The Glass House

by Jennifer Ashley

  Inglethorpe had dropped to the floor. Chapman had let go of the sword and fled.

  Chapman's voice was hollow when he finished. Thompson and Sir Montague exchanged glances. Pomeroy said, "A nice story. Now then, sir, what about your wife?"

  Chapman looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

  "Your wife, who was cuckolding you with a Mayfair gent. Did you kill her first, vowing you would kill her lover as well?"

  "No, no. I did nothing to Amelia. I told you, I never saw her after the time she left my house to begin her journey to Sussex."

  "Well, the jury will decide whether that's true," Pomeroy said cheerfully. "Who knows? Perhaps the gent what prosecutes you will be one of your acquaintance from Middle Temple." He chuckled.

  Chapman went white. The man who had aspired to take silk would now have a King's Counsel staring at him across the courtroom at the Old Bailey, questioning his stammered explanation of how Inglethorpe had run into the swordstick.

  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 offic
ers 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."

  "I don't think Chapman killed him," I continued. "He was astonished when I told him Lord Barbury had been his wife's lover. He'd been fixed on Inglethorpe."

  "Why would someone other than Chapman kill Lord Barbury, in any case?" Thompson asked. "Unless Lord Barbury knew something about Mrs. Chapman's death that he hadn't revealed?"

  I turned my cup around on the table. "I have toyed with the idea that Lord Barbury might have been blackmailing the killer, and the killer grew fearful or tired of it. But I do not think so. I would swear Barbury knew nothing of how Mrs. Chapman died."

  "Unless he killed her himself," Sir Montague suggested. "Then remorse built up so much that he took a quick way out. Or perhaps after speaking with you and Mr. Grenville, he realized that he could not hide his guilt forever."

  "Lord Barbury was a man of volatile passions," I said. "I saw that in him, and in those letters he wrote to Mrs. Chapman. I agree that he could have quarreled with Mrs. Chapman and killed her, perhaps even accidentally. Both of the bedrooms I saw had heavy brass fenders at the fireplaces. If she'd fallen and hit her head, the blow could have killed her. I did check both fenders and found no evidence of blood on either, but they could have been cleaned afterward. The one in the attic was certainly shiny."

  "Well, I shall ask Mr. Kensington about those fenders, when I have him up before me," Sir Montague said, sounding happy. "I intend to arrest him before the week is out. I will need your testimony and that of the little girl, Lacey, but I will get him."

  "What of Lady Jane?" I asked. I had explained about her, and what Denis had told me, on our way to see Mr. Harper.

  "I've heard of her," Sir Montague said. "So far, no one has been able to fasten anything illegal to her, but that is because she's slippery, not innocent." He thought a moment. "Can Mr. Denis set us an appointment with this Lady Jane?"

  "He and Lady Jane are fierce rivals," I said. "I doubt she'd let him pin her down."

  "Mr. Denis might find it in his best interest to keep a magistrate happy," Sir Montague said, smiling.

  "Unfortunately, that may not sway him."

  "No harm in asking," Sir Montague said with good cheer. "Or we can get to her through her subordinate, although I have the feeling that when we arrest Kensington, she, the larger fish, will slip the net. I would like to do this the easy way, Captain. I do not have the manpower to scour the city for her."

  I gave him a nod and promised to send word to Denis, though I was not optimistic.

  Sir Montague grunted as he climbed to his feet. "I will have Mr. Harper keep me informed of who will inherit the house. I hope this person, whoever it might be, is horrified to learn it is being used as a bawdy house and closes it. And if he is of mercenary disposition and wishes the income from it, I will have a little talk with him."

  Sir Montague looked buoyed. He had realized today that The Glass House's lifespan would be even shorter than he'd hoped.

  "Lady Jane can simply open another house," I pointed out.

  "Not if I have anything to say about it." Sir Montague stuck out his hand. "You have been of great help, Captain."

  "I have done very little," I said, as we shook on it.

  "Nonsense. You got yourself into The Glass House where my patrollers could not go, you found the connection between Mrs. Chapman, Lord Barbury, and The Glass House, you got Chapman to confess to the murder of Inglethorpe. Impressive work to this plodding magistrate."

  "It comes from poking my nose where it does not belong."

  "Yes, indeed." Sir Montague clapped me on the shoulder. "Keep it up, there's a good fellow."

  * * * * *

  Chapter Fifteen

  Much happened that afternoon. When I returned home, I wrote to James Denis, telling him that Sir Montague wished to speak to Lady Jane, and it would please Sir Montague if Denis would help us find and meet with her. I doubted Denis would be impressed, but I sent the letter anyway.

