Free Hanover Square Affair, The by Ashley Gardner

waistcoat.
    But that wound had not made the dull brown wave that encompassed most of the carpet. Horne’s trousers had been wrenched opened and his testicles sheared from his body.

Chapter Seven
     
    The stink of blood and death coated the stuffy room. I pushed past the footman and made for the window, taking care to step only where the carpet was still yellow. I unlatched and opened the window onto the garden letting in the chill wind and rain. I gulped the cold air in relief.
    When I turned back, Grace was clinging to the doorframe, sobbing wretchedly.
    “Take her out,” I told the footman.
    The footman tried to coax Grace to her feet, but she remained in a heap, weeping. The footman grasped her under the arms and hauled her bodily up and away.
    I made my way back across the room, barely feeling my stiff knee, my thoughts tumbling. In these moments of shock, when the world blurred for others, it became crystal clear for me. I saw the room with sharp edges, every piece of furniture, every shadow from the tiny fire, every fiber of carpet soaked with blood.
    Horne’s face was a mask of surprise. His mouth was wide open, his brown eyes round. He’d died without struggle, I could see from the way his hands lay open at his side. His fingers were curled slightly, not raised in defense. His testicles, bloody and disgusting, rested on the carpet between his spraddled legs. The knife in his chest must not have killed him instantly, but the mutilation of his body had spilled his life onto the bright yellow carpet.
    I turned away, like a man caught in a dream, and found the butler in the hall. He leaned against a wall, his handkerchief to his mouth, his breathing shallow.
    Here was one whose world blurred with shock; he’d be useless to me. My long habit of command seeped through me, and I straightened my shoulders. “Send someone for a constable. And a doctor. Keep the others from coming in.”
    The footman trotted back to us from the stair, his young eyes wide and excited. “A doctor’s not going to do him any good. He’s dead, ain’t he?”
    “A doctor can tell us how long he’s been dead,” I said.
    “Can he, sir? Must have been a long time. Would have to be for all that blood to dry, wouldn’t it?”
    The butler whimpered, and I snapped my attention back to him. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Horne?”
    He moved his handkerchief a fraction. “This morning, sir. In this very room.”
    “This morning? It is five o’clock. You did not speak to him all day?”
    “He told me he did not want to be disturbed, sir.”
    “Was that usual?”
    The footman nodded. “Aye, on account of his ladies. We were never to come nigh him when he was with his ladies. No matter what.”
    “Shut up,” the butler wheezed.
    “We weren’t supposed to know. He kept it quiet like. But we knew.”
    I kept my gaze on the butler. “So you thought nothing of it when you never saw him from that moment to this?”
    Both servants shook their heads.
    I scanned the room again. An odd place for Horne to have a liaison. The desk was littered with books and papers and the chaise was too narrow to be comfortable. Odd places could be exciting, but Horne was older than I was, his body thickset. A man of his stature would long for a deep featherbed for anything more than a playful kiss.
    I looked again at the wardrobe. It was of cheap mahogany, like the rest of the furniture, but its presence bothered me.
    I went to it, again keeping to the edges of the carpet. It sported two keyholes, double locks like misshapen eyes. I ran my hand down the seam between the doors. Near the locks, the crack between the doors was nicked and chipped, small gouges in the finish.
    I pulled on the handles. The doors did not move.
    “Do you have a key for this?”
    In the hall, the butler said, “I have keys for all the locks.”
    “Bring it to me.”
    Keys jingled as the butler sorted them in his shaking fingers. The footman carried one across the room and laid