Free The Grenadillo Box: A Novel by Janet Gleeson Page B

silent. Six remaining diners were seated around the table fidgeting uncomfortably, avoiding one another’s eyes. Only Robert—the new Lord Montfort—stood, legs braced in front of the dying fire, gazing fixedly at Elizabeth, who was turned to face the window and the invisible landscape beyond.
    The grand dinner for which such careful preparation had been made was now a sorry sight. I was oddly reminded of a painting I’d once seen in Lord Chandos’s London mansion, by an Italian master, of a bacchanal in which Bacchus and various attending nymphs and satyrs sit frozen around the detritus of their meal. In this case, collapsing custards and melting syllabubs, fractured nut husks and wilting fruit peelings were strewn about like flotsam from the tide.
    Six heads turned inquiringly towards me as I entered. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I announced, “Lord Foley requests that you join him in the library without delay.” As Foley had directed, I gave them no hint of what awaited. Yet by the paleness of my countenance and the faltering of my voice they might easily have suspected some calamity. Nonetheless not one of them was consumed by curiosity about what was happening to them. Docile as children, they rose to their feet and followed me along the hall to the library.
    Lady Montfort led the straggling group as I opened the door, thus it was she who first caught sight of her husband’s body. I confess her reaction startled me profoundly. I had expected tears, shrieking hysteria, a violent outpouring of emotion. But she betrayed no shock or fright. She didn’t tremble, nor did she shiver as I had seen her do earlier. Indeed she displayed no sign of any sentiment whatsoever. For perhaps half a minute she gazed unflinchingly at her husband’s corpse. Only when the rest of the group clustered behind her and began to express astonishment and dismay did the full horror strike her. Her legs seemed suddenly to give way, and she toppled forward and would have struck herself had not Bradfield stepped in to save her.
    Miss Alleyn’s response to her brother’s death was as voluble as Elizabeth’s was silent. She uttered a shrill birdlike cry, and began manically twirling the fringes of her shawl between her bony fingers. Wallace the lawyer placed a comforting arm about her shoulder, his feet braced, his brow furrowed. After a few moments he mumbled something inaudible.
    “What’s that you said?” cried Foley impatiently. “Speak louder, man!”
    “Only that while I take no responsibility for the present tragedy, there is something I must divulge which may have a bearing upon it.”
    I couldn’t help wondering how it could be that both Foley and Wallace felt that they were somehow to blame for this death. Surely both couldn’t be responsible, or were they in conspiracy together? Before Wallace could shed light on this perplexing matter, Robert Montfort pushed his way from the rear. Seeing his father’s corpse for the first time, he fell to his knees, and taking a linen kerchief from his sleeve, dabbed at the gunshot wound on his father’s head. He then took his father’s left hand and pressed it to his lips. “I cannot believe he would take his life. Why did he not speak to me of his melancholy?” he exclaimed, rising stiffly to his feet. “I blame you for this, Foley. You now have an obligation to explain yourself.”
    Foley met his accusing stare directly but said nothing. The culpability he had voiced earlier seemed to have disappeared. Perhaps I imagined it, but his expression seemed to me more akin to triumph.
    “Take his life, what do you mean?” interjected Miss Alleyn.
    “See here, the gun has dropped from his hand. Is that not proof enough, taken together with his melancholy and his strange humor this evening?” said Robert.
    “I do not believe that your father took his life,” I said, realizing Robert Montfort’s drift and intending to console him.
    He swiveled round and glowered at me. “Hopson the