Black Silk (16 page)

“I did not—” Was her name Arabella? “Dead? She is dead?” He could not even picture her. “How?” he asked. “How did she die?”

“That is the question of the hour—of the last twenty-four hours. Damned opportune for you though, isn’t it?” After a pause, someone else from the little band added, “She fell from St. Mary’s bell tower.”

The facts seemed fairly obvious to Graham. A distraught, none-too-sane young woman had thrown herself from the top of a very high place. Unfortunately, he benefitted financially from her death—his first bank draft, uncashed, was still in her pocket when she was found. In trying to find him, the police had had to trace him through movements that seemed on the surface exceedingly suspicious. And most muddling of all, the girl had left behind a note. A suicide note, Graham was quick to call it. But the note had an ugly twist: It was a suicide note that claimed murder.

They are the earl of Netham’s sons now. He has killed me.

“Of course,” Graham responded. “I took her up to the church bell tower to shove her off it, but first I let her write a little note—I always carry pen and ink when I’m about to do murder. Then I left the note lying around for the likes of you to find.”

The truth was, no one could make much sense of it, though a superintendent of police tried. He questioned Graham politely, ever so carefully, never complaining about the somewhat sarcastic tone of Graham’s responses. The superintendent in charge raised only an eyebrow here and there as Graham tried to explain his last few days in London: an unstaffed house; disjointed, unappointed days; while owning a dozen, no horse to ride. Graham tried to manifest an attitude of—mildly insulted, but totally cooperative—candidness. It seemed unnecessary and indiscreet to involve Submit Channing-Downes. So for her sake (and possibly for his own, since Rosalyn was likely to
look a bit huffily on a meeting at a remote country inn), he said nothing of that part of his day.

The soft-spoken and suspiciously amicable law officer, however, brought on a change of heart. After half an hour, he rose from his desk and rested his hands on his stout middle. He shook his head, as with genuine regret.

“I am afraid, Your Lordship,” he said, “that unless you can give a better account, we shall have to detain you further. The note is written in the girl’s hand—a victim’s testimony is usually considered very reliable. It definitely points to you. And it was found on her person, prewritten, as though she might have been insuring against foul play. If nothing else, certainly, there is too much left unexplained: I am bound, at least preliminarily, to consider the possibility of murder.”

The London Metropolitan Police was housed at number 4, Whitehall Place. It was an ancient building, only a skeleton of its past glory when it had greeted Scottish ambassadors and kings. Submit made her way toward the main building, across the grounds known commonly as Greater Scotland Yard. She was flanked by a chief constable and a policeman in a round bucket hat. The chief constable kept up a respectful conversation, trying to ease her distress. The “bobby,” called thus after Sir Robert Peel who had put together the controversial police force, was a ruffian, out of his element when asked to escort a lady.

Inside, the atmosphere was equally daunting. It was institutional in a way Submit had never experienced. There was clutter everywhere. Records hung out of cupboards. Files were stacked on the landings of stairs. Likewise, the offices and corridors were bustling with people. Submit was taken through a maze of inspectors and clerks, uniformed constables and subconstables, to the front offices, which were only a bit more gracious. With her police escort, she entered a small office with a view out onto the yard. Like the outer of
fices, this one was packed with papers and files stacked on and around nondescript furniture. The impersonal, cramped feel of the place was only relieved in one spot. On a wall, between a cupboard and vertical file drawers, was a small lithograph, done rather surprisingly in the bright, experimental style of Delacroix. In this office, Submit was introduced first to the police commissioner, then to his assistant commissioner in charge of the Criminal Investigation Division, then to a soft-spoken man who looked her directly in the eye. The office was his. He was the designated superintendent for “delicate matters such as these.”

Submit was given to understand that a marchioness being questioned in a murder inquiry, involving also an earl of the realm, would be treated with deference. At least for the time being.

“If you please.” The superintendent cleared some books from the seat of a spindle-backed chair and invited Submit to sit down. He wore a rumpled suit rather than a uniform, his badge on display on the lapel of his brown coat. In a quiet, unassuming manner, he apologized, “I’m terribly sorry to put you to this trouble, Lady Motmarche. But we felt it was important to bring you into London. Certain questions are best addressed here.”

