A Body in Berkeley Square (10 page)

"If you are a very close friend of Colonel
Brandon, Mr. Lacey . . ."

"Captain. And yes, I am quite close to the
Brandon family."

"Captain," she said. "Then you must know
more about me than you appear to at present."

"I do not wish to be rude, Mrs. Harper, but
it will help me if you tell me exactly what your relation was and
is to Colonel Brandon."

Mrs. Harper regarded me with calm eyes. "I
believe you've already guessed. We had a brief liaison when we were
on the Peninsula. When my husband died, I was alone and afraid, and
Aloysius helped me. Small wonder that I turned to him." Again her
voice held that flat indifference.

"Not surprising under the circumstances. I
know from your recent letters to Brandon that Turner somehow found
out about the affair and threatened to expose you."

She flushed. "You are quite well informed,
Captain."

"You came to London and wrote to Brandon for
help. Turner told you to meet him at Lady Gillis's ball, and you
asked Brandon what to do. What did he suggest?"

"That we meet him. That we try to persuade
him that it was all in the past and did not matter anymore."

"Then I take it that you had no intention of
resuming the affair?"

She hesitated. "I'm not certain what my
intentions were. At the moment I was worried about Turner and his
revelations."

"What did you fear? That Turner would go to
Brandon's wife with the information? She already knew. Brandon's
manner when he received your letters at home shouted it loud and
clear, not to mention his obvious actions at the ball. He has been
most tactless."

"I cannot help Colonel Brandon's behavior,"
Mrs. Harper said, tight-lipped. "I'm afraid I was quite agitated
last night, or I might have noticed that we were making cakes of
ourselves. My only concern was speaking to Mr. Turner."

"And Turner, very conveniently, turned up
dead."

At last, Mrs. Harper
looked distressed. "I do not know why you say
convenient.
It was the most
horrifying thing that has ever happened to me."

"More horrifying than the casualties of the
battlefields?"

"Yes," she said defiantly.
"I followed the drum long enough to expect the carnage. Even when
my husband died, I cannot remember feeling terribly surprised. I
think I knew it was only a matter of time before
his
body was brought
back from a battle. But last night was different. You certainly do
not expect to find a corpse sitting in a chair in your friend's
house. It frightened me. More than that, it appalled me. London is
supposed to be civilization. To see something like that in such an
elegant little room was unnerving."

"More than unnerving," I said. "In fact,
witnesses say you screamed quite a lot. You were so upset you had
to be taken home--leaving Brandon to face arrest by himself."

She reddened. "I am not stupid, Captain. You
believe that I killed Mr. Turner then feigned hysteria in order to
gain sympathy and let Aloysius take the blame. But I assure you, I
did not murder Turner. He was dead when I entered the
anteroom."

"How quickly did you realize he was dead?" I
asked.

"I didn't right away. I thought him drunk.
He'd been quite foxed when he'd spoken to us earlier, so I was not
surprised to find him unconscious. But when I touched his shoulder,
I saw that his face was gray. It was quite horrible. Then I saw the
knife, and lost my head. I did scream. I cannot remember much after
that."

"How did the blood come to be on your
glove?"

She looked startled. "On my glove?"

"Mr. Grenville told me that you stared at
your glove in horror, and that it was crimson with blood. But if
you touched Turner's shoulder, you could not have gotten blood on
your glove. You could have done so only if you'd touched the knife
or the wound."

Mrs. Harper stared at me, her lips parted. I
sensed her thinking rapidly, considering arguments and discarding
them before she chose her answer. "I believe that I touched the
back of the chair, where he'd been leaning," she said at last. "I
rested my hand on it. The blood must have been there."

I had not seen blood on the chair, dried or
otherwise. She lied, but I was not certain why.

One thing I did notice was that she'd not
suggested that Brandon did not murder Turner. I said, "Colonel
Brandon was committed to trial for killing Turner, and now he is in
Newgate prison."

"I know."

