A silence was followed by a quiet grunt. “Bring it to me, and I will show you.”
“We can’t. It’s guarded,” Knight said, rubbing his chin. “Its size suggests it couldn’t be used on any domestic animal.”
Fane exhaled. “It’s just a trifle. Something to remember my great love by. You would not understand.”
Elliot gasped and pressed his hand harder against the door. “No, you underestimate me, sir. I would. I would understand. We’re here to listen to your story. That was why we first came down here. There is a lot of gossip about you, sir. Even to this day, and what we want is to know what really happened.”
Fane remained silent for so long Knight’s ears started ringing softly, and this kind of dismissal was piercing the very core of Knight’s pride. “Laurent Mercier had been defending himself. He’s a hero.”
Elliot hissed at Knight. “Let him tell the story, jeez.”
Knight frowned, annoyed that the moment Elliot was under Fane’s influence again, he was immediately taking that monster’s side. “He wasn’t telling us anything.”
“Ah, Laurent Mercier. Such a beautiful man. What hair he had. Skin like porcelain, and his heart was equally cold and impenetrable.”
Knight bit on the inside of his cheek, willing to listen to this nonsense first before he’d debunk it.
“Did you love him, sir?” Elliot asked quietly as if he were coaxing a cat down a tree. “No need to lie to us. We would understand. What happened that night?”
Fane’s fingers scratched against the other side of the door, and all of Knight’s body hair bristled at the sound.
“Love him? It was impossible not to. Everyone knew how beautiful he was, and he used all his charm and beauty to his advantage. So he tempted, he lied, and yet I still fell for him like an old fool.”
Knight’s head was boiling. He knew for a fact that it wasn’t true, because the very Laurent Fane was blackening with his words was upstairs somewhere—the very picture of moral superiority and good heart.
But, outrageously, Elliot nodded, lapping up every word from the ghost. “Sometimes our feelings do get the best of us, don’t they?”
“Ah, they do, dear boy. I was so blinded by love that I gave him everything he wanted. I even offered to pay back the debt he still owed his employer, but he betrayed me with my own footman.”
“No! He didn’t!” Elliot raised his voice and his cheeks got a rosier color. “I knew there was so much more to this story than written records could have provided us. But why did he kill you, sir? Did the two of you have a fight?”
“I called him out on his lies. And yes, I did want him dead, but that was only because he put me in that position. My heart was bleeding, and the intensity of my feelings blinded me to consequences.”
Knight didn’t want to discuss this with Fane. The bastard was lying through his teeth, and Knight would make sure to brief Elliot on why the story didn’t make any sense.
Elliot put his cheek against the wood as if Knight wasn’t even there to witness it. “I understand. Some people… just don’t deserve to live.”
Fane sighed loudly. “I could sense you were a kindred soul, my sweet. But with the beautiful Laurent… I hesitated for too long. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt the beauty that possessed my heart. And so I met my end, bled like a commoner, no matter how much I had offered him. He could have gotten anything from me, and yet he rejected it all. Even now, as my memory is slightly faded, I still remember his dark, lying eyes, and I cannot bring myself to hate him. I was looking for something to patch up the hole inside my heart. To feel again.”
Knight rolled his eyes, no longer able to hold his mouth shut. “All evidence points against you, no matter what you say. Why would this story be true if we know for a fact you murdered thirty people!”
Fane’s elegant accent was just as studied as it has been at the beginning of this conversation, as if despite his declarations, he didn’t experience true emotion. “I’m sure that after the findings made in the rooms further on, the world has judged me harshly, but—”
“What other rooms?” Knight asked, his mind going completely blank.
The silence made Knight’s thoughts pick up pace again and he looked around the naked corridor.
“Mr. Fane?” Elliot gently tapped the door and took off his gloves, as if wishing to be closer. “The world might have judged, but we won’t. We are searching for the truth behind the way your name has been blackened. We… do know bodies of victims have been found on the grounds of your property, but so much about you is a mystery, sir. Are there more secrets to still be discovered? We want the world to see you for who you were, sir.” Elliot stared at the door but his other hand frantically reached back and grabbed Knight’s.