"Will you show me where it happened?" I asked.

Lord Gillis pointed. "In the room just at the foot of the stairs. Forgive me, but somehow I never want to see it again."

"I am sorry," I said. "Did you know Mr. Turner well?"

Lord Gillis looked surprised. "Not at all. Henry Turner was the friend of a friend of my wife's. So she tells me. But murder is a grim business, Captain. It was a gruesome sight."

Death in battle was far more gruesome. I recalled piles of bodies before the walls at Badajoz, young men torn in half by blasts, some ripped open but still alive, screaming in pain and fear. Henry Turner had looked peaceful, hardly touched.

Grenville volunteered to show me the room. His face, which was rather pointed, revealed no emotion, and his dark eyes did not glitter with as much curiosity as I'd thought they would.

Tonight, Grenville wore the finest clothes I'd ever seen on him. His coat was black superfine, cut in a style likely invented this morning and which would be all the rage by tomorrow. Next week, Grenville would return to his tailor and invent yet another fashion, and this week's coat would be discarded by one and all.

Black pantaloons hugged muscular legs that ladies liked to admire. I'd seen caricatures and cartoons in newspapers about his legs and the way ladies ogled them. The diamond stickpin in his cravat was large and elegant, though not so large as to be vulgar.

"It was not pleasant, I must tell you," Grenville said as we crossed the inlaid floor toward the stairs. We walked alone; Lord Gillis stayed behind to speak to Pomeroy. "Mrs. Harper found him a little past midnight. She began screaming in a horrible way, half mad with it. She had blood on her hand and it seemed to make her crazed."

"Blood?" Turner's wound had been small and nearly clean.

"I saw it on her glove. The poor woman was horrified. The ladies near her seemed more inclined to recoil from her than to help her. I was able to take her aside to pour brandy into her."