A Masquerade in the Moonlight(134)
They exchanged a few more words before the man who had to be a considerably weary night watchman mounted the coach beside the driver and drove off.
“You there,” Donovan called out quickly as the servant turned to reenter the house. “I’ve an appointment to see Sir Ralph. Is something wrong?”
The servant nodded, rubbing his hands together nervously. “Yer could say that, sir. ‘E be dead, sir, yer see.”
Thomas stood very still, his blood running cold. The man who would live forever was dead? Could he be so lucky that he would not be forced to carry Harewood’s death on his conscience? So much for the man’s coveted Shield of Invincibility. “Dead, is it? You don’t say? How?”
“Ah, it’s awful, that’s wot it is! Oi wasn’t apposed ta come back till later, but the young lady wot Oi walks out with whenever Oi has an evenin’ off—well, sir, we ‘ad us some words, and Oi ‘adn’t no other place ta go. So Oi brought m’self back ‘ere. An’ Oi found ‘im, swingin’ there, ‘is face all purple an’ all. Why ‘e did it, that’s wot Oi doesn’t ken. Seemed ‘happy enough ta me when Oi took m’self off last night.”
Thomas frowned, immediately discarding any faint notion that Harewood had been carried off by a sudden apoplexy, perhaps brought on by his delight over his supposed immortality. “Swinging there. Are you saying Sir Ralph hanged himself?”
The servant nodded furiously. “That’s ‘ow come ‘e sent us all off, or so the mort from the guardhouse said when Oi fetched ‘im ‘ere. So’s ‘e could do it all alone, with nobody botherin’ ‘im. But it’s up ta me now ta fetch ‘im down and lays ‘im out, an’ Oi gots ta tell yer, sir, Oi ain’t lookin’ forward ta it. Nary a bit!”
“If you’d like some assistance—” Donovan ventured, wanting to see Harewood’s body for himself. He remembered Harewood had hinted he might be able to assist him in removing something from his house when he arrived this morning, but Thomas was certain Harewood had not meant for him to remove a dead body. Or had he? Had the thieves fallen out to the point where an “immortal” Harewood had planned to eliminate Laleham? God! This was getting too complicated—and too dangerous by far.
The servant all but bowed Thomas into the house, and they were soon inside the drawing room, Sir Ralph’s grotesquely suspended body the decided focal piece of the well-kept, plainly furnished chamber.
He was dead all right, Thomas told himself, looking into Harewood’s lifeless eyes, doing his best to ignore the man’s purpled complexion. He walked slowly around the room, taking in the fallen chair, the tied cords, the short distance between Harewood’s toes and the floor, and remembered the man’s description of Geoffrey Balfour’s death and his horror of meeting the same fate.
There was, Thomas knew, no possible way Harewood would commit suicide. Not a man who had longed to live forever. And especially not a death by hanging.
He walked over to the cold fireplace, touching the cord as it was tied to the handle of the damper, then looked down at the ashes and saw the charred remains of several pieces of paper. He lifted one out, recognizing Harewood’s handwriting immediately as he read the words William and confession.
Had Harewood burned an earlier draft of his confession? It was possible. But then he looked at the body once more, at the cords. At all of the carefully knotted cords. Yes, it was possible Harewood had burned the papers. But not probable. He would have saved a copy; he had been that sort of man.
A man like Laleham, however, seeing those pages, would burn them.
What all had been in that confession? What all had Harewood written about Marguerite? About Laleham’s passion for Marguerite?
And then Thomas remembered.
... if he ever learned about the American, about the way he tumbled her, he’d kill her, that’s what William would do.
“Sweet Jesus and all the saints.” Thomas looked at the clock on the mantel. It was nearly nine. Marco and Paddy wouldn’t be arriving in Portman Square before eleven.
Marguerite wouldn’t know—she’d have no idea Laleham had in fact murdered her father, and not driven the man to suicide. She wouldn’t know Laleham had found a copy of Harewood’s confession. She wouldn’t know he had murdered Harewood. She wouldn’t know of Laleham’s obsession with her, wouldn’t realize that, because of her involvement with one very stupid American, she had put herself in the position of not only earning Laleham’s hatred but of becoming a prime suspect in this business of bringing down the members of The Club. Laleham was many things, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d see it, sooner or later, a way to turn all blame away from himself. He may have seen it already.