‘I saw her at the church one Sunday when I was staying with Georgie. She was lovely, Alder. Really lovely.’ He let the button, with its betraying number 40, drop back on to the table.
Sebastian sighed and retrieved the small but significant object. Only one officer, other than himself, would have worn the insignia of the Fortieth Regiment of Foot in this neighbourhood. He knew as soon as Bennet showed it to him that he had found Amy Thompson’s secret lover. Had he also found her killer?
He looked down at the button in his hand. It carried such a weight. A man’s life, but it had already cost a life—two lives.
‘You have the death of two on your conscience, Harry. Amy carried your child.’
Harry flung himself out of his chair and walked across to the window, running his hands through his hair.
‘It was an accident, Alder.’ He turned to face Sebastian, his face crumpled in distress. ‘There’s not a day goes by when I don’t think about it… what I did…’
‘What did you do?’
‘We used to meet in the pavilion up behind the lake. When I was staying with Georgie I’d send the girl a ribbon. That was our secret signal. Different colour for different days. The last time…’
Harry covered his face with his hands, his shoulders convulsing as he struggled to control his emotions.
‘She told me she was with child. She started making all sorts of demands. I couldn’t think straight.’
Sebastian regarded his friend without sympathy.
‘Plenty of men find themselves in your situation, Dempster. They don’t resort to murder.’
Harry dropped his hands and stared at Sebastian.
‘Murder? It wasn’t murder. I panicked. I admit I lost my temper. I think she thought I was going to hit her. She took a step backwards and slipped. I couldn’t stop her. She fell backwards and hit her head on the corner of the marble bench.’ His breath came in short bursts as if he had been running. ‘I can still hear the crack. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘Was she still alive?’
Harry shook his head. ‘No.’ He took a great shuddering breath. ‘I waited for hours, hoping it was all a terrible mistake, but she just lay there, cold and dead, with her eyes wide open. I carried her body down to the lake and I put her in. There wasn’t even any blood, Alder. No trace that it had ever happened.’
‘So you threw her away and you went on with your life,’ Sebastian said without disguising the disgust in his voice, ‘leaving her family to mourn; her mother to suffer an apoplexy, her body to be buried in unconsecrated ground with all the world thinking she had committed the sin of suicide?’
‘She was only a housemaid!’ Harry all but screamed.
Sebastian didn’t answer. He held out his hand, palm open with the incriminating silver button.
‘When did you lose this?’
‘After one of our trysts,’ he said. ‘I was wearing a uniform on my way to a party. I know I’m retired, but the ladies do like a uniform. It was annoying to find the button missing but I just thought a thread had come loose.’ He scowled. ‘If I had known the chit had purloined it...’
‘She loved you. She was carrying your child and you threw her away like a piece of refuse, Harry.’ Sebastian could not keep the disgust from his voice.
Harry looked away. ‘I’m not proud of myself.’
‘She thought you would marry her.’
Harry shook his head. “That was never going to happen but Iwould have done the right thing and seen she and the child wanted for nothing.’ He turned his gaze back to Sebastian. ‘What are you going to do?’
Sebastian shook his head. ‘What areyougoing to do, Dempster? You have twenty-four hours before I report this to the Chief Constable. If what you say is true then you won’t hang… or you can be the coward I think you are and run. The choice is yours.’
Harry stared at his friend. ‘That’s it? You would turn me in? After Spain, after Inez… after everything we have been through together? God damn it, Alder, you’re no saint. You’ve killed!’
Sebastian’s gaze did not waver. ‘When I have killed, it has been in battle, Dempster. I don’t have the death of an innocent woman and her unborn child on my conscience, but I counted you my friend. For Inez if for no other reason, I owe you the chance to do the honourable thing.’
Harry gave a snort of laughter. ‘Honour? God, Alder, I lost my honour years ago. Did you know I was all but cashiered from the army? It was all done quietly, my reputation intact.’
‘What did you do?’
