Chapter 65
Chapter Sixty-Five
Bennet took a long draught of his pipe and closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of the late autumn sun on his face. He had found a sunny corner of the kitchen garden to take his ease, and he considered that life had definitely taken a turn for the better.
‘Mr. Bennet.’
He opened his eyes. Peter Thompson stood in front him, holding a battered tin box out before him.
‘What’cha got there, boy?’
Peter swallowed. ‘The men who was tearing down the stables found it hidden behind a loose brick in a wall,’ he said. ‘I think it was Amy’s. I used to see her with it when she thought no one was looking.’
Bennet considered the object, a sad remnant of the girl’s life.
‘Nice it was found,’ he said.
Peter held it out. ‘I want you to take it to his lordship,’ he said. ‘There’s things in there. I don’t know what they are, but he will.’
‘What sort of things?’
Peter just shook his head and shoved it at Bennet before turning on his heels and running away.
Bennet looked at the object on his lap and opened the lid. The contents looked like the sort of detritus he would expect of a young girl’s life: ribbons, dried flowers, the sort of cheap trinkets pedlars at a fair would sell and, hidden in a corner, a small, apparently insignificant object.
Bennet fished it out and held it up.
He let out a low whistle.
Sebastian poured two glasses of French brandy and handed one to Harry. Harry swirled the liquid and took an appreciative sniff of the fumes that rose from the glass.
‘When’s the wedding?’ he enquired.
‘March,’ Sebastian said.
Harry cocked an eyebrow. ‘Have to say, old chap, I’m a bit hurt you haven’t asked me to stand by you.’
Sebastian set his glass down. ‘I have my reasons.’
Harry frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Sebastian crossed to his desk and opened the cigar box that stood on the table. He stood looking down at the little silver button… an officer’s button from the 40th Regiment of Foot—the number 40 encircled by a laurel wreath.
He handed it to Harry.
Harry tossed it in his hand. ‘Collecting buttons from the old regiment, Alder?’
‘So you recognise it, Harry?’
‘Of course I do. It’s an officer’s button from the Fortieth. Hanging on to it for sentimental reasons, Alder?’
‘It’s not mine. It was found in a box, hidden behind a brick in the old stables.’
Harry stiffened and set the button back on the table, recoiling from it.
Sebastian continued. ‘The box belonged to a housemaid here at Brantstone, Amy Thompson. Did you know her, Dempster?’
The faintest hesitation gave lie to the words that followed. ‘How the hell would I know a housemaid from Brantstone?’
‘Perhaps you can tell me? Did she accompany her father over to Fairchild Hall? Did you see her in the village? Did you meet her at Brantstone?’
Harry picked up the button, turning it by its shank. His shoulders sagged and he shook his head.
‘I saw her at the church one Sunday when I was staying with Georgie. She was lovely, Alder. Really lovely.’ He let the button, with its betraying number 40, drop back on to the table.
Sebastian sighed and retrieved the small but significant object.
Only one officer, other than himself, would have worn the insignia of the Fortieth Regiment of Foot in this neighbourhood.
He knew as soon as Bennet showed it to him that he had found Amy Thompson’s secret lover. Had he also found her killer?
He looked down at the button in his hand. It carried such a weight. A man’s life, but it had already cost a life—two lives.
‘You have the death of two on your conscience, Harry. Amy carried your child.’
Harry flung himself out of his chair and walked across to the window, running his hands through his hair.
‘It was an accident, Alder.’ He turned to face Sebastian, his face crumpled in distress. ‘There’s not a day goes by when I don’t think about it… what I did…’
‘What did you do?’
‘We used to meet in the pavilion up behind the lake. When I was staying with Georgie I’d send the girl a ribbon. That was our secret signal. Different colour for different days. The last time…’
Harry covered his face with his hands, his shoulders convulsing as he struggled to control his emotions.
‘She told me she was with child. She started making all sorts of demands. I couldn’t think straight.’
Sebastian regarded his friend without sympathy.
‘Plenty of men find themselves in your situation, Dempster. They don’t resort to murder.’
Harry dropped his hands and stared at Sebastian.
‘Murder? It wasn’t murder. I panicked. I admit I lost my temper.
I think she thought I was going to hit her.
She took a step backwards and slipped. I couldn’t stop her.
