Think of England (7 page)

“Nor do I.” Da Silva dropped the photo back into place and started going through more folders. “Here’s another one.”

Curtis grabbed the photo, incredulous. “For the love of God. I know him as well. He was in my college. Belongs to my club.”

“He belongs to a couple of mine, come to that. Not very discreet. Isn’t he an equerry of His Majesty?” Curtis nodded. “
Most
indiscreet. Notice we can’t see the other chap’s face.” The equerry was obviously thrusting into a male body, but the recipient had his head buried in the sheets. Da Silva frowned. “Blond. I wonder if that’s the obliging footman.”

“That fellow Wesley?” Curtis tried to call him to mind. “It could be, I suppose.”

“And— Oh. Look.”

Curtis looked at the photograph da Silva held out, a woman being enjoyed by, and taking a good deal of enjoyment from, a man with a Y-shaped scar on his shoulder. He didn’t recognise her, but as his gaze moved from the man’s body to his face, his mouth dropped open. “Isn’t that Lambdon?”

“It is. And…” Da Silva flicked back to the beginning of the drawer and pulled out the first picture again. This photograph was framed so that the man in it was cut off at the neck, but da Silva’s finger tapped the distinctive scar on his shoulder. “It looks like this is too. Mr. Lambdon taking a leading role.”

“Sir Hubert can’t be blackmailing his own brother-in-law!”

“What makes you think it’s Lambdon being blackmailed? Come to that, what makes you think it’s just Sir Hubert blackmailing? Look at these, Curtis.” Da Silva swept his hand over the drawer of files. “How many Oxford contemporaries of yours have you seen in this lot, your time or younger?”

“Three.” Two had been with men. The third was enjoying a meteoric rise in the Catholic Church, which would not be helped by the photograph of his copulation with a busty young woman.

“Who in this house went to Oxford a couple of years after you? Who would know the gossip? Who’s best placed to invite these fearfully nice chaps for a spot of shooting, meet the pater?” Da Silva’s quiet tone was a vicious parody of an upper-class accent.

“You can’t mean James Armstrong.”

“Look at who they are. Think. James invites the young Turks, the ones with burgeoning careers and everything to lose. Sophie selects the ladies. Women talk, she’ll know who’s frustrated, who’s open to suggestions. They target them, they invite them, and then the footman, or her charming brother, or the bloody Prussian Ambassador beds them. It’s a family business.”

Curtis thought about that, holding the torch while da Silva went through the next drawer at speed. It held a few more photos, people he didn’t recognise, one an older man with a girl who looked no more than twelve, and then sheaves of paper. Da Silva flicked, then stopped as Curtis grabbed his hand.

“What?”

Curtis scrabbled back through the folder and found what had caught his eye. He pulled it out. A page of diagrams, bitterly familiar. He stared at it, blood pounding in his temples.

“What
is
it?”

Curtis licked his lips. “It’s the schema for a Lafayette rifle.” He took a deep breath, then went through the papers around it, one by one. “Architectural plans of the Lafayette factory. More specifications for guns. For—” He stopped and swallowed hard, holding out the page. “This one is the revolver I used at Jacobsdal.”

“Oh God,” da Silva said softly. “Curtis…”

“Why would Armstrong have these, locked away here? Unless—”

Those papers, in this secret cabinet of vileness, could mean only one thing. Jacobsdal had been no accident. The guns had been sabotaged in the factory. Sir Hubert Armstrong had murdered the soldiers of Curtis’s company, his men, his friends, as surely as if he had pulled the triggers himself.

The papers rattled in his hand. Da Silva took them from him, his touch gentle. “I’m sorry.”

“Armstrong betrayed us. He sent us to hell, for profit.”

“Keep your voice down.” Da Silva’s hand closed on Curtis’s shaking wrist, and he tilted the torch so both their faces were partly lit. “It is unspeakable, and I can’t imagine how angry you are, but
keep quiet
.”

“I’m going to kill him.” Curtis’s voice rasped in his throat.

“You’ll have to fight the hangman for the privilege. Sabotage of the British Army in time of war? He’ll swing for treason.”

