Free Hanover Square Affair, The by Ashley Gardner Page B

Aimee. “You want Hetty, sir? I’ll fetch her.”
    “In a moment.”
    I limped out of the room and back to the study. I closed the door on the grisly scene and locked it with Bremer’s keys. When I returned to the bedroom, the footman was tossing heaping shovelfuls of coal onto the grate one-handed. He’d built the fire to roaring, and heat seeped into the room.
    For a moment, I wanted to sink to my knees and, like Bremer, press my hands to my head. I had come here to get the truth from Horne, by violence if necessary, but someone had beaten me to it. Someone had stabbed him through the heart, cheerfully perhaps. And then, not satisfied with that, the killer had mutilated him.
    I could almost understand the murder. Horne was disgusting and self-satisfied, and by all evidence, he’d beaten this young woman and kept her tied and locked in a wardrobe. But what the murderer had done afterward lodged bile in my throat. That had been an act of anger, of vengeance, an act as disgusting as Horne had been himself.
    Behind my disgust, my clear thoughts kept working to piece together what had happened. I felt a sudden need to order everything in my mind before Pomeroy arrived, though I couldn’t have told myself why. It was Pomeroy’s job to discover the culprit and arrest him, not mine.
    I looked at the footman. “What is your name?”
    He turned from the fireplace, still on his knees. “John, sir. I was christened Daniel, but gents mostly want a John or a Henry on their doors.”
    “If your master told Bremer he was not to be disturbed, why was Grace there?”
    John thought a moment. “Sometimes he had Grace wait on him. When he wouldn’t have us.”
    I remembered Grace kneeling in the doorway, staring in anguish at Horne’s body in the stain of brown blood. “Was she there before or after Bremer opened the door?”
    He looked confused. “I don’t know, sir. I was with you.”
    I let that drop. “What is your job here? To stand by the front door?”
    “Aye, sir. From the morning until I locks it last thing of the day. If a gent comes to the door what has business with the master, I put him in the reception room and give his card to Mr. Bremer. If it’s someone as has no right to be here, I chuck him out.”
    “But you are not on the door all the time, are you?”
    He looked confused. “Yes, I am.”
    “When I arrived yesterday, Mr. Bremer let me in. Not you.”
    “Oh. Well, I’m really the only man here, ain’t I? Except Mr. Bremer, and he’s too old. I help Hetty and Gracie carry the coal buckets up and down the stairs. Or a load of wood, or a tub of water to the scullery. No one else is big enough.”
    “So all day you or Mr. Bremer opens the door to visitors. No one comes in without you knowing it.”
    “No, sir.”
    “Who came today?”
    His eyes widened. “Do you mean someone who came today might have stuck the master?”
    “It is possible. Think back. Who came to visit?”
    John’s face screwed up with effort. “Well, there was one gent, thin, dark haired. You’ll have to ask Mr. Bremer who he was. I was helping cook lug in the potatoes for dinner. I let the gent out.”
    “When was that?”
    John wiped his sweating forehead on his arm, dislodging his footman’s white wig and revealing cropped dark hair beneath. “Oh, maybe half past two.”
    “Was he the only visitor the entire day?”
    “Excepting yourself, sir.”
    “What about the girl, Aimee? You said you’d thought she’d gone.”
    His gaze strayed to the bed. “Aye, sir. Weeks ago now. Her and Lily, they went.”
    “You saw them go?”
    He thought. “No. The master said they were gone. Gracie was that glad. She had to wait on them. She didn’t like them.”
    “The girl, Lily. Are you certain that was her name?”
    “The master said it was.”
    “What did she say it was?”
    He looked worried. “She never said. I never went nigh her. Wasn’t allowed, was I?”
    “Did he tell you why they went away?”
    John shook his