A Regimental Murder by Ashley Gardner

battle.
    Yet Breckenridge and Eggleston seemed to have
forgotten that the entire Peninsular campaign had ever happened.
When I tried to broach the subject, they stared as though they'd
never heard of any of the places and events I mentioned. I began to
wonder whether they'd been Belemites, officers who'd contrived to
miss every battle, every dangerous encounter with the enemy. They
could do it, volunteering to transfer prisoners or carry messages
to headquarters or other jobs that would take them away from the
lines of battle. The Forty-Third Light had done little during the
siege of Badajoz so the two gentlemen could have been far from it,
but I knew they had at least returned to the town after it had been
conquered. Westin's letters and Spencer's investigation put them
there.
    The only reference to army life came from
Breckenridge, who made comments on officers who could barely afford
their kit. He also told the tale of a handsome cavalry saddle he'd
bagged from a downed French officer. Breckenridge used the saddle
for his early rides every morning, never missed since the day. He'd
boasted of the pilfering as though he'd won some great battle, but
likely he'd come upon the officer and horse already dead and had
simply stolen the saddle.
    My errand was beginning to seem for naught.
My mind turned over possibilities for wringing information from the
two gentlemen as I made my way toward the front of the house in
search of my elusive hostess.
    What I found--or rather heard, as I
approached open double doors to a sunny drawing room--were violent,
choking sobs and a shrill female voice endeavoring to shriek over
them.
    A slap rang out. "Shut up, you impertinent
slut!"
    The weeper screamed. "Cow! Skinny cow! He
don't love you, never did."
    I halted in the doorway. Two women stood in
the middle of a grand room whose high ceilings were covered with
the same sort of gods and goddesses that adorned the main hall. The
weeper was a large-boned young woman in apron and mobcap. Her face
was scarlet, and the white outline of a hand showed stark on her
cheek.
    The young woman who faced her hardly deserved
to be called a cow. She was a slender, birdlike girl with soft
ringlets of brown hair and large blue eyes. She could not have been
long out of her governess's care, and I wondered if she were the
daughter of one of my fellow guests.
    She could rightly be termed skinny ,
however, because her slenderness was most pronounced. The fashion
these days was for women to have very little shape at all, but I,
always out of date, preferred a females with a bit more roundness.
This girl's body was as narrow as that of a twelve-year-old
boy's.
    The maid saw me. Covering her face, she
rushed out of the room, bathing me in a scent of warm sweat.
    The young woman transferred her gaze to me,
unembarrassed. "Who are you?"
    I made a half-bow and introduced myself.
    "You are Mr. Grenville's friend," she
announced, looking me up and down. "Did you draw my card?"
    Since I had no idea who she was, I did not
know. "I drew Lady Breckenridge."
    "Oh." She looked neither disappointed nor
elated. "She is in the billiards room. She is mad for everything
billiards. I hate her."
    The gods and goddesses above us seemed to
laugh. I stood silently, at a loss as to how to respond.
    She went on, "Did Mr. Grenville draw me,
then?"
    "Mr. Grenville drew our hostess."
    "I wanted Mr. Grenville." She toyed with her
lower lip. Her white summer frock was thin and wispy, and she
looked far too young to be playing the gentlemen's wretched card
game. "It was not Breckenridge, was it?"
    "He drew Mrs. Carter."
    She made a face. "I hate her, too. She is
fat, like Lady Breckenridge. Do you know how I stay so slender,
Captain?"
    Of course, I had no idea. I'd had
conversations with eight-year-old children that had baffled me
less.
    "I eat what I like," she explained. "Then I
put my fingers down my throat and bring it up again. Lady
Breckenridge could do that. Then she would not be so fat."
    I