Part 4
“I acted without thinking.”
“You crossed half the room without anyone seeing you?”
The butler’s throat moved. “I was nearby.”
Mara remembered him at the service door when she opened her eyes. That did not mean he had remained there. The candles, flowers, and tall chairs broke sight lines. Everyone had been looking at her.
“Place it beside the plate,” she said.
He obeyed.
“Did you throw it?”
“No, madam.”
“Did you see who did?”
His face changed in a way so slight that another person might have missed it. His gaze dropped, then moved toward Julian, then away.
“I saw movement,” he said.
“Whose?”
“I could not say.”
Isobel turned at last. “This is becoming intolerable. Kerr has served this family for thirty-two years. You will not bully him into inventing an answer.”
“I’m not asking him to invent one.”
“You are asking an employee, in front of two powerful families and a room of lawyers, to identify someone who may control his livelihood. Do not pretend the question is neutral.”
Mara held her gaze. “No. It isn’t neutral.”
For the first time, she understood that Isobel was not defending Mr. Kerr. She was reminding him of his position.
Mara stepped away from the stopper.
“Mr. Kerr, no one here should require an answer from you tonight. But please do not touch anything else.”
He nodded once.
“Go to the kitchen,” Isobel said.
He looked at Mara.
“Go,” Mara told him.
After he left, Adrian took out his phone again and held it toward one of the windows. Still no signal.
“Tom,” he said to the nearer aide, “use the satellite unit in the car. Contact local police and our solicitors.”
Mara felt every person in the room tense.
Isobel rose.
She was shorter than Mara, but she had spent a lifetime making height irrelevant.
“No police will enter this house on the strength of an accident and an accusation manufactured during an emotional quarrel.”
“They will enter if invited by the property owner,” Adrian said.
“I am the property owner.”
Mara looked at Julian. “Are you?”
His mother turned toward him slowly.
Cairnross Manor belonged not to Isobel personally but to a family trust. Julian, as the principal adult beneficiary, held limited rights over its use. Mara knew because she had reviewed the documents before the engagement announcement. She had found the arrangement odd at the time: Isobel controlled the household, the staff, and almost every practical decision, but the legal structure rested on her son.
Julian rubbed his thumb along the lacquered edge of the table.
“Yes,” he said.
Isobel’s face stayed composed. “Yes, what?”
“I can permit them entry.”
“You will do no such thing.”
He looked at her, and for a moment Mara saw the boy he must have been—careful, handsome, trained to measure his mother’s temperature before speaking.
Then he said, “They can come in.”
The chandelier hummed faintly above them.
Isobel closed her eyes.
It was the first uncontrolled gesture Mara had seen from her.
When she opened them, she looked not at Julian but at Mara.
“You have no idea what you have started.”
Mara touched the scratch near her temple again. “I think that may be the first honest thing anyone has said tonight.”
The police arrived twenty-eight minutes later.
By then the dining table had become a geography of small restrictions. No one was allowed to leave the manor without giving contact details. The stopper remained beside the chipped plate. Photographs were taken. Statements were requested separately.
Nothing became clear.
Mr. Kerr said he had seen the stopper in the air but not the hand that released it. Malcolm had been looking toward Isobel when Mara first challenged the altered reports. The retired judge had turned toward the windows at the sound of engines. Julian said he had been staring at his glass.
Isobel stated that Mara had become agitated during a private disagreement and might have knocked the stopper herself.
The physical positions made that unlikely, but not impossible. The nearest champagne bottle stood several feet away, open and upright. A second decanter had been placed on a sideboard behind Julian and Isobel. The matching stopper was missing from it.
No camera covered the dining table. Cairnross had security cameras at its gates, entrances, corridors, and gallery, but Isobel considered cameras inside formal rooms vulgar. The salon had none.
Mara gave her statement in the morning room while a young constable with rain shining on his shoulders listened without interruption. A female sergeant photographed the scratch and asked whether Mara wanted medical attention.
“It’s shallow,” Mara said.
“That wasn’t my question.”
Mara looked at her.
The sergeant had kind eyes and the exhausted patience of someone nearing the end of a long shift.
“Yes,” Mara said. “I’d like it documented.”
A paramedic cleaned the cut. It did not require stitches. The scratch was narrow, no longer than the top joint of Mara’s finger.
She felt foolish while it was measured.
That feeling angered her. Someone had thrown a heavy object at her head. Whether it had opened a line in her skin or fractured her skull depended more on chance than intention. Yet because she could stand, speak, and hold a glass of water without trembling, part of her believed she was wasting everyone’s time.
The sergeant seemed to recognize the thought.
“Small injuries can come from serious acts,” she said while sealing the swab. “Don’t decide what it means based on how tidy it looks.”
Mara thanked her.
When the police left the room, Adrian entered without knocking.
He shut the door behind him.
“You should come back to Edinburgh with me.”
“I’m staying.”
“This house is not secure.”
“There are police downstairs.”
“They will leave.”
“So will I, after I speak to the staff.”
“You are not conducting an investigation.”
May you like
“No. I’m asking people what they heard before your lawyers arrive and explain why they remember nothing.”
His expression hardened. “My lawyers are here to protect you.”
