Miss Amelia Leary-alone. The great aunt offered to have her grandniece live with her, but Mrs. Chapman ignored the invitation and continued to live on her own with the strolling players.'
He looked disapproving, but I understood Peaches' reasoning. A young girl, full of life, would rather stay with the people and the freedom she'd known her entire life than return to be a poor relation to family connections who did not approve of her.
'Two years after that,' Mr. Harper continued, 'the great aunt, who had never married herself, died. She had named her sister's children and grandchildren as inheritors of a trust, of which I am the trustee. Mrs. Chapman's mother was the only offspring of the original ill-advised marriage, and because she and her husband had already died, Miss Amelia Leary was the only one left to inherit the trust. And so, upon learning she had inherited the property, Miss Leary decided to come to London. She looked me up, and I explained it all to her.'
'Did not the property go to Chapman when she married him?' I asked. That was usual, unless the trust protected the property very tightly. Most men inherited what their wives had absolutely, and a gentleman could sell a wife's property and squander the money however he wished.
'This trust was quite specific,' Mr. Harper said. 'The property belonged solely to Miss Amelia Leary and the heirs she named, and the trust ensured that her husband could not touch it. The great aunt had no liking for men and feared the property going to, as she called them, 'lowly actors.' Now, as Mrs. Chapman had no offspring before she died, the trust reverts to the original estate, and we trace the inheritance from there. So far, I have had no luck.'
'What was this property?' Sir Montague asked him.
'A house in London,' Mr. Harper replied in his thin voice. 'Number 12, St. Charles Row.'
'Well, this is a turn up,' Thompson said.
The three of us had adjourned to a coffeehouse, where Sir Montague partook of beefsteak, and Thompson and I sipped rather over-boiled coffee.
We were all a bit startled by the revelation. But the fact that Peaches owned The Glass House herself explained why she'd not needed Lord Barbury to supply her with one. It also explained why she'd kept a room there after her marriage. It was a place of her own, a retreat from her unhappy life with Chapman.
A trust meant that although Peaches had technically inherited number 12, St. Charles Row, she could not sell it. But she could certainly hire it out and enjoy the income from it. The house had indeed been hired, Mr. Harper had gone on to tell us, to-no surprise to any of us-Kensington.
There was no doubt that the house made much money, and Peaches would have reaped some of the profit. The riches she'd looked for upon first journeying to London had come to her, although perhaps not as she'd anticipated.
'Well, her husband wouldn't have killed her for the house,' Thompson said. He took a sip of coffee. 'He doesn't get it. Think he's telling the truth about Inglethorpe?'
'Possibly,' Sir Montague said. 'Or at least what he's convinced himself is the truth.'
'He still cannot explain why Inglethorpe had taken off half his clothes,' I mentioned. 'Nor why he had mud on his shoes.'
Both men looked at me without much enthusiasm. They had found and arrested a murderer; they did not much care about the victim's eccentricities.
'What about poor Lord Barbury?' I continued. 'Have you any idea who might have killed him?'
'Himself,' Thompson said. 'You say that his health had deteriorated greatly after Mrs. Chapman's death. Due to either excessive grief or excessive remorse, perhaps.'
I studied my coffee. 'I do not think he did it himself. I saw the wound that killed him. It was too far to the back of his head.' I lifted my hand and tapped myself behind the ear. 'It is more usual for a man to shoot himself through the temple, or through the mouth.'
I had seen more than one corpse of a suicide in the Army; once, of a man in my own company. Most of us in the Army had been very stoic about the fact that every time we rode into battle, we would likely not return. We agreed that death fighting the pesky French was more honorable than death by the infections that regularly swept through the camps. We even joked about it.
But there were those for whom the horrors of war had come as a shock. Some men could not face shooting and killing others and were terrified by the thought of death by bayonet or musket ball. In the quiet hours of dawn, these gentlemen would creep away by themselves and end their lives quickly with a bullet in the head, as I described.
No one stopped them. A man had to find honor where he could. We simply buried them, sent their effects back to their families, and marched on.
I'd always thought it a waste of life that these good officers and men were not put to use elsewhere than the front. But the pigheaded fear of cowardice, drummed into us since birth, made men prefer death at their own hands to being made a headquarters aide because they could not face bullets.
The head wounds I had seen on these men were usually in the temple, above the ear, or through the back of the throat. None had been behind the ear, where the man would have to pull his arm back at a slightly uncomfortable angle.
'Perhaps,' Sir Montague agreed. 'What we need is a witness or more evidence. Pomeroy continues to tramp through the neighborhood, but so far, no one admits they saw him die.'
'I don't think Chapman killed him,' I continued. 'He was astonished when I told him Lord Barbury had been his wife's lover. He'd been fixed on Inglethorpe.'
'Why would someone other than Chapman kill Lord Barbury, in any case?' Thompson asked. 'Unless Lord Barbury knew something about Mrs. Chapman's death that he hadn't revealed?'
I turned my cup around on the table. 'I have toyed with the idea that Lord Barbury might have been blackmailing the killer, and the killer grew fearful or tired of it. But I do not think so. I would swear Barbury knew nothing of how Mrs. Chapman died.'
'Unless he killed her himself,' Sir Montague suggested. 'Then remorse built up so much that he took a quick way out. Or perhaps after speaking with you and Mr. Grenville, he realized that he could not hide his guilt forever.'
'Lord Barbury was a man of volatile passions,' I said. 'I saw that in him, and in those letters he wrote to Mrs. Chapman. I agree that he could have quarreled with Mrs. Chapman and killed her, perhaps even accidentally. Both of the bedrooms I saw had heavy brass fenders at the fireplaces. If she'd fallen and hit her head, the blow could have killed her. I did check both fenders and found no evidence of blood on either, but they could have been cleaned afterward. The one in the attic was certainly shiny.'
'Well, I shall ask Mr. Kensington about those fenders, when I have him up before me,' Sir Montague said, sounding happy. 'I intend to arrest him before the week is out. I will need your testimony and that of the little girl, Lacey, but I will get him.'
'What of Lady Jane?' I asked. I had explained about her, and what Denis had told me, on our way to see Mr. Harper.
'I've heard of her,' Sir Montague said. 'So far, no one has been able to fasten anything illegal to her, but that is because she's slippery, not innocent.' He thought a moment. 'Can Mr. Denis set us an appointment with this Lady Jane?'
'He and Lady Jane are fierce rivals,' I said. 'I doubt she'd let him pin her down.'
'Mr. Denis might find it in his best interest to keep a magistrate happy,' Sir Montague said, smiling.
'Unfortunately, that may not sway him.'
'No harm in asking,' Sir Montague said with good cheer. 'Or we can get to her through her subordinate, although I have the feeling that when we arrest Kensington, she, the larger fish, will slip the net. I would like to do this the easy way, Captain. I do not have the manpower to scour the city for her.'
I gave him a nod and promised to send word to Denis, though I was not optimistic.
Sir Montague grunted as he climbed to his feet. 'I will have Mr. Harper keep me informed of who will inherit the house. I hope this person, whoever it might be, is horrified to learn it is being used as a bawdy house and closes it. And if he is of mercenary disposition and wishes the income from it, I will have a little talk with him.'
Sir Montague looked buoyed. He had realized today that The Glass House's lifespan would be even shorter than he'd hoped.
