The Dollar Prince's Wife

by Paula Marshall

  ‘Well done, Constable,’ was his reward from Walker. ‘Carry on, and let me know anything further you discover.’

  Two days later he returned even more pleased with himself to confront Walker with his latest coup.

  ‘He’s an interest in some property down by the docks, his clerk told me. He visits it occasionally. Something odd is going on there, the clerk thinks.’

  For one moment Walker thought that this might be all too easy, but dismissed the thought. Alcott was a hardworking fellow, getting good results, and so he taunted Bates, when Bates came in later after a hard day spent trying to put the frighteners on a small fence with a shop off Leadenhall Street.

  He would have been right to be suspicious. Mr Dilley was feeding to his clerk each piece of information—which Walker greeted so joyfully—with strict instructions to him to tell his curious new friend exactly that, and nothing more.

  He had left Dinah in Paris deliberately, to allow the Marquise time to groom her, but until he had started to deceive Alcott he had been finding life oddly boring without her.

  Never mind. He was going to enliven everyone’s life before he had finished with Will Walker. That it might only serve to confirm to Walker that he was the mysterious Mr Horne/Dilley worried him not one whit, for the whole business would be a dead-end—he would make sure of that.

  Bit by bit Alcott discovered that Mr Dilley occasionally visited his Dockland property. It was two largish eighteenth-century terraced houses made into one. It was shabby and set back from the road, Alcott said, and he could discover little about it—other than that the man and wife who ran it seemed to have a large number of children.

  ‘Children?’ mused Walker thoughtfully. ‘Some sort of blind, perhaps. What’s our man doing with children? You’re sure it is our man, Alcott?’

  ‘Quite sure, sir.’ Alcott could see promotion in the offing.

  ‘Right,’ Walker said, ‘and he’s going there next week, is he, wearing his funny clothes, no doubt.’ For Alcott had been allowed to discover the lodgings where Jacobus Grant changed into a dubious-seeming masher wearing loud brown-checked trousers, brown jacket, and brown bowler, the uniform of a lower-class artisan.

  ‘What the hell can he be up to? We’ll raid the place, Bates, that’s what we’ll do. Next Saturday, as ever was. Find out what his little game is. You can come along, too, Alcott.’

  He could hardly contain himself that Saturday when he reached the house, Alcott and Bates trailing behind him. Dilley/Horne had been tracked there by Alcott that morning, and hadn’t returned to his low-class pad just across the river.

  Walker rang the bell. The door was opened by a bent old man.

  ‘Police!’ announced Walker. ‘I’ve a warrant to enter this house,’ which was a lie, but most of the people he dealt with usually caved in when he said so. ‘I want to speak to the owner, or the tenant.’

  The old man blinked at them.

  ‘Ain’t no one in but me,’ he quavered. ‘I’m the odd job man here, Parker’s me name. Mr Dilley told me to answer the door, he did, seein’ as how my sight ain’t good these days. They’re all at the Church Hall down the road.’

  ‘At the Church Hall? I’ll have to come in to check that there is no one but you on the premises.’

  Walker and his men shouldered their way past the bemused old man, to find that he had told them the truth. The place was clean, shabby, cheerful and deserted. Upstairs there were beds for twenty children, two to a room.

  Walker stormed downstairs. ‘Where’s the Church Hall, and what are they doing there? What’s Dilley doing here—and there?’

  The old man, who had been coached by Mr Dilley himself, quavered, ‘I don’t know, I’m sure.’

  Walker was beginning to have the ghastly fear that this time he, with Alcott’s help, might have led them all into another mare’s nest only to find a beast even more spavined than Bates’s usual discovery had been. With Alcott breathing excitedly down his neck, however, and Bates looking sullen, there was nothing he could do but persevere.

  ‘Where’s this Church Hall, then?’

  The old man gave them directions, and they all set off. Alcott, perennially optimistic, was now the only member of the party not certain that they were heading for some kind of disaster.

  They found the Hall easily. It was a wooden building with a corrugated iron roof, from which the noise of shouting and clapping came. A clergyman with a soft, benevolent face stood at the door. He allowed them to enter when Walker grunted ‘Police’ at him—leaving him to wonder what the police were doing visiting a children’s entertainment.

  For an entertainment it was. The Hall was full of children, not only the twenty from the house they had just visited. There were a number of adults present, some wearing Salvation Army uniform, and several others, who, Alcott whispered, were from the big house which was connected with Mr Dilley. Along one wall ran trestle tables, set out with children’s party food. A dragon in the shape of a grim woman with a mouth like a rat trap was guarding it.

  Mr Dilley/Horne/Jacobus Grant was there, too. On the stage. He was wearing his brown masher’s suit. His hair, which Walker had seen in Half Moon Street as a mass of carefully ordered golden curls, sleek to his head, had been brushed up on end. He had, after some fashion, extinguished his golden good looks and now resembled every cheap comedian who had ever graced a music hall stage—and his audience was ecstatic.

