by Liz Carlyle
“No, no, dear girl!” Lazonby quietly interjected, squeezing her hand where it lay upon his coat sleeve. “Set your every word with care now. My friend Napier there believes he has a murder on his hands. And we all know your father killed himself.”
Her strange, blue-green eyes glittered. “After he was ruined, yes.”
“Indeed,” said Lazonby tightly. “But you wished to believe that was my doing. So did the police. Every one of you played right into Sir Wilfred’s hands all those years ago. And look what that stubbornness has brought down upon our heads, my dear.”
“I am not your dear,” she said hotly. “And you are still a scoundrel.”
“Aye,” said Lazonby dryly, “but an innocent one.”
The lady cut a sidelong glance at the dairy’s door. “Oh, dear God,” she whispered, pressing her fingertips to her mouth. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up—that I can go back—but Sir Wilfred really is . . . dead.”
“And in the end, neither of us will feel much regret about it,” Lazonby predicted, cutting an assessing glance around. “But press that point too loudly, my dear, and you’ll be giving yourself a clear motive for murdering him.”
She looked suddenly afraid. “But I . . . I need to tell Napier everything,” she whispered. “He’ll find out, Lazonby. And then I shall be the one in prison, not you.”
“Don’t you dare,” Lazonby grimly ordered. “I can only do so much to protect you.”
“I wonder you even trouble yourself,” she said bitterly.
“Only because I want something from you,” Lazonby returned. “I need my good name cleared. I can’t have you accused of murder. Napier is dangerous; he’d have a noose round your neck in an instant—regardless of guilt. Trust me. I know how his father was.”
“Trust you!” she murmured. “Dear God.”
“Elizabeth, listen to me. You’re the only person who heard Sir Wilfred’s confession before he died. After all these years of blaming me, now you know I’m innocent—and you are going to make Napier believe it. Ruined, you’re of no use to me. Moreover, I’ve been to prison, you’ll recall. I would not wish it on anyone.”
“Yes, he’d see me hanged, wouldn’t he?” she whispered, looking away. “You will never let me forget this, will you?”
“Why should I?” he said calmly. “By the way, kindly adjust your shawl. You have a powder burn on your bodice—yes, just there. Thank God you had the presence of mind to wear gray.”
“I always have presence of mind,” she returned.
“Indeed, I have noticed.”
“Though I’ll say it again, Lord Lazonby,” Miss Ashton interjected, “just in case you failed to grasp it the first time: I did not carry that pistol in my reticule all these months with any intention of shooting Sir Wilfred Leeton.”
Lazonby flashed a muted grin. “Lord, no!” he agreed. “I think we all know your intent was to shoot me—assuming you couldn’t get the noose round my neck again.”
But this insightful pronouncement was met by Napier’s reappearance from the shadows of the dairy to converse with his constables. A moment later, Napier was striding purposefully toward them.
Lazonby cut his gaze toward her and winked. “Well, curtains up, my dear!” he murmured. “Now, are we ready to tread the boards?”
With the torch passed and a few simple reminders given for the coroner, Napier went back up the steps and onto the manicured swath of green that stretched to the Leetons’ mansion.
“Direct everyone away from here,” he ordered to the two officers he’d dragged with him from Scotland Yard, “save for Lazonby and the other witness.”
“Aye, sir,” said the more senior. “And what of the widow?”
But Napier’s gaze—and his breath—had caught on the woman in gray again. “Just see Lady Leeton safely inside,” he murmured distractedly, “and I’ll speak with her after I’m done with Lazonby and the governess, or whatever the devil she is.”
Already Napier had asked the butler to provide him the garden party’s guest list; the thing would doubtless read like a page ripped from DeBrett’s. But it little mattered. All of them, he’d been told, had been situated by the tea tent on the west lawn. They had merely heard rather than seen the shot that felled their host.
All save for Lady Anisha, and the pair who now regarded him across the swath of grass.
He watched the woman carefully as he approached. Those icy, blue-green eyes flickered again with the faintest hint of discomfiture as he drew up before them, but the tell was quickly veiled, and her pale, luminescent mask thoroughly returned to its place.
