Matthew

by Grace Burrowes

  “I have reason to believe your husband was the victim of foul play. To quiet misgivings from our vicar, I will preliminarily rule death by accident.”

  Mrs. Stoneleigh was silent for a moment, not reacting at all, and then she sat taller.

  “Please explain yourself, Mr. Belmont.”

  “The cause of death was likely that gunshot to the chest—to the heart—as you no doubt suspected.” Contrary to what the gothic novels propounded, once the heart stopped, little bleeding occurred—and Stoneleigh’s heart had stopped instantly.

  “I did not move the body,” she said, her hand going to her middle. “I knew he was dead, because I put my fingers to the side of his neck, and I saw blood spattered on the desk and blotter. I also saw the gun in his hand, but I did not… I did not look.”

  “You were wise not to disturb the scene.” Was she reacting now? Was there a slight tension around her eyes and mouth? She was mortally pale, though many English women went to pains to protect their complexions.

  “You needn’t flatter me, Mr. Belmont. I simply did not know what to do, other than to send for my nearest neighbor.”

  Who had the bad luck to be serving as the temporary magistrate—something she apparently hadn’t known.

  “Given the gun in your husband’s hand, a casual observer might think he had, indeed, taken his own life, or perhaps had an accident while cleaning his equipment.”

  Axel took another swallow of brandy, resisting the urge to down it all at once.

  Mrs. Stoneleigh reached toward the tea service as if to pour herself a second cup, but her hand drifted to her lap instead.

  “God help my late husband if, after twenty-five years in the cavalry, he was attempting to clean a loaded gun.”

  “True.” Axel hadn’t considered that aspect of the situation. “The difficulty with the theory of suicide, though, is that the gun in your husband’s hand has not been fired and was, in fact, still loaded. Your husband was shot, though the fatal bullet was not fired at point blank range.”

  Axel braced himself for a swoon, some ladylike weeping, even a fit of hysterics. People took their own lives. This was tragic, of course, but in Axel’s estimation, suicide was preferable to murder most foul two doors down the corridor.

  “Is there more?” she asked, still calm, still gazing thoughtfully into the fire.

  “Not much.” Would a second brandy be rude—or stupid? “The absence of an exit wound suggests a small gun was used. Such weapons—pea shooters—are notoriously inaccurate. They lack the length of barrel to steady the projectile toward its target, and such a small weapon seldom fires with much force.”

  “I’ve carried such guns and you are correct. Their greatest value is in the noise they create, but somebody apparently had good aim.”

  Would a woman guilty of murder make such an admission?

  “Who heard the shot, Mrs. Stoneleigh?”

  “I did. I was in my apartments, directly above, and the colonel was in his study, where he usually finished his evenings. Shreve would have heard the shot, because he was in the corridor, having just brought the colonel his customary ten o’clock night cap. Those servants still awake belowstairs heard it, as did Ambers, who was outside the groom’s quarters smoking. Ambers was the first to arrive at the colonel’s side.”

  The murderer had also heard the shot, then taken off across the snowy grounds, footprints conveniently obliterated by the brisk wind.

  “The colonel never finished that nightcap,” Axel said. “I’ll want to talk to Shreve, sooner rather than later, and to the rest of your staff.”

  What Axel truly wanted was to return to the quiet and warmth of his glass house, there to work on grafts until his back ached and his vision blurred.

  “Shreve is busy now,” Mrs. Stoneleigh said. “He should be available to speak with you mid-morning tomorrow.”

  Axel was the magistrate, for pity’s sake, investigating the murder of her husband in her own home. She ought to want answers more than she wanted her next breath.

  “What can Shreve possibly have to keep him busy?”

  Mrs. Stoneleigh turned faintly pitying gaze on him. Her expression was as close to warm as he’d seen it, ever, then Axel realized the direction of her thoughts.

  “When a spouse dies,” she said, gently, “there is much to be done. The windows must be hung with crepe, and the portraits and mirrors in the public rooms, as well. The liveried servants must acquire black armbands, the deceased must be laid out, the coffin built, the surviving family’s wardrobe must be dyed black, the hearse hired, and so forth. You know this.”

