“Here,” I said, happy for any excuse to dodge out of Bremerton’s sight. “Let me set this out for you.”
I slid the lid off the plate with tiny sandwiches and an array of cheeses drizzled with honey. Lee didn’t take any interest in the food, still choking down his too-hot tea.
“I need you to occupy your uncle for a while,” I whispered as quietly as possible. Lee leaned in close, lifting a brow. “Take him to the spa or to the gardens. Something is amiss and I need to make certain he wasn’t involved with the murder.”
“He . . . What?” Lee nearly dropped the teacup. Then he remembered himself and lowered his voice, moving so close his ear touched mine. “You have proof of this?”
“I will,” I assured him. We were going to run out of time any second. “I have some new information, but I can’t tell you everything right now. He’s been lying to you, Lee, I know it. I’ll have proof enough if you can just distract him for a while!”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to find the truth, then, for my mother.” Lee nodded and set his jaw, putting the teacup down on the tray with more force than was strictly necessary. “Uncle!” He gave me a confident nod and fussed with his cravat, tying it back into a presentable knot. “I think some fresh air would benefit me greatly, or we might have a dip in the waters. And we must discuss the plans for my mother’s burial. . . .”
I followed him out of the room and kept walking, not sparing a glance for George Bremerton as I passed. “Will you be taking your supper in your rooms, sir?”
“No, no.” Lee waved me off with admirable indifference. His uncle was rising out of his chair and buttoning his coat. “You can leave us now.”
It was perhaps too callous to be believable, but I obeyed, giving a curtsy at the door and pressing through the outer chamber before scurrying out the second door and into the hall, just in time to see Colonel Mayweather stumble out of his rooms, his face purple as a plum, his huge mustachio twitching in the exact moment before he vomited blood in a spectacular arc over the Turkish carpets.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Help m-m-me . . .”
The Colonel fell face-first into his own sick, crawling across the floor toward me with one shaky arm extended. He flopped onto his back like a dying harbor seal, his arms twitching as he tried to form another word. His eyes were red, filling with blood that soon spilled over and ran like crimson tears down his cheeks.
His body hitting the floor would rouse others soon. I stared, helpless, watching him slither across the carpets toward me. Little footsteps pelted up the stairs, and Poppy appeared on the landing with her dog. She froze, looking, for the first time, truly dismayed.
“What did you do?” I whispered furiously, backing slowly away as the Colonel moaned and pulled himself toward me. I couldn’t stand to look at his bloated face and the white mustache that soaked up his blood like a sponge.
“A measuring error,” Poppy said, gnawing on her knuckle. “Oh dear, not enough poison in the crumpets.”
“We can’t leave him like this,” I replied. But what could I do? Poppy seemed utterly clueless, too, pacing back and forth on the top stair while her hound sniffed at the Colonel’s boot. The door to Lee’s room was just behind me, and though I had closed it up before leaving, he and his uncle would be departing any moment. There was no hiding the wide trail of blood and vomit being spread down the hall.
“Help,” the Colonel croaked again, reaching for me.
“Colonel Mayweather, you naughty fellow, leave Louisa be,” Poppy scolded loudly.
I clapped my hand over my forehead with one hand and pointed toward Lee’s door with the other.
Poppy simply shrugged. Her shout had some sort of effect, at least—the Colonel flipped around again, wheezing and crawling toward the stairs. Somehow he managed to rear up onto his feet. Unsteady, he lumbered toward Poppy, both hands extended toward her as if he might lunge for her neck. Bartholomew danced around him in frantic circles, barking and snapping. Poppy had frozen on the top step, grasping the banister. And I could hardly blame her; it was a gruesome sight, made worse by the labored breaths he kept pulling in, the blood pouring out of his mouth making each one wet and sputtering.
He had nearly reached her and the stairs when I darted forward to try to pull him away by the back of his coat. But the dog acted first, wedging himself between the stairs and Poppy, toppling the dying Colonel and sending him careening down and down, the noise thunderous enough to be heard all through the house. He fell without a word, just bones and flesh crashing and crunching, hitting the second-floor landing with so much momentum that he cracked the railing and kept going, tumbling, cartwheeling until the final bone-rattling impact on the bottom floor parquet.
The noise echoed up through the foyer to where Poppy and I stood silent, staring at the Colonel, who was splayed out and still, the last of the blood in his body seeping out around him in an ever-growing pool.
“Poppy,” I whispered frantically.
“Oh, Louisa,” she whimpered, gathering up her hound and hugging him to her chest. “I swear by all the saints and sinners I didn’t mean for it to happen that way!”
The door behind me opened, just as I knew it would, and I heard the men before I saw them.
“What the devil is going on here?” Bremerton shouted, marching as close to the bloodstain as he dared. He gasped and turned ashen as he caught sight of the body flat and still two floors below.
Poppy ran to us without hesitation, grabbing George Bremerton’s coat and tugging on it. In a blink she was a terrified innocent little girl begging for assistance. “Thank goodness you’re here, sir! The Colonel became ill and I didn’t know what to do. One moment he was sipping his tea, content as you please, and then he made this bad, bad sound and he . . . Oh, it’s too embarrassing to say,” she improvised freely, even conjuring tears for them. “He was sick everywhere and there was blood in it and—and—he slipped in it and fell! It was too, too horrible, sir!”
I backed away slowly but not without making certain Lee locked eyes with me. God knows what he saw there, or what he must have thought when he, too, saw the dead man in the foyer and the wet trail of blood leading from the Colonel’s room to just about where I had been standing.
“He was old and infirm,” I said weakly. “A man his age . . . It might have been anything. Ulcers, convulsions . . .”