The Edge of Desire

Christian grimaced. “Indeed. Once we eliminate them…at present the field is empty.”

“Which is going to make it doubly hard to argue the Vaux’s combined innocence.”

Christian nodded and stood. “I’ll look into Randall and his circumstances, and inquire about any lover Letitia may have. But first I’ve an appointment with Pringle-I asked him to take a look at Randall’s body.”

“An excellent idea. Meanwhile I”-Tristan rose, too-“will scout through the clubs for more pertinent information on Justin Vaux-whether anyone knows of any reason he might have headed to Dover, or if, as we suspect, he was merely blazing a trail for us to waste time following.”

Christian met Pringle in an anteroom off the police morgue.

While the dapper little surgeon washed his hands, he happily recited a list of Randall’s injuries. “Those to the face are the most severe, of course-extremely heavy blows with the poker. And yes, before you ask, it was Randall’s poker that was the sole weapon. No hint of any other blunt instrument coming into play.”

Picking up a waiting towel, Pringle turned to look at Christian. “What was most interesting, however, was that he wasn’t killed by the blows to the face and the sides of his head.” Pringle grinned at Christian’s look of surprise. “Indeed. The gentleman was killed with one lucky blow to the back of his head.” Raising a hand, now clean, Pringle indicated the base of his skull.

Christian frowned. “Why a ‘lucky’ blow?”

“Because it was delivered with far less force than the blows to the face. In many men, it wouldn’t have killed them. Randall had a thin skull, as it happened, so it did for him. Regardless, the killing stroke-administered first-was weak and definitely struck from behind. All the rest-the blows to the face and sides of the head-came later.”

Disappointment settled in Christian’s gut. “So in your opinion, a woman could have delivered the blow that killed Randall?”

Unaware of the importance of the question-that the chance to eliminate a female as the murderer was what had prompted Christian to ask him to examine Randall, and then pull strings, using his rank to arrange it-Pringle grinned. “Indubitably. Any reasonably tall woman could have done it-I say tall so the angle of strike fits.”

Letitia was definitely tall.

Christian fell silent, digesting the news.

But Pringle hadn’t finished. “What, however, in my humble opinion, a woman couldn’t have done was deliver the blows that came later.”

Christian refixed his attention on the surgeon. “You’re sure?”

Pringle pursed his lips, weighing the question, then nodded. “Perhaps a strong woman from the circus might have, but any normal woman simply would not have been able to impart such force, even with him laid out on his back and her standing over him. Whoever struck those after-death blows was a male-a grown man. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

Christian inwardly grimaced at the scenario taking shape in his mind. “How long after death?”

Again Pringle pursed his lips. This time he took longer before he answered. “My best estimate-and I stress it’s only an estimate, this is an inexact science after all-would be at least fifteen minutes after death. Possibly as many as thirty, but not much longer. The injuries caused by the heavy blows were bloody-there was definitely some blood, but in none of the injuries, nor in the relevant reports, can I find sufficient blood to suggest the man’s heart was still pumping. It wasn’t. He was already dead, and from what else I saw on the corpse, for at least a little time.”

“So it looks like he was first struck down when he was facing…the desk?”

Pringle considered, then nodded. “Again I’m going by the reports, but there wasn’t any indication he’d been moved other than being turned over, which of course he was. And yes, with the knowledge that he was first struck from behind, not from the front as was assumed, he was indeed facing the desk, not the hearth.”

Randall had been facing away from the person who had shared a drink with him. The person who’d sat in the other armchair.

Christian tucked the information away and refocused on Pringle. “Do you have any insight into why anyone would deliver those blows to the head and face of an already dead man?”

Pringle nodded. “Indeed I do. A guess, of course, but I believe it bears examining.” Laying aside the towel, he reached for his coat. “Those later blows were extremely deliberate, struck with concerted, focused force. Any notion they were the product of some frenzied attack is purest fancy. No. Those blows were administered, I believe, to achieve precisely what had been achieved before you called me in. The police doctor didn’t look closely enough- he assumed that the blows to the face and sides of the head killed Randall, and that, as I said, would exclude any woman as a suspect.

“I believe,” Pringle caught Christian’s eyes, “that the postmortem blows were administered with the sole objective of hiding-disguising, if you will-that a female could, in fact, have been the murderer.”

Christian nodded; the scenario in his head had solidified.

“Just as well you called me in when you did,” Pringle went on, shrugging into his coat. “If I hadn’t got here this morning, it would have been too late. They’re releasing the body to the undertakers as we speak-he’ll be buried this afternoon.”

Christian already knew about the funeral; he nodded again. “Thank you.” He waited until Pringle settled his coat, then shook his hand and left him to make his report to the police.

Christian paused on the steps outside the dismal gray building. The raucous sounds of the bustling city surrounded him but made little impact on his senses. His mind was focused on what he was increasingly sure had happened in South Audley Street four nights previously. Justin Vaux had administered those dreadful blows to his already dead brother-in-law’s face, and then fled, leaving a trail any child could follow, all to draw attention from, to protect, the person Justin believed had killed Randall.

Letitia.

Christian walked back to his house in Grosvenor Square, using the journey to turn Pringle’s findings and his deductions over in his mind; with every step, every minute thus spent, he only grew more convinced that his conclusion was correct. Justin had acted to protect Letitia.

Why, as ever, was what he didn’t know.

Regardless of Pringle’s assertion that a tallish woman could have killed Randall, Christian knew, with the same absolute, unshakable conviction he’d felt from the first, that Letitia hadn’t delivered that killing blow.

Who had-for if his scenario was correct it couldn’t have been Justin-was the other major question he’d yet to address.

Reaching the steps leading to his front door, he started up, then paused. An instant ticked by, then he turned and looked across the square at the house directly opposite.

He considered the sight for a further minute before, straightening, squaring his shoulders, he went down the steps, crossed the street, and followed the path through the park filling the square, eventually reaching his senior paternal aunt’s door.

He knocked, and was admitted-with some surprise-by her ladyship’s butler, Meadows, who informed him their ladyships-Lady Cordelia Foster, Countess of Canterbury, and her sister, Lady Ermina Fowler, Viscountess Fowler-had just sat down to luncheon in the smaller dining parlor.

Girding his loins, he allowed Meadows to show him in.

“Christian, dear boy!” Seated at the end of the smaller table-still long enough to seat twelve-Cordelia waved him to her. A still handsome woman now in her late fifties, she was surprisingly energetic and remained a force to be reckoned with among the ton-even with the improbably blond curls that framed her face.

He obliged, crossing to her chair and placing a dutiful kiss on the cheek she offered, then circled her to perform the same greeting with the sweeter tempered Ermina, a milder version of Cordelia but no less observant.

“Come and sit!” Cordelia waved imperiously to the chair on her left. Meadows was already setting a place there. “As you’re here and we’re lunching, you can lunch, too.”

Although he hadn’t intended to, he was happy enough to fall in with her wishes; Cordelia’s chefs were invariably excellent, although they never lasted long.

He sat, then eyed the dishes the footmen Meadows waved in placed before them. “You’re new chef is Austrian.”

“Clever boy! Yes, indeed, Frederick is my new find. Quite a novel craze, Austrian dishes. They say Wellington and the others brought back the taste after the Congress of Vienna. The congress was a complete failure, of course,