Typical of Brandon to make everything worse with heated protests. He would expect Pomeroy to obey him without question, as though we still stood on the battlefields of the Peninsular War.

But we'd left Spain three years ago, Napoleon had been defeated, and Brandon and Pomeroy and I were now civilians. Brandon, with a large private income, lived in a rather opulent house on Brook Street, and I, with no private income, lived in rooms over a bake shop near Covent Garden.

Even so, Pomeroy's instant acceptance that Brandon had stabbed this young man through his so elegant suit irritated me a bit. Pomeroy liked solutions to be simple.

"I never remember Brandon mentioning having acquaintance with Mr. Turner," I said. "He does not look like the sort of young man Brandon would even consider speaking to."

"True, the colonel did not know Mr. Turner, he says. I believe him, for the reasons you give. But he didn't have to know him, did he? Turner was annoying the colonel's paramour, and the colonel killed him in a fit of jealousy."

I stared at Pomeroy in abject astonishment. "Paramour?"

The Colonel Brandon I knew would never have anything so common as a paramour.

Pomeroy nodded. "A woman named Mrs. Harper, Christian name, Imogene. According to guests at the ball, Colonel Brandon became angry at Mr. Turner's pursuit of Mrs. Harper and threatened to kill him."

I stood still in incredulity. Brandon in a temper might call out a man who behaved badly to a lady, but what Pomeroy said was unbelievable.

"Sergeant, you are speaking of Colonel Aloysius Brandon. He does not have a paramour. He never did. He is the most moral and faithful husband a wife could have. He is tiresome about it. The idea that he murdered a rival lover in a fit of jealousy is beyond absurd."