Death at Dawn (7 page)

Having decided that, my mind felt clearer. The thing to do was talk to Daniel Suter, the last friend I knew of to see him alive. I’d return to Paris and, if necessary, inquire at every opera house or theatre until I found him. I took my father’s letter out of my bag to re-read.

That was not surprising. One of the ways in which my father earned enough money to keep us was by acting as a go-between for objects of art. His excellent taste, wide travels and many friends meant that he was often in a position to know who needed to sell and who was aching to buy. Some classical statue or portrait of a Versailles beauty was probably his additional business in Paris

He’d been long enough in Paris to pick up some gossip:

It had puzzled me when I first read it, and still did. Why indignation as well as laughter? As for the quotation from Shelley, I knew it, of course. It came from the poet’s tirade of justified indignation against His Majesty George III and his unpopular brood of royal
duke sons:
Old, mad, blind despis’d and dying King,
Princes, the dregs of their dull race … mud from a
muddy spring
. A fine insult, but King George was seventeen years dead. I might never hear the story, unless Daniel knew it. Still, I was making some progress. The mare to Tattersalls and I to Paris. I should have to set about it carefully though, sail from somewhere other than Dover and avoid Calais. I had no wish to see ever again the gentleman in black, or the toad-like monster, or the person who called himself Trumper. (Unless, I thought, side by side on the gallows for killing my father.)

Soon after that, I fell asleep. The decision had been made and I was mortally tired. For the first time since hearing that my father was dead I slept deeply and dreamlessly. When I opened my eyes, the jug and ewer were making a long shadow up a wall that had turned copper-coloured in the light from the setting sun. The buzz and clinking of people at dinner and drinking came up from the floor below. The strange thing was that – although I woke unhappy – there was a little island of warmth in my mind, where before there had only been cold greyness. I saw, as vividly as if they had been in the room with me, the generous eye of Esperance, Amos Legge’s kind but puzzled look, even the golden stare of Lucy the cat. I had family of a kind after all, three beings who in some fashion depended on me.

And I was going to sell them. I’d decided that quite
clearly before going to sleep. Now, quite as clearly, the thing was impossible. Sell my father’s last gift to me, for a hatful of greasy guineas? Use as my agent in this betrayal the good giant who’d brought her to me so faithfully (and so far at no profit to himself)? Even the cat had shown more loyalty than that.

I jumped out of bed and opened my purse. My small store was now seven shillings and four pence, not even enough to pay the rest of my score at the Heart of Oak. And yet here was I, proposing to make a trip to Paris and pay board and lodging indefinitely for an equine aristocrat. I heard myself laughing out loud.

Somebody else heard too. I froze, aware of a board creaking just outside the door. But there had been no footsteps since I woke up, so whoever it was must have been there while I was sleeping, quite probably looking in at me through the keyhole. I seized my travelling mantle and wrapped it round me. There was a knock at the door, knuckle against wood; quite polite sounding, if I hadn’t guessed. The landlord, I thought, come to make sure of his money and, in addition, spying on me in my chemise and stockings.

‘You’ll have to wait,’ I said.

I moved to be out of sight of the keyhole and dressed, taking my time, then put back the money in my purse. No need to let the fellow spy out the nakedness of the land in every sense. Then I went to the door and opened it, expecting to be looking into boot-button eyes and a pudgy face above a stained apron. Instead there was
the gentleman in black, as straight and severe as when I’d last seen him at the Calais burial ground, although this time he was vertical, not horizontal. You might have taken him for his own spectre, except that he spoke like a living man, though not a happy one.

‘Good evening, Miss Lane. I have a proposition to put to you …’

His high white cravat was the brightest thing in the shadowy passageway, the face above it grey as moonlight on slate. He held his hat in hand, as if making a social call.

‘I thought you might be dead,’ I said.

Admittedly it was hardly a cordial greeting, but when I’d last seen him he was barely breathing. In the half light, I could see no sign on his temple of the blow that had felled him, so perhaps there was not enough flesh and blood in him to bruise.

‘It might be best if you would permit me to come in,’ he said.

I came close to slamming the door in his face. My reputation was low enough with the landlord, without entertaining gentlemen in my room. But something told me that my virtue was in no danger, though everything
else might be. The man had as much carnality as a frozen dish-clout. Even though he had been spying on me through the keyhole, it was for something colder than my charms
en chemise
. I opened the door wider. He walked in, looking round. I might have invited him to sit down, but with only one chair in the room, that meant I should have to perch on the bed. We stayed on our feet. He put his hat on the wash-stand.

‘Our last conversation was interrupted,’ I said. ‘I was asking you what you knew about my father’s death.’

‘And I believe I counselled you to have patience.’

As before, his voice was low and level.

‘An over-rated virtue. Were you present when he died?’

‘No.’

‘But you know what happened?’

He raised a narrow black-gloved hand in protest.

‘Miss Lane, that is not what I have come to speak to you about.’

‘Do you know what happened?’

He looked straight at me, as if he wanted to stare me down. Anybody with a brother has practice in that trick. I held his look. He sighed and walked towards the window, sliding a hand into his coat pocket.

