Axel (39 page)

“The most common motives for murder,” he said, “are passion, greed, and revenge. I looked for somebody with a proper motive for murder, when I should have been looking, not for the person with a motive to kill Gregory Stoneleigh, but for the person Stoneleigh was most likely to have been aiming for when he died. You killed Stoneleigh in self-defense.”

Sir Dewey had taken up a place near the fire, one hand propped on the mantel. At Axel’s statement, he didn’t nod, so much as he bowed his head.

Abigail remained by Axel’s side, exactly where he preferred she be.

“You shot in self-defense,” she said, “confirming Gregory was a menace to all in his ambit save his blighted dogs and hunters. Nonetheless, when you had every opportunity to explain the situation to one of the most rational, intelligent, diligent magistrates in the realm, you withheld that information. Why?”

“Might we put the gun out of sight?” Sir Dewey asked. He gaze was on the fire, but with a studied detachment, such as a person terrified of dogs might employ when confronted with the realization that a mastiff gnawed a bone across the room.

“Abigail, what say you?”

She set the gun on the sideboard and came back to Axel’s side, while a large, long-haired black cat stropped itself against Sir Dewey’s boots.

“I am uneasy around guns,” Sir Dewey said. “I’ll not provoke anybody to firing one if I can help it.”

“You can help,” Abigail snapped, “by telling the truth. You and Gregory went haring all over the realm, and you weren’t pursuing any kind of gentlemanly sport. What were you about?”

A snippet of conversation emerged from Axel’s memory. “Explain what the colonel might have been doing in Harrogate, for example. Foxes and grouse do not frequent spa towns, as best I recollect.”

The fire popped, and Sir Dewey started. Abby, by contrast, remained calm. The shire should start appointing widows to serve as magistrate, so steady were her nerves.

“Gregory was addicted to the opium,” Sir Dewey said. “Addicted and growing worse. All those so-called shooting trips to the north, the removes to Melton in hunt season, the weeks spent allegedly in London, were Gregory’s attempts to get free of the opium. He failed. Inevitably, he failed.”

Axel endured another spike of self-castigation, for evidence of Stoneleigh’s dependence—the twenty pipes, the mandatory trips to Farleyer’s, the erratic moods—was obvious only in hindsight.

“Opium?” Abigail murmured. “Why should that matter? Many people rely on a regular dose, and few are the worse for it.”

“Might we be seated?” Sir Dewey asked.

“Take the arm chair,” Abby said. “Mr. Belmont, if you’d join me on the sofa?”

Sir Dewey threw himself into the chair nearest the hearth. Gone was the witty, urbane veteran, and in his place was an exhausted man burdened by a sad tale.

“Mrs. Stoneleigh asks why Gregory Stoneleigh, of all His Majesty’s subjects, could not manage a cordial relationship with a medicinal commonplace,” Sir Dewey began. “I don’t know the answer to that, but I can tell you the sheer humiliation of addiction drove the colonel. He could not abide what the cravings did to him, could not stand to be vulnerable to a white powder obtained from half way around the world at significant cost.”

“Why not simply tell Stoneleigh to get help from some obliging physician?” Axel asked. “Why involve yourself in the situation at all? Were you still entangled in the business?”

The cat hopped into Sir Dewey’s lap. Purring commenced, loud enough to be heard across the room.

“I’m knighted for bravery,” Sir Dewey said, “but my ability to form coherent sentences is jeopardized by the presence of a gun. There’s more to the tale, though the retelling is difficult.”

He stroked the cat gently, and the creature settled in his lap. Axel did not want to hear this difficult tale, and yet, he’d promised his lady that he’d find her the truth.

“Say on, Sir Dewey. I’ve an investigation to conclude, and I’m sure Mrs. Stoneleigh is interested in what you have to tell us.”

Sir Dewey had nearly been one of Gregory’s victims too. This thought tolled through Abby with the clarity of a bell, and the solemnity too. This soldier, a man in his prime, had also been in some regard tainted by Gregory Stoneleigh’s lies and schemes. If a wealthy officer, a knight of the realm in full control of his situation, had fallen prey to Gregory’s machinations, what chance had a grieving shop girl had?

“Tell us your story, Sir Dewey,” Abby said. “Don’t consider it a confession. Consider it an explanation.”

