"You knew Colonel Brandon," I said, sitting next to her, "on the Peninsula."
Mrs. Harper nodded. "He was very helpful to my husband and to me."
A gratitude any woman might express toward a friend who once had lent assistance. "Your husband was killed at Vitoria, I believe," I said. "I was there. The battle was devastating. We lost many."
"Yes, my husband had often been praised for his valor. He died trying to save others." She made the statement flatly, as though she had said it so many times it no longer had meaning.
"Quite heroic of him. Brandon had been a friend of his?"
"Yes." Mrs. Harper had a quiet confidence about her, something I might admire under other circumstances. Her apparent ease at dealing with me, someone she had not expected, made me wonder. If she were this cool-headed, why had she become so overwrought at the sight of Turner's blood?
"If you are a very close friend of Colonel Brandon, Mr. Lacey.. "
"Captain. And yes, I am quite close to the Brandon family."
"Captain," she said. "Then you must know more about me than you appear to at present."
"I do not wish to be rude, Mrs. Harper, but it will help me if you tell me exactly what your relation was and is to Colonel Brandon."
Mrs. Harper regarded me with calm eyes. "I believe you've already guessed. We had a brief liaison when we were on the Peninsula. When my husband died, I was alone and afraid, and Aloysius helped me. Small wonder that I turned to him." Again her voice held that flat indifference.
"Not surprising under the circumstances. I know from your recent letters to Brandon that Turner somehow found out about the affair and threatened to expose you."
She flushed. "You are quite well informed, Captain."
"You came to London and wrote to Brandon for help. Turner told you to meet him at Lady Gillis's ball, and you asked Brandon what to do. What did he suggest?"
"That we meet him. That we try to persuade him that it was all in the past and did not matter anymore."
"Then I take it that you had no intention of resuming the affair?"
She hesitated. "I'm not certain what my intentions were. At the moment I was worried about Turner and his revelations."
"What did you fear? That Turner would go to Brandon's wife with the information? She already knew. Brandon's manner when he received your letters at home shouted it loud and clear, not to mention his obvious actions at the ball. He has been most tactless."
"I cannot help Colonel Brandon's behavior," Mrs. Harper said, tight-lipped. "I'm afraid I was quite agitated last night, or I might have noticed that we were making cakes of ourselves. My only concern was speaking to Mr. Turner."
"And Turner, very conveniently, turned up dead."
At last, Mrs. Harper looked distressed. "I do not know why you say convenient. It was the most horrifying thing that has ever happened to me."
"More horrifying than the casualties of the battlefields?"
"Yes," she said defiantly. "I followed the drum long enough to expect the carnage. Even when my husband died, I cannot remember feeling terribly surprised. I think I knew it was only a matter of time before his body was brought back from a battle. But last night was different. You certainly do not expect to find a corpse sitting in a chair in your friend's house. It frightened me. More than that, it appalled me. London is supposed to be civilization. To see something like that in such an elegant little room was unnerving."
"More than unnerving," I said. "In fact, witnesses say you screamed quite a lot. You were so upset you had to be taken home-leaving Brandon to face arrest by himself."
She reddened. "I am not stupid, Captain. You believe that I killed Mr. Turner then feigned hysteria in order to gain sympathy and let Aloysius take the blame. But I assure you, I did not murder Turner. He was dead when I entered the anteroom."
"How quickly did you realize he was dead?" I asked.
"I didn't right away. I thought him drunk. He'd been quite foxed when he'd spoken to us earlier, so I was not surprised to find him unconscious. But when I touched his shoulder, I saw that his face was gray. It was quite horrible. Then I saw the knife, and lost my head. I did scream. I cannot remember much after that."
"How did the blood come to be on your glove?"
She looked startled. "On my glove?"
"Mr. Grenville told me that you stared at your glove in horror, and that it was crimson with blood. But if you touched Turner's shoulder, you could not have gotten blood on your glove. You could have done so only if you'd touched the knife or the wound."
Mrs. Harper stared at me, her lips parted. I sensed her thinking rapidly, considering arguments and discarding them before she chose her answer. "I believe that I touched the back of the chair, where he'd been leaning," she said at last. "I rested my hand on it. The blood must have been there."
I had not seen blood on the chair, dried or otherwise. She lied, but I was not certain why.
One thing I did notice was that she'd not suggested that Brandon did not murder Turner. I said, "Colonel Brandon was committed to trial for killing Turner, and now he is in Newgate prison."
"I know."
Mrs. Harper looked neither angry nor distressed. She spoke in the same calm voice and looked at me in the same resignation.
"You do not defend him?"
She made a gesture that was almost a shrug. "What would you have me say? Colonel Brandon was quite upset last night. He was livid with Turner. I had never known him to be in so much of a temper."
"But you had not seen him in a long time."
"No, not I since I left Spain four years ago. Do you believe me?"
"More unsettling to me is that you believe he killed Turner."
"I really have no idea what happened," Mrs. Harper said in a hard voice. "When I walked into that room, Turner was dead. I did not see Colonel Brandon actually kill him, but I have no idea who else would want to."
"Colonel Brandon seems to believe that you killed him."
She flushed. "He said that?"
"No, he has done his best to incriminate himself and spare you. Which makes me realize that he believes you killed Turner. If he'd thought a passing footman had done the deed, he would have said so loudly and expressed outrage to be arrested. Instead, he let Pomeroy's patrollers take him away without much fuss."
Mrs. Harper looked astonished. "He truly believes I would do such a thing?"
"You believe that he would. In either case, it will be Brandon who pays. He is being gallant, and you are condemning him to hang."
She pressed her hands together, gloves sliding over very thin fingers. "You have not told me what you believe, Captain Lacey."
"I believe the colonel is innocent. I have not yet decided who else would want Turner dead. There were quite a few people at that ball. One of them may have been Turner's mortal enemy, who knows? I only know that you are ready to send Brandon to the gallows, and I do not want him to go there."
For the first time since she'd entered the room, Mrs. Harper looked at me in real fear. Her lips trembled, and I saw her strive to keep them steady. "Do you plan to give me to the magistrates? Without knowing me, without proof that I went into that room and stabbed Mr. Turner?"
"There is the blood on your glove," I said.
"Which I have explained. I touched the back of the chair."
"What I think you actually did, Mrs. Harper, was put your hand inside Mr. Turner's coat. You checked his pockets, did you not? You were looking for the letter or whatever evidence he had of your affair with Colonel Brandon. I conclude that you did not find it, because you came here today to look for it. So did I."
She stared at me, eyes wide, and I saw her reassess my character. She must have first thought me simply a hanger-on of Colonel Brandon's, an acquaintance left over from the war. Colonel Brandon was a man who did not always think before he acted. He was brisk and determined but sometimes did not bother with critical thought. Imogene Harper must have thought I would be much the same.