Prince of Secrets (15 page)

He said, seeing that Cobie had finished for the moment, ‘That is all? A vague suspicion, and the verbal confession of a man now usefully dead. Men—if you can call them men—abuse girl children, but they rarely kill them. You dislike Sir Ratcliffe, that is plain to see. Perhaps your dislike ruins your judgement, Mr…Dilley.'

‘Perhaps it does,' agreed Cobie, ‘But I heard the confession, and it would have stood up in a court of law if the man had lived. Since I had no hard evidence and more children were murdered, I hired an ex-police officer, Jem Porter by name, to investigate Sir Ratcliffe for me. I also asked him to watch two men whom another witness—whom I cannot name—informed me were in Sir Ratcliffe's pay.'

‘Just a minute,' said Walker patronisingly. ‘What have we here? Your vague suspicion, two witnesses, one dead, and one whose name you won't give me, and as investigator a bent copper, thrown out of the force for taking bribes. What a farrago, Mr Dilley. Can't the great magician do better than that?'

‘There is more to come.' Cobie was aware that Walker was taking a savage revenge for all the humiliations inflicted on him, and for the life of him he couldn't blame the man, he would have done the same himself. If he wasn't enjoying the role of biter bit, he was finding a sardonic interest in it—a new experience for someone who valued them.

‘Jem Porter has disappeared. He left London last weekend to follow a lead for me. He wrote me a letter setting up an interview for today. He was due to return to his Clapham home last Tuesday to carry out further investigations in the East End, but has never returned. He didn't attend my office for the interview he set up and his wife is distraught. She says that he has never failed to come home before, and she is fearful that harm may have come to him.'

‘Nell Porter? You've spoken to Nell Porter?'

‘This afternoon. I promised I would report his disappearance to you, and try to have it taken seriously.'

Walker's whole manner had changed.

‘I know Nell Porter,' he said reminiscently. ‘I used to be sweet on her myself, and if she's worried, there's something to be worried about. Regular pair of turtle-doves, she and Jem. Who was he supposed to be seeing?'

‘That I don't know. I can give you the two names I told you of, and that's all. He wrote as though there had been a breakthrough.'

‘You're pretty sure that Heneage is involved?'

Yes, he was being taken seriously at last. Walker was suddenly the professional sleuth, his nose to the ground, sniffing at the scent of an animal long gone, but perhaps still traceable.

‘Start again, would you, Mr Dilley? Tell me again—in detail—why you thought this Heneage murdered the first girl, Lizzie Steele, leave nothing out. Take a chair,' he offered belatedly.

Cobie didn't refuse the chair. He sat in it, wondering when he would see Dinah again, and hoping that she wasn't worrying about him. It was going to be a long evening, he could tell that by Walker's expression. The chance to make Mr Dilley sweat was too good to miss.

‘Well, who'd have thought it?' Walker grinned at Bates, who had sat stolidly taking notes while he had grilled Mr Dilley making him tell his story twice more. ‘So our swell mobster—that's what the Yanks call them, I'm told—had to come to us for help in the end. Not so clever after all.'

‘Do you believe him, guv?'

‘About Heneage? Yes, I think I do. It begins to explain a little why our man stole the necklace. But it's the devil of a thing to try to prove with so little to go on. I can't go round accusing a Cabinet Minister of murder—even one who won't be a Minister much longer, I hear. We'll have him tailed, Bates. See to it at once.'

‘Who, guv? Mr Dilley?'

‘No, you priceless idiot, Bates! Heneage, of course! Dilley I'll have followed later. Who knows what tricks he may get up to? But for the moment he'll stay quiet, you see. Cunning bastard, our magician. But I don't think he magicked poor Porter away. I'll lay odds it hurt him to have to come to us, but give him his due, he was helping poor Nell. Odd customer, ain't he? Even odder than Heneage. A straightforward, murderous bastard he is!'

Mr Dilley wasn't. Not straightforward, not murderous, just a bastard. In every way. Even he knew that, and knew it the more when he reached home later than he had intended. Dinah never reproached him, never asked him where he had been, what he was doing, but the gap which had opened up between them was growing wider.

Only when he was making himself ready for bed and had dismissed Giles, did it occur to him, belatedly, that she might think that he had been with another woman. He inwardly cursed his own simple-mindedness and wondered how he could convince her that whatever he was doing, it wasn't that.

Ten years of strict self-discipline over his emotions stopped him from rushing to her room and trying to persuade her that he was not being unfaithful, since to do so might make matters worse, not better. For a moment he considered telling her the truth, but the thought of what might have happened to Porter prevented him.

