Free Captives of the Night by Loretta Chase Page A

not repeat it. I do not wash my linen in public."
    Scattered whispers among the onlookers.
    "I sympathize with the principle, Mrs. Beaumont," said the coroner. "However, you must be aware that your servant understood the exchange to be of a threatening nature."
    "So far as I am aware, the servant you refer to was incapable of understanding," Leila said coldly. "She was of no assistance to me when I discovered Mr. Beaumont’s body. On the contrary, she launched into an hysterical fit from which she did not recover until she had consumed a sizable portion of my late husband's best sherry."
    There was a louder buzz and some laughter. The coroner uttered a sharp rebuke, and the room instantly hushed.
    He turned back to her. "May I remind you, madam, that Mrs. Dempton overheard the quarrel hours before this — er — hysteria you diagnose."
    "Then I cannot account for her attributing to me threats which I did not make," Leila replied. " 'Go to perdition’ is not, so far as I understand the English language, a threat, regardless how vulgar the specific terminology used. My own terminology was most unladylike, admittedly. I did not, however, threaten violence. I most certainly did not commit violence, except upon inanimate objects — my own belongings-in my own studio."
    "You have indicated that you were vexed," the coroner persisted. "To bid your husband to — er — perdition indicates a considerable anger."
    "If I had been angry enough to do him injury," she said, "which I presume is what you are getting at, I should very much like to know why I didn't commit violence on the spot, while I was in this enraged state. Yet Mrs. Dempton saw him shortly after he left the studio. I'm sure she's told you he bore no marks of ill-usage."
    There was more laughter and another reprimand from the coroner.
    "We are inquiring, madam — as the law obliges us — into a death whose cause is questionable," he said quellingly. "Surely it must have appeared so to you, since you agreed to summon the authorities."
    Surely it must be plain to him that a guilty person wouldn't have agreed so readily or cooperated so fully. Leila had done both, as the coroner must be aware, for all his frowns.
    "The cause did not appear questionable to me," she said. "I agreed because
others
appeared to have doubts, and I did not wish to stand in the way of their putting these doubts to rest in the way they thought proper. I thought then and still do, however, that the inquiry would prove a great waste of the government's resources."
    "It would seem then that, at the time, you were the only one not in doubt regarding your husband's demise."
    At the time
. That was significant. Apparently, the autopsy had produced no dear evidence of foul play.
    "It was not precisely unexpected," she said, her confidence soaring. "Mr. Beaumont took too much laudanum, despite warnings from his physician of the risk of overdose. It is called opiate poisoning, I understand. It was obvious to me that my husband had — as his physician had warned — accidentally poisoned himself."
    That wasn't strictly perjury, she told her conscience. Francis certainly hadn't taken the poison on purpose.
    "I see." The coroner looked down again at his notes. "According to Mrs. Dempton, you mentioned poison during the quarrel. You are telling us that the poison you referred to was the laudanum?"
    "I referred to drink as well as opiates. I certainly was not expressing an intention of poisoning him myself — if that is what troubles you about Mrs. Dempton's statement."
    "Yet you can understand, madam, how the words might be construed by another?"
    "No, I cannot," she said firmly, "unless that other took me for an idiot.
Had
I threatened murder, I hope I would not be such a fool as to commit the act immediately thereafter, especially when it was more than likely the servants had overheard the alleged threat. To do so, I should have to be either an imbecile or a madwoman."
    Leila paused to allow this to