The look of her set him on edge. There was something . . . something familiar in the turn of her face. And yet it was wrong somehow.
No. He did not know her.
Did he?
“Lazonby.” Napier gave the earl a too-curt nod then introduced himself to the woman.
“Elizabeth Ashton,” she returned, her voice husky as if with tears. “I teach grammar at Lady Leeton’s charity school.”
That took Napier aback. Despite his joke to the constable, there was nothing of the prim schoolmistress in those cool, knowing eyes. And seen up close, her plain gray gown was of an obviously fine quality.
“Won’t you have a seat, ma’am?” he suggested, waving a hand at the stone bench Lady Leeton had vacated.
Lord Lazonby, however, did not relinquish her arm, but instead escorted her to the bench and remained standing stiffly beside her like the soldier he’d once been.
Napier jerked his head toward the path. “Walk with me a moment, Lazonby, if you would be so kind?”
“I’ve nothing to say that cannot be said in front of Miss Ashton,” said the earl coolly.
Napier cut the lady another glance. “Very well, then,” he said. “What’s the meaning of all this? Why send for me?”
Lazonby’s smile was faint. “Your old friend’s corpse isn’t cause enough?”
“Sir Wilfred was barely an acquaint—”
“Oh, he was much more than an acquaintance to your late father, the previous assistant commissioner.” Lazonby’s voice had a nasty, warning edge to it now. “In fact, Sir Wilfred was explaining—mere moments before his untimely death—precisely how close they were.”
“What is your point, Lazonby?” Against his will, Napier felt his ire rising, as it always did in the earl’s presence. “I’m hardly my father.”
“No, but you have his old job,” Lazonby countered. “His old office. His old files. My old files, in point of fact—the ones documenting my wrongful conviction for murder.”
Napier felt his lip curl. “I may be a mere civil servant, my lord, but I’ll be damned to hell before I’m accountable to the likes of you,” he whispered. “Besides, this is Greenwich, not London. I’ve no jurisdiction here.”
“Jurisdiction, perhaps not,” said Lazonby. “But influence? Aye, and plenty of it.”
“You’re wasting my time, Lazonby,” said Napier.
Lazonby’s eyes flashed. “I sent for you because it is to our mutual benefit that Sir Wilfred’s death be handled discreetly.”
Napier answered his disdainful smile with one of his own. “Is it indeed?” he murmured. “I cannot think of one other occasion, sir, when our best interests have had so much as a nodding acquaintance with one another.”
“Sir Wilfred lies dead in his own dairy,” said Lazonby again. “Don’t you wish to know how it happened?”
“Admittedly I might be wrong,” said Napier snidely, “but I was of the impression the gentleman had been shot in the head.”
“Yes, but it was an accident!” the lady interjected. “Sir Wilfred was—he was a madman! He seized the gun and—”
“And it went off inadvertently,” Lazonby interjected, settling a hand over the woman’s shoulder.
“Oh?” Napier’s gaze swung down, pinning the lady’s odd eyes. “Did it indeed?”
“Really, Miss Ashton,” Lazonby continued. “You are overset. Permit me t
o explain.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Napier. “I might trust the lady’s opinion over yours. Moreover, she looks about as cool as an ice pick to me.”
At that, Lazonby leaned very near. “You overstep yourself, Assistant Commissioner,” he whispered, “and at great peril. Now, I will tell you just what happened here today. And you will take down every word of it in your little black book. And then, sir, you will make this business go away.”
But this last Napier scarcely heard. Instead he had tugged out his pocket watch and was staring at it.
“Dear me, old chap,” said Lazonby mockingly. “I do hope we aren’t keeping you from your afternoon constitutional?”
Napier raised his gaze to meet the earl’s. “By God, you sent for me before Sir Wilfred was shot!” he said accusingly. “You had to have done. That corpse is still warm. The Leetons’ butler says the shot was heard round four o’clock. I was halfway across Westminster Bridge by then.”
“Napier, old fellow, do drop your voice.” Lazonby laid a hand on his arm. “Yes, I sent for you, because—”
“By God, Lazonby, if you’ve murdered another innocent man, I vow to see you hanged for it—hanged this time ’til you’re bloody well dead.”
