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She looked thoughtful. “I can’t remember anything before I came here. I was not yet two years old. And back then, Mr. Harcourt’s collection was only small. It grew along with me. Over the years, as he added items, he told me the story of each one. So I became accustomed to tales of violent death and human wickedness from an early age. I was not at all attracted to those things, but I accepted their existence. Imagine a child growing up in a madhouse or a prison. Even the strangest situations become normal if one knows nothing else.”
“But now, at last, you can escape,” I said. “Have you set a date for your wedding?”
She stared at me. “Surely William told you? I think it’s best we don’t even speak of an engagement until after I’m of age, and can leave here.”
“You believe your guardian doesn’t wish you to marry?”
She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Oh, I believe he would like to see me married! A wife and a widow in the same day would please him very much!”
There was no point in beating about the bush. “Do you think he killed Mr. Adcocks?”
She did not flinch. “No. Despite his fascination with the subject, Mr. Harcourt is no murderer.”
“Do you suspect someone else?”
She did not reply. I thought I saw something cornered and furtive in her look. “Miss Bellamy,” I said gently, “however painful this is, we can’t help unless you tell me what it is you suspect, or fear, no matter how slight or strange. Were you there, did you see anything, when Mr. Adcocks was attacked?”
She shook her head. “I bid him good night and went up to my room. I thought he was safe . . .”
“And your guardian?”
“He was shut into his room, as usual.”
I looked toward the house, but the ground floor was shielded from my view by shrubs and foliage. “Is there another exit? From his room?”
“No. And I would not have missed the sounds if he’d left the house.”
“Who murdered Mr. Adcocks?” I asked suddenly.
“No one.”
“And yet he is dead.”
“He was killed by a powerful blow to his head. The blow came from a walking stick. Can it be called murder, is it even a crime, without human intervention?”
I had seen objects levitate, hover, move about, even shoot through the air as if hurled with great force although no one was near. Usually, there was trickery involved; but not always. I had seen what I believed to be the effect of mind over matter, and also witnessed what was called poltergeist—the German for “noisy spirit”—activity. Yet I was deeply suspicious of everything attributed to the action of “spirits.” I had yet to encounter anything that was not better explained by the power of the human mind.
“What are you saying?” I asked her gently. “You believe that the stick, an inanimate object, moved, and killed a man, of its own volition?” Yet even as I asked, the memory of the malignant power I had sensed in that very stick, only a few minutes earlier, made me much less certain that I was right.
“Have you ever heard of a deodand?”
“I’m not familiar with the word.”
“It’s a term from old English law: deo, to God, dandum, that which must be given. It referred to any possession which was the immediate cause of a person’s accidental death. The object was then forfeit to the Crown, to be put to some pious use.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and she smiled. “That walking stick was a deodand. Not officially; it’s hardly that old. But it was the proximate cause of death to a young man almost seventy years ago—so my guardian told me.
“And the unpleasant stone gargoyle beside the stair? It fell off the tower where it had been placed many centuries before, and killed a mother and child.
“My guardian collects such things, along with his morbid keepsakes from actual murders.
“He gave Archie that stick, knowing what it was, and suspecting what it would do.” She stopped and passed a hand across her brow. “What am I saying? Of course he didn’t suspect. Why should he? None of them had ever hurt him, or me. Not even when I was a child who played with whatever took my fancy—he wouldn’t let me touch anything dangerous, of course, nothing sharp or breakable. I whispered secrets in the gargoyle’s ear, even used to kiss it, and it was that gargoyle—” She stopped, her hand to her mouth.
I waited for her to go on.
“It was in the wrong place, too near the stair. I thought perhaps, when the maid washed the floor, she’d pushed it out, but she insisted she never did. Yet it was not where it usually was, and that’s why Archie stumbled against it, and wrenched his ankle.
“It happened again, just a few days ago, to Will. He fell over it, and if I hadn’t caught him, he might have struck his head, might have been killed, just like Archie!”