He thought of Mrs Porter's ravaged face—and cursed again. He felt responsible for it, and wondered what Walker's investigations, for he had no doubt that Walker would now begin them, would bring.

They brought nothing but bad news. A week after he had been to see Walker, the butler came in and announced in his aloof voice that ‘a person from Scotland Yard' was asking to see him.

Walker had been put in the drawing room where Cobie found him staring at a painting of the Arizona desert which hung over the hearth, a symphony of brilliant colours showing the sun setting over distant mountain peaks, the desert floor, studded with giant cacti, dark below it.

‘You've been there, Mr Dilley?'

He leaned forward to examine the signature, and said in a voice of total disbelief, ‘C.G. You painted that?'

Cobie nodded. ‘Something I did once, yes.'

‘Another magician's trick?'

‘If you like. Why do you want to see me, Inspector?'

‘To tell you what you'll learn from the Press tomorrow, seeing that you came to tell me that Porter was missing, and
that you feared foul play, I thought it only fair. You see I do right by you, Mr Dilley. Can you say as much for yourself, regarding me?'

‘Circumstances alter cases, Inspector.'

‘A magician's answer which I might have expected. Right, they fished a body out of the Thames yesterday, Mr Dilley. It was poor Jem Porter's. He didn't drown, he was dead when he hit the water.'

He stared at his enemy's impassive face. ‘You're not surprised?'

‘No, I was certain he was dead, or I wouldn't have come to you.'

‘Dead in your service, Mr Dilley. What are you going to say to his wife?'

Cobie's iron composure nearly cracked. Rage ran through him like wildfire. Rage at himself for putting Porter in danger. Rage at the man—or men—who had killed him.

He turned away. He knew that sometimes the rage showed, and he didn't want that. Let Walker think him the heartless magician—one whose magic tricks had failed on this occasion.

‘Nothing to say, Mr Dilley?' Walker mocked at his back. ‘Poor Nell Porter is left penniless. Ready to help her with some of your dirty money, Mr Dilley, that you got from the sale of the Heneage diamonds?'

Cobie felt that he was about to suffocate. ‘If I were the magician you think I am, then I would open the coffin and bring him back to life, would I not? Seeing that I can't do that, the least that I can do is see that his widow doesn't starve.'

He still couldn't turn round, and had spoken in his iciest voice to the wall before him.

‘Don't like to face me, do you, Mr Dilley? Not such a joke after all?'

His enemy swung round to offer Walker a face he could hardly recognise as that of the jesting magician.

‘Damn you, Walker,' he began, and then, ‘No, not that. Have you any idea who did this thing?'

‘None. Like the dead girls there are no clues, no clues at all. Are you sure that you have told me all that you know? He was killed over a week ago. Where were you then, Mr Dilley? I need to know. I suspect everyone, you see.'

Cobie had recovered himself. The inward nausea had begun but he was controlling it. ‘I was in Oxford, Inspector, staying with my wife's mother and her second husband, Professor Louis Fabian. I went there to collect my wife, and stayed overnight. Even I, magician though I am, cannot be in two places at once.'

‘Then I can strike you off my list, can't I? Except that you could have hired someone to do that deed for you. Do gentry like you have become ever do their own really dirty work, Grant? Like to stay spotless, do you?'

Cobie thought of the wild young outlaw he had been, a gun on each hip, grimy from head to toe, only his guns clean. He stifled a desire to laugh, and said politely, ‘If you like to think so. But I don't think that you really suspect me, Inspector. Do you want me to identify him? One would like to spare his wife.'

‘Indeed one would,' mocked Walker, ‘but no need. I knew him well. He was my guv'nor once. He was never a careful man, Mr Dilley, and in the end I guess that carelessness killed him.'

‘Oh, I killed him, Inspector—' and Cobie's voice was still ice ‘—by sending him on this mission. You've been telling me so ever since I walked into this room. But be sure of one thing, those who killed him will pay for it.'

‘My job, not yours,' returned Walker rudely.

‘Then see that you do it. Do you need anything more from me?'

‘Nothing. I simply wish that I had never met you. Death and destruction follow you about, Mr Dilley. You are not the man your society friends think you.'

Cobie was about to answer when the door opened and Dinah walked in. She looked enchanting in a blue and white striped walking dress, navy blue shoes and a big cream straw hat with a wide blue band and a large blue bow.

‘I'm sorry, Cobie. I wasn't aware that you had a visitor.'

