Grenville's persona today was that of horse-mad dandy. He sat upright, his gloved hands competently holding a complex configuration of reins. He occasionally touched his whip to the horses, encouraging them to hold a smart pace. In his black suit, knee-high boots, and fine hat, he was the epitome of the fashionable gentleman. His horses were perfectly matched grays, the phaeton nearly new and shiny black, the wheels and points picked out in gold.
Grenville navigated us swiftly through other vehicles and over the rutted roads. I held tightly to my hat with one hand and the seat with the other.
Remembering his motion sickness inside carriages on previous journeys, I remarked, "The movement does not bother you when you drive?"
"No." Grenville kept his gaze on the horses and the road beyond. "Don't honestly know why. Probably because I must concentrate on something other than my stomach."
Grenville evidently liked to focus on obtaining the speediest journey possible. I braced my feet on the footboard and concentrated on holding on.
When I'd mounted the phaeton this afternoon, Grenville's reaction to my bruised face was not as severe as could be, because Bartholomew had already told him the tale. He quizzed me on the particulars, however, as we rode south.
"Are you certain the Frenchman had connection with the Turner murder?" Grenville asked. "Perhaps he was looking for something else entirely."
"He had an inordinate interest in Mrs. Harper's letters," I said over the noise of our passage. "Why take them otherwise? No, depend upon it, he has something to do with Mrs. Harper, and probably with Turner."
We rode silently a few minutes, the rattle of the wheels over the road and the thudding of the horses' hooves making talking impractical.
"What I most wonder," Grenville said, when he slowed to drive through a village, "is why Marianne was there."
"She'd come to talk with me," I said. "She happened to get in the way of the Frenchman's fists, which she would not have if she'd run away like a sensible woman."
"She was hurt?" Grenville gave me a look of alarm. "Bartholomew did not tell me that."
"She was not much hurt. I made certain. And Marianne gave back as good as she received."
Grenville rarely grew angry, but he grew angry now. "Why the devil was she there to get in his way at all? If she wanted to speak to you, why not send for you to visit her?"
"She still feels a bit confined."
His mouth set. "I have told her she can come and go as she pleases. She can do what the devil she likes. I have ceased trying to hold her."
" Constrained, I should have said. Your servants would no doubt mention a visit from me to you, possibly telling you what they heard us discuss."
"Dear God," Grenville shouted at the countryside in general. "The woman will drive me mad. It is my own fault; I remember you warning me against her. I wish I had listened."
"You wanted to help her. It was kind of you."
He gave me a sideways glance. "Helping her was not my only reason, and you know it. Well, I suppose I have paid the price for my folly."
If Grenville had imagined that Marianne would be forever grateful for his charity and fall into his arms, he had certainly read her character wrong.
I wanted to ask him about Mrs. Bennington, and Marianne's speculations, but we exited the village and picked up speed, and I did not fancy bellowing such questions to him on the road. Time enough for that later.
I did tell him, when we slowed again near Epsom, about my encounter with Imogene Harper in Turner's rooms and the rest of my investigation until this point.
I had imagined we'd put up at an inn at Epsom and journey to Turner's father's home for the funeral the next day, but to my surprise, Grenville drove to a red-brick, Tudor-style manor a little outside the town.
When the phaeton finally rattled to a halt, a groom came out to greet us and hold the horses. Grenville said, "When I wrote to Mr. Turner to express my condolences, he invited me to stay at the house. You are welcome, as well."
A footman appeared at the front door and led us inside into a narrow, dark-paneled hall lined with doors. At the end of this hall, a staircase, its wood black with age, wound upward to a gallery.
We did not meet Mr. Turner, but were taken upstairs to bedchambers that were low-ceilinged and dark, though warm and comfortable. The footman brought us hot coffee and hock and left us alone.
"I've stayed here several times," Grenville said. "Turner does fine house parties for the Derby. They are quite popular, and Turner is a good host."
I looked out the window across green hills toward the dusty road on which the Derby race was held. I had no doubt that house parties here were filled with gaiety and excitement. Sad that such a place would now have to be the site of so dismal a scene as a young man's funeral.
Not long later, our host sent for us, and Grenville and I descended to meet Mr. Turner in his study.
Large windows here overlooked a lush back garden where spring flowers pushed themselves up in the beds. The sun shone hard, rendering it a lovely landscape. On any other occasion, I would have stopped to enjoy the sight.
Henry Turner's father, Mr. Allen Turner, looked much like his son. His hair was straight and close cropped, but he had the same rather soft features as Henry and had probably been quite handsome in his youth. Mr. Turner was not very tall, standing only about as high as Grenville, and he had to look up at me. He shook my hand politely, showing no resentment of my intrusion.
"You are the captain who sometimes works with the magistrates, are you not?" he asked.
I admitted that I was. "My condolences on the loss of your son, sir."
Turner nodded in a resigned manner. "It came as a bit of the shock. When your only son dies, it is as if you lived your life for nothing. All this…" He gestured to the room, and I took him to mean the entire house and the estate as well. "Henry will not have any of it now. It will go to my second cousin and his son, and that will be the end of it."
His eyes were sad, but his back was straight, as though Mr. Turner determined to face the future, no matter how bleak it was. I remembered the frustration Brandon sometimes expressed that he had no son to carry on his name and his line, no one to inherit his money and his houses. I personally was happy not to bestow the ruin of the Lacey house in Norfolk on a son, but Brandon and Mr. Turner had much more to lose. An Englishman without a son was almost like a man without an appendage.
Brandon had been disappointed at Louisa's failed attempts to produce his hoped-for heir, but I believe Turner suffered worse. He'd had a healthy and robust son, who'd been cut down in the prime of his life. No matter what Henry Turner's character had been, he might have lived a long time and produced many children so that his father might see his line stretching to eternity. Now that possibility was gone.
Mr. Turner placed his hands behind his back. "I've offered a large reward for the conviction of the felon who killed my son. I understand from Grenville that you believe there is doubt that the colonel who's been arrested actually committed the murder."
"I'm trying to ascertain whether he did, but I am skeptical," I answered. "This might seem a strange question, sir, but could you tell me if there is anyone who could have been angry enough at your son to want him dead?"
Turner shook his head. "If Henry had been called out and died in a duel, I would understand it. This-the senseless killing-while he sat in a chair, at a society ball of all places, confounds me. No, Captain, I do not know whether he angered anyone in particular. My son had a wide circle of acquaintances, and he was not always the most polite young man, unfortunately. The young seem to find extreme rudeness to be fashionable."
He glanced once at Grenville, as though debating whether Grenville's famous disdain were to blame for the rudeness of young people today.