Page 40 of Hawk & Sparrow

“True, but if Bess wanted Francis dead, why kill him the night of the exhibition?” he asked. “Personally, I still think the Gladwell Machine is involved in this somehow.”

Vesper bit her lip. She’d had the same thought.

“If you ask me, I also still think Charles Belver’s the more likely culprit,” said Maximilian. “We just have to find a way to prove it.”

Vesper sat back in her seat. “Why do you dislike Charles Belver so much?”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem to have real animosity toward him, even outside of the current situation. You said you once did business with him,” Vesper pressed. “What happened?”

Maximilian massaged the bridge of his nose, sighed, then leaned forward. “Do you know how old I was when I assumed leadership of the Basalton Coal Company and its foundation?”

“No,” Vesper admitted.

“I was fourteen.”

“What?” Vesper frowned. “How’s that possible?”

“It goes back to the founder of my family’s empire,” said Maximilian. “My great-grandfather, Ignatius Kite.”

Ignatius, Vesper thought. So that’s where you got your middle name.

“When he drafted the company’s bylaws, Ignatius added a special clause,” Maximilian went on. “It mandated that leadership of the Basalton Coal Company must always be held by a direct male issue of the Kite family, no exceptions.”

“But at fourteen, you were still only a child,” Vesper pointed out. “It couldn’t possibly have been legal for you to run a multimillion gild company.”

“It wasn’t,” said Maximilian. “So, to make do, a board of trustees was established to essentially run the company until I was of age. The board was made up of men personally preselected by my father. You might guess who one of them was.”

“Charles Belver,” said Vesper.

Maximilian nodded. “For the first couple of years, I was happy with the arrangement. After all, I was only a boy who didn’t know any better. But the closer I got to seventeen, the more obvious it became that Charles had no desire to relinquish the power that had been temporarily afforded to him. One day, I caught him trying to steal money, and immediately fired him from the board.”

“So that’s why you don’t like him,” said Vesper.

“To put it lightly,” said Maximilian. His smile was humorless. “And that’s also why I now want you to shift the focus of your investigation to him exclusively.”

“What?”

“Means. Opportunity. Motive.” Maximilian held up three fingers. “Belver was at the exhibition on the night Francis died, and had the ability to use sorcery to kill him. We know he also had a clear motive to want him dead. That’s enough for me.”

“Your personal bias is clouding your judgment.” Vesper pinched off a piece of banana bread from her plate. “You’re trying to make a case for Belver being the culprit instead of letting the facts lead you to it organically. Certainly he was at the exhibition, but neither of us ever actually saw him in the maze. Whoever killed Mr. Gladwell would have needed pretty good knowledge of the grounds to get in and out of the maze quickly. How would Charles Belver have even known Francis was going to be in there? And if he’s as wealthy as you say, why wouldn’t he have just offered Francis more money for his machine?” She shook her head. “Something about it isn’t right.”

Maximilian frowned. “Then we go back to the drawing board and look at every captain of industry who was at the exhibition,” he said. “One of them is guilty, I know it.”

“How can you be so sure that a captain of industry did this? They’re not the only ones in Basalton with power and motive, you know.”

“Fine.” Maximilian cocked his head. “Who would you rather focus on, then?”

Vesper’s gaze panned the coffeehouse. “I think we keep Bess Duxley on our list, and I think we keep asking questions about Francis Gladwell. Until we know who he really was and what secrets he might have been hiding, we’re missing a major piece of the puzzle.”

“And how do you plan to find that elusive piece?”

I don’t know. Vesper didn’t want to say the words aloud. She’d always hated uncertainty, it was one of her least favorite feelings, but that seemed to be the only thing she’d been feeling as of late. She picked up her apple cider to sip it, then immediately drew back, grimacing.

“What’s wrong?” Maximilian asked.

“It’s my cider.” Vesper set her mug down, disappointed. “I was waiting for it to cool a bit, but now it’s gone cold.”