Walker said, grinning and showing his teeth, ‘Oh, I'm about to leave, Lady Dinah.'

‘No tea?' remarked Dinah. She could feel the tension in the room, it was written on the faces of both men. A kind of feral delight on Walker's, a stern impassivity on her husband's classic features gave them both away.

She felt a desperate desire to bait them both and didn't know why. ‘You're sure you won't have some tea, Inspector? I can have it here in a moment,' and she made for the bell.

‘Kind of you, Lady Dinah, but no.'

‘Oh, do stay for tea, Inspector,' and Cobie's voice was savage. ‘I believe it's chocolate cake today, the cook's speciality, you mustn't miss that.'

Walker looked embarrassed for the first time while he refused tea and cake. It wasn't Mr Dilley who was causing the embarrassment but his pretty young wife. The brute didn't deserve her, he thought, not for the first time.

Then, remembering the way in which she had spoken to them, something about her struck him, something in her manner which didn't quite match the impression of charming innocence which she gave off. The hunter in him was aware of false notes and he had detected one there.

Was it conceivable, could it possibly be, that unworldly
young Lady Dinah was a match for her husband? As his blond and civilised beauty concealed the true man he was, did his wife's seeming naïveté also cover something deeper? Was the magician's wife also his assistant, who walked the stage performing tricks of her own to conceal his?

And did the magician know?

T
he magician did not know, but he had his suspicions. There was something about Dinah these days which intrigued him: something which told him that she was an even more complex person than he had first thought her.

Cobie had even come to the conclusion that she would be able to understand, and to approve, of why he was carrying out his ruthless campaign against Sir Ratcliffe and his wickedness. The only thing which prevented him from confiding in her was his continuing fear that if Sir Ratcliffe thought that she knew of his secret and murderous life he might make her his target in an attempt to get at his enemy. He dare not take that risk—best that she know nothing—even if she suspected something. He dare not risk losing someone whom he had come to love so dearly, even if he dare not yet tell her of his love.

There was no doubt that Inspector Walker's sudden reappearance, and his strange manner towards Cobie, was telling Dinah that, in the words of her maid when she forgot herself and reverted to the language of the days before she achieved respectability, ‘something was up'.

What that something might be was difficult for Dinah to imagine. Why, for example, should Cobie steal the Heneage
diamonds? And if
they
were not the reason for Inspector Walker's re-appearance in their life, what was? What in the world could he be doing that the police should be interested in it? She had read novels in which the most unlikely persons were master-criminals. Could Cobie be one of them?

If he were, should she confront him with her belief? And if he were not, what would it do to their marriage if she came out with something so apparently crass? Added to that was that she feared that something else had happened—to her, this time. Something which she would normally have told Cobie of at once, but if he were engaged in a truly dangerous venture she did not care to add to his secret worries yet another which might distract him—and thus put him in even further danger.

It was bad enough that he was a principal witness in this wretched Markendale business, and so she told him that night when they were playing their nightly game of cribbage before retiring to bed. It had become something of a ritual: Cobie said that it soothed his nerves, and it certainly soothed Dinah's these days.

‘I shall not be happy until the Markendale action is over,' she said, ‘I do believe that it has cast a shadow over all our lives. Violet has become more fretful than ever, and she's not the only one.'

Cobie, busy collecting the cards and putting them and the pegs which they used as counters back into the beautiful box in which they were stored, looked up, and answered her, drily for him, ‘I'm not exactly delighted by being the principal witness either, seeing that I am an American and therefore something of an outsider. I understand that the date will be set for the near future—and then we shall all of us have something real to worry about. Except you, my dear.'

Dinah gave him as artless a look as she could.

‘Oh, I shall worry about you, Cobie.'

‘Now that I do forbid,' he said, walking over to her and kissing her. ‘Your role is to be supportive, to sit in the courtroom looking charmingly innocent so that the jury will think that the husband of such a cherub could never be other than an archangel himself.'

‘Do archangels have wives?' Dinah riposted smartly. ‘I thought that there was no marrying or giving in marriage, in heaven.'

‘Minx,' said Cobie, charmed as ever by his young wife's mixture of erudition and sly wit, ‘for that you shall be royally rewarded in bed—the place where all our worries can be forgotten.'

Except that Dinah could not forget them, and later, after their joyful lovemaking was over, she lay awake, wondering yet once more about the true nature of the enigmatic man she had married, the man who had never told her that he loved her, and who had also ordered her never to love him.

