A Body in Berkeley Square (30 page)

"You should be more careful," Grenville said
to Mrs. Bennington. She flushed but did not look up.

"Aye, that's what I tell her," Grady said.
"One of her creditors, he was threatening her with arrest. And us
being in Italy, what would happen if she was taken by foreign
police? Then this Mr. Worth, he comes backstage one night and says
he'll pay the debts, all of them, free and clear, if only she'll
marry him, in name alone."

"That must have seemed an answer from
heaven," I said.

Mrs. Bennington raised her head. "I was so
relieved, I could not refuse him. I saw no reason
to
refuse
him. He said I could do what I pleased, and he would keep me out of
trouble with the creditors. Why should I not marry him?"

"Because he is a blackguard," Grenville said.
"Did you not sense that?"

"But he offered to help me. I wanted to go to
London to perform, and he enabled me to do so. He has heaps of
money. He was left a grand inheritance."

"He was," I said. "From a relative in
Scotland."

"Yes," Mrs. Bennington answered.

"Did your husband know Mr. Turner on the
Continent?"

Mrs. Bennington looked blank. "I have no
idea."

"Aye, he knew him," Grady said, her face
grim.

I started to ask why the devil she hadn't
mentioned this on my previous visit, but I remembered that Grady
had not been in the room when I'd discussed Turner with Mrs.
Bennington. When I'd spoken to Grady, she'd only wanted to talk
about Grenville's anger at her mistress.

"You saw him?" I asked Grady. "In Italy?"

"Yes," Grady said. "Mr. Turner came to visit
Mr. Bennington when we were in Milan. Talked to him like he wasn't
a stranger, like they'd met before, but Mr. Bennington wasn't best
pleased to see him. Then Mr. Turner went away, and I forgot all
about it."

"A magistrate would be interested in knowing
this," I said. "Why have you said nothing?"

"I didn't think it mattered, and I didn't
want my lady bothered by Bow Street. That's the truth. That Runner,
the one who came to the ball, was a great bully. And my lady had
nothing to do with Turner getting himself killed. Besides, if her
husband's convicted of murder, my lady loses his money. What's to
become of her then?"

Grady looked anguished, but Mrs. Bennington
seemed more resigned. "I have my money from the stage," she said.
"And I have been poor before."

"You will not be again," Grenville said. "I
will see to it."

Both Lady Breckenridge and I looked at him in
surprise. Grenville's face was flushed. "I will take care of you,
Claire," he said. "I offered to before, remember?"

Mrs. Bennington turned to him, eyes wide.
"You frightened me. You said I must divorce my husband. I did not
know what to think."

Neither did I. Grenville and Mrs. Bennington
looked at each other, and the pair of them seemed to forget that
the rest of us were in the room.

"When you are free of Bennington, I will take
care of you," Grenville said. "I told you this, and I promise it. I
should have done so long ago."

I exchanged a glance with Lady Breckenridge.
She raised her brows, and I shook my head slightly, to indicate
that I too did not know what to make of the conversation.

Lady Breckenridge broke in. "Mr. Turner is
dead now. So who can know what he wanted with Bennington? To
blackmail him, presumably, over the fact that Bennington was not
Mr. Bennington. Did Bennington want to leave Italy because of
Turner, or because others also had got wind of his deception? And
why did it matter so much?"

"I plan to ask him," I said. "Where is Mr.
Bennington at present?"

Mrs. Bennington shrugged. "I never notice
where he goes."

"He likes the Majestic Hotel in Piccadilly,"
Grady said. "He doesn't have a club like a proper gentleman."

I took up my walking stick, my usual
restlessness getting the better of me. "If I can get a confession
out of Bennington and have him arrested, that will solve many
problems."

Lady Breckenridge looked alarmed. "He is a
murderer, Gabriel. He killed one man who knew his secrets; why
would he not kill you?"

"Because I have one advantage that Turner did
not--a very large and loud former sergeant who is now a Bow Street
Runner."

"I will come with you," Grenville said. "If
Bennington is guilty, I want to put my hands on him." He looked
angry and dangerous.

