The Dollar Prince's Wife (22 page)

The sardonic realism which lay behind everything he said and did, jeered at him ruefully, Well, she's a fine one to talk, taking up with Ratcliffe Heneage of all people— Lizzie's destroyer. And how many others has he destroyed? And, yes, how can I destroy him?

Back in San Miguel, in New Mexico, it would have been easy enough to go as far as killing him—even though the idea filled him with revulsion. But how to do such a thing
here, in more civilised London—even if he wished to? There must be other ways of stopping him.

The wary cop, Walker, knew that he was responsible for last night's blaze. He was also sure that it was Mr Dilley who had killed Hoskyns—which he had, in a way,…he had put him where the poor young tart could finish him off. That reminded him—he must check whether she, and the children, had ever reached the places of safety to which he had sent them.

It was plain that Walker was quite unaware of Sir Ratcliffe's involvement in the matter. It was likely that he did not even know that he was one of the mighty for whom the night houses were protected, so that they might take their obscene pleasures in safety.

On the other hand, however, if he did find out that someone near to Cobie Grant were to die mysteriously—and through Susanna, alas, he was near to Heneage—then he would be after Jacobus Grant as determinedly as the terrier who pounces on a rat in order to capture it and worry it to death.

He was dry again and felt cleansed now that the stench of fire and alcohol had been removed. He climbed on to the bed and sat cross-legged and naked on it, eyes closed, first thinking, and then, thought erased, letting his inward self, not his mind, rove free as he had been taught to do by the Indians in the desert.

Reason told him that he need not kill Sir Ratcliffe to destroy him. There were other ways of destroying a man in a society as sophisticated as the one he was living in in England. He could ruin him financially, and then he could ruin him socially. That would leave him in an even worse torment, for it would be a death indefinitely prolonged, in
stead of being the swift and sure route to oblivion a bullet, or a garrotte, would give him. But how?

Slowly, as always while meditating, his mind stopped its busy work. Time and chance would offer him an opportunity which he could not yet see, and meantime it was pleasant to do nothing, to be nothing, to forget the malaise of last night's drunken bout and Lizzie's dreadful death which had caused it.

To rise and to float free, somewhere near the ceiling, looking down at the figure on the bed, lost in a nirvana which was, he was sure, partly self-hypnosis, but none the less pleasant and life-renewing for that…

 

Dinah, the memory of the previous night strong in her, had given orders that he was not to be disturbed. She had overruled a supercilious servant, whom she had caught on his way to Cobie's room, coffee and a pick-me-up being borne before him on a silver tray.

‘Not now. Leave him. I'm sure that he will ring when he wants you.' How in the world did she know that?

The man had given way unwillingly, and now she was about to be the busybody. Noon had come and gone, and she had promised—although in his drunken state he might have forgotten—that he would be at Scotland Yard by mid-afternoon. Surely he was not
still
asleep. She had had little experience of drunken men, she owned, but this drunken man must be awakened and made aware of his responsibilities.

Later she was to laugh at herself and think how far she had come in such a short time, that she could make such decisions—and carry them out.

She knocked on the bedroom door. Not a timid knock, nor a defiant one, either.

By now Cobie was nowhere at all, a state he usually achieved only after some little time, but which always heralded the end of the semi-trance into which he had not so much accidentally arrived, as consciously taken himself. In it, he heard the knock on the door, had the sensation of falling, and then was acutely awake, all his senses alert, the pains of his hangover dispersed. He felt himself sink on to the bed again, wondering how long the trance had lasted this time.

‘Come in,' he called: it was probably Giles, ready to shave him.

It was Dinah who entered, however. In his heightened condition he registered how charming she looked, how carefully she had dressed herself, in one of her Paris walking gowns, straight-skirted, deceptively simple, a deep beige which should have extinguished her, but didn't. She held herself with confidence, her round shoulders gone.

Dinah took him in, sitting there, cross-legged and naked. His wet hair had dried and had sprung up in unruly curls around his head. His face now showed no signs of last night's excesses. His blue eyes were grave on her, but he was looking at her as though she were miles away, in a place where Dinah Grant was an intruder.

