Her eyes were very dark in her white face.
She raised them towards Lord Lynche as he stood looking down at her, his arm on the marble mantelpiece.
“My brother Giles was ten years older than I,” he began. “He was always a gay dog and had little use for living in the country and trying to look after the estate. But my mother adored him. He had always been her favourite and she would hear no ill of him and if she did she would not believe it, not even when he killed a man.”
“Killed?”
“‘Murdered’ is a better word,” Lord Lynche replied. “He was only a shopkeeper, but he had a very pretty wife. The husband returned home unexpectedly and my brother shot him dead without there being the slightest excuse of self-defence.”
“How horrible!” Carina exclaimed.
“It was indeed a crime for which ther