‘Miss Lane, do you recognise this?’

He was holding something small in the palm of his hand. I walked over to him and picked it up. When I saw it close, I felt as if somebody had caught me a blow.

‘It’s his ring.’

A signet with a curious design of an eye and a pyramid.
The one that should have been on his hand in the morgue.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘You robbed it from his body.’

‘It was taken from his body. Not by me.’

‘Who, then?’

‘By persons at the morgue in Calais.’

‘The fat drunken woman and her husband?’

The slightest of nods from him.

‘I thought so,’ I said. ‘But what concern was it of yours?’

He must have been at the morgue before me, touched my father’s hands as I’d done, and he had no right.

‘I bought it from them,’ he said. ‘It should have stayed on his hand and been buried with him, but they’d only have stolen it again.’

‘So you’ve come to return it to me?’

I was trying to bring myself to thank him, but could have saved myself the effort.

‘No. I show it to you only to convince you that I knew your father. That in some measure I speak with your father’s authority.’

He pulled off his right glove and stretched out his hand to me. On his middle finger was a ring identical to my father’s, only the design was worn flat by time. Then he turned the hand over, palm up.

‘If you please.’

He expected me to give him my father’s ring back. Instead I dropped it down the front of my stays. It was cold against my hot and angry skin. The shock in his
eyes was the first human reaction I’d had from him. We stared at each other and he drew another long sigh.

‘I had heard that you possess an excellent understanding, Miss Lane. I fear you are not using it rationally.’

‘The only understanding I care about is how my father died. Who is this woman he was trying to bring back to England?’

For a second, he couldn’t hide the surprise in his eyes.

‘Who told you about a woman?’

‘The man who kidnapped me in the graveyard and a fat man in the carriage. You know who they are, don’t you?’

‘You did well to escape from them.’

‘The fat man said my father had abducted a woman from Paris. They thought I’d know where she was. I don’t. I know nothing about her.’

‘That’s good. You must continue to know nothing.’

‘No! She’s the reason my father was killed, isn’t she? Don’t I at least have the right to know who she is?’

‘I’m not sure myself who she is.’

‘But there is a woman, you admit that?’

‘I have reason to believe that your father left Paris in company with a woman, yes.’

‘He wouldn’t have taken her away against her will.’

‘Very well. I accept that.’

‘So, whoever she is, she went with him of her own accord. But Trumper and the fat man found out about that and wanted her back.’

A reluctant nod from him.

‘So they chased him from Paris to Calais?’

‘Not chased, exactly. I understand that it took them some days to connect your father with the woman’s disappearance.’

‘Were you in Paris at the time?’

‘No.’

‘So how do you know about this?’

‘I have no obligation to tell you how I know about anything. You must accept that I have been doing my best to observe these people for several months.’

There was a hint of weariness in his voice.

‘The day they tried to kidnap me, they were still looking for this woman,’ I said. ‘Did they find her?’

‘I don’t know. As you may remember, I was indisposed for a while.’

‘You mean knocked senseless by the fat man’s coachman. Who are these people? Why are they doing this?’

He didn’t answer for some time. We stared at each other. There were chalky rings round his grey pupils, a sign of bad health. He sighed.

‘Miss Lane, your father became involved in something that was nothing to do with him. You are probably right in thinking that it cost him his life. When I met you in Calais, my wish was to protect you.’

‘By ordering me to go back to England and forget about it?’

‘I never said “forget”. But it’s true that I wanted to keep you away from them.’

‘And now?’

‘Since then, I have discovered two things about you. One is that you are, unfortunately, not on good terms with those whose natural duty it should be to shelter you. In fact, you are alone in the world and without means of income.’

Yes, I thought. You watched me counting every last penny.

‘The other is that you are a young lady of some resource. Those two men in the carriage did not wish you well. I have heard some of the story of how you contrived to escape from them …’

How? From the toad-like man, the peasant with the pigs …?

‘… and it suggests resolution and quick-wittedness. If it were not for these two discoveries, I should have had no hesitation in restoring you to some relative and counselling you to mourn your father and ask no more questions.’

‘You have no rights over me. All I want from you is to know what happened to him.’

‘In due course, you shall know everything. Only you must have –’

‘Patience? What’s to stop me opening this window and shouting to people to fetch a magistrate, that my father’s murderer is in this room with me?’

He didn’t move a muscle.

‘Two reasons: one, that it would be untrue; the other, that it would be ineffective.’

I had my hand on the window latch. If he had moved to stop me I should have opened it. He stayed where he was and went on talking in that same level voice.

‘I did not kill your father. If I could have prevented his death by any means, I should have done so. As for the magistrates, I should be able within a few minutes to convince them that your accusation was untrue. And you, Miss Lane, would appear a young lady driven out of her senses by grief. Is that a desirable outcome?’

I let go of the latch. If he’d knocked me to the floor he couldn’t have defeated me more thoroughly, because what he said was true. I could imagine the cold, official looks and what would follow: my aunt sent for and my return to Chalke Bissett as a captive. Or, worse than that, strait-jacketed to a common asylum, fighting and screaming, spending the rest of my life among squalid gibberers. In this new world I’d fallen into, it could happen. He must have seen from my face that he’d won the round, because his voice became just a shade more soft.