At this, the woman leapt off the bench. “But Lazonby didn’t murder anyone!” she insisted. “He never did, don’t you see? And there was nothing innocent about Wilfred Leeton. Nothing! He was an evil, deceitful devil!”
Her vehemence struck Napier as oddly familiar. “Madam, calm yourself.”
“No! My God. Can’t you see?” Miss Ashton’s husky voice was tremulous with rage now, as if something inside her had finally snapped. “This—all of this—is the result of . . . of lies and incompetence!” she went on. “Of vain assumptions and callous greed! Leeton made fools of us all, Mr. Napier—your sainted father included.”
“Oh?” Napier’s foreboding sense of familiarity was deepening. “So did you shoot Sir Wilfred?”
She dragged in a ragged breath. “I—I—”
“Here is what we are going to say,” interjected Lazonby, cutting Napier a dark glance. “Her brother shot Sir Wilfred. Accidentally.”
Here, the lady shocked Napier by collapsing into the grass, sobbing as though her world had ended, her skirts puddling around her in a pool of shimmering gray silk.
“Ah!” Napier waved a hand around the lawn. “And this mysterious brother, just where might he be?”
“Spooked and ran.” Lazonby had knelt to console the sobbing woman. “By the way, he’s Jack Coldwater with the Morning Chronicle,” he said, flicking a cool glance up at Napier. “You’ll want to write that down in your interview notes.”
“Jack Coldwater—? That hot-penned, red-haired radical reporter who keeps churning up your murder conviction in the newspapers? Lazonby, that makes no sense.”
“Well, that’s how it was,” he said as Napier helped him lift the sobbing, shaking woman to her feet. “And just before the shots rang out—as the penny dreadfuls so cleverly put it—Sir Wilfred confessed to stabbing the very chap your father had me sent to Newgate for killing.”
“You must be quite mad.”
“He—he is not mad.” Miss Ashton’s remarkable eyes had gone soft, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Indeed, I am perfectly sane—as I have been for all the years since old Hanging Nick Napier managed to get me convicted of murder.” Lazonby gingerly urged Miss Ashton back onto the bench. “I’ve told you time and again I’d nothing to do with it. And now here is your proof.”
“Proof?” Napier exploded. “There is no proof!”
But Miss Ashton had seemingly gathered herself. “There is proof,” she said, her voice still low and tremulous. “I overheard Sir Wilfred confess everything. Apparently Lady Anisha had become suspicious of him. I don’t know why, exactly. But Sir Wilfred hit her in the head with a garden spade, and dragged her in there to drown her in the spring box.”
Napier’s gaze narrowed. “And you’d know this . . . how?”
“I followed them.”
“Indeed? Why?”
“Let’s just say she was looking for her brother,” Lazonby interjected. “Jack Coldwater had followed them, too.”
“Well, that must have been quite a parade!” Napier shook his head, as if it might clear his vision.
“No, it’s really quite simple,” said Lazonby—and Napier knew it was anything but. “We are going to put it about that Miss Ashton saw her brother in the crowd, and guessed that Coldwater had come looking for Sir Wilfred.”
“We are going to put it about?” Amidst all the confusion, Lazonby’s weasel-words were finally coming clear to Napier. “No, by God, I’ll have the truth—from the both of you.”
“And the truth is, Jack Coldwater was in that dairy because he’d been investigating that old murder case, just like Anisha,” Lazonby reminded Napier almost accusingly. “You should know. You let her into your office to see your father’s files. Because of that, she asked one too many questions, and Sir Wilfred feared his house of cards was collapsing.”
Napier could only stare at the man. A cold chill was slowly creeping over him. He had allowed Lady Anisha into his office—and for selfish reasons, too. And now it was coming horrifically clear just why he had been summoned here.
But Lazonby was still speaking—and rather too authoritatively. “So Coldwater was stalking Sir Wilfred when he saw him strike Lady Anisha and drag her in the dairy. Coldwater tried to save her but Sir Wilfred rushed him. A struggle ensued. And Coldwater’s pocket pistol went off. Accidentally.”
