"So you blackmailed her," I said.
"Not right away. I followed her for nigh on a sixmonth, until I knew every single one of Mrs. Chapman's dirty little secrets."
"Blackmailers always come to bad ends," Thompson remarked. "The law frowns on it, you know."
"Why did you kill her?" I asked. "If she was keeping you in fine suits?"
Gower looked stricken. "I didn't. She only gave me money a few times. It's not like I bled her dry."
"She came here to see you last Monday evening, just after dark," I said. "You met her in the Gardens-here-and she gave you another payment. Perhaps you quarreled, perhaps she threatened to tell Lord Barbury, perhaps she told you she'd already informed him of everything. Perhaps you panicked and killed her to keep her quiet."
Gower shook his head. "You're wrong. I never killed her. She was angry with me, right enough. She told me it was for the last time."
"What did you do then? Did you strike her? Or perhaps you asked her for more than money, and killed her when she refused you?"
"She slapped me." Gower's eyes sparkled in outrage. "Acted like she was better than me, her an actress and a tart. So I slapped her back. Then Mrs. Chapman flew at me, ready to claw my eyes out. It was raining hard. She slipped and fell and came crashing down on the steps. She gasped once, and then she just lay there."
He stared down at the steps, looked bewildered, as though he still saw her body crumpled in the rain.
"Why the devil didn't you run for help?" I demanded, holding onto my temper with effort.
"She was dead already. Besides, if I’d gone for help, I'd have had to explain what I was doing out on the Temple Stairs with Chapman's wife. I didn't want Chapman to sack me, dull as he is. I must become a barrister; I told you, my family needs the money. But no one had seen. So I rolled her off into the Thames. The rain took care of the blood. Simple as that."
I walked down a few stairs, then turned and looked back. The dome of St. Paul's cathedral, ghostly in the rain and mists, rose above the high houses of the Temples behind the quivering Gower.
"She died here," I said. "While you stood and watched. Then you took the money and bought yourself a new suit."
"What would you have done?" Gower asked. "I didn't kill her. It was an accident."
I moved back up the stairs, anger suffusing my every move. "You did kill her. You brought her here because of your greed and your meanness. Peaches would not have been here to die, if not for you."
"She was the one cuckolding her husband and running a bawdy house," Gower said.
I made for him. Gower backed away in some alarm, and Thompson stepped between us. "Now, Captain," he said, eyes quiet. "Let us not have another body in the Thames."
The jovial admonition made Gower look still more worried, but it stopped me. "Accident or no, you are responsible," I said.
Sir Montague at last turned from watching the river, as though he'd done no more in the last twenty minutes than enjoy the view. "On the other hand, Lord Barbury's death was no accident," he said in his cheerful tones. "Unless you accidentally put a gun to his head and shot him?"
Gower went dead white.
"I am a magistrate, Mr. Gower," Sir Montague went on. "Why don't you tell me what happened?"
Gower looked at him for a long while, then at Thompson, who stood quietly beside him, then at me. "You must have proof to arrest me," he said. "Or a witness. You cannot prosecute on Captain Lacey's speculations. You must have evidence. I know the law."
Sir Montague chuckled. "That you do. But so do I, Mr. Gower. And I have a witness."
Gower stared. "I don't believe you."
"There is a Bow Street Runner called Mr. Pomeroy," Sir Montague said. "He much enjoys his duties. He pounded Mount Street up and down for two days, questioning everyone he could get his hands on. And he found a witness, a footman, who was awake very late that night. A footman who looked out the window in time to see you walk past Lord Barbury then turn around and shoot him in the head. You dragged his lordship to his own front doorstep then ran off fast as you could. You put the pistol in his hand to make it seem as though he'd shot himself."
"I do not believe you," Gower said again, though his bravado was flagging. "If this footman had seen someone shoot Lord Barbury, he would have run at once for the watch."
"But this particular footman, though he'd been a respectable servant for fifteen years, once had been transported for the crime of theft. A transported man returning to England usually means his death. He'd come back to take care of his family, reformed his ways, and took honest employment. Didn't much want the magistrates to recognize him, so he kept quiet, until our diligent Mr. Pomeroy got the story out of him. I've promised to help him, if he stands up as a witness."
"A convicted thief?" Gower asked incredulously. "One who escaped his punishment? What sort of a witness is that?"
"Oh, I agree that the jury might take his character against him when they listen to his evidence. But he saw you. And it is on that evidence that I am arresting you, Mr. Gower, for the murder of Lord Barbury. A peer of the realm, no less." He clucked his tongue. "What the devil were you thinking?"
Predictably, Gower tried to run. Thompson caught him at once. The Thames policeman might be thin, but he was wiry and strong. He and Sir Montague walked Mr. Gower back between them to the hackney, and I remained behind to stare at the river while they took him to Bow Street.
Chapter Twenty
Mr. Gower had believed Peaches had told Lord Barbury all about Gower's blackmailing. That is what Sir Montague told me later, and I related all to Grenville the next afternoon over ale and beef in a tavern in Pall Mall. Gower knew that if his schemes came out, Sir Montague said, the lad would lose his position as Chapman's pupil, and no other barrister would take him on. He'd never become a barrister, a silk, a high court judge.
Gower confirmed this at his trial the next week, at the Old Bailey, he on the wrong side of the dock. The trial was swift. Gower was convicted of the murder of Lord Barbury and sentenced to hang.
I left the courtroom, my melancholia stirring. Gower had tried to brave it out until the last, but he'd been no match for the prosecutor, a prominent man from Lincoln's Inn. Lord Barbury's family had paid for the best. Gower's family, likewise, was there, respectable middle-class people, stunned at this aberration in their lives.
Such a needless one. If Gower had not panicked and shot Lord Barbury, he would have been convicted of nothing. Peaches had died by accident, and there was no evidence to prove a case of blackmail.
In this mood, I returned home to Grimpen Lane to finish my packing. I would leave on the morrow for Berkshire.
I met Bartholomew coming down the stairs. "Just nipping to the Gull, sir," he said, naming the tavern from which he usually fetched supper. "Was Mr. Gower convicted?"
I nodded and told him what happened. Bartholomew looked interested, but also in a hurry. He barely waited for me to finish before he hastened past me and into the darkened street.
I made my way upstairs, my feelings mixed. I had found my villain, and Peaches was avenged.
But I also still blamed Chapman and Lord Barbury for her death. Each of them could have paid more attention to her, could have cherished her and protected her, kept her safe. Instead, they'd gone on with their lives, assuming that Peaches would be there whenever they wanted her.
Just as, God help me, I had done with my own wife. They had not understood-they'd not known what a hole you faced when you turned around, and the one you'd thought would always be there was gone.