The Seal King Murders by Alanna Knight

that he had fallen down, poor lad, she asked anxiously, ‘Did you hurt yourself last night?’
    He looked at her in amazement and said, ‘Of course not, Ma.’
    She held out the shirt and he shrugged. ‘Bit of a tussle, my nose must have been bleeding.’
    And when his father heard that story, he was a very unhappy man indeed.

CHAPTER TEN
    In the quiet of his own room, wondering how long he could evade his mother’s gloomy and tearful speculations, Faro sat down grimly to consider the events of the last twenty-four hours. Sticking to his usual procedure, he made a careful list containing everything known about victim and suspects, in the hope that by so doing it might also reveal the inescapable fact that for every crime there must be a motive.
    First of all, if Celia was the victim, why? He dismissed suicide. She might have removed the cloak, although it could have been useful, as two heavy stones in the pockets would keep her from floating to the surface again. It was doubtful, however, that she would have removed all buther underwear, and the neatly folded clothes did not suggest a sudden unpremeditated impulse by a passing rapist or the actions of a kidnapper intent on ransom.
    Without knowledge of any kind regarding the Prentiss-Grants, the facts thus far simply failed to make any sense of the girl’s disappearance. With a sigh of exasperation, he laid down the pen and, blessed with an extraordinary retentive memory, he went over every item of Celia’s brief conversation with him, in the hope he might remember any remark which might hold some significance.
    He could think of none. Only one fact was predominant. Although she was beautiful, young and rich with, as Stavely had indicated, the world at her feet, Faro had sensed flaws, an underlying vague discontent and frustration with her life of luxury, which might in time become rebellion.
    Even that short acquaintance had revealed that she was on the threshold of a new womankind, bred by the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, a growing army rebelling against the tyrannical trappings of male-dominated centuries, where daughters in rich homes were on sale to the highest bidder in the marriage marketplace.
    Faro’s knowledge of Lizzie’s tragic background,and his recent encounter in England with the bohemian life of artists and models, had given him greater understanding of a situation which seemed to the average man quite out of the bounds of decency.
    If this could be related to Celia’s disappearance – neither suicide, nor kidnapping – was she merely determined to go against some plan for her future which had set her into violent opposition with her parents? Although this was the most logical reason for her hasty departure from London, alone, the scene of abandoned clothes by the shore hit a more sinister note.
    The question remained, why had she chosen to return to Scarthbreck? It held no magic for her, and the fact she had returned hinted at a strong personal attachment to someone who lived here. And as she was but eighteen years old, this had to be kept secret at all cost from her parents.
    Again that led to the abandonment of her clothes, which refused to fit any logical theory beyond going for a swim and failing to return, the obvious reason too dreadful to dwell upon.
    What about the missing reticule? Why was it not with her clothes? It could, of course, have started off that way but had been removed by some passer-by. However, bearing in mind the appalling weather, a casual evening stroller withdishonest impulses seemed unlikely.
    And at the back of his mind, still obstinately refusing to be dismissed, the shadow of a legend.
    The coincidence of Thora Claydon and the seal king.
    The only difference was that she had returned wearing clothes identical to those she had on the night she disappeared.
    Frustrated, he pushed aside the list and stared out of the window to be rewarded by the bleak prospect of sea and sky united in an indivisible