“An interesting story,” said Napier snidely. “But then you’ve always possessed quite an imagination, my lord.”
“You have Miss Ashton as a witness,” Lazonby barked. “And then there is Anisha herself. But I shall warn you here and now I’ll not have her further involved in this mess. So you are going to tidy this up, Napier. You are.”
“The devil!” swore Napier. “I’ll do no such thing.”
“Oh, I very much think you ought.” Miss Ashton’s voice had stopped quavering now. “For it’s all true. Moreover, Sir Wilfred said something else, Mr. Napier, just before he died—bragged about it, really.”
“Oh?” Napier tried not to sound callous. “And what was that?”
The lady’s odd green-blue gaze now held his, unblinking and certain, and Napier was suddenly sure he knew her.
And he realized, too, with his policeman’s instincts that she was about to say something he did not wish to hear.
She dragged in a deep, almost ragged breath. “Sir Wilfred bragged that he had bribed the former assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police,” she said. “He bribed your father, Mr. Napier. To ensure Rance Welham—now Lord Lazonby—was accused and convicted of a murder he did not commit.”
Napier could only stare at her. The shiver inside him turned to a surge of blood-chilling uncertainty, like some secret, dammed-up dread too long held back. It roared in his head, threatening to burst free of all constraint.
“No. I . . . I do not believe you,” he finally managed.
For what else was there to say?
Nicholas Napier had been known far and wide as the Crown’s most resolute, most ruthless man within the Metropolitan Police. And once his officers arrested a man, the chap was as good as hanged; only Lazonby had managed to slip the Newgate knot.
As a boy, Napier had idolized his father; had always imagined him flawless. Above reproach. And if, in later years, there had come the occasional question or inconsistency . . . well, he’d be damned before he’d admit it to the likes of a convicted killer.
If Lazonby was, in fact, a killer . . .
Napier dragged a hand down his face. The significance of it all sunk in on him again, forcing him to will his own breath.
Sir Wilfred—oh, he had always been too bloody clever for anyone’s good. No one would long mourn him once the shock was past.
And Lazonby, the arrogant bastard—he ha
d suddenly stepped a little away—ever the gentleman!—as if to give Napier the time and space to collect himself.
Miss Ashton merely sighed. “Mr. Napier, you do not remember me, do you?” she said. “It was nearly two years ago. In your office.”
Napier could only stare at her. And suddenly, he knew why she was so familiar. Why he felt that strange connection that was so alluring yet so disturbing.
“Elizabeth Colburne!” he growled. “By God, this cannot be coincidence.”
“It actually is, rather,” she said quietly, her slender hands set almost prayerfully together.
It was her eyes, he realized. Those incredible eyes were the clue. And the only clue, too, for her hair was somehow darker, her figure fuller and far more shapely.
“And as to what Lord Lazonby has said,” the lady went on, her voice trembling a little, “I fear that you will come to believe it. Just as I have done. Though neither of us, I daresay, are going to enjoy having our comfortable, time-worn views so drastically altered.”
He held her eyes, waiting on the next shoe to drop. For this day had been so damnable, he knew without doubt there was one.
And then Elizabeth Colburne-Ashton, or whatever her damned name was, sighed again, her viridian gaze settling over him in a way that made his breath catch. She leaned into him, so near he could breathe in her perfume, that exotic combination of sun-warmed lilies and jasmine, unique as the lady herself.
“And now, Mr. Napier,” she whispered in her husky voice, “wouldn’t it be best for all of us if we just let this awful business drop?”
Napier looked at her blankly, his head swimming from her scent and her proximity. “What do you mean?”
But Lazonby broke the spell by setting a heavy hand on Napier’s shoulder. “She means let sleeping dogs lie,” he said, giving him a hearty pat. “Embrace it, old chap. Trust me, it will only ruin your father’s good name if you go churning up old muck. And Miss Ashton, you will kindly stop talking now.”
“The devil!” Napier swore.
But Lazonby, damn him, merely winked.
“Now listen closely, my old friend,” he murmured, slipping his arm fully about Napier’s shoulders and urging him down the path, away from the lady in gray. “For I am about to tell you a tale which, if I were you, I would not much question.”