Snatches of choral music drifted up from the Queen’s Chapel. Dominus illuminatio mea. He cared nothing for religion, but he could live quite happily in its harmonies. Elegantly posed questions, followed by perfectly resolved answers. Dominus ad adjuvandum. White used to scoff at the soaring voices. Gelded lambs, he called them. What else could he expect from a drummer-boy?
He lay back, making a fist of it – pictured his love’s elastic coat – the oiled tip (he gasped) – peeled lychees and jellies – White’s face a nun’s in the midst of her rapture.
44. Taking Turns
The depositions were being taken in a semicircular office that rose to a dazzling cupola – the glimpse of outside as unexpected as it was astonishing. Read showed Wyre to his seat then left, muttering about needing a piss.
A tall man in a liveried jacket identical to Paulet’s knocked and entered. Identical, too, to the one that hung over the chair at the foot of Sellis’s bed.
“My master begs to know if you or Mr Read require any refreshments before you begin,” the valet said in respectful tones.
“Refreshments?”
The man dipped his head. “A cup of tea, sir. Or Italian ice, or French punch?”
Wyre shook his head. “Thank you, no. I can’t speak for Mr Read.”
“If you should change your mind, just send for me. It’s Neale.”
The man Yardley had warned him against. He looked more closely. The face was pleasing enough; none of the obnoxiousness of Wardle’s description.
“I gather you were the man of the hour.”
The valet kept his eyes professionally focused somewhere over the top of Wyre’s shoulder.
“I did my duty, sir. No more than that.”
“Yes, I read about it in the newspapers. You kept your nerve. While you’re here, perhaps you could clarify something for me.”
“If I can, sir. Everything seemed to happen at once. But then everything always does.”
“They say Sellis must have lain in wait in the Duke’s closet. Why, before bidding his Highness good night, didn’t you –?”
“Why didn’t I check the closet, sir?” Neale said, with a hint of injured self. “I didn’t check under his Highness’s bed for hobgoblins, either.”
Sarcasm from a valet? “Perhaps you should have. Were all the doors leading to the Duke’s bedchamber locked?”
Neale appeared to consider. “That between his Highness’s bedroom and my own was shut, but not locked. But I’m a light sleeper. If anyone had come by that way I’d have heard them.”
“There’s no other entrance to the Duke’s bedroom?”
“Only through the yellow door, which I locked.” He paused. “Sellis was in the closet all along, sir. That’s where we found his slippers.”
Wyre ignored that bit. “After the Duke cried out, tell me what happened then?”
Neale was silent for a moment. “I heard my master shouting in agony, and ran to him. It must have been a little before three o’clock in the morning. He bade me look for the assassin.”
“How could you see to look? I thought there was no light.”
“But there was a little moon,” the valet replied insouciantly. “I noticed the door to the yellow room was open, and ran to give chase. As I did so, I trod on the weapon Sellis had dropped there. I recognized it immediately as the Duke’s regimental sabre.”
“And then?”
“I asked his Highness for permission to pursue the villain through the house, but he forbade it. He instructed me to call the other servants.”
“Why didn’t he allow you to go?”
“Shouldn’t you ask him, sir?”
Wyre regarded him. “You called the servants.”
“Yes. Then we set off for the porter, but his Highness came over faintish. Loss of blood, sir. We were forced to turn back. That’s when we met my wife on the stairs. His Highness asked her to fetch Sellis.”
“Why Sellis?”
“You’ll have to ask his Highness, sir.”
Wyre frowned. “What was your wife doing on the stairs at that time of night?”
“The commotion had woken her.”
“All the way over in the householders’ wing? That is where she’s quartered, isn’t it?”
“Oh, it’s not that far, sir,” said the valet. “Sound travels so readily through these corridors.”
“Another light sleeper.”
Neale merely looked.
“So you were quite happy for a woman to wander on her own through the house when, as far as anyone knew, the assassin was still at large?”
“The Duke was giddy.”
“That doesn’t quite answer my question.”
“Perhaps I’m not entirely sure what it is you wish to know.”