She fell backwards and hit her head on the corner of the marble bench.
’ His breath came in short bursts as if he had been running.
‘I can still hear the crack. I didn’t know what to do. ’
‘Was she still alive?’
Harry shook his head. ‘No.’ He took a great shuddering breath.
‘I waited for hours, hoping it was all a terrible mistake, but she just lay there, cold and dead, with her eyes wide open. I carried her body down to the lake and I put her in. There wasn’t even any blood, Alder. No trace that it had ever happened.’
‘So you threw her away and you went on with your life,’ Sebastian said without disguising the disgust in his voice, ‘leaving her family to mourn; her mother to suffer an apoplexy, her body to be buried in unconsecrated ground with all the world thinking she had committed the sin of suicide?’
‘She was only a housemaid!’ Harry all but screamed.
Sebastian didn’t answer. He held out his hand, palm open with the incriminating silver button.
‘When did you lose this?’
‘After one of our trysts,’ he said. ‘I was wearing a uniform on my way to a party. I know I’m retired, but the ladies do like a uniform. It was annoying to find the button missing but I just thought a thread had come loose.’ He scowled. ‘If I had known the chit had purloined it...’
‘She loved you. She was carrying your child and you threw her away like a piece of refuse, Harry.’ Sebastian could not keep the disgust from his voice.
Harry looked away. ‘I’m not proud of myself.’
‘She thought you would marry her.’
Harry shook his head. “That was never going to happen but I would have done the right thing and seen she and the child wanted for nothing.’ He turned his gaze back to Sebastian. ‘What are you going to do?’
Sebastian shook his head. ‘What are you going to do, Dempster? You have twenty-four hours before I report this to the Chief Constable. If what you say is true then you won’t hang… or you can be the coward I think you are and run. The choice is yours.’
Harry stared at his friend. ‘That’s it? You would turn me in? After Spain, after Inez… after everything we have been through together? God damn it, Alder, you’re no saint. You’ve killed!’
Sebastian’s gaze did not waver. ‘When I have killed, it has been in battle, Dempster. I don’t have the death of an innocent woman and her unborn child on my conscience, but I counted you my friend. For Inez if for no other reason, I owe you the chance to do the honourable thing.’
Harry gave a snort of laughter. ‘Honour? God, Alder, I lost my honour years ago. Did you know I was all but cashiered from the army? It was all done quietly, my reputation intact.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Gambling debts. Not just a few guineas here and there. Debts I could never hope to repay, even if my father dropped dead tomorrow.’
Sebastian narrowed his eyes.
Harry sighed heavily. ‘You may as well know the whole story. I founded a company: The Golden Adventurers Club. Forged some convincing reports of gold mines in Guinea and promised a fortune to be made. It was so easy to gull the investors. I soon made my fortune back, paid off my creditors.’
‘And the investors?’
Harry’s smile made Sebastian’s flesh crawl. ‘Oh dear, the mines were a failure. As far as the investors knew, a legitimate investment had been badly made. They didn’t make a fuss, didn’t dare risk their own reputations.’
‘And Anthony was one of them. He put everything he owned into that investment in one last gamble to rid himself of Freddy. Did he know it was you?’
‘No. I covered my tracks well. Even pretended to be one of the fools caught by the collapse.’
‘Anthony lost everything, including Isabel’s jointure in that venture.’
‘Well more fool him,’ Harry said, his swagger and confidence returning.
Sebastian rose to his feet. ‘Get out of my house, Dempster. You have twenty-four hours to examine your conscience.’
Harry straightened his shoulders and, without looking at Sebastian, walked over to the door.
As he put his hand to the doorknob, he said, ‘Your problem is you are too trusting, Alder. You see good in people where there isn’t any to be found.’
‘Get out before I change my mind.’ Sebastian turned his back.
He heard the click of the door and waited a long moment before he let out his breath. He knew the decision Harry would make. He would run, like the coward he had shown himself to be.
Tomorrow he would exercise his powers as magistrate and give an order for the body of Amy Thompson to be buried within the churchyard with a proper Christian funeral. He had already housed the Thompson family in a grace and favour cottage on the estate and found a proper nurse for Mrs. Thompson.
He could not bring Amy back to life, but he could give her some peace and dignity.