A Regimental Murder

by Jennifer Ashley

  The horse proved immune to my bad language, but at last, I got mounted and rode quietly out of the yard.

  Once on horseback, my lameness mattered little, and I could ride with only small discomfort. Within a matter of minutes, I was moving at an easy trot toward the paths in the woods.

  I had been right; the ride did soothe me. I put Breckenridge and Eggleston and their odd wives behind me, and simply enjoyed a gallop over the downs. I thought of nothing but the horse moving beneath me, of my shifting balance, and the feel of the horse's mouth through the reins.

  After some time of this, I felt much better. I slowed the horse and turned him back for the house, letting him breathe while I ordered my thoughts.

  Eggleston and Breckenridge were proving difficult to question. I would have to pin them down or abandon the attempt. I wanted to talk again with Lydia Westin. She must know some reason why Eggleston and Breckenridge would blackmail her husband into taking the blame for Captain Spencer's death at Badajoz.

  Truth to tell, I simply wanted to see her again. I wanted her to look upon me and thank me for helping her.

  I sighed. I had a long way to go before she would thank me for anything.

  The curious prickling between my shoulder blades suddenly returned, just as it had at the wayside inn, just as it had in the gardens the night we'd arrived. Someone followed me, someone who lingered in the trees in the bend of the road. I could taste it in the air, breathe it in the scent of dewy grass.

  I abruptly wheeled the horse and plunged back the way I'd come. Startled doves fluttered from the underbrush and a rabbit dashed away across the field. Nothing else moved.

  I slowed the horse and peered among the trees. The damp brown and green of the woods showed no signs of human life, and I heard nothing but early birds in song. I hesitated for a long time, disquiet settling upon me. I knew someone followed me, someone who knew how to mask their footsteps and hide themselves with skill.

  I looked for a long time, holding the horse still, but I saw no one. At last, I turned the horse again and rode back to the house, looking about me, unnerved.

  The stable lads were still not stirring when I entered the yard, so I removed the saddle and bridle myself and led the horse back into his box. I was too conscientious to leave the horse without rubbing him down, so I did this quickly, with a curry comb and brush I found in the tack room. The saddle and bridle, on the other hand, I left for the stable lads to clean.

  Despite the unknown person tracking me, the ride had settled my nerves somewhat. I entered the house through the garden door I'd left unlocked and trudged back upstairs. I paused at my bedchamber door then bravely opened it.

  To my immense relief, the room was empty. I closed the door and locked it behind me. Tired now with my short night and long ride, I removed my boots and lay down on the bed.

  I felt blissfully drowsy. The ride, the port and brandy I'd imbibed the night before, and the horse care combined to send me to sleep in a trice.

  So hard I slept that I did not awaken until nearly ten, which, as it turned out, proved to be most unfortunate.

  *** *** ***

  Once awake, I performed my usual ablutions--washed, shaved, cleaned my teeth with tooth powder, and combed my hair. I donned my regimentals, since I seemed to have left my coat in the stables. I had a vague memory of sliding it from my shoulders as I rubbed down the horse in the morning heat.

  I made my way down to the dining room, hoping to scare up a servant to bring me a large feast for breakfast. And coffee. Plenty of coffee.

  When I reached the dining room, I heard raised voices on the other side of the door. One was Grenville's. Odd, because he prided himself on never shouting or losing his sangfroid in public.

  The other voice was. . .

  My eyes widened in astonishment and I opened the door.

  "How the hell should I know?" Grenville was saying. "You and your wife are the closest thing . . ." He broke off and swung around as I entered.

  The man facing him was Colonel Brandon. When Brandon saw me, his expression performed a powerful transformation from astonishment to relief to disappointed dismay.

  I had witnessed the identical transformation one day a few years ago when I'd returned from a mission he'd sent me on. I had been dragged, half-dead, back to camp on a makeshift litter, and when Brandon had first seen me, he'd assumed me dead. His face had betrayed triumph, guilt, remorse, and behind that, glee. And then when I'd opened my mouth and called him a bastard, his look had changed to one of horror. He had wanted me dead, and against all odds, I lived.

