Page 108 of Death at a Highland Wedding

“Move.” He indicates with the gun. “Back the way you came.”

When I don’t move, his eyes harden. “I said move, girl.”

“Moveawayfrom the house?”

He sneers. “I do not need you farther from the house. You are far enough. You could scream, and they would not hear.”

“You know that for a fact? Because no one heard Ezra Sinclair when you clubbed him?”

The sneer only grows. “I did not kill Ezra. His death has been nothing but trouble for me.”

Ezra.He calls Sinclair by his first name. He wasn’t exactly respectful when he referred to Cranston, but this is another level of familiarity.

“You were leaving, though,” I say. “That says you’re guilty of something.”

“No, it says I knew your detective friend was going to accuse me of something. Him and that girl.”

“Lenore?”

The sneer returns, telling me I guessed right.

I continue, “You knew she was coming back to tell us how her belongings got under that floorboard.”

“She would not tell. She knows better.”

“Knows better than to admit she had an affair with Ezra Sinclair?”

When his lip curls, my first thought is that we’re wrong. But then he says, “That is a pretty word for it. Girls always have pretty words for it. They need to believe it means something when a man wants them. All fancy bows and flowers, ending with a wedding ring.”

“Maybe hewasin love with her.”

Müller’s laugh is so ugly something inside me hardens. I fight to tamp it down. As long as that gun isn’t moving—and he isn’t insistingImove—that’s good enough. Lower his guard while getting what answers I can.

And there’s an answer dangling here.

“It wasn’t love,” I say. “But he did care about her.”

“I am certain that is what she will say. She knows the truth, but she will not admit it even to herself. They never do.”

“The truth being that he only wanted sexual relations. That’s what you presume because you can’t imagine anything else. You can’t allow for the possibility that he might have cared—”

His laugh answers my question, but I still need to push, and maybe that’s for Gray and McCreadie’s sake. They want to believe their friend was a good man who saw beyond class and fell in love.

“You sound very sure of yourself,” I say.

“Iamvery sure of myself.”

“Because you knew Ezra and knew he was not the man everyone thought him to be.”

He only smiles. “If I told you the truth about your Ezra, you would not believe it.”

“I might.”

Müller shakes his head. “Walk. Head down the road. I will tell you when to stop.”

“You were blackmailing him.”

A pause. Müller’s face screws up. “Black mail?” His English is excellent, but he must not know that word.