Except that she did, and so she must continue with the crusade on which she had embarked at Moorings, the crusade which had as its aim her determination that he would love her as passionately as she loved him.

Thinking so, she fell asleep at last—to dream of him again.

Fortunately for all concerned, the cat sprang out of the bag at last: the date of the Markendale hearing was set for the last week in November since both plaintiff and defendants were determined for their own reasons that it should be held as soon as possible. The whole of society buzzed and roared at the news.

Excitement grew to a crescendo when it was learned that the Prince of Wales had been subpoenaed to give evidence. Given the lofty nature of all the participants in the action,
the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Coleridge, was to preside and a special jury was to be called.

Beauchamp and Sir Francis Knollys, the Prince's Private Secretary, Cobie was told, were doing their utmost to try to persuade Sir Ratcliffe to withdraw, but he remained adamant. The stakes were too high for him to do so. More, if he were to win, the damages which he would be awarded would save him from the ruin which he faced.

Cobie was interviewed by defence counsel in his chambers. All four defendants, Lords Kenilworth, Dagenham, Rainey and Cobie himself, had met and had agreed to hire Sir Darcy Spenlow, QC, to represent them. He had the reputation of being a cross between a fox and a lion in court. In private he was a small man, mild of manner although, as Cobie soon discovered, his questions were sharp and searching.

‘Before I begin to discuss this matter with you, Mr Grant, I had perhaps better inform you that Sir Ratcliffe has engaged as his counsel the man regarded as the most formidable ever to lead in any court. He is the Solicitor-General, Sir Halbert Parker, QC.'

Cobie had no idea how to respond to this news, other than not to respond at all. Privately he wondered where Sir Ratcliffe was finding the money to hire such a star.

Sir Darcy began without further preamble. ‘Now let me turn to preparing my own case. I have been reading the statement which you and your co-defendants have made, and it seems to me that in many respects your own evidence is crucial. I note that the other defendants are all in their mid-forties and early fifties. I should like to know how you, a very young man, came to be such an important member of the party.'

Cobie replied with all the earnestness at his command, ‘I had seen on the first night we played baccarat that Sir Rat
cliffe was cheating, but being an American I felt diffident about starting such an accusation on its way. When it was plain that others were also aware of what he was doing, I made my own doubts known. More, I have an excellent memory and was able to remember the exact details of how he was manipulating his cards and counters.'

‘Will you now tell me precisely what you saw, Mr Grant, in detail, if you please. I want nothing to be obscure.'

Plainly and lucidly Cobie took Sir Darcy through the whole business of the baccarat games in which Sir Ratcliffe had taken part, and of how he had made the most careful observations after the committee had asked that he watch Sir Ratcliffe.

Sir Darcy began to make notes. What he was hearing tallied with what the other defendants had told him, so he moved on.

‘If your memory—which is claimed to be remarkable—were challenged in court, you would consent to allow it to be publicly tested?'

‘Indeed. I have no qualms about that.'

Sir Darcy, still making notes, continued, ‘I understand that Mr Hervey Beauchamp was present at these meetings, but he did not sign the declaration which Lord Kenilworth drew up. Why was that? Did he have some doubts on the matter?'

‘None at all. He thought, as one of the Prince's entourage, that it was better that he should only be an adviser, not a signatory. He wished, at all costs, for the matter to be settled in a way which would avoid not only public scandal, but damage to his master, the Prince.'

He hesitated. ‘That, I think, motivated all of us in allowing Sir Ratcliffe to sign a paper which, while tying his hands, allowed him to avoid public obloquy—providing none of us talked, that is.'

‘Providing none of you talked,' agreed Sir Darcy, shaking his head. ‘Someone talked. Sir Ratcliffe said that it was you. Did you talk, Mr Grant?'

Cobie shook
his
head, delighted that for once in his life he was able to stick to the perfect truth. ‘No, I didn't talk—whatever he thinks.'

‘Do you know who did talk, Mr Grant?'

‘No, but I think that I could hazard a guess—which is not evidence.'

‘Which is not evidence,' repeated Sir Darcy. ‘You are an American citizen, I understand, Mr Grant. One thing which Sir Ratcliffe's counsel will try to do is to destroy the defendants by attacking their good faith. Where he cannot do so, he is likely to allege that their character and reputation are so bad that their word cannot be relied on. Is there anything in your past which might enable Sir Ratcliffe and his counsel to attack you on that score? If so, you had better tell me now.'

Here came the lies.

