I rather believed Chapman had stabbed Inglethorpe in fury then had come up with the story of Inglethorpe skewering himself, while sitting in this room "researching" his case. The sword had been thrust all the way through Inglethorpe's chest and into the carpet. I could imagine Chapman stabbing, Inglethorpe crumpling, dying, Chapman keeping the sword hard in him until he'd pinned Inglethorpe to the floor.
As Pomeroy had said, the jury would decide what was true.
Before Pomeroy dragged Chapman off, I said to him, "What is the name of your wife's man of business? I wish to speak with him."
Chapman stared at me in bewilderment. "My wife did not have a man of business. All of our affairs were handled by mine."
"Oh, but she did," Sir Montague Harris broke in, a smile on his broad face. "He sent the coroner a letter on hearing of her death, asking for the death certificate."
Chapman continued to look surprised.
I was surprised as well. "So the man of business does exist?" I asked.
"Indeed," Sir Montague said. "I think I ought to pay him a visit. Care to join me, Captain?"
"This is most irregular," the thin man on the other side of the table said to us. He had sandy, almost colorless hair, narrow dark eyes, and pale skin stretched tightly over his bones. He kept a tiny room in a court off Chancery Lane, not far from the Temples, had a clerk as thin as he was, and an office of painful neatness.
His name was Ichabod Harper, and he'd been Peaches' man of business for six years, ever since she'd inherited property in a trust.
"Murder is most irregular," Sir Montague replied.
"Indeed," Mr. Harper said.
Sir Montague beamed at him. "Now then, tell us, sir, what was this property, how did Mrs. Chapman come to inherit it, and to whom does it pass on occasion of her death?"
Mr. Harper cleared his throat, a dry sound. "To answer that, sir, I must go back some years. Mrs. Chapman's parents were a rather low form of actors-strolling players, I believe they are called. Mrs. Chapman's grandmother had married one of these players, running away and disgracing her family, who then disowned her. The grandmother's sister-Mrs. Chapman's great aunt-took it upon herself to see that her foolish sister's offspring would not be completely destitute. Mrs. Chapman's parents died of a fever eight years ago, leaving Mrs. Chapman-then Miss Amelia Leary-alone. The great aunt offered to have her grandniece live with her, but Mrs. Chapman ignored the invitation and continued to live on her own with the strolling players."
He looked disapproving, but I understood Peaches' reasoning. A young girl, full of life, would rather stay with the people and the freedom she'd known her entire life than return to be a poor relation to family connections who did not approve of her.
"Two years after that," Mr. Harper continued, "the great aunt, who had never married herself, died. She had named her sister's children and grandchildren as inheritors of a trust, of which I am the trustee. Mrs. Chapman's mother was the only offspring of the original ill-advised marriage, and because she and her husband had already died, Miss Amelia Leary was the only one left to inherit the trust. And so, upon learning she had inherited the property, Miss Leary decided to come to London. She looked me up, and I explained it all to her."
"Did not the property go to Chapman when she married him?" I asked. That was usual, unless the trust protected the property very tightly. Most men inherited what their wives had absolutely, and a gentleman could sell a wife's property and squander the money however he wished.
"This trust was quite specific," Mr. Harper said. "The property belonged solely to Miss Amelia Leary and the heirs she named, and the trust ensured that her husband could not touch it. The great aunt had no liking for men and feared the property going to, as she called them, 'lowly actors.' Now, as Mrs. Chapman had no offspring before she died, the trust reverts to the original estate, and we trace the inheritance from there. So far, I have had no luck."
"What was this property?" Sir Montague asked him.
"A house in London," Mr. Harper replied in his thin voice. "Number 12, St. Charles Row."
"Well, this is a turn up," Thompson said.
The three of us had adjourned to a coffeehouse, where Sir Montague partook of beefsteak, and Thompson and I sipped rather over-boiled coffee.
We were all a bit startled by the revelation. But the fact that Peaches owned The Glass House herself explained why she'd not needed Lord Barbury to supply her with one. It also explained why she'd kept a room there after her marriage. It was a place of her own, a retreat from her unhappy life with Chapman.
A trust meant that although Peaches had technically inherited number 12, St. Charles Row, she could not sell it. But she could certainly hire it out and enjoy the income from it. The house had indeed been hired, Mr. Harper had gone on to tell us, to-no surprise to any of us-Kensington.
There was no doubt that the house made much money, and Peaches would have reaped some of the profit. The riches she'd looked for upon first journeying to London had come to her, although perhaps not as she'd anticipated.
"Well, her husband wouldn't have killed her for the house," Thompson said. He took a sip of coffee. "He doesn't get it. Think he's telling the truth about Inglethorpe?"
"Possibly," Sir Montague said. "Or at least what he's convinced himself is the truth."
"He still cannot explain why Inglethorpe had taken off half his clothes," I mentioned. "Nor why he had mud on his shoes."
Both men looked at me without much enthusiasm. They had found and arrested a murderer; they did not much care about the victim's eccentricities.
"What about poor Lord Barbury?" I continued. "Have you any idea who might have killed him?"
"Himself," Thompson said. "You say that his health had deteriorated greatly after Mrs. Chapman's death. Due to either excessive grief or excessive remorse, perhaps."
I studied my coffee. "I do not think he did it himself. I saw the wound that killed him. It was too far to the back of his head." I lifted my hand and tapped myself behind the ear. "It is more usual for a man to shoot himself through the temple, or through the mouth."
I had seen more than one corpse of a suicide in the Army; once, of a man in my own company. Most of us in the Army had been very stoic about the fact that every time we rode into battle, we would likely not return. We agreed that death fighting the pesky French was more honorable than death by the infections that regularly swept through the camps. We even joked about it.
But there were those for whom the horrors of war had come as a shock. Some men could not face shooting and killing others and were terrified by the thought of death by bayonet or musket ball. In the quiet hours of dawn, these gentlemen would creep away by themselves and end their lives quickly with a bullet in the head, as I described.
No one stopped them. A man had to find honor where he could. We simply buried them, sent their effects back to their families, and marched on.
I'd always thought it a waste of life that these good officers and men were not put to use elsewhere than the front. But the pigheaded fear of cowardice, drummed into us since birth, made men prefer death at their own hands to being made a headquarters aide because they could not face bullets.
The head wounds I had seen on these men were usually in the temple, above the ear, or through the back of the throat. None had been behind the ear, where the man would have to pull his arm back at a slightly uncomfortable angle.
"Perhaps," Sir Montague agreed. "What we need is a witness or more evidence. Pomeroy continues to tramp through the neighborhood, but so far, no one admits they saw him die."