“You expect me to believe that Julian lied about it? Why would he do that?”
“You tell me. I will point out one thing, though, that you might think about with your intellect instead of your prejudice. You saw me when Coffey and I came back into camp. You saw how weak my illness had left me. I wasn’t even completely over my fever. How the devil do you think I was able to overcome a fellow like Dennis in my condition? Eh? And why did Coffey hide and watch instead of coming to Dennis’s aid? Two men against one feverish one? I would think they could have brought me down.”
Barchester’s eyes shifted away from Theo. “Madness can give people inhuman strength. Delirium would be the same.”
“No doubt you would like to believe that,” Theo responded tightly. He turned toward Megan. “I think it is time for us to leave.”
Megan nodded. She gave Barchester one last long look, then swept from the room, Theo right behind her. They said nothing until they were out of the house.
Megan looked up at Theo. “Do you think he’s telling the truth? That Coffey is the one who lied about you?”
Theo shrugged. “It’s anybody’s guess. He seems convinced of what he says.”
“Yes, he does.” Megan frowned. “But why did he tell us without reservation that you did it? As if he had actually witnessed Dennis’s death? Why did he not say that he heard it from another?”
Theo shook his head. “I don’t know.” He handed her up into the carriage. Then he spoke quietly to the coachman and swung up onto the seat across from her.
The carriage pulled out into the street, went smartly down the road and turned left, then left again, coming up on the other side of the small park that lay across from Barchester’s house. The carriage pulled to a stop.
Megan, who was still ruminating on Barchester’s words, looked over at Theo questioningly. “Why are we stopping?”
“I think a little walk in the park would be of benefit to me right now.” He nodded toward the strip of greenery and trees that separated them from the street in front of Barchester’s house.
“We are going to spy on him?” Megan asked eagerly.
“I would suggest that I do it myself and send you back safely to the house, but I have a good idea what you would say to that.”
Megan grinned. “You are a smart man.”
She scrambled out of the carriage after him and took his arm to stroll into the park as if they were simply out enjoying the afternoon. They walked across the width of the park until they could see the front door of Barchester’s house.
“Let us hope that he has not left the house yet,” Theo said as he turned and began to walk parallel to the iron fence that separated the trees of the park from the street.
“Are you sure he is going to leave it?” Megan asked.
“No. But I think it is a strong possibility,” he replied. “If he was telling the truth—that Coffey is the one who lied about my having killed Dennis—then I would think he would go to question Coffey about it. It is certainly what I would do.”
“And if he doesn’t leave, then you think he was lying to us again? That the lie is his alone?”
“It seems more likely.”
“Unless, of course, they are in it together,” Megan pointed out. “Then he would go running off to see his partner in the lie.”
“True.”
They had reached the end of the park and stopped. Sheltered by the trees, they were able to look at a slant across the street and down to Barchester’s door without being seen themselves from his house.
“But what exactly is this ‘it’ they are in together?” Theo mused as he gazed through the fence railings. “What is the purpose of the lies?”
“I don’t know why they would be in it together,” Megan replied. “Or, indeed, why Mr. Barchester would be the one who made up the lie. While it is possible, I suppose, that Barchester could have done as Alex and Con surmised and followed your group, then killed Dennis, it seems an unlikely scenario. It makes more sense to me that Barchester simply accepted Mr. Coffey’s lie.”
“I agree. Which leaves us with only the question of why Coffey would have made up the lie.”
“It makes little sense for him to lie to Barchester if a villager killed my brother, as he told you. I would think that means Coffey lied because he killed Dennis himself.” Tears glittered in Megan’s eyes, and Theo put his hand over hers on his arm.
“I am sorry.”
Megan offered him a weak smile. “It is foolish, I suppose, for all this to make the wound fresher. But somehow it does. It seems so much more horrible that a man Dennis knew and trusted killed him.”
“I know. It is hard for me, too, to believe that Julian killed him.”
“The twins’ rationale makes more sense with Mr. Coffey,” Megan reasoned. “He came upon all that treasure with you. It wouldn’t have been strange for him to want some of it—many men would have. But Dennis opposed that. Perhaps Mr. Coffey tried to sneak some of it out and Dennis caught him.”
“He was stealing the treasure while dressed up in a priest’s garb?”
“Perhaps Dennis caught him in the garb and realized what he was doing—I don’t know.”
“Or perhaps I confused the scene with one of my dreams,” Theo admitted. “Aside from the delirium I suffered, I think that the healing tea they gave me to drink may have induced hallucinations. I read more about the Incas after I returned, and I learned that the priests often ingested plants that gave them visions. So I’m not entirely sure that what I saw was accurate. Dreams and reality could have blurred. It was all so vague and strange….”
“Mr. Coffey could have taken treasure out of the cave. You wouldn’t have known if he loaded some of the objects on your pack animals. You were too ill. But Dennis might have caught him. They fought, and he killed him. Then he lied to you about what happened. And when Barchester didn’t buy the accident story, he made up a different lie for him.”
“But why make up that second lie? Why not just stick to what he and I had agreed upon?” Theo pointed out.
“Well…” Megan thought for a minute. “Barchester, feeling that the story you two told was a lie, might very well have kept on questioning you, and after a while, you might have explained the truth to him. And in talking about it, one or both of you might have begun to see holes in Coffey’s story. The best thing to do was to keep the two of you from thinking about the story, from talking about what happened. If Barchester believed that you killed Dennis, he would not keep on questioning you.”