Christian frowned. “Why a ‘lucky’ blow?”

“Because it was delivered with far less force than the blows to the face. In many men, it wouldn’t have killed them. Randall had a thin skull, as it happened, so it did for him. Regardless, the killing stroke-administered first-was weak and definitely struck from behind. All the rest-the blows to the face and sides of the head-came later.”

Disappointment settled in Christian’s gut. “So in your opinion, a woman could have delivered the blow that killed Randall?”

Unaware of the importance of the question-that the chance to eliminate a female as the murderer was what had prompted Christian to ask him to examine Randall, and then pull strings, using his rank to arrange it-Pringle grinned. “Indubitably. Any reasonably tall woman could have done it-I say tall so the angle of strike fits.”

Letitia was definitely tall.

Christian fell silent, digesting the news.

But Pringle hadn’t finished. “What, however, in my humble opinion, a woman couldn’t have done was deliver the blows that came later.”

Christian refixed his attention on the surgeon. “You’re sure?”

Pringle pursed his lips, weighing the question, then nodded. “Perhaps a strong woman from the circus might have, but any normal woman simply would not have been able to impart such force, even with him laid out on his back and her standing over him. Whoever struck those after-death blows was a male-a grown man. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

Christian inwardly grimaced at the scenario taking shape in his mind. “How long after death?”

Again Pringle pursed his lips. This time he took longer before he answered. “My best estimate-and I stress it’s only an estimate, this is an inexact science after all-would be at least fifteen minutes after death. Possibly as many as thirty, but not much longer. The injuries caused by the heavy blows were bloody-there was definitely some blood, but in none of the injuries, nor in the relevant reports, can I find sufficient blood to suggest the man’s heart was still pumping. It wasn’t. He was already dead, and from what else I saw on the corpse, for at least a little time.”

“So it looks like he was first struck down when he was facing…the desk?”

Pringle considered, then nodded. “Again I’m going by the reports, but there wasn’t any indication he’d been moved other than being turned over, which of course he was. And yes, with the knowledge that he was first struck from behind, not from the front as was assumed, he was indeed facing the desk, not the hearth.”

Randall had been facing away from the person who had shared a drink with him. The person who’d sat in the other armchair.

Christian tucked the information away and refocused on Pringle. “Do you have any insight into why anyone would deliver those blows to the head and face of an already dead man?”

Pringle nodded. “Indeed I do. A guess, of course, but I believe it bears examining.” Laying aside the towel, he reached for his coat. “Those later blows were extremely deliberate, struck with concerted, focused force. Any notion they were the product of some frenzied attack is purest fancy. No. Those blows were administered, I believe, to achieve precisely what had been achieved before you called me in. The police doctor didn’t look closely enough-he assumed that the blows to the face and sides of the head killed Randall, and that, as I said, would exclude any woman as a suspect.

“I believe,” Pringle caught Christian’s eyes, “that the postmortem blows were administered with the sole objective of hiding-disguising, if you will-that a female could, in fact, have been the murderer.”

Christian nodded; the scenario in his head had solidified.

“Just as well you called me in when you did,” Pringle went on, shrugging into his coat. “If I hadn’t got here this morning, it would have been too late. They’re releasing the body to the undertakers as we speak-he’ll be buried this afternoon.”

Christian already knew about the funeral; he nodded again. “Thank you.” He waited until Pringle settled his coat, then shook his hand and left him to make his report to the police.

Christian paused on the steps outside the dismal gray building. The raucous sounds of the bustling city surrounded him but made little impact on his senses. His mind was focused on what he was increasingly sure had happened in South Audley Street four nights previously. Justin Vaux had administered those dreadful blows to his already dead brother-in-law’s face, and then fled, leaving a trail any child could follow, all to draw attention from, to protect, the person Justin believed had killed Randall.

Letitia.

Christian walked back to his house in Grosvenor Square, using the journey to turn Pringle’s findings and his deductions over in his mind; with every step, every minute thus spent, he only grew more convinced that his conclusion was correct. Justin had acted to protect Letitia.

Why, as ever, was what he didn’t know.

Regardless of Pringle’s assertion that a tallish woman could have killed Randall, Christian knew, with the same absolute, unshakable conviction he’d felt from the first, that Letitia hadn’t delivered that killing blow.

Who had-for if his scenario was correct it couldn’t have been Justin-was the other major question he’d yet to address.

Reaching the steps leading to his front door, he started up, then paused. An instant ticked by, then he turned and looked across the square at the house directly opposite.

He considered the sight for a further minute before, straightening, squaring his shoulders, he went down the steps, crossed the street, and followed the path through the park filling the square, eventually reaching his senior paternal aunt’s door.

He knocked, and was admitted-with some surprise-by her ladyship’s butler, Meadows, who informed him their ladyships-Lady Cordelia Foster, Countess of Canterbury, and her sister, Lady Ermina Fowler, Viscountess Fowler-had just sat down to luncheon in the smaller dining parlor.

Girding his loins, he allowed Meadows to show him in.

“Christian, dear boy!” Seated at the end of the smaller table-still long enough to seat twelve-Cordelia waved him to her. A still handsome woman now in her late fifties, she was surprisingly energetic and remained a force to be reckoned with among the ton-even with the improbably blond curls that framed her face.

He obliged, crossing to her chair and placing a dutiful kiss on the cheek she offered, then circled her to perform the same greeting with the sweeter tempered Ermina, a milder version of Cordelia but no less observant.

