The Nurse Who Watches

By morning Cornelius had a plan and precisely one ally.

Rosalind Fennimore had been his live-in companion for eleven months, hired officially to "assist with daily tasks," which mostly meant she made his tea exactly the way he liked it and never once treated him like he was already gone.

"You heard them," he said, when she brought his tray. It wasn't a question.

Rosalind set the cup down without spilling a drop. "I heard a woman talking about filing something with a lawyer named Alaric. I don't listen at doors, Mr. Hargrove."

"You didn't have to. The whole east wing could hear her."

She studied him a long moment — the same steady, unhurried look she gave him every morning, except now there was something sharper underneath it. "You're not slipping at all, are you."

"Not one bit." He allowed himself the smallest smile. "Haven't been for four months."

To her credit, she didn't gasp, didn't scold him for the deception, didn't ask why. She just pulled out the chair across from him and sat, which no one else in this house had done in years without an agenda.

"I want cameras," Cornelius said. "The study, the east hallway, the guest wing where Barnaby and Odalys stay when they visit. Nothing anyone would notice."

"That's not assisting with daily tasks."

"I'll pay you separately. Cash, so it's not on any account Odalys can pull records from."

Rosalind considered it exactly as long as it took to pour her own tea. "Why not just ask a lawyer to protect you the normal way?"

"Because normal ways get outmaneuvered by people who write the paperwork for a living." He tapped the table once. "I need to know who's protecting me because they love me, and who's protecting me because they're waiting for a number to hit their account. There's only one way to learn that, and it isn't asking."

She nodded slowly, and that was that.

It was Rosalind, three days later, who found the envelope. It had fallen from the pocket of Percival's coat, left over a chair in the front hall, and she brought it to Cornelius unopened, her face carefully blank.

The return address was a collections office. The amount inside made Cornelius's stomach drop.

$180,000. Due in eleven days. Final notice.