  I had two missives waiting for me at the bakeshop, one from Lady Breckenridge asking me to join her in her box at Covent Garden Theatre that night. The other was from Grenville who had learned of Barbury's death and was anxious to discuss it with me. I wrote my acceptance to Lady Breckenridge then journeyed with Bartholomew back across the metropolis, to be greeted by the impatient Grenville and invited to partake of yet another meal.

  I ate savory chicken pastries with succulent wine sauce while I told Grenville all that had happened. He was as angry as I at Lord Barbury's death and expressed a wish to pin it on Kensington.

  "I dislike Kensington," I said as I finished off the excellent dish. "He is manipulative and a liar. But he also strikes me as a coward. I can believe him killing Peaches, but Lord Barbury was large and strong, and Kensington is a small man."

  "Lord Barbury was shot," Grenville pointed out.

  "The gun was pressed against his head. The powder burns around the wound attest to that. I cannot imagine Lord Barbury standing still and letting Kensington shoot him. If he'd have seen Kensington coming at him with a pistol, he would have tried to fight him."

  "Then he didn't see the pistol," Grenville suggested.

  "But Barbury knew Kensington. He wouldn't have trusted the man for a moment. I too want Kensington to be guilty, but I am not certain he is. At least not of killing Lord Barbury."

  "And Thompson is still not certain how Peaches got herself to Middle Temple Gardens?"

  "And who would have noticed anyone scuttling down the streets on that afternoon?" I asked. "At just after four that day, it was raining and dark and cold. Anyone walking would have been heavily bundled against the weather--everyone looks like everyone else in such a circumstance, especially in the dark. Most people were indoors seeking warmth. Did the killer count on that, or did circumstance work in his favor?"

  "Begging your pardon, sir," Bartholomew said from where he stood against the wall. "But I've thought of something." He and Matthias had taken up stations on either side of the room, waiting to serve us. It was not a footman's place to speak to his master or guest while they served--servants were supposed to be invisible. Not in Grenville's house, however, where he solicited opinions of his staff, saying he employed them for their brains as well as their service.

  Bartholomew approached the table, while his brother topped off our glasses with hock. "Seems to me that we are all thinking that since poor Mrs. Chapman ended up in the river she was tossed from the banks. But what if she was in a boat already? Rowed up to the Temple and heaved over the side? Or, since she fetched up under Blackfriar's Bridge, why not put in the river right there? The murderer might figure she'd wash far away downstream before anyone found her. His bad luck she stuck under the bridge."

  He had a point. Boatmen and others did go up and down the river all the time, scavenging for articles that they could sell or keep. They could be paid to transport people, if you wanted to share a boat with a smelly, ragged man and his family.

  I remembered standing on the Temple steps, reflecting how the river used to be the main artery of travel in days gone by. Two hundred years ago, men had rarely moved about the city on horseback or foot or in any kind of conveyance. With the river handy, they'd had no need to.

  "A long way to row from The Glass House to the Temple Gardens," Grenville said. "Upstream."

  "Maybe, sir, he was afraid that if Mr. Thompson figured out she went in by London Bridge or below that, he'd connect her
more easily with The Glass House," Bartholomew said. "If she went in by Middle Temple, she'd be more connected to her husband. Maybe The Glass House would never be mentioned."

  "And wouldn't have been," Matthias added, putting the stopper in the decanter and licking a bit of spilled hock from his thumb, "if the murderer had noticed her wearing his lordship's ring and took it from her."

  "That would not have hidden things for long," Grenville said. "Lady Breckenridge, for example, knew that Mrs. Chapman was Barbury's mistress. Barbury would have been questioned eventually, and the connection to The Glass House revealed."

  Bartholomew shrugged. "Maybe the murderer didn't think of that. He was panicked and hauled off her corpse, supposing everyone would think her husband had done her in. Husbands usually do. Or wives their husbands."

  I ignored this optimistic view of marriage and drank deeply of hock. "It is an interesting theory," I said. "But how much time would it take to go upstream from London Bridge to Blackfriar's Bridge in a boat? Peaches died at about half-past four. She was in the river a few hours before she was found at eight o'clock. Does the time fit?"

  "One way of finding out, I suppose," Bartholomew said.

  Grenville looked at the faces of his two eager footman, glanced back at his wine, and groaned. "Oh, no. Why do I think I know what you're going to say?"

  I suppressed a smile. "It is a possibility," I said. "But I hate to send Thompson questioning all the boatmen up and down the river if it proves to be a false one."

  Grenville looked pained, then he sighed. "Oh, very well. I will ask Gautier to prepare a suit appropriate for riding in a fisherman's boat."

  *** *** ***

  I doubted the wisdom of Bartholomew's plan once we were out on the water. It was not raining, and the clouds had cleared a bit, but the wind was sharp. It was just a mile between Blackfriar's Bridge and London Bridge, but the current was strong and the boat full.