  His look now was little different. This morning, Brandon had once again thought, for some reason, that I was permanently out of his life.

  Grenville, on the other hand, gaped at me, white-faced. "Lacey! Good God."

  "What the devil is the matter?" I snapped. My headache had returned.

  Grenville took two strides to me, relief lighting his eyes. He clapped both hands to my shoulders, and for a moment, I thought he would embrace me.

  I frowned at him. "Tell me what has happened."

  His fingers clenched my shoulders, hard, once, then he stepped back, his Adam's apple moving. "We thought you had gone and died, my friend," he said lightly. "I knew it had to be a mistake."

  I looked from one man to the other. "Died?"

  Grenville turned and strolled to the decanter on the sideboard. His hands were shaking. "Brandon here rushed in and told me he'd found you dead in the woods. Frightened me half to death."

  My gaze switched to Brandon. His face suffused with blood. "I thought it was you," he said. "He was dressed in that brown coat of yours, or so I thought. He was facedown in the brush, and obviously dead. Hair the same color as yours, too." He glared at my head as if it were to blame for this deception.

  "Did it not occur to you to roll the poor man over and discover who he was?" I demanded.

  Brandon looked peevish. "He is down the side of a hill. I could not get to him through the mud and the saplings without help. Looks as though he was thrown from his horse and slid there. And a stable lad told me he'd seen you go riding in the wee hours of the morning. Sounded like a damn fool thing you would do."

  "I did go," I answered. "But I returned. I even rubbed down the horse and left the furniture in the middle of the tack room. Did they not reason I'd returned?"

  Grenville broke in. "Apparently not. Colonel Brandon came to rouse the house. And found only me. No one else is stirring."

  Brandon sneered. "At ten o'clock on a fine summer's day. I do not think much of your friends, Mr. Grenville."

  Grenville held up his hand. "They are not my friends. Believe that." He drank down a measure of brandy and clicked his glass back onto the sideboard. "Well, shall we go and see to this poor gentleman?"

  *** *** ***

  Brandon led us to a lane that lay near to where I had been riding that morning. The stable lad who accompanied us called it Linden Hill Lane. Tortuous and narrow, the road climbed toward a low ridge that encircled the valley. To either side of the lane, the land fell away in steep, wooded banks. Trees grew thinly here, but the underbrush was dry as tinder in the summer heat.

  About a quarter of a mile along, Brandon stopped. "There."

  He pointed. A body was caught halfway down the brown hill, the brush and branches broken in a path to it. He lay facedown, very still. I could see why Brandon had thought him me. He was a tall, lean man with thick dark hair and no hat and wore a brown coat, the one I had mislaid that morning.

  We stood in a semicircle, staring down at him. In addition to the stable lad, Bartholomew and Matthias had accompanied us.

  "If he rode a horse up here," I began, "then where is the horse? Has it returned home?"

  The stable lad shook his head. "Lad" was a misleading appellation--this man looked to be about fifty. A stable lad was simply a man, of whatever age, who looked after the tack and helped the grooms care for and exercise the horses. "Unusual, that," he said. "A horse will r
un right back to his own stable. Knows where the grub is, don't he?"

  Grenville poked at the brush with his walking stick. "Bartholomew, can you get down there?"

  The energetic young footman promptly began crashing through the dried scrub toward the body. His brother followed. I came after them, using my walking stick to bear my weight.

  I slid and scrambled down the two dozen or so feet between the road and the body, arriving just as Bartholomew put out a large hand and turned the body over.

  Matthias whistled.

  "Who is it?" Grenville called down.

  I straightened. "It's Breckenridge."

  * * * * *

  Chapter Eleven

  Breckenridge's eyes were open to nothing, unseeing and glassy, pupils fixed. His mouth was open as well, as though he'd been drawing a breath to shout. His face had been slashed by the dozens of branches he'd crashed through, not to mention bruised where I'd hit him the day before. His knee-high boots and buckskin breeches were likewise scarred by his descent. My coat and his gloves were in ribbons.