Axel’s gaze was approving. Despite the circumstances, Abby kissed him, and a ghost of a smile curved his lips. The brave knight was pale, nervous, and exhausted, while Axel looked good. The sight of him, the simple sight of him, fortified Abby as nothing else could.

She went to the sideboard and poured Sir Dewey a finger of brandy.

When he accepted the glass, his hand trembled minutely. “My sincere thanks.” He downed the brandy in a single toss, and passed back the glass.

“I am not nervous of guns,” Sir Dewey said. “I am entirely undone by them. I was taken captive in India, and day after day, the guards would play a game with me. They would lay out eight pistols, put a bullet in one of them, and then rearrange the guns, very rapidly while I watched. I was to choose a succession of pistols. Each one I chose was then fired against my temple. By the time I escaped, even saying certain words caused me to shake uncontrollably.”

Axel got up and poured a second serving of brandy. He offered it first to Sir Dewey, who declined, then to Abigail. She took a sip and passed the remainder back to him before he resumed his place beside her, drink in hand.

“You have suffered much,” Axel said, “and some of the damage was permanent.”

“I hope not,” Sir Dewey replied. “But years later, I am still not… I can hold a gun. I can even fire a gun, apparently. A relief, that, as awful as the admission is. Shall you see me hanged, Belmont?”

Despite Sir Dewey’s casual tone, despite even Abby’s anger at him, her heart hurt for him too. He had been brave, he was brave still—also broken.

“Gregory’s gun was loaded,” Abby said. “Both chambers. That’s how we knew he didn’t take his own life.”

Sir Dewey looked away, into the fire. “Belmont had said only that Gregory’s gun was not the one that had killed him. I hadn’t been… I hadn’t been sure. My mental faculties have… I’ve vacillated between an urge to confess, which will bring scandal down on my siblings if I’m convicted of murder, and silence, which brought dishonor to me, and left Mrs. Stoneleigh without answers.”

“You truly did fire in self-defense,” Axel said. “Why didn’t you simply sever all ties with Stoneleigh and warn Abigail of his problems?”

“Mrs. Stoneleigh was not well,” Sir Dewey said, “and a wife would have no authority to deal with a husband’s addiction. Stoneleigh had brought his habit home with him from India. I know this, you see, because I am the person who introduced him to the sedative qualities of opium.”

Sir Dewey’s hand paused on the cat’s back, as if the past had become more real to him than the present.

“The patent remedies are a pale imitation of the relief the pure product can yield,” he said, “and when I escaped from my captors, I became dependent on the drug. Guns are a fact of military life, and there I was, dreading every morning inspection.”

Abby knew how that felt. Dreading every breakfast meal, praying for hunt season to start early, praying for a late spring, regardless of the impact on the crops, because a late spring would have meant Gregory tarried at Melton.

Or wherever Sir Dewey had taken him.

Axel was sitting too close to her for propriety, thigh to thigh. She took comfort from his nearness and hoped he took comfort from hers.

“Are you addicted now?” she asked.

“Mercifully, no,” Sir Dewey said. “I weaned myself, I left India, I let time work what healing it could. I surrounded myself with people I trust, I allowed myself only moderate use of spirits, and I forced myself into increasing proximity with guns, by the most gradual degrees. I started with a painting that included a gun as a detail and made myself study it from across the room.”

“All very commendable,” Axel said, “but what has this to do with Gregory Stoneleigh?”

Sir Dewey seemed calmer now, but also infinitely sad. As if all the charm and manners he wore so consistently had weighed as much as armor, which for the first time, Abby was seeing him without.

“Stoneleigh learned his opium habit from me, sent his servants to buy it where mine bought my supply. I eventually explained to him why I’d begun using the drug, hoping I could prevent him from growing dependent. He was at first scornful of my weakness, then he blamed me for his inability to control his habit.”

“He ridiculed your honor,” Abby said. “He ridiculed my intellect, my innocence, my grief, my reading, my music, and made sure everybody in the neighborhood had reason to suspect me of mental incompetence.”

Sir Dewey sat up straighter at Abby’s recitation. “I kept telling myself—and Gregory told me too—that a once honorable officer had been ruined because of me, because of a comment I’d made over tea that an occasional pipe could make life more bearable.”

Abby shared a look with Sir Dewey, an acknowledgment of both victimhood and survivorship.

“Disabuse yourself of the notion that you ruined a competent officer,” Axel said. “I’ve corresponded with some of Stoneleigh’s military acquaintances. He was a harsh commanding officer, at best.”

