A Body in Berkeley Square (16 page)

I thought of the bedchamber Turner's father
had let me see that afternoon. Mr. Turner was not certain why I
wanted to see where his son had lived when he was at home, but he'd
led me to the chamber without fuss.

Inside, Mr. Turner had stopped, as though
realizing all at once that his son would never inhabit the room
again. Numbly, he'd straightened a chair in front of a desk, then
he'd turned around and walked out without a word.

I'd wandered the cold, still chamber, not
certain what I was looking for. It was not a terribly personal
room. Turner's flat had been filled with his own things, as
tasteless as some of them had been, but they'd been what he liked.
This room had been a mere place to sleep when he visited his
family. I found no indication that Turner might have had male
lovers, no love letters from people of either sex. In fact, I found
no letters at all.

The few books in the small bookcase near the
fire had been treatises on botany, one on rose gardens with colored
plates. The rose garden book was nicely bound but did not look as
though it had much been read. I also found several volumes of
The Gentleman's Magazine
from years past bound together. I
thumbed through them, but saw little of interest, except an article
on the house of one Lucius Grenville in Grosvenor Street. Sketches
of his drawing rooms and ballroom were presented.

Now, as I held on to the seat while
Grenville let his phaeton fly over the roads, I said, "I keep
returning to that damned Frenchman. What did he want, and what has
he to do with Turner?"

Grenville steered his phaeton through a ford
of a small stream. Such was his skill that water splashed from the
wheels but did not so much as touch our boots.

"Perhaps it is not Turner who interests
him," Grenville suggested. "But Mrs. Harper and Colonel Brandon.
Hence he went after Mrs. Harper's letters."

"Mrs. Harper, perhaps, but I cannot see Brandon
having dealings with him for any reason. Brandon will not speak to
anyone French, even emigres who have lived in England for thirty
years.
Damn all French,
is his motto."

"I did not say that he and this Frenchman
were friends. Perhaps they encountered one another during the
war."

"I very much doubt it," I said. "Although I
will not out-and-out disregard the idea. Brandon refused to have
anything to do with anyone French, even when he and I and Louisa
lived in France during the Peace of Amiens. Brandon talked only to
Englishmen and ate only English food. He was quite a bore about it.
And I never remember seeing the fellow who invaded my rooms."

Grenville smiled a little. "I encounter such
Englishmen abroad. Cannot abide foreign ways, they say. Give them
the
Times
and a joint of beef, and they are happy. I wonder
that they bother to leave home at all."

"Travel broadens the mind, I have heard
tell," I said.

Grenville barked a laugh. "You are in a
cynical mood today, Lacey. But let us return to France. Did Mrs.
Brandon have the same prejudice about all things French? Or did she
make friends with French persons?"

"She did make friends. She simply neglected
to mention them to her husband."

"Perhaps Mrs. Brandon is the connection.
Could she have met this Frenchman?"

"I never heard of it. She did not mention
her French friends to Colonel Brandon, but she told me of them. She
never spoke of meeting a French military man, and I never saw her
speaking to anyone who looked like him."

"Perhaps she simply did not tell you. I
don't wish to be indelicate, Lacey . . . I know the lady is a great
friend of yours . . ."

"If you are hinting that Louisa Brandon she
had an affair with him . . ." I broke off. "It is unlikely, but
truth to tell, I have no idea."

I hadn't thought Brandon capable of
betraying Louisa, but now he was in prison, trying to defend the
woman who was, or at least had been, his mistress. I'd thought
myself Louisa's greatest friend, that there was nothing Louisa
Brandon would not confide in me. But I had to concede that if she
decided to keep a liaison secret from me, she could. She was wise
enough and discreet enough to hide it well.

"I will have to find this Frenchman and
squeeze the truth from him," I said.

We had reached the outer limits of London,
rolling fields giving way to houses with gardens and increased
traffic of drays and wagons and carriages.

"Do you think your Mr. Pomeroy will have
found him by now?" Grenville asked as we closed in behind a chaise
and four.

