The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [137]
Twelvetrees uttered a strangled protest, reaching for the papers, but Fraser hauled him to his feet and deposited him with some force on a settee upholstered in blue- and white-striped silk. He glanced back at Grey, as though inquiring whether he required some similar service.
Grey shook his head and, wheezing gently, one hand to his bruised ribs, got awkwardly to his feet and hobbled to the wing chair.
“You could … have helped,” he said to Fraser.
“Ye managed brawly on your own,” Fraser assured him gravely, and to his mortification, Grey found that this word of praise gratified him exceedingly. He coughed and wiped his nose gingerly on his sleeve, leaving a long streak of blood.
Twelvetrees groaned and raised his head, looking dazed.
“I’ll … take that … as a no, … shall I?” Grey managed. “You say you did not kill Major Siverly?”
“No,” Twelvetrees answered, looking rather blank. Then his wits returned and his eyes focused on Grey with a profound expression of dislike.
“No,” he repeated, more sharply. “Of course I did not kill Gerald Siverly. What kind of flapdoodle is that?”
Grey thought briefly of inquiring whether there was more than one sort of flapdoodle and, if so, what the categories might be, but thought better of it and ignored the question as rhetorical. Before he could formulate another question, he noticed that Fraser was calmly engaged in going through the piles of paper on the desk.
“Put those down!” Twelvetrees barked, staggering to his feet. “Stop that at once!”
Fraser glanced up at him and raised one thick red brow.
“How d’ye mean to stop me?”
Twelvetrees slapped at his waist, as do men who are accustomed to wearing a sword. Then sat down, very slowly, reason returning.
“You have no right to examine these papers,” he said to Grey, calmly by comparison with his earlier outbursts. “You are a murderer and evidently an escaped outlaw—for I misdoubt that you have been released officially?”
Grey understood this was intended as sarcasm and didn’t bother replying. “By what right were you examining them, may I ask?”
“By right of law,” Twelvetrees replied promptly. “I am the executor of Gerald Siverly’s will, charged with the discharge of his debts and the disposition of his property.”
So put that in your pipe and smoke it, his expression added. Grey was in fact taken aback at this revelation.
“Gerald Siverly was my friend,” Twelvetrees added, and his lips compressed briefly. “A particular friend.”
Grey had known that much, from Harry Quarry, but it hadn’t occurred to him that Twelvetrees would be so intimate with Siverly as to have been appointed executor of his estate. Had Siverly no family, bar his wife?
And if Twelvetrees was so intimate—what did he know concerning Siverly’s actions?
Whatever it was, he obviously wasn’t about to confide his knowledge to Grey. John got to his feet and, manfully trying not to wheeze in the smoke-filled air, went to the bay window and threw back the lid of the blanket chest. The ironbound box was gone.
“What have you done with the money?” he demanded, swinging back to Twelvetrees. The man glared at him with profound dislike.
“So sorry,” he sneered. “It’s where you’ll never get your thieving hands on it.”
Jamie was collecting the half-charred bits of paper he had saved from the fire, handling each with ginger care, but looked