Cobie opened his blue eyes wide, and said, ‘Nothing, I assure you, Sir Darcy. I am a member of a respected family in the United States of America, and a financier with business connections in three continents. I will not pretend that I am entirely blameless, but I can think of nothing which Sir Ratcliffe's counsel could discover which might impugn either my veracity or my good faith.'

Spoken like a true barrack-room lawyer, thought Sir Darcy. He also thought that beautiful and brilliant Mr Jacobus Grant was too good to be true. The favourite of the Prince, Kenilworth had told him, Rainsborough's brother-in-law, and therefore related to Kenilworth himself. He was enormously rich, with a fortune he had made for himself, having refused the legacy left him by one foster-father, and
the financial support of another. He was also the American envoy's brother-in-law. And all this before he was thirty.

On top of that he was an American who looked and spoke like an Englishman, and his tailor had outfitted him accordingly. Provided that he was telling the truth his evidence alone, if properly given, was enough to sink Sir Ratcliffe and his leaking ship.

‘I trust that you are being entirely honest with me, Mr Grant. I must tell you that if you speak in court as you have done to me, none of you, including the Prince, have anything to fear.'

‘And that is that?' asked Cobie, rising.

‘Indeed. I should like to see you again before the action begins. If anything occurs of which you think I ought to know, I trust that you will inform me of it immediately.'

‘You may be sure of that, Sir Darcy,' and Cobie departed, leaving behind him a man who wondered exactly what the charming self-control of the young American was hiding.

Mainly what Cobie was hiding was his criminal past in Arizona Territory, his theft of the Heneage diamonds, and his current involvement in trying to corner the man who was not only suing him, but was responsible for the deaths of three small girls, and a middle-aged enquiry agent. Some of which, but not all, would be excellent grist to Sir Ratcliffe's counsel's mill.

Violet told Dinah that she was sick of the whole business. ‘Why he wants to drag us all through the mud I cannot conceive. There is enough Republican sentiment in the country without allegations like these coming along to support every fool who wants to turn us into a poor imitation of the United States.'

Dinah said mildly, ‘I agree with you, Violet. But what principally troubles me is Cobie's involvement.'

Violet was scornful. ‘I really don't think that you need worry about
that
. From all I have seen of him, I would have thought that Apollo would be capable of eating most Queen's Counsels alive!'

But you don't know what I do, Dinah thought, remembering the stolen diamonds. Unconsciously echoing her husband's words, she imagined him walking a tight rope from which he might fall at any moment if he put a foot wrong.

‘Is Kenilworth worried?' she thought it polite to ask.

‘Not he!' Violet was scornful again. ‘Enraged, my dear, at being put in a position where pen-pushing attorneys can ask him impertinent questions.'

Conversations like these were going on all over Mayfair. Most of society had returned to London from the country in order to share in and enjoy the excitement. The Press had taken up the case, calling it the Markendale mystery, and was on Sir Ratcliffe's side and against the Prince and his cronies, particularly the Dollar Prince. Patriotism was invoked: it was shameful that an American should be a principal in attacking a good old British baronet.

So Walker told Cobie when he called at his office in the City not a week before the action was due to begin. ‘Not very popular are you, Mr Dilley? But I don't suppose that troubles you.'

‘Not much,' Cobie agreed. ‘What is it now, Inspector?'

‘Well, first of all I'm pleased to see that you're keeping your head down. You don't want to do anything to put you at a disadvantage in court, I suppose. I've news for you. I've traced one of the two names you gave me, that of Linfield, and he's prepared to turn copper's nark and talk provided, he says, that I'll guarantee that if he turns Queen's evidence I'll see that he gets off.

‘He's an awkward customer, you understand, so I want
you to dirty your lily-white hands, Mr Dilley, and come with me. You can perhaps tell me if he was one of the men you saw at Madame Louise's.'

‘Nothing more than that? You're sure that you want me? Oughtn't you to be taking that fat sergeant with you?'

‘Bates? No, I don't want Bates. This isn't official, Mr Dilley, any more than you are. Best he knows as little as possible before it becomes official. It's what we do behind the scenes, not before them, which often counts the most—and you know all about that, don't you? No, I want backup, and you're it. Afraid?'

Cobie thought of the Professor who had always been willing to be his back-up. He wouldn't be standing here jousting with Walker if it weren't for the Professor's readiness to stand by him. If this mission meant that Sir Ratcliffe might be cornered at last, then, yes, he would be back-up. The last time he had been a back-up man had been when he had killed two villains in order to save the Professor's life—hence Hendrick Van Deusen's debt of gratitude to him.