“Christ.” Curtis clenched his useless, mutilated hand in its black leather sheath. “I’m in the bastard’s house. Eating his food. His
guest
.” He wanted to vomit up every meal he’d had here. He wanted to drag Sir Hubert out of bed and beat him to a bloody pulp.

“We’ll make him pay. I swear to you, Curtis, we’ll see him dead. Don’t lose your head now.” Da Silva held his gaze till Curtis gave a stiff nod. He kept his grip on Curtis’s wrist for a moment longer, the slim fingers a steadying contact, then let go and went back to the drawer.

Curtis stood still, trying to control the rage that surged through him. He had not truly believed Lafayette, had acted on his words only because inaction was impossible, but now there was no doubt. The full scale of Armstrong’s treachery unspooled in his mind: the dead men and the mutilated. George Fisher’s bewildered face. His own empty, futureless life, without the army, without the purpose and companionship that had been all he ever wanted. All of it to light Sir Hubert’s house with electricity, to keep Lady Armstrong in dresses and James in horses.

“Shit and derision.” Da Silva’s voice was quiet but very clear.

That jolted Curtis out of his trance of fury. “What is it?”

Da Silva jerked a paper at him. Curtis registered the letterhead, and
For your eyes only
. “That’s Foreign Office. What the devil is that doing here?”

“Ask your old college friend with the Prussian in his arse.” Da Silva’s hands were moving very fast now, flicking through typed and handwritten sheets. “Uh-oh. Tell me, as a military man, what does this look like to you?”

“Army supply-line plans.” Curtis could barely bring himself to look; they were stamped Top Secret. “What the devil—? Why does Armstrong have these?”

“Why do you think?” snapped da Silva.

“Foreign Office men. Blackmail. Is Armstrong selling State secrets?” A thought struck him, and he felt the nape of his neck prickle. “You said this morning that he needs another war.”

Da Silva took a deep breath. Then he patted the papers back into their folders, smoothing the edges down where they had been disarranged. “We get out of here now. We close up, leaving no trace. And you keep your mouth
shut
. Not one look, not one word to betray what you know till we’re out of this house. I don’t care how angry you are. This cabinet has enough in it to hang the Armstrongs five times over, and we’re in their house, outnumbered, and thirty miles from anywhere.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Can’t I?” hissed da Silva. “High treason? State secrets? Lafayette found in the river after he asked for help? Oh,
hell
. When did they invite you, Curtis? Before or after Lafayette came to you?”

“After.” Curtis felt a sudden prickle of alarm. “But Sir Hubert was at school with Sir Henry, my uncle. It didn’t seem odd…” Except that he’d thought at the time that the invitation was a damned fortunate coincidence. “Do you think they invited me to find out what I knew?”

“I don’t know. There’s something else. Lafayette isn’t the only man who’s been found in the Thames with a broken head.”

“What?”

“There was another victim. He got angry. He was deliberating whether to speak out, bring evidence of the blackmail to the authorities. Then he vanished, and his body was found a few days later, in the river, with a smashed skull. A street robbery gone wrong, the coroner decided.”

“Christ. You think—”

“I do.” Da Silva looked sour. “Lafayette and a blackmail victim in the river? Two more men vanished? Does that all sound like chance?”

“No,” Curtis said heavily. “It doesn’t.”

“I think the Armstrongs have killed to protect their secrets, and we must assume they’ll kill again. If we take this information out of here, the Armstrongs will swing. If they discover what we know, what choice have they but to silence us? And they hold all the cards while we’re in this house. If you don’t keep this quiet, we’re both as good as dead.”

Curtis frowned. “How many do you think we’d be facing? Just the Armstrongs, or—”

“Some of the servants too. I don’t see how the game could be worked without extra manpower. It would be risky to involve too many of them, but—”

“You know a lot of the groundsmen are ex-army,” Curtis said.

“I did not know that.” Da Silva didn’t look pleased to hear it.

“Sir Hubert’s older son Martin died in the first Boer war. Sir Hubert took on all the local men from his company that he could, in his memory. He was telling me about it just yesterday.” He’d talked at length, longingly, to Curtis about beloved, clever, much-missed Martin, a hero in his father’s memory. As though the men at Jacobsdal hadn’t had fathers to mourn them. “The army pension’s not much to live on, and this is a better post than a factory. They’re trained men, and they’ll likely be loyal to their master. Whether they’d kill for him…”

Da Silva winced. “I suggest we avoid finding out. Let’s not get caught.”