“Come and sit!” Cordelia waved imperiously to the chair on her left. Meadows was already setting a place there. “As you’re here and we’re lunching, you can lunch, too.”

Although he hadn’t intended to, he was happy enough to fall in with her wishes; Cordelia’s chefs were invariably excellent, although they never lasted long.

He sat, then eyed the dishes the footmen Meadows waved in placed before them. “You’re new chef is Austrian.”

“Clever boy! Yes, indeed, Frederick is my new find. Quite a novel craze, Austrian dishes. They say Wellington and the others brought back the taste after the Congress of Vienna. The congress was a complete failure, of course, but the food, apparently, was excellent.” Cordelia glanced at Meadows as the last dish was set in place. “Leave us, please, Meadows. I’ll ring if we need you.”

“Very good, ma’am.” Meadows bowed low. “My lord.” With a second deferential bow to Christian, Meadows retreated.

The instant the door closed behind him, Cordelia fixed Christian with an interrogative eye, the same gray hue as his own. “Well, my boy-what do you need to know?”

The direct attack had him blinking.

Ermina smiled gently-and closed in for the kill. “Well, dear, you never do appear without a summons, not unless you need something from us, which is usually information.”

Her earnest soft gray gaze was quite enough to make him inwardly squirm.

Ermina’s smile deepened as she shook out her napkin. “I daresay it’s about Letitia and this dreadful business of Randall’s murder.”

Christian glanced from her to Cordelia. From the eager gleam in Cordelia’s eye, she was only too ready to answer whatever questions he had; clearly, delicacy and tact would be wasted. “Indeed.” Delicacy and tact aside, he wanted to reveal as little as possible; his aunts rated among the most well-connected gossips in the ton. “As you say, Randall has been murdered, and so the question of whether Letitia has a lover, and whether together or separately, for the obvious reason, they killed him, naturally arises.”

Both his aunts stared at him. Their expressions initially suggested shocked surprise; that was quickly replaced by censure.

Cordelia snorted. “For men the question might ‘naturally arise,’ but I assure you no such nonsensical thought has surfaced in any female brain within the ton.” With that statement, uttered in a tone even he would think carefully about questioning, Cordelia returned her attention to her plate.

From across the table, Ermina shook her head at him. “No, dear-you’re quite wrong in even suggesting such a thing. Even putting such an outrageous suggestion into words.”

It hadn’t seemed outrageous to him-Letitia was a highly passionate woman-but there was clear rebuke beneath Ermina’s words.

“Letitia is a Vaux, after all,” Ermina informed him with not a little dignity. “I would have thought you would know what that means. She has taken no lover-absolutely not-not in all the years since she wed that man. We never did approve of him, of course-there was something not quite right there, as I’ve always said.”

Chewing, Cordelia nodded. She swallowed, then said, “Not that he-Randall-was ever anything other than polite. He always behaved just as he ought, but…” She waggled the beringed fingers of one hand. “There was just something that didn’t feel quite right about him.” She mulled for a moment, then rallied. “But enough about him-he’s dead and gone. As for Letitia, as Ermina said, she’s a Vaux, for heaven’s sake-they’re sound, fury, and high drama on the surface, but absolutely unshakable rock beneath. A vow for them is sacred. Nothing would induce them to break one, and Lord knows you must have noticed how stubborn they are.”

He’d known that, all that, but…Letitia had broken her vow to him. Why not her vows to Randall? He felt a pang of unaccustomed jealousy…for a dead man.

Shaking off the feeling, burying it, he returned to the point at hand. “So, no lover?”

Cordelia snorted. “Absolutely not.”

Late that afternoon, his mind grappling with a number of irreconcilable “facts,” Christian stood in the graveyard of the church in South Audley Street and watched George Martin Randall’s earthly remains laid to rest a mere two blocks from his house and close to the center of the ton’s world.

Given that, the lack of mourners was remarkable.

The short service in the church had been brief. Very brief. No one had come forward to read the eulogy. Letitia, it transpired, hadn’t known any of Randall’s friends, and as none had called or written to convey their condolences, the minister made the best job of it he could, but his knowledge of Randall was cursory.

Letitia, Hermione, Letitia’s aunt Agnes, and Randall’s servants had made up the congregation in the church; other than Christian, no one else had attended. As was customary, all the females and the younger males had returned to the house at the close of the service, leaving Christian, Mellon, and two older footmen to observe the interment.

The only other observer was Barton, the Bow Street runner. Christian spied him watching proceedings from the shadow of a monument, no doubt imagining he was inconspicuous. Barton scanned the cemetery, as did Christian rather less obviously, but no one else appeared at any time-not even after the sods had been cast and the mourners drifted from the grave.

Christian found it difficult to comprehend the startling absence of any friends. Given that Randall had been murdered, the ton’s ladies-those who would otherwise have been present to support Letitia in her grief-had not been expected, but where were Randall’s male acquaintances, let alone friends?

Regardless of the nature of his demise-indeed, even more so because of it-they should have turned out, one and all.

Yet not one gentleman had appeared. As a comment on a life lived within the ton, that was extraordinary.

Admittedly the ton were only just returning to the capital for the autumn session of Parliament, and perhaps some who might have known Randall had yet to hear of his death, yet this absolute dearth of acquaintances seemed bizarre.