“You stayed with the Duke the whole time? You didn’t feel the urge to go after your wife?”
“I remained with the Duke till the Prince arrived followed by the Duke’s other brothers.”
Silence as the big names circulated in the air.
“There was no mention of that in the papers.”
“No, I do believe there wasn’t.”
Read’s imposing figure appeared in the door. He was accompanied by a secretary; the man was primped out in powder-blue collars and cuffs.
“Mr Read . . .” the valet said, looking past Wyre, “his Highness asks whether you wish to take refreshments now.”
Read shook his head brusquely, and took the middle seat at the table. Neale withdrew with a bow.
Little Boy Blue fussed with his writing implements, lining them up like surgical tools. From his blue bag, Wyre took out his own accoutrements: soft calf notebook (another of Rose’s gifts) and a short pencil of the kind that offered little resistance to the knife.
The first informant of the day was a compact man with florid cheeks.
“Matthew Henry Graslin? Yager to his Royal Highness?”
The huntsman corrected the magistrate’s pronunciation, earning himself a withering look.
“We’re authorized to examine on oath all persons who may have been witness to the attempt on the Duke’s life.” Read turned. “This is Mr Wyre from the Courthouse.” (A dutiful inclusion.) “Now, Graslin, I understand you accompanied the others to Sellis’s bedroom that night?”
“Roight, sir. I arriv’d at Mr Sellis’s door with Mrs Neale an’ Benjamin Smith, th’ Porter. Sellis’s throat wor cut. Frightened us, the thought the murderer wor still in the house.”
A bumkin’s accent.
“Why did you think that?”
“Can’t say.” Graslin shrugged. “Suppose cos he weren’ caught, nor seen runnin’ away, neither. I went fer help . . . called on Ball an’ Strickland. Richardson, too. Them’s servants, sir. We waited in the Porter’s Room.”
“What did you tell Ball and the others?” asked Read.
“I told ’im Sellis wor dead.” The yager adjusted his green jacket. “Mrs Neale said, from what she’d seen, the Duke wor set to join ’im. By then, there wor soldiers waiting in the hall. I sat wi’ Mrs Neale in the Porter’s room while Ball wen’ upstairs wi’ the sentinels. Them as ’ad been posted to guard Sellis’s door.”
“Sign and you may go.”
Graslin took the pen from the secretary.
“One thing, Graslin,” Wyre said quickly. “Where exactly was Sellis when you found him?”
The nib hovered in Graslin’s fist above the vellum.
“Do you understand the question?”
“Lying on his bed, sir.”
“Did anyone else enter Sellis’s room before Ball arrived with the soldiers?”
The eyes flickered back and forth. “Not that I saw.”
“Not that he saw, Wyre,” Read said, tapping his finger on the vellum for the yager’s signature.
When Graslin was gone, Read turned angrily. “What the fuck was that all about? Your role’s to observe due process, not interrogate.”
“With respect, sir, Mr Best – ”
“Mr Best . . .” mimicked Read.
“Surely the issue of whether Sellis was left unattended is relevant?”
“In case someone desecrated his corpse?” Read snorted. “I don’t suppose Sellis would have objected to that.”
(The secretary sniggered.)
“Every minute that elapsed after the attack should be accounted for. A court would expect it.”
Best peered at him. “Are you suggesting I don’t know my job? It’s to accumulate facts, not emboss opinion – and it’s certainly not to help you lather up a public frenzy.”
A furious still descended, broken by the appearance around the jamb of an aged schoolboy’s head, bald apart from a few wisps of white hair that formed arches above the ears.
“Get in here, man,” Read barked.
The witness confirmed his name as Benjamin Smith, Head Porter.
“Your part in this business?”
“His Highness and Mr Neale called on me, about two in the morning, sir, desiring I should lock all them doors leading out of the Palace.”
“I assume you did as they asked?”
He nodded. “A little while later, Mrs Neale called on me. Tol’ me his Highness ’ad instructed her to fetch Sellis, but the devil had bolted his room. I went with her, sir, called through the door, but there was no answer.”
