“Yes,” Mira murmured, squinting at a button on his waistcoat as she thought through all of the implications of this new twist.
“Hmmm. I was not aware that my father ever partook of Beatrix’s remedies. I would have thought him more inclined to take a stiff gin. Something a little more English, if you take my meaning.”
“Your father did not do it,” Mira muttered, still staring at Nicholas’s button.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your father did not do it.”
“Mira, you have just spent the better part of a week reaching the seemingly inescapable conclusion that he very much did do it, and I have even agreed to swear out an information against him.”
“Mmmm, no,” Mira replied with a tiny shake of her head. She leaned back to look Nicholas in the face. “I am afraid that I concluded tonight that your father is not, in fact, the murderer.”
“And how, pray tell, did you reach this conclusion? I thought we were in agreement as to his guilt.” A hint of annoyance had crept into his tone. “As you took such pains to explain to me a few short days ago, the fact of his affairs with two of the victims strongly suggests that he is the murderer.”
“Yes, well, I thought so as well. But not any longer. When I spoke with Uncle George earlier, I asked him about his activities yesterday. Uncle George was with Blackwell all day. They left at dawn to go to a neighboring village to inspect a brood mare. Uncle George said they rode for hours to get there, so they must have ridden for hours to get home, as well. Blackwell would have been miles away from Dowerdu when I was run off the cliff. He did not try to kill me.”
Nicholas stared blankly at Mira for a moment before responding. “Yes, I suppose I see your point. But if my father was the mysterious wealthy lover, yet he is not the murderer, then who is?”
The answer seemed to well up from some hidden spring of intuition, and Mira spoke almost without thought.
“Beatrix.”
As she said the name out loud, all of the pieces fell into place, the import of every subtle hint now standing out in stark relief against the blur of the week’s events.
“It makes perfect sense,” Mira continued, warming to her new theory. “Beatrix’s volatile temper, her reputation for violent outbursts, her obvious interest in my inquiries…and she was in the library while I was waiting for you yesterday morning, she knew I was going out. I lied about where I was going, but it would have been a simple thing to follow me a bit. If she saw me wandering down the path toward Dowerdu, she might have guessed where I was going.”
Nicholas held up a hand. “But why would Beatrix kill those girls?”
“Jealousy? Blackwell had affairs with Bridget Collins and Tegen Quick. Perhaps it wounded Beatrix’s pride to see herself cast aside in favor of such young girls after watching her own youth slip away while she was trapped out here in Cornwall.”
“Perhaps,” Nicholas responded, nodding thoughtfully. “But that would only explain her killing Bridget and Tegen. What about Olivia Linworth? There is nothing to suggest that Olivia Linworth was intimately involved with my father.”
Mira paused to consider the question, thoughts whirling through her mind in a dizzying rush. “Maybe Blackwell expressed an interest in Olivia, or perhaps Beatrix only suspected one.”
Even as she spoke the words, they rang hollow to Mira, and the frown on Nicholas’s face indicated that he was not persuaded either. It was one thing for Beatrix to be so outraged by Blackwell’s romantic affairs that she was driven to murder, but it was quite another for her to be distraught over some small flirtation. If Beatrix killed every woman Blackwell admired, there would be no women left in all of Cornwall. No, jealousy might have driven Beatrix to kill Bridget and Tegen, but she must have had another motive for killing Olivia. Unless…
Unless Beatrix was not only jealous of Blackwell.
“Oh no,” Mira breathed, as the blood drained from her face and formed a cold, viscous pool in her gut. “Jeremy.”
She clutched at Nicholas’s sleeve, and her voice trembled with urgency. “Nan said that Beatrix is fiercely protective of Jeremy, almost smothering him. If she knew that Olivia and Jeremy were planning to elope, if she thought Olivia was going to take her precious son away…” Mira had a sudden image, vivid and terrifying, of Beatrix accusing Bella of scheming to secure a husband. Of Beatrix’s features contorted with rage as she struck the younger girl. Of her standing frozen afterwards, hand upraised, eyes empty and wild.