‘I'm pleased to see that you are awake,' she said carefully to the remote creature on the bed. ‘I ought to tell you that it is now past one o'clock, and I must remind you that, last night, in your names, I told the Inspector that you and Mr Van Deusen would visit him at Scotland Yard by three o'clock this afternoon. It was forward of me, I know, but it was the only way I could think of to rid us of him as quickly as possible.'

‘And very well done, too, Lady Dinah Grant,' he told her gravely, ‘and it would be remiss of me not to carry out
your most reasonable wishes. I take it that you will now inform Giles that I am ready to be dressed for the day—I mean, the afternoon. I had not thought it to be so late.'

He was rarely as formal as this with her, and if he wished to be so, then so be it.

Dinah inclined her head. ‘Indeed. And I will order the carriage to be ready. I cannot do as much for Mr Van Deusen, you understand. He was not so far gone as you were last night, and insisted on returning to his own home, but he did say that he would see you at Scotland Yard.'

Cobie was off the bed in one of his cat-like movements, and was pulling on a dressing gown. He walked over to where she stood, put a hand under her chin, and kissed her on the lips, gently, and passionlessly.

He said, his face, for the first time alight with his usual humour, ‘What a treasure of a wife you are, my dear. No reproaches for the husband who failed to come home to take you out last night, failed to give you the pleasure he had promised you afterwards, and then turned up in the small hours, in a state for which I must apologise to you most profoundly. I don't deserve you.

‘I can only say, in my favour, that nothing but the most urgent of considerations would have caused me to behave in the way in which I did.'

Dinah said, ‘I know that, Cobie,' and said nothing more.

‘I believe you do,' he said slowly. ‘I see that you are even more of a treasure than I thought that you would be. You deserve a better man than I am. Now, you had better send Giles to me, so that I may be ready to tell the police whatever they wish to know.'

She nodded, and made for the door. He said to her when she began to open it, ‘Don't you want to know why the police wish to question me, Dinah?'

To his amused and astonished pleasure, she gave him back one of his own smiles, before saying, ‘Oh, Cobie, I'm sure if you wish me to know you will tell me without my having to ask you.'

The sound of the door shutting failed to hide the shout of laughter he gave at this considered, two-edged answer—proof that Lady Dinah Grant was not averse to learning from her husband's example.

 

Walker regarded the two men before him unfavourably. He had begun by seeing them separately, Bates with him, to hear what they had to say when they had not heard the other's explanation. He was sure that they were lying when they claimed that they had been together since the early afternoon of the previous day, and had never been apart before they had arrived to find him and Bates waiting in Park Lane.

Their accounts had almost tallied. The ‘almost' in that sentence annoyed him most of all. Had they tallied exactly, he would have suspected that they had rehearsed what they were telling him. They had certainly not had time to prepare any alibi since he had seen them early that morning. He had ordered that each of them should be watched until the pair of them left for the Yard. Both of his men had reported that they had not met again until they had arrived in Walker's office: Mr Van Deusen twenty minutes before his laggard friend.

While, amazingly, Mr Hendrick Van Deusen looked much the worse for wear after the previous evening's excesses, Mr Jacobus Grant appeared even more splendidly innocent than usual, his air of slight disdain—as though Walker had not seen him disgustingly drunk not so many hours earlier—as hard to bear as ever.

He left them in separate rooms: Mr Grant contemplating the silver top of his cane as though he were consulting a crystal ball for guidance, Van Deusen smoking his usual cigar, not seated, but leaning easily against a wall.

‘A ripe pair of villains,' he told Bates disgustedly, after questioning Hendrick.

‘What, him, too?' exclaimed Bates, thinking that Walker's wits were slowly unravelling under stress. ‘Van Deusen looks a right harmless old codger to me. Just a fat Yankee.'

Walker's face darkened. ‘Does he so? Well, I think differently. And that ain't fat, Bates. It's muscle. Like
his
, like Dilley's. They've got away with it this time. They were drinking with half the aristocracy at their last port of call. Yes, they were on the Embankment about the time of the fire. They wondered what was going on. No business of theirs, they said, because they were going to make a night of it without the women. They must think me a prize fool!'