  Axel did know this, and he resented her bitterly for making him recall that he knew it. Maybe resentment fueled by fatigue prompted his next observation.

  “You seem to be coping with this tragedy well, Mrs. Stoneleigh.”

  “Am I a suspect?” The pity, at least, was gone from her eyes.

  “No.” Not yet. “But if murder was done in this house, while others were about, then we have both a crime and mystery on our hands.”

  “And a tragedy,” she replied. “Have you more questions, Mr. Belmont, or shall I see you out?”

  “I can see myself out,” he replied, unhappy with himself for his little pique. “And again, my condolences.” He rose, surprised when she did as well, albeit slowly, and walked him to the door.

  “You are fatigued,” she said. “Unusually so, not merely like a man at the end of a long day.”

  Her observation wasn’t rude, but neither was it… useful. “I’ve just arrived this afternoon from my brother’s home in Sussex, hailed back to Oxfordshire by Rutland’s decision to nip off to Bath in the dead of winter. Phillip and Dayton chose to remain with their uncle until spring.”

  “You are orphaned, then. I am sorry to have disturbed you when you are much in need of rest. Shall I tell Shreve to expect you tomorrow morning?”

  Axel spared a thought for his grafts and for his crosses.

  “By eleven,” he replied, taking her hand—still cold—and bowing over it. “Will you be all right?” he asked, not knowing where the question had come from, and not releasing her fingers, either.

  “I don’t know.” She seemed unaware of their joined hands, or at least unconcerned. “I’ve heard of people being in shock, and I suspect that term fits. My husband is dead, and though we were not… entangled, as some spouses are, I did not expect such an end to the day, to any of my days. The colonel was not ill, he was not reckless, he did not drink to excess….” A minute shudder passed through her, one Axel detected only because he was holding her hand.

  “I expect,” she went on, “I will realize more fully what has befallen this house when Mrs. Pritchard and I lay out my… the body.”

  “Mrs. Pritchard will charge you good coin for tending to that office, and she needs the money, too. You are not to return to the study until the morning.” Axel made it an order, which was bad of him. The father of two adolescent boys learned that giving orders all but guaranteed his wishes would be disrespected.

  Mrs. Stoneleigh withdrew her hand. “I want to argue with you, but only to argue for argument’s sake, not because I want to see my husband’s naked corpse, particularly, not with a bullet…”

  Another little shiver, two…

  “Mrs. Stoneleigh?” Axel took her by the hand and drew her back over to the hearth, grabbing an afghan from the back of the loveseat and draping it over her shoulders. “Have you somebody who can sit with you, get you up to bed?”

  “I do not use a lady’s maid,” she said, much the same as she might have eschewed sugar in her tea. “The colonel regards it…. regarded it…. Well, no. I do not have a lady’s maid.”

  Axel endured an inconvenient stab of compassion—one that temporarily obliterated the question of her role in her husband’s death. She was alone, more alone than a woman expected to be at the age of… eight-and-twenty? Her husband had died violently, and even if she’d killed him, who knew what her motivations might have
been.

  Time enough later to locate some outrage if she’d done away with the old boy for pestering her once too often in the marriage bed.

  Axel took a moment to study her, the way he’d studied each and every specimen in his glass houses when he’d returned to Candlewick after weeks of absence. Mrs. Stoneleigh looked overwatered and undernourished, ready to drop leaves and wilt.

  “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

  “I’ll manage.” She didn’t exactly smile. “I’ve been managing alone for quite some time, Mr. Belmont. My thanks for your concern. Until tomorrow.”

  Axel had no authority to gainsay her, so he bowed and took his leave. He was back on his horse—why on God’s good green earth had nobody devised a means of warming a saddle before a man settled his innocent, unsuspecting arse on cold leather?—when he put a name on what he’d seen in Mrs. Stoneleigh’s luminous green eyes the last time he’d bowed over her hand.

  Fear. Mrs. Stoneleigh was afraid, but was she afraid of the murderer, or of having her part in the murder revealed?

  Order your copy of Axel: The Jaded Gentlemen—Book III