‘Miss Lane, I did not come here to threaten you. I came, as far as I may, to assist.’

I kept my back turned to him, looking out of the window. A drab in a doorway was beckoning to two sailors. They were taunting her, pretending to push each other in her direction.

‘I give you my promise that, when it is possible, I shall tell you more about what happened to your father. But the time is not yet right, and there are more things bound
up in this than the fate of any single man or woman. Your father was a good man on the whole …’

‘On the whole!’

‘… but of an impulsive temperament, as you clearly are. That, above all, was what led to his death.’

The two sailors were walking away, the drab shouting something after them. When she came out of her doorway you could see she was no more than a girl, perhaps fourteen or so. I turned back into the room.

‘You said you had a proposition to put to me.’

He made it, standing there with his hand on the edge of the wash-stand. I sat down after all, because my legs were trembling from shock and anger, and I did not wish him to know it. I let him talk without a word of interruption and tried not to show what I thought.

‘There is a small part which you may play in a great cause which I believe your father would approve. It may even in some measure help to put right the harm to that cause which your father unintentionally has done.’

How can I defend him, when I don’t even understand what you’re accusing him of? I hate you, as much as I’ve hated anybody in my life, but you possess something I want, so I must listen.

‘So here is the proposal which I ask you to consider. It has the merit that it would meet, for a short time, your need for sustenance, a roof over your head, while permitting you to be of some service to a greater cause.’

Am I intended to assassinate somebody, like Charlotte
Corday and Marat? I suppose I’d have a roof over my head until they hanged me. Or does he wish me to put on a man’s uniform and go for a soldier?

‘I am proposing that you apply for the post of governess.’

‘What?’ That ended my silence, all this secrecy and drama leading to the most commonplace of conclusions. ‘You invade my lodgings, spy on me, insult my father – to tell me that? I could have come to that conclusion myself, without your valuable … counsel.’

I threw his own word at him, bitterly. The fact was, for a woman like myself with some education but no means of support, becoming a governess was the only respectable alternative to the workhouse, and only slightly less miserable: an underpaid drudge, ignored by gentry and servants alike, neither the one nor the other, condemned to a lifelong diet of chalk dust and humble pie. Yes, it was probably my only prospect, but I hated him all the more for hurrying me towards it.

‘Not just any governess,’ he said. ‘There is a particular family …’

‘Friends of yours, I suppose.’

‘No, anything but friends of mine.’

‘Enemies, then?’

‘Opponents.’

‘So am I expected to put ground glass in their stew and saw through the brakes on their carriage?’

‘Nothing so deleterious. You have merely to observe certain things and inform me, by means which shall be arranged for you.’

‘In other words, to spy?’

‘Yes.’

Honest, at least. My father’s ring was now warm against my chest and I kept my hand on it through my stays to help me think.

‘This family – are they something to do with why my father was killed?’

‘We think so, yes.’

‘How long should I have to stay there?’

‘A few weeks, probably. Months at most.’

‘And what are you in all this – a Government spy?’

‘Far from it. The reverse, rather.’

‘The reverse?’

‘No government has any reason to love me.’

I waited for him to enlarge on that, but he just stood there looking at me in that arithmetical way I’d noticed in the churchyard. He was a miser with information, giving out as little as possible.

‘You must tell me more about this family,’ I said.

‘Their name is Mandeville. They claim descent from one of William the Conqueror’s knights and hold a baronetcy, conferred on them by Charles II. The present holder, the ninth baronet, Sir Herbert, is a very wealthy man and until recently was a Conservative MP.’

‘Until recently? Do you mean he was one of those who lost their seats through the Great Reform?’

They’d been a huge joke to my father’s circle, those lost Members of Parliament. They were mostly country squires and their friends who thought they had something
like hereditary rights to seats in the House of Commons. For centuries they’d owned pocket boroughs, consisting of a mere half-dozen easily bribed or bullied electors. The Reform Act of five years before had swept them away, and not before time. I was laughing at the thought of it, but the man in black didn’t smile.

‘Great Reform, you call it. I should have thought it a singularly small reform. Did it give a vote to every working man?’

‘No, but –’

‘Did it do anything to help the tens of thousands toiling in the workshops and factories of our great cities?’

‘No.’

‘Did it take away a single shilling from the rich to give to children hungry for bread?’

‘Sadly, no.’

His eyes were glittering, his thin body swaying to the rhythm of his words. So, I thought, the man is an orator. That explained his sparing way with words, like an opera singer guarding his voice. Perhaps he realised the effect he was having, because he smiled a thin smile.

‘I am sorry to become warm, Miss Lane. You suppose, correctly, that Sir Herbert lost his seat because of the Reform Act. Until then, there had been Mandevilles in the House of Commons for four hundred years. But you would be mistaken to see him as simply a buffoon from the shires. He is a man of ability and ambition. In fact, he has held ministerial office under both Whig and Tory governments.’