'Lady Jane can simply open another house,' I pointed out.
'Not if I have anything to say about it.' Sir Montague stuck out his hand. 'You have been of great help, Captain.'
'I have done very little,' I said, as we shook on it.
'Nonsense. You got yourself into The Glass House where my patrollers could not go, you found the connection between Mrs. Chapman, Lord Barbury, and The Glass House, you got Chapman to confess to the murder of Inglethorpe. Impressive work to this plodding magistrate.'
'It comes from poking my nose where it does not belong.'
'Yes, indeed.' Sir Montague clapped me on the shoulder. 'Keep it up, there's a good fellow.'
Chapter Fifteen
Much happened that afternoon. When I returned home, I wrote to James Denis, telling him that Sir Montague wished to speak to Lady Jane, and it would please Sir Montague if Denis would help us find and meet with her. I doubted Denis would be impressed, but I sent the letter anyway.
I had two missives waiting for me at the bakeshop, one from Lady Breckenridge asking me to join her in her box at Covent Garden Theatre that night. The other was from Grenville who had learned of Barbury's death and was anxious to discuss it with me. I wrote my acceptance to Lady Breckenridge then journeyed with Bartholomew back across the metropolis, to be greeted by the impatient Grenville and invited to partake of yet another meal.
I ate savory chicken pastries with succulent wine sauce while I told Grenville all that had happened. He was as angry as I at Lord Barbury's death and expressed a wish to pin it on Kensington.
'I dislike Kensington,' I said as I finished off the excellent dish. 'He is manipulative and a liar. But he also strikes me as a coward. I can believe him killing Peaches, but Lord Barbury was large and strong, and Kensington is a small man.'
'Lord Barbury was shot,' Grenville pointed out.
'The gun was pressed against his head. The powder burns around the wound attest to that. I cannot imagine Lord Barbury standing still and letting Kensington shoot him. If he'd have seen Kensington coming at him with a pistol, he would have tried to fight him.'
'Then he didn't see the pistol,' Grenville suggested.
'But Barbury knew Kensington. He wouldn't have trusted the man for a moment. I too want Kensington to be guilty, but I am not certain he is. At least not of killing Lord Barbury.'
'And Thompson is still not certain how Peaches got herself to Middle Temple Gardens?'
'And who would have noticed anyone scuttling down the streets on that afternoon?' I asked. 'At just after four that day, it was raining and dark and cold. Anyone walking would have been heavily bundled against the weather-everyone looks like everyone else in such a circumstance, especially in the dark. Most people were indoors seeking warmth. Did the killer count on that, or did circumstance work in his favor?'
'Begging your pardon, sir,' Bartholomew said from where he stood against the wall. 'But I've thought of something.' He and Matthias had taken up stations on either side of the room, waiting to serve us. It was not a footman's place to speak to his master or guest while they served-servants were supposed to be invisible. Not in Grenville's house, however, where he solicited opinions of his staff, saying he employed them for their brains as well as their service.
Bartholomew approached the table, while his brother topped off our glasses with hock. 'Seems to me that we are all thinking that since poor Mrs. Chapman ended up in the river she was tossed from the banks. But what if she was in a boat already? Rowed up to the Temple and heaved over the side? Or, since she fetched up under Blackfriar's Bridge, why not put in the river right there? The murderer might figure she'd wash far away downstream before anyone found her. His bad luck she stuck under the bridge.'
He had a point. Boatmen and others did go up and down the river all the time, scavenging for articles that they could sell or keep. They could be paid to transport people, if you wanted to share a boat with a smelly, ragged man and his family.
I remembered standing on the Temple steps, reflecting how the river used to be the main artery of travel in days gone by. Two hundred years ago, men had rarely moved about the city on horseback or foot or in any kind of conveyance. With the river handy, they'd had no need to.
'A long way to row from The Glass House to the Temple Gardens,' Grenville said. 'Upstream.'
'Maybe, sir, he was afraid that if Mr. Thompson figured out she went in by London Bridge or below that, he'd connect her more easily with The Glass House,' Bartholomew said. 'If she went in by Middle Temple, she'd be more connected to her husband. Maybe The Glass House would never be mentioned.'
'And wouldn't have been,' Matthias added, putting the stopper in the decanter and licking a bit of spilled hock from his thumb, 'if the murderer had noticed her wearing his lordship's ring and took it from her.'
'That would not have hidden things for long,' Grenville said. 'Lady Breckenridge, for example, knew that Mrs. Chapman was Barbury's mistress. Barbury would have been questioned eventually, and the connection to The Glass House revealed.'
Bartholomew shrugged. 'Maybe the murderer didn't think of that. He was panicked and hauled off her corpse, supposing everyone would think her husband had done her in. Husbands usually do. Or wives their husbands.'
I ignored this optimistic view of marriage and drank deeply of hock. 'It is an interesting theory,' I said. 'But how much time would it take to go upstream from London Bridge to Blackfriar's Bridge in a boat? Peaches died at about half-past four. She was in the river a few hours before she was found at eight o'clock. Does the time fit?'
'One way of finding out, I suppose,' Bartholomew said.
Grenville looked at the faces of his two eager footman, glanced back at his wine, and groaned. 'Oh, no. Why do I think I know what you're going to say?'
I suppressed a smile. 'It is a possibility,' I said. 'But I hate to send Thompson questioning all the boatmen up and down the river if it proves to be a false one.'
Grenville looked pained, then he sighed. 'Oh, very well. I will ask Gautier to prepare a suit appropriate for riding in a fisherman's boat.'
I doubted the wisdom of Bartholomew's plan once we were out on the water. It was not raining, and the clouds had cleared a bit, but the wind was sharp. It was just a mile between Blackfriar's Bridge and London Bridge, but the current was strong and the boat full.
The boatman we hired seemed oblivious to the cold and the wind. He took one look at the gold guineas Grenville offered him and shuffled us into his boat. His wife stood on the bank, hands on hips, and watched while her husband and son pushed us off.
The boatman bent his back to the oars, while Grenville sat in the bows, watch in hand. The man's son, a spindly lad of twelve years, manned the tiller. The river was dense with traffic, boats scuttling this way and that, fishermen hauling nets in and out, the occasional large vessel moving silently upriver, carrying goods to the upper Thames or to the narrow barges that would traverse the canals.
The boatman and his son skittered around and out of the way of other craft with the ease of long experience, but still the going was slow. Matthias had professed an aversion to boats and had remained with Grenville's coach near London Bridge. Halfway along our journey, I, hunkering into my coat, envied Matthias. No doubt he'd found a warm tavern or a corner out of the wind where he could play dice and swap gossip with the coachman.
The smell from the river was not nice. I could not help thinking of the wide open meadows of Spain and Portugal, warm and sweet under the summer sun. I thought of sleepy towns with brick plazas and people sauntering about their business in no hurry. Those places had been bright and warm and beautiful, a sharp contrast to the gray of London.
After a time, the arches of Blackfriar's Bridge drew near. We passed the place where the waterman had fished Peaches' body from the river and so on under the shadow of the bridge. The smell grew intense. Refuse clung to the stones and pilings under the bridge, and rats swarmed everywhere.
'Take you in here?' the boatman asked, the first words he'd spoken since we'd entered the boat.
