Heiress for Hire (Duke's Heiress #1) - Madeline Hunter Page 0,88
I see.”
“Well, I saw you at the concert and asked my friend who was that there and he told me. He’s not a friend of yours, but he knows that box and the family that uses it.”
It all sounded innocent, but Chase heard the architecture behind the façade. “Why did you ask about me?”
“Ah, that is the whole of it, isn’t it? I’ve some information that may be of use to the man in that box and needed to know his name. Imagine my surprise to learn it was a duke’s relative, and one whose days are spent much like mine.”
“Of course if what you know is of some use, I will be grateful to hear it. Perhaps you should inform me of your fees before you share the information itself.”
Monroe was not insulted. He was in the business of information, after all. Still, his smile demurred before his words did. “No fees as such. My thinking is that if I do you a good turn, professionally speaking, that someday you will return the favor. Our sort needs to stick together, right?”
Apparently, Mr. Monroe had sought him out with the best of intentions. “I have been remiss as a host. Let us share some brandy while you visit.” Chase went to the decanter, poured two glasses, and brought them back.
Monroe sipped his, expressed delight, then set it down. “So, here it is. That woman you were with at the concert. I know her. And, to be honest, I’m wondering if you really do.”
“I think so.”
“She uses the name Hepplewhite now. But she was not six years ago Margaret Finley. That’s her real name. Married she was, to one Algernon Finley.”
“I am aware of that.”
“Are you now? Do you also know she killed the man? Came within an inch of hanging for it.”
Chase kept his reaction in check, but astonishment slowed time for a solid ten count.
Monroe saw his surprise despite his efforts to hide it. “I know of what I speak. This is not idle gossip.”
“How do you know?”
“I was in Dorset on another matter. When it finished, I stayed on a spell and did a spot of work for her husband. An inquiry. Into her.”
“Algernon Finley wanted your services regarding his wife?”
“He did indeed. She’d left him, and he was sure there was a lover behind it all. Had me looking into that. Not the sort of work I much care for, but there I was and I thought it would be an easy assignment. I was wrong. The woman was sly. She guessed I was watching and that lover never came to her house. Sometimes she would get out somehow without my seeing, and she probably met him then. I was working my way into a friendship with a neighbor who might know something, when Finley turns up dead. He went riding in nearby hunting lands on occasion, and one day he got shot there.”
Hell. Finley had not merely died. He’d been shot.
“A hunting accident, most likely.”
“So the coroner eventually said, but no man who dies by an accident ends up with a lead ball directly to the heart, does he?”
Hell. “Pistol ball, mind you. Not a musket. Who hunts with a pistol?”
Almost no one.
“She carried one, tucked into this shawl she wrapped around herself back then. I saw it once. She said she was in the market at the time it happened, but the market people didn’t know just when she was there seeing as how it was so busy. Could have been then, or earlier. I had learned about how she left, and knew her husband assumed the only way she got the money to live was from another man. I saw how that lover could have helped her or done it for her. I swore down that information.”
Minerva had told him most of this. Not about the pistol wound to the heart. Not about Monroe looking for a lover. She had to know she was being watched by Monroe, though. She was too good at inquiries to miss when one had her as the object.
“Why was she not accused and tried?”
Monroe took another sip of his brandy. “Evidence too thin, the coroner said. No proof he was murdered at all, and none that she was in that forest. Then it turned out he left nothing, was in debt, so any motive fell apart, since I had never found that lover. But I’m telling you that she did it, as sure as I’m sitting here drinking