"Holy Paul!" he exclaimed, under his breath; then stood with bent head… "How happened it?"
"No one knows, certainly. As you expressly ordered, either the lieutenant or myself regularly locked their apartments at sundown and opened them at dawn. Two nights since I, myself, turned key upon them. In the morning I found them dead—in each breast a grievous wound—Edward's bloody dagger on the floor."
"And your view of it?"
"That Edward killed Richard and himself. He had lately been oppressed with heavy melancholy."
The King shook his head. "Yes, that is doubtless the solution, yet scant credence will be given it. To the Kingdom it will be murder foul… Yet, pardieu! who else know it?"
"None but my lieutenant."
"And his discretion?"
"Beyond suspicion. He has forgotten it long since."
Richard called De Lacy to him. "Let Suffolk, Lovel, Ratcliffe, D'Evereux and Catesby be summoned instantly," he ordered.
"My friends," said he, when the last of them had come, "I have sore need of your wisdom and counsel. Hark to the mournful tidings Sir Robert Brackenbury brings."