Because the conspirators understood something about grief that they used against me with precision: that grief disarms inquiry.

A newly bereaved person cannot think.

They cannot analyze, or question, or notice the inconsistencies that would be obvious to them on any ordinary day.

Their whole mind is consumed by the enormity of the loss, and into that consuming fog, a competent-seeming person can insert almost anything, and it will be accepted, because the bereaved person has no capacity left to examine it.

Marcus knew this.