“And then?”
“Mrs Neale tol’ us to put our shoulders to it, sir. We found him inside. I cried out he’d been murthered. The blood was still gushing. Afterwards, they told us he’d had at the Duke.”
Wyre paused. “What did you make of Sellis’s character?”
“Oh, he was obstinate, sir.”
“How did Mr Neale get on with him?” Wyre sensed Read’s exasperation building.
Smith appeared to weigh the question. “They weren’t what I’d call friends. Quarrelled once over the Duke’s wardrobe.” (Read snorted at that.) “I heard Sellis say he couldn’t live with the Duke, if Neale was kept on. Said he’d rather work as a messenger boy.” The Porter’s voice dropped a little. “Sellis was a stirrer, mind. He painted a disgusting picture of Neale. I told him a foreigner like ’im would never secure another position, if he’d just lost one.”
Read sniffed. “Sign here.”
When the cupola door had closed behind the Porter, Wyre turned to the Chief Magistrate.
“Earlier, sir, when Neale came in about his iced teas, he said he’d helped the Duke to the Porter’s that night. They were forced to turn back.”
“Well, what of it?”
“Doesn’t it strike you as odd? Their first act after the assault, to seek out the Porter. Wouldn’t you expect them to wake the surgeon, and tend to the Duke’s injuries?”
Read gave him a contemptuous look. “Cumberland’s a soldier. You might have run for bandages, but his first thought was to get the doors locked, and prevent the bastard who attacked him from getting away.”
Wyre considered that. “What about Smith’s first impression on discovering Sellis. He used the word ‘murder’.”
Read gave him a look of bewilderment. “Who cares what Smith said?” He jammed his magistrate’s seal into the bleb of wax at the bottom of the Porter’s affidavit. “Fuck’s sake, man! He found the Corsican bastard in bloody sheets. Anyone who saw claret in that quantity would assume foul play.”
“You don’t think it odd, sending a defenceless woman halfway through an unlit house when everyone, including her husband, believes the assassin’s at large? That bothers me, to tell the truth.”
“Christ’s nails, you’re determined to see complexity where there is none.”
The next round of interviews was more run-of-the-mill, and Wyre began to wonder if he was seeking an otherness that simply wasn’t there. His attention drifted to the slashed crinoline dress Miss Crawford had worn to Wood’s Close asylum.
A set of linked raps dispelled his reverie – a touch of the sailor’s holler-and-reply. Paulet appeared in the doorway. Seeing Wyre, he smiled.
Read waved the valet over. “Where were you on the night of the attack?” He reeled off the formula like a tired length of ship’s hawser.
Wyre took in the genial valet more closely – fleshy face, stiff carriage; something military about the upraised chin.
“I was in the page’s waiting-room, Mr Read, with Mrs Neale and two of the maids. Ann and Margaret, sir.”
“What did you discuss there?”
“A case of a missing poker, sir. Margaret was carping on about it something rotten. Said it must have been taken from the valet’s bedroom. Found it that morning while she was dollying the sheets. Behind the bed. She asked if I was responsible. I told her it must have fallen there.” His eyes drifted to the side. “It wasn’t ours, anyhow. Not originally. No, it belonged to the Duke. York, I mean, not Cumberland.” He resumed his subaltern pose. “But I wouldn’t attach any importance, sir. Things tend to walk in this house.”
Read gave him a stern look. “If there’s anything else you have to tell us, you’d better do it now. If it comes to light later . . .” He let the pause speak for itself.
Paulet shifted uneasily. “I imagine Mrs Neale already mentioned the pistol, as if that was my fault, too.”
“Pistol?” Wyre experienced the sensation of being on a boat and feeling the precise moment when it reaches deep water, that sense of yawning bathymetry.
“The one that hung from the bedpost, sir. In a red bag. I can’t speak to it, though, other than to say it had a short barrel. I told Mrs Neale I didn’t care for it. They can pop off on their own, can’t they?”