Submit had not questioned the authority of the police from the moment she had first confronted it at her door at Morrow Fields. The methods and sovereignty of the policing process were new to her. For that matter, being called upon in such a manner was new. She had never had even the remotest contact with authority of this sort. Submit sat, not sure what would come of—or how she would handle—any of it.

“You saw the earl of Netham yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“In the afternoon.”

“For how long?”

“I—ah—” She couldn’t remember at first, then for a second longer she hesitated, knowing the answer. “For an hour perhaps.” This seemed suddenly inordinately long.

The questions continued. The superintendent asked; she answered. Another man, a subordinate, took notes. The questions were few and straightforward. Submit tried to keep her answers equally to the point. Yet she realized she was becoming watchful and defensive, despite the fact that virtually nothing she had to say either obscured the facts or contradicted what she knew as the truth. Then, just when she thought she would be allowed to go, the ordeal began in earnest.

“Would you have any objections, Lady Motmarche,” the policeman asked as he leaned toward her, “to answering a few more questions in the presence of the earl of Netham?”

She was taken to a larger office. It belonged to the man she’d met earlier, Richard Mayne, the police commissioner at the head of Scotland Yard. Submit would have preferred the less august accommodations of the other office, but she understood as soon as she entered the reason for the change: Graham Wessit had been made “comfortable” in this room for who knew how long. At the sight of him, something in her chest gave her a little fillip of alarm. He took his feet off a tea table, clicking the front legs of his chair to the floor, coming fairly quickly to his feet. He was obviously not prepared to see her. His coat was on the back of the chair, his necktie having slipped to the floor. His vest was open. His collar lay in a dish on the table. They had given him no warning that she’d arrived. Submit looked down.

“Lady Motmarche,” he murmured. He offered no apology and displayed no unease, as if murder and alibis were to be taken in stride.

The superintendent pulled a chair out for Submit and
waved his hand. “No notes, Dixon.” His subordinate put down his pad. “Tea?”

Submit only shook her head.

“Well, then. Let’s begin.” The policeman smiled and sat on the edge of a large desk. “What I don’t understand, Lord Netham,” he began, “is that you seem to have removed all evidence of your living in London. Why were you hiding?”

“I wasn’t.”

“But you must admit it would seem so. To a poor, uncomprehending fellow as myself.”

Submit frowned. The policeman with a taste for French lithographs had the air of a man who was overqualified for his job; a man with a taste for success. She felt the first wave of sharp concern, of being boxed back into a corner.

“I told you already,” Graham Wessit answered, “that I was not hiding. I merely thought that my staff might be of better use to me in Netham. I have guests there, with more to arrive in the next week.” He went over to the window, putting one hand on the frame as he looked out.

A white shoulder brace was revealed by his raised arm. It split at his trousers into white satin tabs. Submit stared a moment. The beautiful, disheveled earl of Netham. Consummately undone. It took an act of will not to offer him something, a drink of water or a murmur of encouragement, a kiss on the brow.

“How long has he been here?” she interrupted. And why, she wondered, was he here alone with no one coming to his defense?

As if she had addressed him, the earl took out his watch. He was only wearing one of them, she noticed, a nice one of etched gold. He took it out from the pocket of his forest green vest. “For exactly eight and three-quarter hours,” he answered. His eyes shifted to the superintendent. His tone became flat. “I want a lawyer. Either charge me or let me go.”

The superintendent said nothing but sat there looking at
both of them. Submit felt an unpleasant realization bring a flush into her cheeks. They had kept Graham Wessit here all day, unwound him, then brought her in before he could put himself back together. They had put him at a disadvantage to see if she had any feminine inclinations to help or protect him. She was nonplussed for a moment to realize she did.

“A lawyer isn’t necessary, I assure you,” the superintendent continued. “Not at this point. Just think and tell me, Your Lordship. Why did you send even your manservant away?”

Graham stared at him truculently, then looked out the window again. “I wanted to be alone for a time. Is there anything wrong with that?”

“You wished to be without your carriage, not even a horse?”

“There was a mix-up. An inadvertent misunderstanding of my instructions.” The man by the window paused, as if to test in his own mind how plausible this sounded. He murmured again the same words, “A misunderstanding.”

The superintendent shifted his attention back to Submit. “And he arrived at your temporary residence at—when?”

“It was late in the afternoon when I saw him. He had already been there for a time.”

