“I thought the juice tasted strange because the influenza makes everything taste strange! How could we have known that there was a sedative in it?” cried Jenny. This stirred up a chorus of “Indeed!” and “The same goes for me, too!” Even the grounds staff had consumed the juice.
By the time Lord Farellshire woke up, it was a quarter to three. Unable to find Lord Gillinghamshire at home, he assumed that he had come to Ambrose Estate. But he arrived to find the gates closed and Ian’s coach waiting outside.
“Since no one was answering the gates, I worried that I must have been mistaken or perhaps had read the address wrong.”
Ian explained, “His Grace had written to me requesting a special order and promised to pay an extra fee if I came to deliver it personally on today, the 16thday of August. He gave very specific instructions.”
Lord Farellshire assured Ian that, indeed, this was the correct estate and that if no one came to open the gates in the next few minutes, they were free to push the gates open themselves. Naturally, with all of the staff unconscious, this was exactly what the two men ended up doing.
“Of course, the obvious thing to do was to check Anthony’s study and ask him what on earth was going on,” Lord Farellshire said matter-of-factly. “But we found it empty. All of the rooms we regularly used were totally deserted. We had no choice but to go upstairs.”
“Indeed, Lord Farellshire, but you are forgetting the moment you gawked in awe at my pistol,” interjected Ian.
Meredith shot him a stern look, partly for being overly-friendly with Lord Farellshire and partly because she thought he had no business owning a pistol.
“Come now, Mere. Of course I need a weapon. Once you become known as the owner of a successful and profitable business, a pistol becomes absolutely essential. I no longer fear highway robbers, for if they dare try anything, I can scare them away by blowing their hats right off their heads.”
“So yes, I revealed my pistol to Lord Farellshire before we ascended the stairs to reassure him that at least one of us was equipped to face whatever awaited us upstairs. Naturally, I led the way.”
“I only let you go first so that if our opponent also happened to have a pistol, I could immediately go and find help whilst you made believe that you were dying for King and Country,” Lord Farellshire huffed.
This time it was Anthony’s turn to fire a stern look.
So the young men spotted Mr. Tulk standing guard outside of the master bedroom. Since they weren’t certain whether or not he, too, was armed, they decided that the best course of action would be to lure him away from his post at the door and then knock him unconscious.
“It was a simple plan that any old fool could have followed. Unfortunately, in line with all of today’s events, nothing at all went to plan.”
For as the two young men whispered in hushed voices what the best way to distract Mr. Tulk would be, he had apparently heard their squabbles and snuck up on them to investigate. And before they knew it, he was upon them, waving his knife in the air.
But Ian managed to aim the pistol at him and got him to drop the knife.
“And then I told him to drop his knife without making a sound, and he did! We didn’t hear a peep out of him!” Ian proudly declared.
Lord Farellshire picked up the story.
“Yes, yes, and when he refused to tell us what was going on, we marched him back to where he was originally standing and told him to open the door.”
Evidently, Mr. Tulk feigned as though he was complying and did, indeed, turn the doorknob. But in a flash, he swung around and made a grab for Ian’s pistol.
“I thought he was attempting to punch me, so I immediately ducked out of the way,” Ian explained.
For once, Lord Farellshire sided with Ian.
“That is correct. I also had a similar thought, but instead ducking, my first instinct was to punch him back.”
“Yes!” Ian’s voice grew louder with excitement. “It felt a bit like roughhousing at the orphanage. You should have seen us, Meredith! As we struggled with him, we heard a shot, but it wasn’t from my pistol! Of course, now we know it was from the pistol His Grace had pried from Lord Gillinghamshire.”
“But I say, it was quite disorientating to hear a pistol shot and be the only person around holding a pistol, but then realizing that you hadn’t fired it. At any rate, he was clearly very experienced in these sorts of fights. The way he threw his punches, you wouldn’t believe the pain! So as soon as we had him on the floor we—”
Meredith cleared her throat and discreetly nodded towards Lady Cecilia, who—whether she realized it or not—was now tightly hugging a cushion to her chest.
Ian immediately lowered his voice abashedly.
“We took care of him as we saw fit. Lord Farellshire was the one who suggested that we tear strips of cloth from the back of his shirt to tie him up.” He then turned to Anthony, “And that’s when you found us, Your Grace.”
* * *
Dinner consisted of simple sandwiches and tea. After all of the talk regarding poisoning, it was understandable that no one was particularly hungry tonight. It was a frankly ridiculous sight, for everyone was mostly back to normal by now, except for Anthony, Meredith, Kenneth, and Mr. Lockhart, who all had their respective assortments of cuts and bruises.
