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“I didn’t see you. I’m sorry.” Oliver stared into the fire. Perhaps he should have taken the Port. He was colder than he had thought. The taste would have been good, its heat going down his throat.
“I didn’t want to distract you from your task,” Henry replied. “But I thought you might want to talk about it later. Easier if I had been there. It isn’t only what is said, it’s the way people react to it.”
Oliver looked across at him. “And you are going to tell me that the crowd is with Gisela … the poor bereaved widow. I know. And as far as I can see, they are right. Monk thinks it is political and whoever did it actually intended to kill Gisela, to free Friedrich to return home and lead the party for independence, but somehow the plan misfired and the wrong person took the poison.”
“Possibly,” Henry said with a frown puckering his forehead. “I hope you aren’t going to say anything so foolish in court?”
“I don’t think it’s foolish,” Oliver said immediately. “I think he’s probably right. The Queen hated Gisela with a passion, but she had an equal passion to have Friedrich back, both to lead the party of independence and to marry a wife who would give him an heir to the throne. The other son has no children.”
Henry looked puzzled. “I thought Friedrich had several sisters.”
“Doesn’t pass through the female line,” Oliver replied, easing himself a little more comfortably in the chair.
“Then change it till it does!” Henry said impatiently. “A lot simpler and less dangerous than murdering Gisela and trying to deal with a bereaved Friedrich and put more backbone into him to make him lead a battle which will take all the courage and skill and determination anyone could have. And even then which may be a lost cause. You need a miracle for that, not a man who has just lost the love of his life and who may well be intelligent enough to realize who was responsible for that.”
Oliver stared at his father speechlessly. He had not thought so far ahead. If they had succeeded in killing Gisela, surely Friedrich would have at the very least been suspicious of them?
“Maybe it was not the Queen, or Rolf, but some fanatic without the brains to foresee what would happen?” he said hesitantly.
Henry raised his eyebrows. “And were there many of them at Wellborough Hall with access to the Prince’s food?”
Oliver did not bother to reply.
The fire caved in with a shower of sparks, and Henry picked up the tongs and placed several more coals in it, then sat back again.
“Who will Harvester call tomorrow?” he asked, fishing for his pipe and putting it absentmindedly into his mouth without even pretending to light it.
“I don’t know,” Oliver replied, his mind almost numb.
“Could Gisela be guilty?” Henry pressed. “Is there any way in which it is possible … even supposing she did indeed have motive?”
“The servants,” Oliver said, answering the earlier question. “Harvester’ll call the household servants from Wellborough Hall. They’ll almost certainly testify that after the accident Gisela never left the suite of rooms they had.”
“Truthfully?”
“Yes … I think so.”
Henry took the pipe out of his mouth. His slippers were so near the fire the soles were beginning to scorch, but he had not noticed, his mind was so intent on the problem.
“Then she cannot be guilty,” he said frankly. “Unless one supposes she habitually carries distillation of yew about with her, or else that she planned this from before the accident. Either of which supposition would require total proof before anyone at all is even going to entertain it.”
“I know,” Oliver conceded quickly. “It wasn’t she.”
They sat in silence again except for the ticking of the tall clock against the wall and the comfortable flickering of the fire.
“Your feet are burning,” Oliver remarked absently.
Henry moved them, wincing as he became aware of the hot soles.
“Then you must find out who it was,” the older man said.
“Either Rolf or Brigitte, if it was meant to be Gisela in order to free Friedrich to return home, or Klaus von Seidlitz, if Friedrich was the right victim—to prevent his return.”
“You have not yet proved that there was a conspiracy,” Henry pointed out. “You can’t leave that to assumption. The jury won’t return any verdict which indicates that if you don’t show it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Oliver said miserably. “The charge is slander, and they can only bring in a verdict that she is guilty, because she is guilty. I might manage to persuade them she did it to expose the fact that he was murdered and she dared not accuse anyone else—or that somehow she originally imagined it could have been Gisela, although I can’t th
ink anyone would believe that. One would only have to ask her why she thought so; she does not provide a single coherent answer.”
