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“Well, someone knew you were there and not here,” Barnabas replied and then turned to his brother. “Just like they knew to make sure you got the note before you left for Scotland.”
“If it had arrived half an hour later they would have missed me,” Gerald replied.
“So someone knows what we are doing,” Myles sighed. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.”
“Me neither,” Gerald and Barnabas replied in unison.
Myles met his father’s gaze. He knew his father was also thinking about the hooded figures.
“They can’t be linked, can they?” he asked with a frown.
“I should like to say not, but in all honesty I cannot,” Barnabas replied. “Until we get some answers, we have to assume someone bodes one of us ill. Because they have mentioned my demise, we have to assume that it is a credible threat.”
“Well, first thing in the morning, I am going to head off to Scotland and I won’t be stopping for anything until I get there,” Gerald snorted. “I defy anybody to try to stop me this time.”
He drained the last of his brandy and slammed the goblet onto the table beside the letters angrily before he turned to the door. “It isn’t me, or Isaac, and if it isn’t Vernon, Eva, or either of you two then it has to be Beatrice, doesn’t it?”
Myles almost groaned at that. He should have suspected that Gerald would raise issue with his sister, Beatrice. He always did whenever he came to visit. His altercations with his elder sister were legendary amongst the family. In fact, the last time the two of them had come to blows Barnabas had banished them both to the garden and told them to stay out of the house until they had resolved their differences. It had been one of the most fraught Christmases he had ever experienced.
“You cannot just lay blame without having proof,” Barnabas warned. “We all know you don’t like her but it isn’t fair to point an accusatory finger in her direction without any evidence to support your theory.”
It was on the tip of Myles’ tongue to say ‘here, here’, but Gerald was already at the door. Before he could open it, it swung inward and the woman in question stormed into the room.
Myles’ eyes widened as he absorbed Beatrice’s rather unkempt appearance.
“Well?” She slammed to a halt in the middle of the room. She levelled a glare on Barnabas that could have withered ivy. “You are not dead then,” she snapped in her usual uncouth manner.
Barnabas slowly shook his head. Rather than say anything else he held his hand out. “Let me see your letter then. I take it you have received one too?”
“What do you mean ‘too’?” Beatrice blustered. “What’s going on here?”
Rather than wait for anyone to answer, she rummaged around in her bag and withdrew a crumbled piece of parchment which she slapped into Barnabas’ outstretched hand.
While he read the note and passed it to Myles, she turned her attention to the letters already on the table.
Myles read the note, which was practically identical to the ones Myles and Gerald had received, and placed it carefully on the table next to the others.
“All by the same hand, all meant to get you to the house as quickly as you can so we are all here together. So, it can’t be Beatrice,” Barnabas murmured. Although he spoke to the room at large, his eyes were on Gerald.
“What can’t be me?” Beatrice demanded.
She whirled to face him, clearly outraged at having been summoned to the house in the first place. Myles knew she invariably turned up to receive presents on special occasions, or leave another raft of bills for Barnabas to pay once she had pleaded poverty for an hour or two. Otherwise, in weather like this, everyone knew Beatrice wouldn’t leave her house voluntarily.
“I am touched you care so much,” Barnabas said quietly, and he was. It was a rare display of affection from a woman who could often be called prickly at best.
Beatrice, unsurprisingly, didn’t deign to answer.
“Do you have any idea who delivered yours?” Myles asked, waving a hand toward the parchment.
Beatrice snorted and glared at him. “My maid brought it up to me late this afternoon. I thought it was the post so I opened it.”
She shrugged as if to say that it didn’t matter, but didn’t seem to be aware of the lingering worry that narrowed her eyes and turned her complexion pale. She glared at Gerald but, uncharacteristically, refrained from laying any portion of the blame on him – unlike Gerald had tried to do earlier.
Myles knew now that someone outside of the family had to have sent the notes mainly because what constituted as the Martin-Howe family were now in the building, and had all travelled many miles to get there. There was nobody else who might know them well enough to be aware of what their social plans to be able to get hold of them at a precise moment in time.
“Well, what tomfoolery is this?” Beatrice snapped eventually. She glared at Gerald as though this was his fault.
“Someone is playing tricks on us,” Barnabas warned.
