hmm to me you are hinting at Clancy since he is the most unobvious, and yes there is evidence that someone on the staff was helping the Paladins. Some facts stand out that implicate Clancy.GBLW wrote:Gee, so far no one has hit on the one I see as most likely to want Kit and his line dead.
And knowing that as a writer, I check my reader's guess, I ain't gonna say anything about it here.
(If I am right, I don't want Fel p'd off with me for giving away a great plot line.)
GBLW
(And off he rides into the sunset, with a vicious chuckle echoing behind him! )
(Well, maybe just snickering a bit, since the choice is so obviously unobvious.)
1. Stonebrook was finished being built in 1936 and is now 72 years old. Clancy is 73 years old and his father was the head butler before him just like himself before Stanely. That tunnel had to been built during Stonebrooks construction or Clancy would have seen it being built. However Clancy's father had to have known it was there and it would be inconcievable that he didn't pass that on to Clancy.
2. The dust pattern on the floor shows that someone cleaned the footprints up after the Paladins left after the first visit.
The Paladins could have swept the rest of the floor (if they brought a broom with them that is) but they couldn't sweep on top of the trap door after using it to leave, someone int he Manor had to do it. It couldn't have been Jahal he was at the gate under observation, so that only leaves one of the staff who would have access to cleaning supplies in the manor and wouldn't stand out having a broom.he saw a curious mar in the dust of the stone floor, that was almost perfectly three feet square, offset in the floor so one edge was on the edge of the wall. The dust was striated and disturbed in straight lines…almost as if something brushed over it.
However with that being said Clancy doesn't have a motive to kill Kit but he does have motive to try to protect the next unobvious person not mentioned already: Stanley
It is logical that Clancy would pass the knowledge of that tunnel onto Stanely as being head butler. Stanely also doesn't have the history with Kit that his father does, Kit was like a son to Clancy and we don't know if Stanley has any purist leanings. There is another piece of circumstancial evidence that Stanley is not on Kit's side and that is the Stonebrook accounts. Zach was moving money in and out of the Stonebrook accounts, the same accounts the Head Butler is in charge of.
Remember it was Stanley that contacted the auditors and it was Stanley that told Kit that the suditors found more money in the account then was supposed to be. kit was never shown the report from the auditors he has only Stanley's word that it was Zach doing it. Kit then had Vil remove Zach's access to the accounts which would remove Stanley's cover if he was using Zach to cover his own Purist dealings. Remember Stanely had Zach sign for everything and has been pointed out Zach doesn't read all the documents given to him to sign ie the Stonebrook contract.The manor ran itself, and while Zach had access to the manor’s accounts, that money was not his, and neither was he the primary fur that managed that money. That responsibility was actually Stanley’s, since he was the chief butler and primary overseer of the estate.
So Clancy doesn't have a motive to kill Kit but Stanley would if he was using the Stonebrook accounts to launder Paladin money.Stanley wasn’t kidding when he said that he’d been extremely careful since Zach moved in, according to Clancy, making sure that he had written authorizations from Zach personally for everything Zach wanted done around the manor, and Stanley was extremely thorough and careful when it came to his own management of the manor, capable of producing a detailed trail of exactly where the money he took from the accounts went