“I warn you, I’m a damned poor hand at dissembling.”

“Improve. We
must
get these papers to the authorities, and we can’t do that from a shallow grave under the redwoods. You have to appear your normal self until we can leave here. Play billiards with James Armstrong, talk soldiering with Sir Hubert.”

“I was invited for a fortnight,” Curtis said. “I can’t spend two weeks in this nest of vipers. Not with—” Not eating and chatting and socializing with the man who had murdered his comrades. The thought was intolerable, indecent. He felt stained even considering it.

Da Silva’s gaze was intent on him. “You won’t have to. I’ll get you out of here as quick as I can without rousing suspicion. Leave it to me, Curtis. I’ll think of something.”

Curtis nodded, absurdly grateful for the unexpressed understanding in those dark eyes. “I…that is, thank you.”

“Thank me when I’ve thought of it. We’ll discuss it tomorrow, we’ve been here too long.” He shut the last drawer as he spoke, locking the cabinet with the picks, and pocketed his flashlight. “All right, let’s go.”

Curtis turned to the door and pushed it open. On the other side, the connecting wire broke free from the putty on the contact plate. A light instantly illuminated the library, glaringly bright for dark-adapted eyes. Faintly, somewhere in the house, a bell began to ring.

Chapter Five

“
Shit
,” Curtis said, scarcely believing what he had just done.

Da Silva stood quite still for a second. Then he pushed Curtis into the library, following him, and shut the storeroom door behind them. “Hide the dark lantern, behind those books on the shelf. Quick, man.”

“Shouldn’t we run?”

“Don’t argue.” Da Silva grabbed the wire and putty off the doorframe and shoved them in his pocket, then dropped to the keyhole, working his picks with maddening deliberation. “And take off that pullover, just throw it over that chair.
Now
.”

Red with shame and anger at himself, Curtis did as he was told, pulling his dressing gown over his bare chest at da Silva’s rapid, bewildering directions. There were running footsteps audible now. Several men, approaching fast.

“Over here, quick.” Da Silva rose and turned his back to the storeroom door. Curtis stepped over, and da Silva said, urgently, “Don’t hit me.”

“Wh—”

Da Silva fisted his hands in Curtis’s dressing gown, dragged him forward and kissed him on the mouth.

Curtis couldn’t even react for a second. His mind was already fizzing with hurry, panic, anger at himself and rage at his traitorous host, the late hour and confusion, and now there was the sensation of hard lips battering his mouth, a hand behind his head, pulling at his hair and forcing his face forward, stubble that rasped across his skin. He stood, frozen stiff, and da Silva kicked his ankle viciously so that Curtis half-fell forward, leaning against him, and the main light clicked on, shocking him with its glare.

Da Silva pushed Curtis away so hard he stumbled a few paces back. He swung round to face three shotguns.

Fighting instinct surged, the appalling awareness of being unarmed and outnumbered overriding any other thoughts. He tensed, assessing the threat.

Three men in nightgowns. One was the handsome servant Wesley; the other two were both older, both with the unmistakable stamp of the soldier. All had their weapons—the latest model of heavy-duty Armstrong shotguns—at their shoulders, and all three had them aimed at Curtis. The older men were giving him their full attention, but Wesley was glancing over Curtis’s shoulder, his eyes widening, biting back a smirk.

A few endless seconds ticked by as they stared at each other. They weren’t about to shoot, Curtis registered.

“Put those guns down,” he ordered. “Good work, but no need for it. Mr. da Silva and I were just—” He looked round as he spoke, indicating da Silva, and the words dried in his throat.

Da Silva was leaning back against the door, hips tilted provocatively forward. His eyes were hooded, black hair dishevelled, lips parted and a little red, like a man who had been thoroughly kissed. The silky dressing gown was open, revealing his smooth, bare chest and, Curtis couldn’t but notice, dark nipples, one of which—oh, good God—was pierced with a silver ring.