"Then shall we adjourn to Piccadilly?" Lady
Breckenridge asked. "In my carriage. I will accompany you,
gentlemen."

"No, you will not," I said immediately. "We
will return you home, and I will go from there."

She gave me a scornful look. "I am not a
fainting flower, Captain. I do not intend to enter a gentlemen's
hotel, but I certainly will not sit home and wait for you to
remember to call on me and tell me what happened, if you bother to
at all."

Grenville seemed uninterested in our
disagreement. "Let us away, Lacey. I am ready to arrest a
murderer."

"I want Pomeroy," I said.

"Very well. We'll fetch him." He swept out of
the room without taking leave of Mrs. Bennington. I bowed to Mrs.
Bennington, but she gazed after Grenville with a mixed expression
of fear and wonder.

Lady Breckenridge and I descended the stairs
together. Grenville paced in the foyer, waiting for us. I held him
back as Lady Breckenridge went out the door to the carriage.

"Do you love her?" I asked in a low voice.
"Mrs. Bennington?"

"What? Of course I do." Grenville's scowl
softened suddenly. "Forgive me, Lacey, I ought to have told you.
But it caught me a resounding blow when I found out, and I have not
yet recovered." He lowered his voice and said, with a little smile,
"Hadn't you guessed? Claire is my daughter."

*** *** ***

We found Mr. Bennington in the sitting room
of the Majestic Hotel in Piccadilly. The hotel itself was not far
from the house where Henry Turner had kept his rooms.

Mr. Bennington sat in an armchair reading the
Times,
his immaculate suit attesting to the exactness of his
valet. He crossed his legs and held the newspaper in carefully
manicured hands.

He glanced up when I walked into the room
alone but betrayed no surprise. "I will be with you in a moment,
Captain," he said. "I am reading a fascinating story about a
gentleman's journey through the wilds of Prussia. I must ask, if he
complains of not having the comforts of London in the middle of
Germany, why did he leave England in the first place?"

"I could not say," I said.

He hummed a little tune in his throat as he
read on, then he finally laid the paper aside. "Sit down, Captain.
We might as well be civilized. You have found me out, have you? I
wondered how long it would take you. People talk about your
cleverness, but I believe you are not as clever as your reputation
paints you."

I did take a seat, but one out of his reach.
We were the only ones in the sitting room, and the windows were
muffled with drapes against the night. The room was quiet and
genteel, with a gilded clock ticking on the mantelpiece and
decanters of wine and brandy resting on tables for the guests'
convenience.

Grenville and Pomeroy waited in the next room
for me to call them in. I wished I could have had time to speak to
Grenville a bit more after he made his astounding statement about
Mrs. Bennington, but we'd had no moments of privacy. His
revelation, however, explained some of his odd behavior--he was a
worried father, not a jealous lover.

"In this instance, I was distracted by
Colonel Brandon," I said to Bennington. "The knife pointed too much
to him, and he did not help by being stubbornly vague with both me
and the magistrate."

"He is a stubborn gentleman," Bennington said
with a smile. "I was pleased, quite pleased, actually, to discover
that I was not the only person that horrible young man tried to
blackmail. I did Colonel Brandon a favor."

"By landing him in Newgate?" I asked, my
temper rising.

"That was unfortunate, I agree. But I saved
him from whatever dire revelation with which Turner threatened
him."

"You do not know what that dire revelation
was?"

"No, nor did I care. My dear Lacey, I cared
only that Turner knew that I should not have enjoyed my glorious
inheritance over the years."

"No?" I asked, speculations coming together.
"An inheritance from a fourth cousin, probably one you would
rarely, if ever, meet, especially when he lived in Scotland and you
stayed on the Continent. His family and friends might not have seen
the man's heir for decades, if they'd ever seen him at all. Which
means they might not realize that you weren't his fourth cousin
after all."

"Excellent, Captain." Bennington applauded me
softly. "A man can steal an inheritance, you know, if he is very
clever and very lucky. And I was both. Mr. Worth, the true heir,
had moved to the German states as a lad of ten and hadn't returned
to England in forty years. He'd never met his so-wealthy distant
cousin from Scotland. I convinced the Scottish solicitors and
Worth's London man of business that
I
was Mr. Worth--made
easier because I knew that my friend Worth was dead. Fell down a
mountain in Bavaria, poor fellow. He was all alone, with no one to
know but me."

