifted her eyes from the book in her lap.

"Ian."

"Yes?"

A quiet voice answered. Ian looked up, his reading glasses catching the light at the bridge of his nose. He removed them and pressed his fingers there, then looked at her. Anxiety had settled into his features — his brother's death written plainly on his face — but the warmth when his eyes found hers was unchanged.

"Did you call?"

"...It's only — with rain like this, will Joseph be able to make it back?"

Ian turned to the window. A heavy, constrained sigh.

"...It'll be difficult. We can only hope it stops before nightfall."

"If it doesn't stop..."

"..."

Then. If Joseph couldn't come through this weather with the police.

If the killer had not left. If he had stayed somewhere in this estate...

"...Why Edmund?"

"..."

"Mr. Hamilton senior's funeral hasn't even been laid to rest, and yet — what grudge could anyone have against this house, to commit something so terrible?"

At her murmur, Ian closed his eyes slowly. He hesitated a moment, then asked:

"...May I lean on you?"

"Of course."

Ian came to sit beside her and rested his head against her shoulder. The fringe that had been lying neatly against his forehead pressed and crumpled entirely out of order, but neither of them remarked on it.

Ian Hamilton's hands were still cold.

Dinner was a strained affair.

Fear sat at the table with all of them. The food was well-prepared — carefully laid, as if the cook had tried to offer something steady in an unsteady world — but no one could look at it with any appetite. Hands reached and pulled back. Reached again. Put down forks they'd never quite used.

"When is Joseph coming back?"

Julia asked in a voice that had gone rough, pressing the question as if it were an accusation.

Julia had deteriorated sharply since Edmund's death. The way she startled at small sounds, the way tears came and went without warning — Veronica watched her sister and felt the worry settle somewhere deep. If the one meant to hold the household steady was this frightened, then little Veronica would feel it too. Veronica hoped the child wasn't already learning to read the room, learning to make herself smaller. That sweet, angelic girl was still far too young to grow up watching others for cues.

Everyone seated at the table understood, without saying it aloud, that the only remedy for Julia's fear was for the rain to stop and Joseph to return. And all of them understood equally well that in weather like this, Joseph would not be coming tonight.

Ian's expression was the face of a man deciding between truth and mercy. Veronica knew Julia well enough to have already made her own judgment: the truth would be poison. Julia knew it herself, in the part of her mind that was still working properly — it was the fear of a killer in this house, her husband's murderer still somewhere among them, that was making her so raw and frantic.

Perhaps if they got through the night, morning would bring the rain off. If the rain cleared, Joseph would return in time. The police would come. Things would move toward something that resembled order.

Veronica turned her head slowly toward Ian and gave the faintest shake.

Don't tell her he can't come because of the rain.

He caught it. Ian inclined his head toward her, barely perceptibly — just enough for her to see, a movement so slight that anyone else would have taken it for nothing more than a small shift in his posture.

"I couldn't say exactly, Sister. Perhaps after supper? Let's try not to be impatient and wait a little longer."

"How can I not be impatient! There may be a killer in this estate!"

"I know. I know. But saying so won't change anything. Joseph will return soon — with the police, with help. Let's hold on and wait."

The steadiness in his voice worked on Julia gradually, the way a hand pressed to a wound slows the bleeding. Ian Hamilton's voice had that quality — not anything magical, but the quality of a person who conveyed ease and trust simply by existing in a room.

Julia pressed her trembling hands over her face. Little Veronica's small voice came from beside her: "Mama..." — watching, uncertain, measuring the temperature of things. Startled to realize she'd frightened the child, Julia quickly moved to comfort her daughter, though from where Veronica sat, it seemed it would not be an easy thing to manage.

Veronica's own appetite had been entirely absent. She rose slowly from her chair. In truth, since arriving at the estate, her appetite had been strange — hollow. Perhaps the weight of the place, the old memories of it pressing in. Ian's gaze briefly rested on her. She met it and offered something that approximated a smile — a small, silent gesture: don't worry about me.

Unfortunately, Ian Hamilton's keen perception for everything else in the world appeared to be entirely blunt when it came to Veronica's concerns. He set down his utensils, gathered them neatly to one side of his plate, and stood.

"Come, Vera. I'll walk you to your room."