Excerpt
from The Hanover Square Affair...
I
had decided after speaking with Grenville to ask Horne point blank about
Jane Thornton and her maid. If he were innocent, then he would have
nothing more to fear from me. I would apologize and leave him alone.
If he were not innocent, I would put him to the question until I knew
Jane's whereabouts. If she were in his house, I'd get her out of it,
using violence if necessary. If she were elsewhere, I'd damn well make
the man take me to her.
I
was tired of polite evasiveness and roundabout methods. It was my nature
to act. If I offended the man and he called me out, then he did. I'd
borrow a pistol from Grenville and let Horne shoot at me while I fired
into the air. If he were innocent I'd deserve it.
The butler was taking his time. I plied the knocker again.
Instead of the butler, a young footman yanked open the door and peered
at me curiously. I handed him my card. He looked me up and down, inspected
my drab suit, then ushered me inside to the dim hall.
The hooknose butler entered the from the back of the house as the footman
took my hat and gloves. "Captain. Welcome, sir. My master is expecting
you. I will inform him of your arrival."
He limped away and mounted the stairs. The footman led me to the same
reception room with the same annoying Egyptian drawings and the same
clumsy paintings. I did not sit down.
The footman moved to stir the fire, oblivious of the decor. He shot
me a few eager looks over his shoulder, then finally spoke. "Were
you in the war, sir? At Waterloo?"
I shook my head. Brandon and I had chosen semi-retirement over disgrace
before Napoleon's escape and return to power in 1815. While the last,
glorious battle had waged in Belgium, we'd remained in London, learning
of the outcome only when the guns in St. James's Park had been fired
to celebrate the victory. "Not Waterloo," I answered. "I
served in the Peninsular campaign."
His eyes widened. Already, the horrors of the war were fading, and the
battles of Vitoria, Salamanca, and Albuera were distant and romantic
tales.
"What regiment, sir?"
"Thirty-Fifth Light."
"Aye, sir? My brother was in the Seventh Hussars. He was batman
to a colonel. The colonel died. Shot out of the saddle. My brother was
that broken up. Narrowly missed ending up a Frog prisoner."
"Indeed," I said.
"I wanted to go. But I was only fifteen, and me ma wouldn’t
hear of it. What was to happen to her if both her sons died over in
foreign parts? she wanted to know. So I stayed. My brother came back
all right, so she worried for nothing."
My own father had forbidden me to go into the army; the fact that he
could not afford a commission for me had been moot. We’d had day-and-night
screaming rows about it, which included him cuffing me or beating me
with a stout stick when I could not elude him. I had no money of my
own for a commission either, and I assumed I had no hope. Then, just
after my twentieth birthday, I’d met Aloysius Brandon, who convinced
me to come with him to India and volunteer.
Brandon had been a compelling man in those days and our friendship had
deepened quickly. So I’d turned my back on my father and gone
with Brandon to the king’s army. I heard of my father's death
the very day Arthur Wellesley, the brilliant general who was to become
the Duke of Wellington, had entered Talavera, in Spain. The next morning,
I'd been promoted from lieutenant to captain.
We heard the butler returning, and the footman rose. But the footsteps
on the stairs sounded wrong. They clattered: rushed. Somewhere in the
distance, a woman began screaming.
The footman with his young bulk gained the hall before I could. We saw
a curious sight. The butler swayed on the stairs, clutching the rail,
his face gray. His gaze fixed on me and clung for a moment like a drowning
man clutching a rock, then he doubled over.
Above, the screaming went on, winding into wails of despair. Footsteps
sounded on the lower stairs--the rest of the staff emerging from the
kitchens so see what was the matter.
The footman charged past me and up the stairs. I came behind. On the
first floor, in the doorway of the study in which I'd met Horne the
day before, the maid called Grace huddled. Her cap had fallen from her
brown hair, and her face was blotched with weeping.
The footman stared at her then into the room. A dry gasp fell from his
lips. I looked over his beefy shoulder and into the study.
The pretty yellow carpet had been ruined. A huge brown stain marred
it, spreading from under the body of Josiah Horne. He lay face up, his
eyes wide, his mouth frozen in a grimace of horror. The hilt of a knife
protruded from the center of his chest, and small a circle of blood
stained his ivory waistcoat.
But that wound had not made the dull brown wave that encompassed most
of the carpet. Horne’s trousers had been wrenched opened and his
testicles sheared from his body.
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