“I cannot say.” Sidmouth's voice was heavy, and his fingers slid away from my own. “I did not know for a certainty that he was behind the fellow Tibbit — but your stating it now must be the fruit of further knowledge.”

“And so you killed him, though you doubted his complicity?” I was all horrified amazement, and my shock must have throbbed in my voice.

“I, killed Percival Fielding? But I never killed the Captain, however little love I bore the mincing scoundrel!”

“But, indeed, you must have!”

“Indeed, I did not!”

“But the horseshoes — the white flower—”

“I must assure you solemnly, Miss Austen, that I was standing for the better part of the night some six miles distant, on Puncknowle hill, awaiting the signal of a ship most anxiously desired, which failed, however, to appear! And that Mr. Dagliesh was with me, from the direst necessity, and will vouch for my presence the entirety of the night Captain Fielding was murdered.”

A memory of the scene I had witnessed on Charmouth beach, the very night afier Fielding's killing, flashed before my eyes.

“The boat that landed the following night — with the wounded man — it was for this that you waited?”

“How come you to know of it?”

“I was a witness to its arrival.”

“But how?” Sidmouth's voice was hoarse.

“You must know of the cavern, on the Charmouth shingle. I had hidden myself in its depths, the better to observe unmolested the movements on the beach — for after your arrest at the hands of Mr. Dobbin that morning, I felt I had to probe the truth of matters more. For lie seemed little inclined to do it.”

“The cavern—” Sidmouth hesitated. “You explored its fullest extent?”

“You would mean the tunnel? You knew, then, of its existence, and its end point in Captain Fielding's garden?”

“I did. In point of fact, the tunnel predates the Captain's tenancy of that house, it having been built for another gentleman more inclined to clandestine trade, who has since fled these parts, Miss Austen. You will understand that the Gentlemen of the Night have long held sway about this coast — some hundred years, in fact — and Fielding's house is at least as old. He may have prettied the place a bit with his wilderness temple, and bits of antique statuary, but the way carved through the cliffs was not his enterprise to claim.”

“And yet,” I mused, “he may have employed it for just such a clandestine purpose. I found the storeroom filled with what appeared to be contraband goods, a fact that has much puzzled me.”

Sidmouth's laugh was short. “Since Fielding styled himself a prop of the law, you would mean, and affected to be so much in the Customs man's confidence? But tell me this, Miss Austen. How do you think that Fielding supported his customary style? On a Naval pension?”

“I assumed him wealthy from the seizure of prizes,”[75] I replied. “You would ascribe it to smuggling?”

“Not smuggling. No. I believe Fielding to have become wealthy through the consideration of others, more benevolent to his circumstances. For certain Gentlemen of the Night, a small expression of gratitude for silences kept, and discovery averted — a cask of the finest Darjeeling, let us say, or a barrel of French brandy — might seem a gift well-placed.”

“Bribery,” I said slowly. “It has a certain aptness. We may assume him to have sold what he could not consume himself, and thus been in a way to supplement his income.”

There was a smallish pause, as I mulled over the Captain's duplicitous character.

“The cavern I understand; but how came you to discover the tunnel at all?” Sidmouth enquired.

“In following two men within its depths.” I was deliberately vague; I should not like to admit to Sidmouth now that I had expected Dick and Eb to be making for the Grange. “I felt sure their business was suspect, and thought to discover its nature in pursuing them. In the event, I found only what bewildered me. I must conclude now that they sought to retrieve some tribute previously given to Fielding — for they canvassed the storeroom with thoroughness. But their activity was for naught; they quitted the place in some disappointment.”

The master of High Down did not bother to express his astonishment on this point; he had done with such effusions. I had no longer the power to surprise him. “And did they, too, witness the landing of the boat?” he asked, in some concern.

I shook my head. ‘They appeared on the shingle after your curious skiff.”

“It was La Gascogne, the boat you saw once on the very beach; and it bore my cousin Philippe — Mademoiselle LeFevre's brother.”

“The one who serves Napoleon?”

“The one who served Napoleon — as a spy for the Royalist cause — and nearly gave his young life as a result. If there can be any consolation for myself at such a time, it is in learning from Seraphine that the boy will survive. Had he not been encamped in Boulogne, with the forces readying the Monster's invasion of England, he should never have escaped when finally he was discovered. But escape he did, if gravely wounded; and though the boat was delayed by storm, it landed successfully a day later— in Charmouth rather than off the Chesnil bank. Dagliesh at least was present, though I could not be.”

I drew a tremulous breath; such turbulence as this man endured! Such passion, for a cause so beyond himself! And to end, now, with the end of a rope — but he had accepted such a possibility, undoubtedly, when first he undertook to commerce in the unseating of emperors, however upstart.

I sat back on my heels. “But if you did not kill Captain Fielding — who, then, fired the deadly ball?”

Sidmouth shook his head. “I do not know. I have expended a world of thought upon the subject — for the Captain's murderer took great pains to incriminate me utterly. It betrays a certain knowledge of my household, and my particular habits, that cannot but be troubling, as well as a desire to see great harm devolve upon myself.”

There was a knock upon the door. “Yer five minutes be ten, Miss Austen! Out wit’ ye!”

“Another moment only, pray, Mr. Trimble!” I called, and turned swiftly to Geoffrey Sidmouth. “It pains me to broach so intimate a subject, and which cannot but be painful to you; but I must voice my darkest thoughts and have done. Is it possible — can you find it in your heart to believe — that Seraphine might have done the murder in your very absence?”

“Seraphine? That is preposterous!”

“I do not mean to say she should have killed the Captain from a desire to incriminate yourself,” I said hurriedly, over his words of protest. “She may have happened upon him of a sudden, and feared a renewal of those events that proved so disturbing to her, but a few weeks before; and so fired upon him, in a belief she acted in self-defence, and then fled the scene. At such a moment she was unlikely to think of the horseshoes.”

“But the lily,” Sidmouth rejoined. “It should be no one's custom to travel abroad at midnight in possession of such a flower.”

“Perhaps she bore it with her, on some errand to one of your Royalist men hidden about the countryside, and only laid it near the Captain in the thought that he was behind the grounding of the Royal Belle, indeed.”

“I suppose that such a case is possible,” Sidmouth said slowly. “For it is difficult to account for the horseshoes otherwise. You make a very convincing argument, Miss Austen.” He raised his head, and I perceived again the glitter of his eyes. “I wish it might be less so. But it is of no matter. I have taken on myself the burden of that death; and perhaps it is only justice that I should stand for Seraphine, as someone else has undoubtedly stood for me, in the matter of Bill Tibbit.”