Mrs. Harper looked neither angry nor
distressed. She spoke in the same calm voice and looked at me in
the same resignation.

"You do not defend him?"

She made a gesture that was almost a shrug.
"What would you have me say? Colonel Brandon was quite upset last
night. He was livid with Turner. I had never known him to be in so
much of a temper."

"But you had not seen him in a long
time."

"No, not I since I left Spain four years
ago. Do you believe me?"

"More unsettling to me is that you believe
he killed Turner."

"I really have no idea what happened," Mrs.
Harper said in a hard voice. "When I walked into that room, Turner
was dead. I did not see Colonel Brandon actually kill him, but I
have no idea who else would want to."

"Colonel Brandon seems to believe that you
killed him."

She flushed. "He said that?"

"No, he has done his best to incriminate
himself and spare you. Which makes me realize that he believes you
killed Turner. If he'd thought a passing footman had done the deed,
he would have said so loudly and expressed outrage to be arrested.
Instead, he let Pomeroy's patrollers take him away without much
fuss."

Mrs. Harper looked astonished. "He truly
believes I would do such a thing?"

"You believe that
he
would. In either
case, it will be Brandon who pays. He is being gallant, and you are
condemning him to hang."

She pressed her hands
together, gloves sliding over very thin fingers. "You have not told
me what
you
believe, Captain Lacey."

"I believe the colonel is innocent. I have
not yet decided who else would want Turner dead. There were quite a
few people at that ball. One of them may have been Turner's mortal
enemy, who knows? I only know that you are ready to send Brandon to
the gallows, and I do not want him to go there."

For the first time since she'd entered the
room, Mrs. Harper looked at me in real fear. Her lips trembled, and
I saw her strive to keep them steady. "Do you plan to give me to
the magistrates? Without knowing me, without proof that I went into
that room and stabbed Mr. Turner?"

"There is the blood on your glove," I
said.

"Which I have explained. I touched the back
of the chair."

"What I think you actually did, Mrs. Harper,
was put your hand inside Mr. Turner's coat. You checked his
pockets, did you not? You were looking for the letter or whatever
evidence he had of your affair with Colonel Brandon. I conclude
that you did not find it, because you came here today to look for
it. So did I."

She stared at me, eyes wide, and I saw her
reassess my character. She must have first thought me simply a
hanger-on of Colonel Brandon's, an acquaintance left over from the
war. Colonel Brandon was a man who did not always think before he
acted. He was brisk and determined but sometimes did not bother
with critical thought. Imogene Harper must have thought I would be
much the same.

"You have found me out, Captain." She met my
gaze, her voice steady. "Yes, I looked for the letter. I must have
gotten the blood on my glove when I did so. I searched Mr. Turner's
pockets, but I found nothing. At least, not the letter. He had a
snuffbox, a few coins, and a scrap of lace, but no letter." She
opened her hands. "You are correct that I came here to look for
it."

"A scrap of lace," I said.

She blinked. "What?"

"The scrap of lace. What sort of lace? From
his handkerchief, perhaps?"

Not the question she expected me to ask. "I
don't know. It looked as though it had come from a lady's
gown."

"Interesting. Could you happen to tell me
which lady?"

She shook her head. "I am afraid I paid very
little attention to the lace. I cared only for the letter."

"I will assume that Pomeroy took all effects
from Turner's pockets." I would certainly ask him to let me examine
them. "What puzzles me, Mrs. Harper, is why you and Brandon were so
afraid of Turner. Your affair ended four years ago. Brandon moved
back to England and went on with his life, and that was that. I
read the letters that you wrote to him. You were not certain he
would remember you or even would want to remember you."

I saw her try to remember exactly what she
had penned to Brandon, but she spoke briskly. "It is hardly
something one would wish to see made public."

"Is that what Turner threatened? To make it
public?"

"I do not know what he threatened. I only
know that he had a letter and would make us pay to have it
back."

