Alyssa Everett Read Online Free PDF Page B

for her.”
    “And was she wearing gloves when she left the room?”
    What an odd question. Yet when I glanced at Helen, she was, indeed, wearing evening gloves. “No. We don’t ordinarily wear gloves when dining en famille. ”
    Mr. Dawson tapped his notebook absently with his pencil. “Any notion what your sister and Lord Cliburne quarreled about?”
    Mr. Dawson had spoken earlier to Papa and Cliburne, and something told me he already knew the answer to his question. “She’d been seen in private conversation with another man.” My eyes slid to Sam’s body. “With the victim, actually.”
    It all made little sense to me. Why would Helen consort with the neighbors’ footman when she had a boy as handsome, good-natured and doting as Cliburne eager to marry her? And why on earth should Helen have put on her gloves unless she was going out?
    “Exactly how did you come to learn there had been a murder?” Mr. Dawson asked.
    “A murder?” I arched an eyebrow at him. “Isn’t that for the coroner’s jury to decide?”
    Mr. Dawson broke into a grudging smile. “Just so, my lady. In that case, how did you come to learn there had been a death?”
    “Barely a minute after Cliburne left the dining room, my sister screamed, and my mother and father and I came running.”
    “So it was your sister who found the body?”
    “Well, she was the one who screamed. If anyone else saw the body before that, they didn’t advertise it.”
    Mr. Dawson glanced at me with a look of faint respect. At least, I hoped it was respect, since it might just as easily have been suspicion. “So you think someone else could have been in the house. A stranger, perhaps?”
    “I have no way of knowing, but you must’ve observed that this house is rather larger than most, with several exits and entrances. It’s not unknown for members of the household to come and go without anyone taking notice.”
    Mr. Dawson nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind, my lady. Back to the discovery of the body—Lord Cliburne was here in this room when you rushed in?”
    “Yes, he was with my sister.”
    “And what happened next?”
    I didn’t want to remember that part. I could still see Papa looking up from the dead man’s body, still hear him saying to Helen, “My God. What have you done?” For once, he’d sounded more frightened than angry.
    That was when Cliburne had stepped in front of Helen and said in a firm voice, his chin up, “I did it.”
    Now I realized Mr. Dawson was waiting for my answer. “Lord Cliburne told us there’d been an accident. He said the Woodfords’ footman had broken into the house, and he’d confronted him.” I swallowed, struck by a disturbing vision of poor Cliburne’s body swinging at the end of a hangman’s rope. “They scuffled, and the footman stumbled and hit his head on the stairs.”
    Of course, any fool could see the story was pure gammon. Everything—from Cliburne’s halting account of the events to the statuette that had clearly come from the morning room some distance away—proclaimed the death more than mere mischance.
    Mr. Dawson’s brow furrowed. “And what did you—”
    “Lady Barbara, how pale you look! You must sit down before you faint,” a clipped voice announced, and before I knew what was happening, the odious Lord Beningbrough had taken my elbow in a grip of steel and was propelling me ruthlessly away. “Do excuse us for a moment,” he threw over his shoulder to Mr. Dawson. “She’s about to swoon.”
    “I’ve never swooned in my life,” I hissed at him once we were out of Mr. Dawson’s earshot. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
    “I might ask you the same thing.” Beningbrough marched me to the opposite end of the room and practically shoved me down on a crocodile-footed bench, all the while maintaining a convincingly controlled posture from the rear. “I saw the way you were talking to that Bow Street Runner. I suppose you want my cousin to end up with his head in