  Bartholomew slid his huge hand beneath Breckenridge's head. "Neck's broken," he informed us.

  Grenville cupped his hands around his mouth. "Can you bring him up here?"

  Bartholomew stooped beneath the branches. Breckenridge was a large man, but Bartholomew was larger. He rolled the older man onto his shoulder. With his brother's help, Bartholomew began climbing back toward the road, brush crackling and breaking under his onslaught. I followed slowly.

  Bartholomew laid Breckenridge out at Grenville's feet. "Must have fallen from his horse, sir," he said, dusting off his hands. "Broke his neck tumbling down the hill."

  Questions spilled through my mind. Had Breckenridge truly fallen or had someone broken his neck for him and tossed him down the hill? What had Breckenridge been doing up here at all? And why dressed in my coat?

  I also wondered why Brandon had suddenly turned up at Astley Close, and why he'd just happened to have been taking a walk this morning in Linden Hill Lane. I thought I knew the answer, and beneath my stunned surprise at Breckenridge's death, anger seethed.

  Something caught my eye and I moved away from the others. The soft earth at the side of the lane showed two shallow furrows. They began about ten yards from where Bartholomew had dropped the body and led straight to the edge of the road where Breckenridge had gone over. The tracks were intermittent, sometimes disappearing altogether, sometimes appearing for only an inch or so.

  I followed the trail back. "Look at his boots," I instructed.

  They stared at me collectively. Impatiently, I bent over Breckenridge and turned the sole of his boot upward. The edge of the heel was crusted in earth. The other was the same.

  I straightened. "He was dragged here, and thrown over the side. He did not fall from a horse."

  "But there's a horse gone," the stable lad said. He removed his cap, wiped his forehead, and replaced it. "And the tack. Someone rode out." He looked at me. "Thought it was you."

  "Which horse is gone?" I asked.

  "Chestnut gelding."

  "I rode a bay," I said. "I put him away when I returned. Was the chestnut Breckenridge's own horse?"

  "He was that."

  I mused. "Even if he did ride up here in the first place, someone dragged him from there to here." I pointed. "Here, the brush is not as heavy. Easier to throw him down the side. He would slide most of the way."

  Grenville frowned. "But why, if he'd broken his neck falling, would someone push him from the road? Why not lay the poor man over the horse and bring him home?"

  "Because I think the person deliberately killed him and wished it to look as though he'd had a bad fall."

  Brandon snorted. "Who would do such a thing?"

  "A very strong man," I said. "Or a very angry one. Or perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps they quarreled, Breckenridge slipped and fell and broke his neck, and the second man panicked."

  "Seems unlikely they'd come all the way up here for a quarrel," the stable lad pointed out.

  I considered. "An appointment, perhaps."

  "Or a footpad," Grenville said. "Tried to rob him, broke his neck, and pushed him over."

  I closed my mouth. I sensed strongly that this had been murder with a purpose, but Grenville's suggestion was logical, and arguing with it at present might look strange to the others. It might have been simple robbery, but I did not think so.

  We all did agree about the need to search for the horse. The stable lad and Matthias easily found the chestnut gelding not a mile down the road, in a pasture of the farm that the lane skirted. Whether he had wandered through an open gate on his own, or someone had retrieved him and led him there, we could not tell.

  The horse seemed displeased at being found, having had its pleasant meal of lush grass interrupted, but once caught he was docile enough. He was about sixteen hands high, fine-boned, and expensive. The head stall and saddle he wore were the very ones I had ridden out with and left behind to be cleaned.

  Bartholomew and Matthias agreed to stay with the body while the rest of us returned to Astley Close. The magistrate would need to be informed and a cart sent to retrieve Breckenridge. There would be an inquiry, and an inquest. I imagined the coroner and jury would happily let the horse be the culprit, but I was not so certain he had been.

