“She’s working with Wynn,” Gideon said. “That’s been fairly obvious.”
“And she’s also not Jessamine. I mean, there is no Jessamine. Elise says the woman here is at least twenty-one and probably an actress.”
Gideon’s jaw dropped. “Good God. Really?”
“Elise said so, and she was right about Laura’s mother.”
“About—”
“Laura’s mother, the housemaid. She was locked up here. They kept her imprisoned for years rather than hand over her legacy. I found the room, her prison. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”
“My God.”
“Wynn’s father did it, which might explain a lot about Wynn. Oh, and Elise also thinks—thought—Wynn and Laura had a Romeo and Juliet sort of affair and Wynn fathered her baby.”
“I don’t think the play would be the same if Juliet was Romeo’s aunt,” Gideon said in the very calm sort of way of someone trying not to lose his grip. “Although I suppose that explains all the paintings. Ugh.”
“Wynn clearly hated his father for getting rid of Laura. And, uh, he told me that his father drowned in the mire, alone. That it took hours for him to die, all the time crying for help that didn’t come.”
“If he died alone, how would Wynn know—”
“That’s what I was wondering.”
“Christ above,” Gideon said. “Right, well, the relevant part of all this—aside from Wynn being a very dangerous and entirely unhinged man—is that Wynn and Jessamine are in cahoots. We can’t doubt that. That business the other night, Wynn selecting Bram while she accepted Hawley, was a masterstroke. It all but forced Bram to push—”
He stopped abruptly. There was a frozen silence.
“Are you saying—did you see—”
“No. No, I didn’t, Zeb. That was an assumption only. I’ve no evidence. But…it’s what I think.”
“He’s my brother. You’re saying he’s a murderer and Rachel says he’s a rapist—”
“Oh my God,what?” Gideon said, a man who couldn’t handle any more revelations.
Zeb hurriedly told him about Rachel and Florence. “Headmitted the whole thing about Florence. There’s a threatening message on his wall now, signed with her name, and he insists nobody else knew about her. He’s in rather a bad way. But the thing is, with all that on his mind, he still denied having anything to do with Rachel, and I… I wanted to believe him. I did believe him. But I believed her too.”
“But she’s one of Wynn’s staff, so you probably shouldn’t.”
“Are you serious?”
“I think we have to treat everyone in this house as the enemy, at this point. We have to assume they’re all playing Wynn’s game.”
“But whatishis game?” Zeb demanded. “Elise thought he hated us because he didn’t want us to inherit his money, but he could have left it all to a cats’ home. Instead, he brought us here. Why? And why are the staff joining in with this? I thought the footman was going to shove me into the crypt by main force. How much can Wynn possibly be paying them to do this? Are they all escaped from Dartmoor Prison?”
“I truly don’t know. All I know is that we have to get out, because I have no more desire to end up in a well than you do in a crypt. You mentioned scaling the wall: I think we might be reaching that point.”
“Right,” Zeb said. “Any idea how one does that?”
“I’ve walked the perimeter and there are no trees close to it, so we’ll need a ladder, and a rope to get down the other side, I suppose, unless we think we could jump safely? Twelve feet—I’m not sure. I suppose one can hang off the side and drop, but ifone of us were to sprain an ankle, that would be bad.”
“A bedsheet would do at a pinch, and be easily found,” Zeb suggested. “And we need warm clothes—oh, and there was a compass in Dash’s room. I should get that. And a map. So we can navigate if we’re walking.”
“Suppose I look for a ladder, then,” Gideon said, in the very calm tones of a man dealing with a nightmare. “You see about the map and compass.”
“I’ll do that. Oh, and food. And gloves and things—”
“Map and compass first. Get those, stow them in your pockets right away, and don’t do anything else until you have them. And, Zeb?”