"But how easy it would
have been to dismiss his threat," I said. "You could claim the
letter a forgery, written by Turner himself. Louisa Brandon would
be hurt by the revelation--indeed, she
is
hurt--but she would hardly take
her husband to court over it. Mrs. Brandon prizes discretion and
privacy."

Mrs. Harper flexed and closed her hands. "We
did not think. How could we? When Mr. Turner approached me about
the letter, it was horrible. In panic, I wrote to Colonel Brandon,
and he suggested that we do whatever Mr. Turner said in order to
get the letter back."

"Have you considered the possibility that
Turner did not have a letter at all? That he somehow got wind of
your affair and, always liking cash, decided to capitalize on it? I
have searched these rooms thoroughly, but I found nothing."

Relief flickered through her eyes. Perhaps
she'd worried that I might blackmail her as well, or perhaps she
simply did not want me to read a love letter she'd written to
Aloysius Brandon.

"The idea had not occurred to me," Mrs.
Harper said. "Why should Mr. Turner say he had the letter if he did
not?"

"He did not show it to you?"

"No."

"You and Colonel Brandon have behaved like a
pair of fools," I said in exasperation. "You took it on faith that
Turner had a letter that would betray you. If you were experienced
at being blackmailed, you would know to insist that the blackmailer
show you what he has to sell first."

The curls on her forehead trembled. "Perhaps
we were fools, Captain. But we did not want to chance that he did
not have the letter. We did not think of that possibility, I
confess." She looked at me a moment, clearly unhappy. "What will
you do with the letter if you find it? Give it to the
magistrates?"

"I have not yet decided. It is possible that
I will burn the foul thing. I do not intend to let Brandon hang for
this crime."

"I know you will not believe me, Captain,
but I wish no harm to come to him, either. Colonel Brandon was good
to me. He helped me when I could turn to no other."

"You knew that he was married," I said
flatly.

"I did." Her defiance returned. "I needed
him. At the time, that was all I could consider."

Mrs. Harper got to her feet and I did as
well, because that was the polite thing to do. She said, "I admire
you for standing by your colonel."

She did not offer me any help to save him.
Perhaps Mrs. Harper still believed that Brandon had killed Turner,
or perhaps she was pushing the blame on Colonel Brandon to save
herself.

"May I call on you if it proves necessary?"
I asked.

"Can I stop you, if you think I can bring
evidence to bear?"

"I am not a magistrate, nor am I a Bow
Street Runner. I simply wish to clear Brandon's name, so that his
wife does not have to watch him hang by the neck until dead."

At last, Mrs. Harper looked ashamed. "Please
tell Mrs. Brandon that I am deeply sorry for the trouble I have
caused her. I never realized how much grief a person can bestow
when they are fixed on one course."

She did not elaborate on what that one
course might be. I imagined loneliness, but looking back later, I
realized that the entire conversation seemed wrong somehow. Imogene
Harper did not tell me much more than I'd already known.
Unfortunately, I was not to realize that fact until other things
emerged. I did not know then how murky things would become for me
and for Brandon.

I ushered Mrs. Harper to the door and closed
it behind us. I stood at the head of the stairs, watching her
descend, in order to discourage her from returning to search the
rooms again. I had found no letter--Turner's rooms had presented
nothing but innocence and badly matched furniture--but she might be
willing to try again.

Mrs. Harper glanced back at me once, her
expression veiled, then she walked out of the house and into the
rain.

*** *** ***

I collected Matthias and Bartholomew from
the kitchens below stairs. Hazleton, the valet, held up his glass
and slurred a greeting to me. One bottle was on its side, empty, a
second, upright but half-empty. By the look of things, Matthias and
Bartholomew had stuck to one or two glasses each, allowing Hazleton
to imbibe the rest. I imagined he'd already partaken of a bottle or
two before we arrived.

Bartholomew and Matthias said farewell to
him, wishing him luck, and we departed.

Imogene Harper had long since vanished.
Matthias took leave of us to return to Grenville's house. He said
goodbye to his brother, touched his forelock to me, and trotted off
in the direction of Green Park.