“Commanded from the rear,” Sir Dewey muttered. “He was liberal with the lash, and parsimonious with commendations.”

“You didn’t ruin him,” Abby said. “And he didn’t ruin you.” Damn Gregory Stoneleigh to the blackest pit, for he’d surely condemned Sir Dewey to endless suffering.

“You are generous,” Sir Dewey said. “I had to try though, to free the colonel from the drug. He demanded it of me, blamed me for his situation, and threatened to reveal my cowardice to all and sundry. I did try repeatedly, Mrs. Stoneleigh, but the measures that had proven effective for me had taken years, with false starts and false dawns. The colonel wanted instant resolution of his cravings. All issues of dependence aside, I fear he was losing his reason.”

The cat rubbed its head against Sir Dewey’s chin, and Abby swallowed past a lump in her throat. Gregory had denied her even a pet of her own. At least Sir Dewey had had the comfort of the mute beasts.

“Stoneleigh had certainly lost his moral compass,” Axel said, “if ever he possessed one. You might have weaned him from the drug, you could not have repaired his integrity. One wonders if the drugs were to assuage his guilty conscience, assuming he had any conscience at all.”

Abby resisted the urge to lay her head on Axel’s shoulder. She’d been aware of Gregory’s true nature for a handful of weeks, while Sir Dewey had been in Gregory’s confidence for years.

“Tell us about the night Stoneleigh tried to kill you,” Axel said.

O
h, what relief Abby felt, when Axel recast the facts for Sir Dewey into the posture of a life saved rather than a life taken. No longer the night of the murder, but the night Gregory had tried to take another victim’s life and failed.

“Gregory sent Ambers with a note earlier in the day,” Sir Dewey said, “summoning me for a late-night chat, which was not unusual. I’d been trying to tempt him into some time away, but he did not oblige me. His manner was gloating and secretive, and he hinted that soon, all of our racketing about would be unnecessary. I had noticed that Mrs. Stoneleigh was increasingly ill, and when I asked Gregory if he feared for his wife’s well-being, he laughed.

“That laugh,” Sir Dewey went on, “wasn’t maniacal or forced. Gregory’s laughter was friendly, sad, regretful… that laugh said he was utterly lost, beyond decency. He’d been cleaning his pistols when I arrived, and instinct told me to remove them from his grasp. I put one out of the colonel’s reach on the sideboard, as if making a place to set Stoneleigh’s brandy down among the items on his desk. I never supposed the gun was loaded, and even touching it made me uneasy.”

“Stoneleigh doubtless noted your disquiet,” Axel said.

“He taunted me, of course. Asked when I’d get over my cowardice, asked if the knighthood weighed on my conscience when I couldn’t even trust myself to shoot a damned pheasant. I can’t, by the way. Hadn’t killed another living creature since I came home, until Gregory drew his pistol on me.”

“Do you doubt that Gregory was planning to kill you?” Abby asked. “He had loaded two guns, Sir Dewey. Four shots is more than enough to end any life.”

“I know when I turned from the sideboard, to tell the colonel to shut his damned mouth, he was holding one of those guns on me, smiling a genial, condescending smile, his nightcap at his elbow, his wife asleep upstairs, possibly losing ground day by day to either neglect or worse at his hands.

“I hated him then,” Sir Dewey said. “I hated him with everything in me, and I do not apologize for that. He was confident I would not defend myself in any fashion.”

“Stoneleigh ridiculed you,” Axel said. “He made implied threats on his spouse’s life, and he held a gun on you when you were unarmed. Then what happened?”

Sir Dewey’s countenance grew thoughtful at Axel’s summation. “Stoneleigh leveled the gun at me, told me I’d become a nuisance, and commended me to the company of the angels, where his wife would soon join me. He regretted that a knight of the realm who struggled with terrible memories was about to become aggressively violent—meaning myself, of course—and to require the same mercy as a rabid dog would.”

“With no one to gainsay him,” Axel said, “Stoneleigh’s claim to have fired in self defense would likely have stood. You would be dead, and Mrs. Stoneleigh still very much in harm’s way.”

Sir Dewey remained silent for a moment, perhaps absorbing the absolution in Axel’s words.

Abby remained silent as well, though this recitation relieved the last of the fears she’d carried with her from Candlewick. She was safe in her own home. The remaining challenge was to fashion her future according to the dictates of her own heart.