“It was when I saw Mrs. Younge. She was very… tidy. She had been hit over the head with a candlestick, and her body ought to have been sprawled across the floor, just as the candlestick was tossed aside, but her dress was smoothed out, as if somebody fussed with her as fastidiously as they fuss with themselves. And then Mr. Tilney said something about the key his brother hid, and I remembered that after they searched the captain’s person to see if he had the key, Sir Walter fussed and tidied him up.”
“I noticed something, too,” Mr. Darcy said. “He is always peering at his reflection, and one night at dinner I saw him adjusting a crooked mirror in the dining room. There was also a large mirror in the cellar, and a bloodied fingerprint on the gilt frame.”
“Sir Walter adjusted the mirror,” Elizabeth murmured.
Mr. Willoughby slumped in a posture of sad acceptance. Wondering what other signs they had missed, Elizabeth picked up the summary page of what they knew of Sir Walter, which lay atop his dossier. The ink was smeared in the middle, and she squinted to make out the blurred words.
“Something about the window,” Mr. Darcy said as he leaned toward her and looked at the paper in her hands, runninghis fingers over the smudge. His hand was nearly in her lap, and Elizabeth shuddered.
“We were standing near the windows when they blew open, extinguishing the candles in the parlor, just before the captain was killed,” Mr. Willoughby said. “It troubled me, for though it was pitch black, I am sure I sensed some movement near me. I had not wanted to think the worst of him.”
Mr. Darcy gazed coolly at him. “What made you change your mind?”
“The little trinket Miss Bennet found. She mentioned something about a secret passageway, somebody eavesdropping on her and Mrs. Rushworth. Was that where you found it?”
“Yes!” Elizabeth shot up out of her seat and retrieved the scrap of handkerchief from their disorganized heap of evidence. “It is not WF for Crawford, nor VE for Vernon! It is WE, Walter Elliot. Of course!” She showed the charred fragment to Mr. Willoughby.
“Where did you get this?”
“Mr. Darcy found it in the fireplace, in the dining room last night. We believe that the murderer used a handkerchief to apply poison to Mr. Rushworth’s plate or cup, just as Lady Susan suggested. Sir Walter must have done just that, and discarded his handkerchief in the fire afterward. Was he with you continuously before dinner?”
“No,” Mr. Willoughby said, shaking his head and laughing bitterly. “I even made a jape that he would be twice as long in dressing for dinner as me; our rooms adjoin.”
Emma furrowed her brow. “You have not been sharing?”
“We have kept the door open, except when we were dressing. I was a fool to trust him simply because he is kin.” Mr.Willoughby gave a heavy sigh before picking up the dossier with Sir Walter’s name on it. “May I?”
“Of course,” Emma said, holding the pages between them as they examined everything they had on his uncle. Mr. Willoughby drew nearer to Emma, eyeing her with interest.
Elizabeth resumed her seat beside Mr. Darcy, who moved a little closer and leaned in to whisper to her. “We have done it, Miss Bennet. Can you believe it?”
She was shaking rather giddily, suddenly feeling very light. “My goodness, we have! We have solved it!” In her excitement, her hand came to rest atop his, and she quickly withdrew. He smiled at her, his eyes shining with joy.
Mr. Willoughby gave a sudden exclamation as he picked up one of the documents about Sir Walter. “This is written in my uncle’s own hand!”
Mr. Darcy looked away, which was something of a relief for Elizabeth, who had stared into his eyes far longer than was sensible. “What?”
“This is his handwriting, I am certain of it. I borrowed a book of his on the day the general arrived, and I noticed how he wrote his name in the fly leaf. I thought his script incredibly feminine, and this is just the same, the curling at the ends of the E and the W, the flourished crossing of the letter t.”
“I had presumed it to be Mrs. Clay’s writing,” Emma mused, examining it. “But why would he write such an incriminating document?”
“It is not incriminating, so much as embarrassing,” Elizabeth suggested. “There is much worse in some of the other dossiers. Oh! Was Sir Walter not the first to suggest that Mr. Tilney search his father’s things?”
Mr. Darcy’s eyes shone with comprehension, and he extended a hand toward her as the ideas burst out of him. “Yes, yes! He wanted us to find this false account of him. He had time to plant fake evidence in the general’s things, after killing him and Wickham, for we must have been a quarter hour at least in making our way down there, and he turned up after us, wet-haired and feigning confusion.”
“So he is likely concealing far worse,” Mr. Willoughby said with a sigh.
Emma continued to sort through the documents in Sir Walter’s dossier and examined a clipping Elizabeth had taken from one of the old newspapers they found. “Lizzy, what is the meaning of this, do you think?”
“It is a mention of John Elliot visiting Clwyd Castle just after the late Lord Cameron took possession of the place; there was a ball and a rather scandalous house party, but I wondered if perhaps Sir Walter was also present. If he was, he may have become acquainted with some of the secret passageways.”
Mr. Willoughby took the clipping and read over it. “This is from 1782, the year before my uncle John died. I was named for him. He was Sir Walter’s brother, his twin brother.”
Elizabeth grinned, a wicked notion occurring to her. “Hisidenticaltwin brother?”
“I believe so, yes.”
Emma glanced at Elizabeth, and the two shared a look of wild speculation. “How did he die?”
