Ashley Gardner - A Body in Berkeley Square

"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.