  We followed the lad into the stable yard. I looked into the tack room, which was simply a horse box on the end of the row used for the purpose. Saddles on pegs lined one wall, and bridles and halters hung opposite. A wooden shelf filled with curry combs, brushes, hoof picks, and cloths occupied the wall opposite the door.

  "Why would he use the saddle I had left to be cleaned?" I asked as the lad unfastened the cinch and dragged the saddle from the horse.

  The stable lad shrugged. "It was nearby."

  "It was dirty. In the middle of the floor, where I left it. Why not use a bridle with a clean bit? Besides, Breckenridge had his own saddle, a French cavalry saddle. He boasted of it."

  I pointed. The saddle rested on a peg at the end of the row. Both pommel and cantle curved high, making the seat, covered with a quilted leather pad, deep. The English saddles had been similar. On campaign, we had strapped sheepskin to the saddle for more comfort, the cinch wrapping across the top of the sheepskin and fastening beneath the horse.

  Breckenridge's stolen French saddle was a fine thing, obviously the property of a high-ranking officer. I knew in my heart that if he'd saddled his own horse and gone off riding early, he would have used the cavalry saddle, not the one I'd left, damp and dirty, on the stone floor.

  The stable lad shrugged again, and moved off to care for the horse. Grenville was watching me curiously, Brandon impatiently. I sensed I would learn no more here, and the three of us left the stable and trudged toward the house.

  "I will inform Lady Mary," Grenville said as we walked. "And tell her to send for the magistrate." He slanted me a glance. "I think for now you should keep your murder theory to yourself, Lacey. You would have difficulty convincing a magistrate without more proof."

  "We have proof," I said. "He would not have used that saddle, and he was dragged down the road to a convenient place to be tossed over the hill."

  "What about my idea of the robber?" Grenville asked.

  I shook my head. "He still had his watch. I saw it in his waistcoat. A robber would have taken the watch, not to mention the horse."

  Grenville deflated. "That is true."

  "For God's sake, Lacey," Brandon broke in. He had been striding along Grenville's other side in silent anger. "A man has just died, and his wife waits in the house to learn of it. She will not want to hear you going on about murder. Leave it be."

  I stopped. We stood halfway between the house and the stables. The stable and yard lay beneath the curve of a hill, the roof just visible from our position. The house sat a good fifty yards ahead of us, rising like a sphinx from the green lawns, arms extended.

  "If he were murdered," I said doggedly,
"it was not done up on that road. He was killed in such a place as this, where they would not be heard from house or stable. The killer fetched the horse, saddling it with the tack I'd left, and led it back to Breckenridge. He laid Breckenridge across the saddle and led him up to the woods until he found a likely spot to dispose of him. Then he slapped the horse on the rump and sent it on its way. When the horse was found, the assumption would be that Breckenridge had fallen from it."

  "He did fall," Brandon said. "Why make things complicated? If a man could know which horse was Breckenridge's, why would he not know which saddle belonged to him?"

  "Perhaps the murderer was not staying at the house. Breckenridge rode out at an early hour every morning by habit. Anyone staying at the village would have grown used to seeing him on the chestnut, and assume the horse was his, or at least the one he liked always to ride. But they might not have noted the saddle."

  Brandon still looked annoyed, but Grenville nodded. "You may be right. I admit, if Westin were not dead, I would not be as quick to agree with you. But two of the four gentlemen involved in the incident on the Peninsula are dead, seemingly by accident. Strange, is it not?"

  He was closer to the truth than he knew. Brandon did not stop scowling, but a worried light entered his eyes.

  Grenville nodded to us. "I will go break the news to Lady Mary."

  "Do you want me to come with you?" I offered.

  Grenville considered. "No. Best I do this alone. I dislike Lady Mary, but Breckenridge was her friend. She will doubtless take it hard."

  He pivoted on his heel and marched away, shoulders squared.

  When he was out of earshot, I turned on Brandon, other questions troubling me. Brandon had mistaken the fallen Breckenridge for me; Breckenridge was dead. I feared, I very much feared, that the idiot had done something irreversible.