"Pomeroy is nothing if not thorough.
However, if he has not, then I know a gentleman who will definitely
be able to put his hands on the Frenchman."

Grenville glanced sideways at me. "You mean
Mr. Denis."

I nodded once. "I do."

James Denis was a man who found things, and
people, for others for an exorbitant price. The methods with which
he found them were not always legal--stealing artwork and other
valuables was in his line as well as punishing those who disobeyed
him with death.

He and I had lived in an uneasy truce since
the day a year or so ago when he'd had me kidnapped and beaten to
teach me manners. The event had, in fact,
not
taught me
manners, but we'd each learned exactly how far we could push the
other.

Earlier this spring, I had found the culprit
who'd murdered one of his lackeys, and Denis had expressed
gratitude. In return, he'd told me where in France my wife lived,
leaving it up to me whether I sent for her or sought her out or
left her alone. I was still a bit annoyed with him over his
dealings in the affair of Lady Clifford's necklace, but I couldn't
say I'd been surprised.

Grenville never approved of my visiting
Denis. He knew of my uncertain temper and was convinced that one
day I would go too far and induce Denis to rid himself of a
troublesome captain once and for all. Grenville was likely
right.

"He has told me he will own me outright," I
said. "If so, I might as well make use of him."

"The more favors he does you, the more
favors he can call in," Grenville said.

"It has gone far beyond that already." James
Denis had said he would snare me, and I already felt that web
closing about me.

Grenville drove me all the way to Grimpen
Lane. Bartholomew joined me there, descending from Grenville's
coach and making his determined way toward the bake shop and my
rooms, as though resolute that I'd not be assaulted today.

"Come to the theatre tonight," Grenville
said as he gathered his reins. "My box at Covent Garden."

I felt tired, wanting to stretch and yawn.
"I'm not certain I'm in the mood for frivolity. Funerals tend to
dampen my spirits."

"Come anyway. I have invited Mr. Bennington
and Basil Stokes. I will introduce you, and you can interrogate
them."

"That puts a different complexion on
things." I tipped my hat. "Thank you. I will attend."

Grenville told me goodbye, turned his
phaeton in a complicated move, and signaled his team on.

Bartholomew had already lit a fire by the
time I entered my rooms. Mrs. Beltan brought me my post and some
coffee. She'd been quite distressed at the attack on me, but she
informed me that no suspicious person had come near the place while
I'd been gone. She'd kept watch specially.

Certainly, nothing had been disturbed. I
thanked her, read my post, and wrote my letters for the day. Sir
Montague Harris had written that Brandon's trial was scheduled for
the fourteenth of the month, one week from now. I gritted my teeth.
I needed to find firm information that would acquit Brandon, and
soon.

Sir Montague had also fixed an appointment
to meet me the next day. I looked forward to discussing things with
him, because too many questions swam in my head. I wrote a note
accepting the appointment, then I wrote to James Denis asking if he
knew anything of my Frenchman, and if not, could he find out?

Denis had an uncanny way of being aware of
everything involving me, so I would not be surprised if he already
knew the Frenchman's name, where he came from, and whether he
enjoyed fishing in the Seine.

I posted the letters, ate the bread and
butter that Bartholomew had procured for me, and took a hackney to
Newgate prison.

Brandon was not best pleased to see me. His
cheekbones looked sunken, and untidy bristles covered his chin.

"What do you want?" he growled as I was
shown in.

"To save your hide," I answered. "Sit down
and let me ask you questions."

He would not sit. Brandon stood stiffly in
the center of the room, ever the officer, and eyed me with chill
dislike. "If you have come to further impugn Mrs. Harper, you may
leave at once."

I dragged a chair in front of the meager
fire and sat. If he wanted to freeze in the center of the chamber,
that was his own business. "I have met Mrs. Harper. I believe you
are both fools."

His eyes widened. "You met her?"

"Yes. She was attempting to search Turner's
rooms for whatever letter he had of yours and hers. I am trying to
decide how the letter come to be in his possession at all."