"Then you stayed in Italy," I finished for
him, "far from people who'd known the true Mr. Worth--or knew you
well, for that matter. But then, Henry Turner discovered your
secret."

Bennington watched me with an amused
expression. "Ah, Captain, I'd grown used to my comfortable means. I
could do whatever I pleased, and living on the Continent suited me
fine. Why the devil should I lose it all because Henry Turner could
not mind his own business?"

"How did he know that you were not the true
Mr. Worth?" I asked.

"My bad luck. Mr. Turner apparently had met
someone who'd known Worth in Germany, and then he met me. I'd never
kept it entirely secret that I'd changed my name when I'd married
Claire--a blind is better when you pretend it is of no importance.
But Turner was too shrewd for his own good, and he realized after a
time that the George Worth his acquaintance had spoken of and I
were entirely different men. I suppose then Henry decided to dig
around and find out what he could about me. He was a careful
gambler--was good at doing his research so he'd more likely win. He
took me aside and explained this to me one day while I was
strolling about Milan for my health, Turner smiling in a rather
nasty way. He liked money, so it was quite easy to press a bank
draft into his hand and make him leave me alone."

"But he returned?"

"Oh, yes. I made a mistake believing that
giving him money would see the end of it. I'd never dealt with a
blackmailer before, you see, and I thought I had been so careful to
cover my tracks."

"But Turner persisted."

"Yes, he was quite obnoxious. He told me he
planned to settle on the Continent, and in fact was going to stay
with a friend for a time in Paris. But he'd return to Milan and
suggested that we would meet again. I could not have that. By this
time, my wife was famous enough that the London theatres were
clamoring to have her. I had no wish to return to England, but I
reasoned that we could go while Turner was in Paris. I thought, you
see, that if it proved too difficult and too expensive for Turner
to pursue me, I'd be rid of the fellow. He'd been so sincere in his
declaration that he'd live on the Continent for good."

"But Turner came to London."

Bennington grimaced. "Yes, to my misfortune.
I'd thought myself safe at last, and then he turns up on my
doorstep, smiling and demanding more money. I knew that if he told
anyone my secret, I was finished."

"So you killed him."

"I had no choice. I feared to call him out,
because if I did, he'd likely spread the tale of why we had the
appointment, and second . . ." He smiled. "Henry Turner was young
and robust, and I am not as steady of hand as I once was. He'd have
potted me good."

"You would have died with honor," I said.

He laughed. "Dear me, I have no honor. Honor
is for cavalry captains. If I had honor, I'd not have pushed my
friend Mr. Worth down the mountain after I learned he'd just come
in to a large inheritance. His face was completely smashed, and
there we were, in a foreign country, no one there knowing which of
us was which. The old me was buried, and a new George Worth wrote
to the solicitors saying he was moving on to Italy and to send the
funds there. I knew it would be a bit risky pretending to be
someone else, but then I met Claire." His look turned beatific. "I
thought all the gods were smiling on me."

"Because you could marry her and hide in her
shadow," I asked. "You might not make it a deep secret that you'd
changed your name to hers, but people would assume it was because
you generously wanted her to continue to be known by her stage
name. In time, people would forget about the name
Worth,
and
no longer associate it with you. Let alone what your real name
was."

"Precisely, Captain. It was easy to make
Claire marry me. She had hordes of young men dancing attendance on
her, but I had one thing she could not resist. Money. I promised to
pay her gambling debts if she'd do me the honor of becoming my
wife. I have a sad affliction and cannot bother her in the carnal
way, which I assure you she does not mind. And I do not mind much
myself. The bodily humors are an inconvenience and interfere with
my peace and quiet. Claire never pretended that she'd married me
for anything but my funds, and I had no intention of being besotted
with my own wife. The arrangement suited us admirably. When Turner
came along to destroy that . . ." He waved his hand, wiping away
Mr. Turner.