He lent me three hundred guineas. In return I'd have to pay him a percentage of the money, payable in increments. I was not fond of usury, but I had no choice. I signed myself into debt and left his house with the money.
I visited my bank, paid it into my account, and wrote out a bank draft. I returned to the outside world and settled my uneasiness by purchasing coffee from a vendor. I took a hackney to Mayfair, heading for Inglethorpe's residence to retrieve my walking stick.
I descended at Curzon Street at half-past three. Bartholomew left me there, jogging off to Grosvenor Street to visit his brother and wait for me at Grenville's. As I stepped up to the door, a gust of wind sent rain under my greatcoat, and water poured from my hat brim. I lifted the knocker.
The door opened before I could let the knocker fall, the polished brass ripped from my hand.
"Ah, Captain," Milton Pomeroy said. "I was about to send a lad to fetch you. Returned to the scene of the crime, eh?"
Icy droplets slid under my collar. "Crime?" What crime?"
Pomeroy's flat yellow hair was dark with rain. "The crime of murder, sir. Mr. Simon Inglethorpe, gentleman. Laid out flat in his own reception room, dead as stone. And curious thing, Captain. It's your sticker that has him pinned to the floor. It's in him all the way through to the carpet."
Chapter Eight
Inglethorpe lay spread-eagled on the gold and cream carpet of the reception room, the same small, uncomfortable room had housed me yesterday while I'd waited for the footman to admit me upstairs.
Inglethorpe's expression was one of astonishment. The dead man's face was chalk white face, a thick rivulet of dried blood creased his chin. He was naked from the waist up, his white skin stark against the carpet. Below the waist he wore tight black pantaloons that buttoned at his ankles, silk stockings, and pumps. His stomach showed that he had slightly gone to fat, and his chest muscles were limp.
The sword from my walking stick stuck straight out of Inglethorpe's chest, the blade surrounded by a circle of dried blood. The handle, which doubled as a hilt, shone faintly in the candlelight.
I turned to Pomeroy, dumbfounded. "When did this happen?"
"Just an hour gone, sir, since he was found. I was sent for right away and arrived not much before you did. Butler last saw him at two o'clock this afternoon, upstairs. At half past, butler glances into this room and sees that." He gestured to the corpse.
I looked into Pomeroy's ingenuous blue eyes. He liked to lay his hands on a culprit, and I had the feeling that he would not scruple to arrest even his former captain on the slim evidence of my sword in the wound.
"You a friend of Mr. Inglethorpe, Captain?" he asked me.
"No, I met him for the first time yesterday."
"Lent him your stick, did you?"
"I left it behind," I said in a hard voice. "I was returning to fetch it."
"Yesterday, while you were calling on Mr. Inglethorpe. He'd invited you?"
I eyed him narrowly. "Yes."
"Butler says, too, that you were here with a gathering of Mr. Inglethorpe's friends. Butler says he saw you come in with your walking stick, that very one that's stuck in his master."
"I did not stick it there, Sergeant."
Pomeroy shrugged. "Sometimes you get into a rare temper, sir. I have seen what you are like when you're enraged. Ready for murder, sir, you are."
"If I had been that angry at Inglethorpe, I would have challenged him," I said.
"Not necessarily. I've seen you draw a pistol on a cove, and I've seen you knock a chap down, easy as breathing. No mention of duels then. Dueling would be too good for them, you said."
I held onto my temper. "I was not angry with Inglethorpe, and I was not here today. I barely knew the man."
"That's as may be, sir. But that is your sticker. You weren't his friend, but you looked him up yesterday. Struck with fellow feeling, were you, sir?"
"Do not question me, Pomeroy. I do not like it."
"Just following orders, sir, same as always. You came here yesterday. I want to know why."
I observed the room, trying to shut out Pomeroy's prying questions. Little had changed from when I'd paced in here the day before, except that a neatly folded pile of clothing now lay on the chair. I unfolded and examined each piece-a frock coat, a waistcoat, shirt, collar, and cravat. Fine materials, fine tailoring. The cravat smelled of lavender oil.
"The dead man's," Pomeroy said. "So the butler says. Neither of us can decide why he was standing bare-breasted in his reception room."
"What do the servants say?" I asked.
"Very little, sir. Inglethorpe was right as rain all this morning, then he came in here and that was that."
"Inglethorpe must have entered this room for some reason. To greet a visitor, most likely."
"Servants didn't open the door to anyone all morning, they say."
That did not mean no one arrived. Gentlemen of Inglethorpe's wealth let their servants answer the front door, but that did not mean he could not have admitted someone himself. Perhaps Inglethorpe had spied the person arriving and hadn't wanted to wait for his butler to open the door.
The removed clothing suggested a romantic liaison-I could think of no other reason for Inglethorpe to so tamely remove his coat and shirt. The visitor, then, might have been a woman, although I remembered Grenville in the Rearing Pony, his mouth twisted in distaste, proclaiming, "I honestly do not believe Inglethorpe cares which way the wind blows." A woman or man, likely a man, from the strength of the blow.
I had left my walking stick in the sitting room upstairs. Had Inglethorpe found it? Brought it down here with him, where his killer had used it as a convenient weapon? Or had the murderer been a member of yesterday's gathering, taken my walking stick away with him, and returned with it this morning?
My heart went cold. Mrs. Danbury had been in the room when I'd gone off without my walking stick. I remembered her, flushed with the magic gas, staring at me in bewilderment as I hurried after Lady Breckenridge.
Lady Breckenridge had not taken the stick away with her; I would have seen it. That left Mrs. Danbury and the few gentlemen who'd still remained when I'd gone. I could not remember through the haze of the laughing gas which of the gentlemen still had been there, though Inglethorpe's servants would probably know.
I did not want to think of Mrs. Danbury returning this morning and stabbing Inglethorpe when he made advances upon her.
Common sense cut into this dire scene. Inglethorpe had removed and folded his clothes, not torn them off in a frenzy of passion. I doubted Mrs. Danbury would stand still and wait for him to undress before stabbing him in panic.
Also, I could see no reason for Mrs. Danbury to return to Inglethorpe's at all. If she had taken my walking stick, she could have had it delivered to my rooms or given it to Sir Gideon Derwent to give to me when I next visited him. Lady Breckenridge had said that Inglethorpe's gatherings were held on Mondays and Wednesdays only, and that Inglethorpe was most regular in his habits, which meant he would not have had a gathering today.
Why Mrs. Danbury had attended Inglethorpe's party the day before still puzzled me. She had not known how to breathe the air in the bag, which indicated she had not done it before. Had she, like Peaches, come to Inglethorpe's in search of a new sensation? Or out of curiosity? Or had she been Inglethorpe's friend, and he had invited her personally?
I felt cold again. She being a close friend of Inglethorpe brought me back to the possibility of her murdering him. I could imagine Inglethorpe eagerly hurrying to open the door for the pretty Mrs. Danbury without waiting for the servants. I certainly would have. I also would have been happy to pull her into the tiny reception room to speak with her alone. Perhaps Mrs. Danbury had come for a liaison with Inglethorpe, and they'd quarreled. No, I could not overlook the possibility that she had deliberately stabbed him.