"I have no idea," Brandon shot back.

His indignation was so prompt and so adamant
that I believed him.

"What I wish to know," I continued, "is why
you and Turner entered the anteroom at eleven o'clock and left it
together a few minutes later."

"I told you. I called him out. He
refused."

"No, that was your lie for the
magistrate--you claimed that you resented Turner's intentions to
Mrs. Harper. But we both know that Turner's only interest in Mrs.
Harper was her liaison with you. Did you meet him to fix a time to
exchange money for the letter? Or did you make the exchange
then?"

"I do not need to answer you. You are not a
magistrate or a judge."

"Damn you, but you are obstinate. I am
trying to prove that you did not kill Turner. If you'd already made
the exchange for the letter, then you'd have no reason to kill him.
Your dealing with him would be over."

"It is none of your business what I did in
that room," he said stiffly.

"Very well. Perhaps they will let you weave
the rope for your inevitable hanging, because that is what you are
doing."

"That is preposterous."

"No more preposterous than you taking Turner
aside and driving a knife into his heart."

Brandon looked away.

I grew impatient. "Mrs. Harper believes you
killed him, and you believe Mrs. Harper killed him. You are a fine
pair. You might be pleased to know that she did not kill him when
she found him. A witness saw all she did in that room. While it was
true that she searched Turner's coat for the letter--which she did
not find--she did not murder him."

He started. I saw it dawn on him that he
might be mistaken, that he might be in Newgate for no reason at
all.

Then he rearranged his expression. "None of
this is your business, Lacey. Leave it alone."

"I truly believe that you did go to the
anteroom at eleven to make the exchange," I said. "Turner probably
did not trust you enough to meet you somewhere too privately. You
are a man of uneven temper after all. Mrs. Harper, he might have
handled, but you were a different matter. If he meets you in the
anteroom, and you try to obtain the letter by violence, he can cry
out. People nearby would come to see what was the matter."

"If that is true, then why did he not call
out when he was stabbed?"

"I have thought of that. I believe he
trusted the person who stabbed him. Or did not believe they had the
strength to hurt him. He was not expecting it."

"A woman, then," Brandon said.

"Perhaps. Or a male lover. I have learned
that Turner preferred men to women. That fact might make any of the
gentleman present at the ball a candidate."

Brandon made a face. "Such a thing is too
disgusting to even contemplate."

The unimaginative Colonel Brandon would
never understand or condone such goings-on. I'd felt much the same
until I'd become acquainted with two officers during the war, who'd
always spent the night before battle with each other. We all,
except Brandon, had known but said nothing, and the two in question
fought the more fiercely for each other the next day. When one was
finally killed, the other had sunk into so much grief he'd retired
his commission and returned to England. Those officers had loved as
strongly as any devoted husband and wife, or any man and his
longtime mistress.

I said none of this to Brandon, however.

"That lover might be your savior, sir. But
let us return to your meeting with Turner. How much money did he
want?"

"Five hundred guineas."

My jaw dropped. "Good God." A gentleman
could live for a year on five hundred guineas. Many gentlemen,
indeed, entire families, lived on far less. "That is a princely
sum. You paid it?"

"It is what he asked," Brandon said.

Brandon was wealthy enough to have come up
with the money. I would query his man of business, make him tell me
if Brandon actually did liquidate five hundred guineas.

"You did not have five hundred guineas in
your pocket when you were arrested," I said. "Pomeroy would have
mentioned that. So you must have given it to Turner. In return, he
gave you the letter."

"So you say," Brandon replied, too calm. "I
did not have a letter in my pocket, did I?"

"I know." I stood up and faced him. "So what
did you do with it?"

He met my gaze, his eyes so cold he froze me
through. "I have told you, Lacey, leave it be."

"That letter could save your life."

"You have called me foolish," he said
softly. "But you are the biggest fool of all."

"Help me, God damn you."

"I told you, I do not want your help."
Brandon's jaw tightened. "Now go, before I call the turnkey to
throw you out."