The penny dropped . . . That bent nail on the bedpost in the Valet’s Room. That’s what it was for! Any thoughts he’d found the game-changer quickly vanished. No weapon had been discharged that night. An unfired pistol changed nothing.
Read had evidently reached the same conclusion. “If it disturbed you so much, why didn’t you just take the blasted thing down?”
The valet opened his mouth to speak, then appeared to think better of it. “It was an odd feeling,” he said at last, “knowing it was there, hanging above me. I told Neale that, but he insisted he wouldn’t sleep without it.”
“Was it hanging there on the night of the attack?” Wyre was sick of seeing the world in slices.
Paulet’s arms were at his side, back on the parade ground. “I believe it was, sir. Can’t say for sure. It wasn’t my turn.”
“Your turn?”
“In the Valet’s Room. It wasn’t my turn that night.”
Read flipped open his watch, then ended the interview with a long sigh like the release of pressure in a cylinder. Paulet signed his name with a little flourish and left, heels echoing under the cupola.
“None of the other informants mention anything about a pistol,” Wyre began when the doors had shut behind the valet. “Yet they all remember the slippers. Why does no one think a pistol suspended above the valet’s bed might be important?”
Read scowled. “You’re determined to make a laughing post of this inquest.”
“A court wouldn’t look past the fire-piece, sir, and nor should we.” Glancing down, Wyre realized he’d cupped his palms on the table as if protecting a hand of cards.
“Sellis used a sabre on Cumberland, not a pistol. Then he slit his throat. He didn’t blow his brains out. The pistol’s irrelevant!”
“It tells us something. We need to recall Neale.” Wyre’s own firmness surprised him.
“Don’t be absurd. He’s already given his deposition. Any more questions could be construed as persecution. He’s a hero in the Duke’s mind, and rightly so. I won’t have you endanger this inquest.”
A smouldering silence; then, to Wyre’s astonishment, with a pained expression, Read sent his secretary out with instructions to return with Neale.
They waited, both mute, Read busying himself with signatures while Wyre pretended to read over his own notes.
The valet entered at a march, the secretary following a short distance behind,
cheeks flushed.
“I’ve already sworn my affidavit,” Neale protested. “I’m sure his Highness didn’t – ”
Read cut him off. “When were you going to tell us about the pistol? Mr Wyre here worked it out.”
There was a pause. “Is that why I’ve been called?” The valet glared at the lawyer. “What an absurd fancy he has.”
“We’ll have none of that,” Read said. “Just answer the bloody question. I won’t have evidence hidden from me.”
Neale was clearly as surprised as Wyre by the magistrate’s tone. “I beg pardon, Mr Read. The business with Sellis is still raw. Some months ago, he attacked my character. It happened right in front of his Highness.”
“Attacked?” Wyre said. “How?”
“Sellis called me a thief. Mr Read knows about it.” Neale glanced at the Chief Magistrate.” The accusations were managed by Captain Stephenson, and all were found to be untrue. From that day, Sellis harboured a hatred towards me. For that reason, and that reason alone, I took measures.”
“What kind of gun is it?” Read asked.
“Nothing special. Something small and double-barrelled.”
“Was it kept loaded?” Wyre put in.
The valet nodded.
“Did you ever imagine shooting Sellis with it?” Read added, finally showing something of the interrogating style.
“Only if he came at me in the night.” Neale smiled faintly. “Given what’s happened, I’d say I was right to take precautions.” He stood there with an air of boyish petulance.
“Was it hanging up on the night of the attack?” Wyre asked. Bow Street and Courthouse were finally working in tandem.
“As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. Mr Paulet had made his feelings on the matter known that morning. To tell truth, it had become something of a bugbear between us, so I locked it in the valets’ escritoire. I’m surprised it wasn’t mentioned. It’s there now, or at least should be, if you’d care to look.”
“We’ll check that,” Read said. He glanced across at the lawyer. “Does that clear the matter up for you?”
“You didn’t like Sellis, did you?” Wyre said, gazing levelly at the valet. “There’s no point denying it.”
The Cunning House Page 21