He brought his fist violently down on the table. ‘I
am
a prize fool, Bates. I can't pin a thing on either of them. Make a wrong move with Yankee plutocrats whom the Prince favours, without decent evidence to back me up, and Will Walker's without a job.'

He ruminated a moment, biting his thumb, before roaring abruptly, ‘Send 'em in, Bates. I want to see them together.'

Bates thought that they looked an unlikely pair of villains: what with Mr Grant's innocent golden beauty, and Mr Van Deusen's appearance of middle-class, middle-aged solidity. He had to remind himself of dubious Mr Dilley and his magic tricks and to consider that appearances often deceive—a favourite saying of Will Walker's—one which he, unknowingly, shared with Cobie Grant.

‘You've not changed your minds?' Walker queried nastily. ‘You're not about to tell me the truth?'

Cobie said languidly, his cane now behind his back, ‘We're telling it to you, Inspector—so how can we change our minds? It seems a pity that we have to pay for a night on the town by enduring all this. I could have done with an easy afternoon, Inspector, after last night's hard work.'

He gave the Inspector what his wife thought of as ‘that look'.

‘I know that
you
had a busy night of it, Grant, Dilley, Horne, whatever your real name is,' snarled Walker. ‘Very busy, indeed. I'm not sure how much your fat friend was involved in burning down a bawdy house and murdering its owner—but I
am
sure that he's given you an out by his lying evidence.'

‘Oh, that's a bit extreme,' murmured Van Deusen. ‘No proof, have you, Inspector? By the by, I do resent being called fat. Well built would be a better description.'

‘Fat or thin,' said Walker grimly, ‘I'm letting you both go, but I warn you, I'll have the pair of you yet—and if you did murder Hoskyns, Grant, I'll see you swing for it, however long it takes.'

Mr Van Deusen felt rather than saw Cobie tense. He was not surprised when his friend began to speak in a voice that reached all the way back to San Miguel, and before that to a hillside where Van Deusen's life had been saved by a boy whom he hardly knew.

‘I'm so glad to hear, Inspector, that you have got your priorities right. That you are prepared to devote your life to chasing the murderer of a pimp providing children for sexual sport. Is it possible that you might devote a fraction of it to finding the man who killed Lizzie Steele—or doesn't she matter in the great scheme of things?'

For one delirious moment Bates thought that Walker was going to strike at the mocking face of the man before him. He saw Van Deusen's watchful eye on Walker while he struggled to control himself.

‘Out,' he whispered at last. ‘Out, you damned Yankee swine, before I forget myself. Bates, see them off the premises, and Grant, watch your step. One false move, and I'll have you.'

 

Dinah was enduring Violet's pinpricking nastiness. ‘It didn't take Apollo long to become bored with drinking nursery tea, did it?' her sister said, smiling, and eating and drinking Dinah's very much not nursery tea.

‘Up yet, is he? I hear that he and that Yankee friend of his spent last night making merry in every gaming hell in London.'

‘Oh, yes.' Dinah smiled back at her half-sister, offering her the sugar bowl. ‘More sugar, Violet? You seem to be in need of it.'

The Marquise's training was standing up well, she thought. At this rate she would soon not only be rivalling Violet in verbal nastiness, but beating her at her own game.

‘Yes, he
was
late home, and yes, he is up. Off on business again. He can't be idle. He has to look after his own fortune, Violet. He didn't inherit wealth as we all did—or didn't, in our case.'

It was no longer easy to put Dinah down, to see her cringe, to watch her shoulders growing rounder, and the betraying brightness appear in her eyes.
His
influence, no doubt. Violet didn't like Cobie Grant the more for that. She decided to try sticking in another dart.

‘That sister of his, Susanna Winthrop. Someone was telling me that the rumour is that when they were in the States,
years ago, they were more than foster-brother and sister. I don't envy you keeping a watch on
his
wandering eye.' She looked across at Dinah to see whether her dart had struck home.