Ashley Gardner - A Body in Berkeley Square

Brandon shot a guilty look at my walking stick. "I hurt you."

"I know. And I haven't forgiven you for that, believe me. But you were angry then-you thought I'd taken Louisa from you, the woman you love more than your own life. You feared that Louisa would leave you for me, even after you retracted your plan to divorce her. You would have deserved it if she had, but Louisa loves you. The pair of you are so romantic, you make me weep. I never bedded your wife, sir. Never. She never would have done such a thing."

"But you would have," he said sullenly.

"Of course. On an instant. Louisa has always been special to me. If she had wanted to give herself to me in that way, I would have taken what she offered and felt privileged to receive it. But she never offered, it never happened, and it never will."

Brandon glared at me with his old fire. "Such words do not make me disposed to trust you."

"You might be a complete idiot concerning your wife, but it is also true that I owe you my life. All of it." I gave him a firm look. "And so I will do my damndest to keep you safe."

I took the document from my pocket and held it up for him to see. I'd read it in Louisa's sitting room and nearly groaned in dismay. In Brandon's handwriting, in French, the letter told Colonel Naveau of Mrs. Harper's husband's death and explained that there would be no more information from that source. The letter also included a copy of a dispatch that Major Harper had set aside for Naveau.

"This is what everything has been about," I said. "Good God, sir. What possessed you? The chance to convince Mrs. Harper to marry you and bear your children? Was that truly a reason to betray your own men to the French? Others might have done so, but I never in a thousand years dreamed you would."

Brandon ignored my tirade, his gaze on the paper. "Where did you get that?"

"Louisa gave it to me after she'd found where you'd hidden it in the Gillises' house."

"I told Louisa expressly not to show it to you."

"Why not? What did you fear I'd do? Give it back to Naveau? I am, in fact, supposed to do that very thing, on the orders of James Denis."

Brandon whitened. "I will never let you. I will kill you first."

"Your faith in me is overwhelming."

I turned on my heel and stalked to the fireplace. There I knelt and thrust the letter into the flames.

"What are you doing?" Brandon demanded.

"Burning the thing. Or would you like to face charges of treason?"

I took up the poker and pushed the papers into the heart of the fire, then I watched while the whole of the thing burned. When any scrap fell, I lifted it with tongs and shoved it back into the flames.

I waited until the papers had burned completely to ashes, then I rose.

Brandon was staring at me as though he could not believe what I'd just done. "James Denis told you to take that to Naveau?"

"Yes," I said tersely.

"What will you tell him?"

He looked a bit worried. I wondered whether Brandon anxious on my behalf or feared that Denis would retaliate against him for not stopping me.

"I will think of something. Why did you not have Louisa destroy it?"

"I hadn't time to examine the papers at the ball. I wanted to be certain Turner had given me the right document. Turner had closed it and the letter into another paper, and I barely had time to break the seal and see that the handwriting was mine before I fled the room. I fancied I'd heard someone coming. Then when I learned that Turner had been killed, I panicked."

The last turn of the labyrinth straightened before me. "That is how your knife got into the anteroom. You pulled it from your pocket to break the seal on the paper, and you left the knife on the writing table in your haste."

Brandon looked uninterested. "Yes, I suppose I must have done. At the time I was not concerned about the damned knife."

"Careless of you. You left a murder weapon handy for the ever resourceful Mr. Bennington." I looked at him in anger. "How could you have written such a letter in the first place? How many men did we lose because you sent Naveau that dispatch?"

Brandon gave me a look of contempt. "None at all. The information was false."

I stopped. "I beg your pardon?"

"I changed the dispatch when I copied it. The information Naveau received was false. I imagine that because of it, a French troop uselessly scoured the hills for hours, looking for English artillery. Meanwhile we were far away." Brandon peered at me. "Did you think I would pass information to the French, Gabriel? What do you take me for?"

I let out my breath. "Do you know, sir, sometimes I could cheerfully strangle you."

"We are already in prison. You would not have far to go."

Brandon rarely tried for levity, so I could not know whether he attempted a joke.

"If the information were false, why the devil were you so anxious to get the document back?"

"Well, I could not prove that it was false, could I? I would have to have the original dispatch, which I assume has been destroyed by now, or Wellington would have to come forward and claim he remembered every detail of the original battle plans. I knew it was false, and Naveau probably realizes it was by this time. A tribunal, on the other hand, especially one influenced by any enemies I made during the war might not choose to believe me. And even if I could prove I'd passed bad information, Mrs. Harper's husband might still be exposed, and she ruined. I hardly liked to risk it."

I stepped close to him. "If anything of this nature happens again-though I likely will strangle you if it does- tell me."

"When I require your help, Gabriel, I will ask for it."

We regarded at each other in silence, face to face, eye to eye.

I turned away. "Be happy that I am both fond of your wife and bad at obeying orders," I said. "You will be released tomorrow. Good night."

The turnkey let me out. I left Brandon in the middle of the room, staring at me with an unreadable expression.

The next morning, in the Bow Street magistrate's house, I told Sir Nathaniel Conant the story of Bennington's confession to me, verified by Grenville and Pomeroy, who had heard it from the next room.

Mr. Bennington, wearing his usual air of faint scorn, stood before Sir Nathaniel and smoothly agreed that yes, he was a murderer twice over. Love of money, he said, was the root of all evil. That was in the New Testament. In Saint Paul's letters to Timothy, if one wanted to be precise.

Sir Nathaniel, looking neither shocked nor amused, committed Mr. Bennington to trial for the murder of Henry Turner. The murder of Mr. Worth, occurring in another country years ago, with no witnesses, would not be tried here, although Sir Nathaniel would keep Bennington's confession to it in mind.

Bennington, however, never did come to trial. He was found dead the morning before he was to stand in the dock, hanging from his bedsheets in his prison room in Newgate. The turnkeys were supposed to prevent such things, but as I had observed, the turnkey for the rooms of the wealthy prisoners was easily bribed. I assumed that the fastidious Mr. Bennington could not bring himself, in the end, to face the public hangman.

In any case, Brandon was released the same day Bennington was taken to Newgate. I do not know what Louisa did when Brandon arrived home, because I was not there to witness it. I left the two of them alone to rejoice, to scold, to decide what they would do from there, together. They did not need me.

The same afternoon Brandon went home, I received the inevitable summons to Denis's Curzon Street house.

I met with Denis and Colonel Naveau in Denis's study, the room in which Denis usually received me. Denis sat behind a desk that was habitually clean-I did not know if he ever used it for anything other than intimidating his visitors.