the walking stick, nor do I believe that either of them returned and killed Mr. Inglethorpe. A housebreaker surprised Mr. Inglethorpe, that is all. That must have been what happened.'
She'd been hesitant a few minutes ago; she was adamant now. If Mrs. Danbury were hiding something from me, she took refuge in her anger.
I decided it time to change the subject. 'I would like to speak to Jean, if I may,' I said. 'I need to ask her a few more questions about Mrs. Chapman.'
Mrs. Danbury's color remained high, but she seemed relieved that I'd stopped speculating on Inglethorpe's murder. 'I suppose it can do no harm,' she said. 'Jean seems a resilient child, not hysterical, but please do not upset her.'
She glared at me to remind me that I'd already upset her. I promised to not tire the girl, and Mrs. Danbury summoned the footman and bade him fetch Jean from below stairs.
When Jean joined us, she was dressed in a sensible garment. With the kohl and rouge gone from her face, she looked like what she was, a child. She was a working-class girl, with stubby fingers and a child's flyaway hair barely contained in a tail tied with a ribbon.
She did not curtsey, but gave a little bow to me and Mrs. Danbury. Jean regarded me warily, perhaps wondering whether I'd come to snatch her away again, but she answered my request to tell me more about Peaches readily enough.
'She wasn't a bad sort,' Jean said. 'She let me sleep in her room sometimes. I could lock the door. Only she had the key.'
I regarded her in surprise. 'Mr. Kensington did not have one?'
'No. He never came in there. She'd never let him have a key.'
'Mr. Kensington opened that door for me the night I rescued you,' I said. 'He had a key then.' Which he could have stolen from Peaches if he'd murdered her, or found it left behind after her death.
'Oh, he had the key to the chamber on the first floor,' Jean said, as though she thought me a simpleton. 'But not to her room in the attics.'
'In the attics?'
Bloody hell. No wonder the chamber Kensington had let us into had been impersonal. No wonder he'd not been worried that we'd searched it. He'd known there would be nothing for us to find, I chafed that I'd so readily believed him, damn the man. He must have laughed to himself about how easily he'd tricked us.
'Yes,' Jean said. 'She kept all her things up there, things she didn’t want Mr. Kensington to see. He and Peaches shouted at each other a great deal about it. And other things.'
Kensington had implied he'd allowed Peaches to take refuge at The Glass House out of sympathy and old friendship. 'What other things would they shout about?' I asked.
'He would say that he knew her before she became high and mighty, and she would say she'd always been beyond his reach. She laughed at him.'
'Did he ever try to hurt her, or threaten to?'
'No. He seemed almost afraid of her, sometimes.'
I thought of Kensington's mean, dark eyes and his oily smile. It pleased me that he had not held Peaches in thrall.
'Can you remember anything that happened on Monday, anything at all before Peaches went away, that might be a little out of the ordinary?'
Jean thought, but she shook her head. 'When Peaches came in that day I heard Mr. Kensington start to shout at her, but she went on upstairs and slammed the door. Later, I saw her go down through the kitchen. She was smiling.'
'Mr. Kensington did not go with her?'
'I didn't see him.'
So I was back to Peaches disappearing from The Glass House and turning up later in the Thames.
'Did she speak to anyone else? Perhaps tell them where she was going?'
Jean shook her head. 'I didn't see.'
Not her fault. I gave her a nod. 'Thank you,' I said. 'You have been very helpful.'
'Yes, sir,' she said. She'd answered without hesitation but without much enthusiasm either. No anger, sorrow, fear. She was like a mongrel dog eating the food given it without gratitude toward the feeder.
I wanted to reassure her. 'You're safe here, Jean. The Derwents will look after you.'
'Yes, sir.' She sounded doubtful.
I had nothing else to add. She would have to learn trust; it could not be forced, well I knew.
Mrs. Danbury announced she'd take Jean up to bed, effectively cutting short the interview and indicating she wanted me to go. I issued my goodnights to her and the little girl and again expressed my best wishes for Lady Derwent.
Mrs. Danbury condescended to give me a half-smile as I departed. Perhaps my gentle treatment of and concern for Jean had redeemed me in her eyes a small amount, at least.
I returned home and spent a restless night. This day I had enraged Louisa, upset Mrs. Danbury, discovered I'd been duped by Kensington, and nearly been accused of murder by Pomeroy. Not the best day of my life, by any means.
I woke with a headache and received a note from Pomeroy that the inquest for Inglethorpe would be held that morning, in Dover Street, at eleven o'clock.
Before I departed for it, I penned Louisa an apology for my behavior at her house the night before. I knew I should not have let Brandon provoke me. I seemed to forever cause pain to the one woman I least wished to.
I sent the letter in care of Lady Aline Carrington, Louisa's dearest friend. I disliked delivering it in this roundabout fashion, but I did not want Brandon to put the note on the fire the moment he recognized my handwriting. Louisa would at least do me the courtesy of reading it, even if she too burnt it afterward.
It was just eleven when I slid inside the dim public house on Dover Street and took a seat near the back wall. The murder had been committed in the parish of St. George's and so the inquest was held there as well. The room was warm and stuffy, the smell of steaming wool and damp hair pomade just covering the odor of stale cabbage. My swordstick, still covered with dried blood, lay naked on a table before the coroner.
The coroner called the proceedings to order. Sir Montague Harris had chosen to attend, and the coroner had called in a doctor, rather unnecessarily, I thought, because Inglethorpe had obviously died of the stab wound, and the butler could fix the time of death within half an hour.
The doctor, a thin, spidery man with pomaded black hair, confirmed that because of the warmth of the body and the stickiness of the blood when he'd been found, that Inglethorpe had died not more than thirty minutes before that, in other words, by half-past two yesterday afternoon.
The coroner interviewed the butler who had discovered the body. The man was nervous, wetting his lips and darting his gaze about, but no more uncomfortable than any man being asked such questions might be. He'd seen his master at two o'clock, he'd said, when Inglethorpe had risen from bed and taken a light meal.
The butler had returned to the servants' hall and attended to duties below stairs until he'd gone upstairs again at half-past two. He'd found the front door standing open and closed it, annoyed that the footman had not noticed. Then he'd stepped into the reception room and found his master on the floor.
The butler's lips were gray when he finished, and he walked heavily to his seat.
Pomeroy rose and gave his evidence about being summoned by the Queen's Square magistrate to the scene of the crime, finding Inglethorpe dead, and recognizing the walking stick as belonging to one Captain Lacey. When he finished, and the coroner asked me to rise.
As I took my place before the coroner I spied Bartholomew sitting to the right of the jury and Grenville next to him, his curled-brimmed hat resting on his knee. Grenville caught my eye but sent no acknowledgement.
I identified the swordstick and explained how I had left it behind on Wednesday, when I'd attended a gathering at Inglethorpe's house. The coroner asked what kind of gathering, and I told him of the scientific gas that Inglethorpe had in the bags, which produced an interesting, but temporary euphoria. The coroner nodded, as though he'd heard of such things before.
I explained that I'd returned to Inglethorpe's yesterday-to look for the walking stick, which I could not afford to lose-and had found instead the Runner, Pomeroy, who'd informed me of Inglethorpe's death.
The coroner seemed quite interested in me. He tried to make me tell him that I had arrived at Inglethorpe's