“Then you deny an arranged meeting.”

“Of course I deny it. It isn’t true.”

“Why did he visit you then?”

“To collect a bequeathal. My husband, Henry—” Her voice broke. She sat up straighter. “My husband left his cousin, the earl, a small remembrance.”

“What?”

Out the corner of her eye, she saw Graham Wessit put his hands behind his back. His thumb rubbed the edge of his palm.

“I don’t believe that is pertinent.” She entered fully into collusion.

The superintendent looked at her a moment, then chose a more direct attack. “You contacted Lord Netham?”

“Yes.”

“And arranged the meeting?”

“Not a specific time or place.”

“Lady Motmarche.” The superintendent paused for what could only be dramatic effect. “It seems to me that such an attractive man as the earl of Netham could have all the alibis he wants. You are not under the mistaken impression, are you, that he is somehow worth—what shall we call it?—an evasion of the truth?”

Submit frowned and looked down. “No.”

Unabashed, the policeman leaned toward her. “Are you,” he asked with another of his prolonged pauses, “somehow
affiliated
with the earl?”

Submit felt a rush of embarrassment. “No.” She scowled. “And if this is how you intend to question me, I want to speak to the Home Secretary. I want my lawyer notified.” Despite her bravado, she felt her palms growing warm and sticky.

“Please. I’m so sorry, Lady Motmarche.” The superintendent was neither dismayed nor alarmed. He merely held out his hands. “You surely must see how truth and delicacy are not always compatible. I meant merely to find out your mettle; I did not intend to offend.” He turned back to the earl.

“So, Lord Netham,” he continued, “you sent everyone, all your personal and considerable conveniences away, then thought better of it. You rented a horse at, let me see—” The man made a show of consulting his notes. Submit had seen them. They were mostly doodles. The man kept nearly everything in his head, with a frightening capacity for keeping it in particular detail. “Ah, yes, John Feller’s Stables. At the rate of three shillings four.” The man laughed and stretched his knuckles in front of him. “He clipped you a bit, that.”

“He may have. I have never rented a horse before.”

“And a stablekeeper would certainly remember a man who paid him so handsomely.”

“Lord.” At the window, Graham Wessit rubbed the back of his neck. The loose vest drew up along his chest. “Honestly, if I had thought I was constructing an alibi, I would not have been so obvious. Nor made one with so many holes.”

“Well, yes. But this is not so bad a one as we can dismiss it, is it?”

“And both—that it is not bad enough and that it is not good enough—are to be held against me.” The earl laughed, looking over his shoulder with an impotent shrug. Then a knock came at the door and saved them all another round of questioning.

Arnold Tate came in, unsummoned and unannounced. He was in full courtroom attire: grey, curling wig and silk bombasine robes. He nodded at the man at the desk, murmuring something about hearing of “the present situation” at Temple Inn and only now being able to get free. He pulled up a chair and put it between Submit and the man accused of murder.

Arnold waved a hand. “I am not here. Officially, that is. I am a close friend of the marchioness. I am only here to hold the lady’s hand, so to speak.” His eyes, filled with reproof, shifted to the earl, who promptly gave the room his full back.

When Arnold looked again at Submit, she thought for a moment he might actually reach over and cover her hand with his. He didn’t. Instead, just an exchange of nods. Relief rushed in. Submit was glad he’d come. She realized she’d been holding her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking.

From there, the interview changed in tone. Almost surely this was because Tate sat there in full regalia. The pace accelerated. The superintendent’s questions became
briefer, less suggestive, and he concentrated more on the scribbled pages of notes than on the faces of his suspects. The barrister’s presence made him behave—and it made him less effective.

Graham folded his arms and leaned back on the window ledge as he listened and watched the turnabout. Submit Channing-Downes was intimidated by all this, and even that worked to her advantage. The remainder of her answers were direct, almost fierce. Sometimes she would allow a pause, taking time to consider before she spoke. Or, when the occasional inquiries came to Graham, she would stare out the window as if she could put herself on the outside of the room, the entire matter. Graham frequently found himself staring at her profile, her graceful neck, her soft shoulders. He realized that with very little difficulty he could let loose of all the wrong reflexes. His every instinct was there, alert, ready to behave like the woman’s lover. And this was precisely what he must not do—the man would hang them both on the innocent friendship they had hardly begun.