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The Fourth Son

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The woman he dreaded.  The woman who was never really a mother for him.  That had fallen to the wife of the king’s brother, the Ambassador way back in New York.

The woman who once threated his mother to a pistol duel at dawn and had got as far as the back lawn and started walking the ten paces before the king came and stopped it.

It might not have been a good idea to stand between the two very angry women.

Ah, the memories.

But his mother was not herself, not the firebrand he was expecting, just there to apologise for not being there to welcome him home before she collapsed on the floor, the sedatives finally taking hold.

The doctor is apologetic.

In between this, there are a few questions for the butler, who used to be his father’s, the morgue superintendent and the doctor, again, when he goes to see the bodies of his brothers and father, sans the eldest, who is missing.

There’s a problem: why is he missing? He should be somewhere in the debris caused by the avalanche, like his two other brothers.

That was something he was going to get to the bottom of.

Autopsies are asked for when he learns they were not going to.

Odd…