David was intrigued, as she had expected he would be.
“How could they do that?”
“I don’t know, but, as I have said, in England a man is innocent until he is proved guilty. When in future people say things about your uncle like that, I suggest you say, ‘prove it, prove it, then I will believe you’. That is the only just and the right way for a gentleman to behave and it is the sporting way as well.”
“You are right,” David murmured after a moment. “Perhaps it’s a mistake to believe that it was Uncle Etienne who pushed Aunt Theresa over the battlements. Nobody knows if she cried out for help or if she threw herself over.”
“Now that is a very sensible attitude,” Arletta approved.
“The Comtesse,” David went on, “who was very beautiful, died of poison through taking too much laudanum. They