  He was in the middle of a juggling act. After that was over he called a boy on to the stage with him, to begin pulling coloured handkerchiefs from his ears, mouth and pockets. While doing so he saw Walker, Alcott, and Bates, standing there, petrified. He finished playing with the coloured handkerchiefs, returned the boy to the audience, produced a pack of cards, waved them in the air, and shouted, ‘I want another volunteer.’

  A dozen childish arms waved in answer. Mr Dilley, his grin now from ear to ear, ignored them all.

  ‘No, I’d like a bigger boy,’ he announced, and his voice was pure cockney, causing Walker’s teeth to grind at his persecutor’s accomplishments, and his insolence.

  ‘You, sir, what about you? The one with the big feet at the back.’ He pointed at the blinking Alcott, who was beginning to grasp that not all of Mr Dilley’s magic tricks were confined to the stage.

  ‘I forbid it,’ snarled Walker into Alcott’s ear. Alcott shook his head miserably, as all the children turned to stare at him.

  ‘Oh, shame, spoilsport,’ Mr Dilley was reproving. ‘Would you ruin these little ones’ fun? Tell him to come up here, at once, boys and girls. Altogether now, “Come on, Mister!”’

  The children began howling in unison, ‘Come on, Mister,’ waving and laughing at the three men, glumly incongruous among all the happy faces.

  ‘Oh, for Gawd’s sake, get it over, Alcott, and go up there. You got us into this fine mess, and you’d better pay for it.’

  Walker’s snarl on saying this was nastier than ever, provoked because he had been compelled to change his mind in order to avoid further embarrassment.

  Pay for it Alcott did. Mr Dilley’s repertoire seemed endless. His magic tricks with cards were succeeded by his tricks with hoops and coins, all designed to confuse the mark who was Alcott. His performance reached its climax with the production of a rabbit which Alcott had apparently been concealing about his person ever since he had climbed on to the stage.

  He was rewarded by being crowned with a paper hat in the shape of a guardsman’s busby. All the children cheered at the merry sight.

  The performance ended with everyone singing ‘God save the Queen’, led by Mr Dilley on the guitar. After that the clergyman climbed on to the stage, thanked Mr Dilley—and Alcott—for the entertainment, and announced that it was now tea time. There was a mad rush for the food.

  One of the little girls had run to Mr Dilley who, guitar in hand, had climbed down from the stage, followed by a red-faced Alcott, still wearing his busby. He made for Walker and Bates, having first promised the little
girl, Lizzie by name, that he would play and sing her favourite song, which turned out to be Marie Lloyd’s hit, ‘My old man says follow the van’.

  Alcott’s busby was enraging Walker almost as much as the egregious Mr Dilley was.

  ‘For God’s sake, Alcott, take it off,’ he roared. ‘He’s been dancing you round London for the last week, like the fool you are. Why wear a brand to prove it?’

  Mr Dilley stared at Walker. ‘You only had to ask me, Inspector,’ he said mildly. ‘I’d have told you that I’ve been helping to finance a home for abandoned children and orphans. With the assistance of the Salvation Army, and Father Anselm here.’

  Father Anselm, who had been standing watching them, his face not quite so soft as Walker had at first thought, said, ‘I am sure that I speak for us all when I say how grateful we are to Mr Dilley. He does not only give us his money. As you have just seen, he also gives us his time.’

  ‘A proper saint, Mr Dilley,’ agreed Walker, through his teeth, snidely.

  ‘Oh, indeed. And now, gentlemen, some tea. I understand from Mr Dilley that you are police officers, searching for some miscreant, and that you have been misdirected. Allow me.’

  Before Walker could stop him, the deluded and deceived wretch, Alcott, was accepting a cup of tea and a sandwich and Bates was not slow to follow him.

  Walker was suddenly alone with Mr Dilley.

  ‘You haven’t fooled me,’ he told him savagely. ‘You gave Alcott the run around, I’ll grant you that, and I should have checked his information, not gone off half-cocked.’

  Cobie inclined his head. ‘True,’ he said, lifting his guitar and playing a few chords of a ballad which included the words, ‘If you want to know the time, ask a policeman’, which he sang in a pleasant, baritone voice.

  ‘Oh, very funny, I’m sure,’ snarled Walker. ‘But you’re a villain, Grant, Dilley, Horne, whatever you call yourself, and I know you’re a villain. One day I’ll prove you are, where there aren’t pious fools about who think you’re some sort of saint to stop me from throwing you into the slammer.’

  ‘Oh, I do so agree with you there,’ Cobie told him earnestly. ‘About being a saint. It’s very far from the truth. I’m sorry that you didn’t like my tricks. My foster-brothers and sisters used to love them.’

  ‘I don’t like you or your tricks, whether they’re on the stage or on the streets of London, Mr Grant—if that’s your real name.’

  Cobie played a flourish on the guitar, and said, ‘Aye, there’s the rub, Inspector Walker. I have no real name, you see. You may call me what you please. Why don’t you have a cup of tea and a bun, like your colleagues? You’ll feel better after something to eat. I always do.’

  ‘It would choke me,’ Walker returned morosely. ‘What I want to know is, what the hell is your game, Grant? Tell me that.’

  ‘Life,’ Cobie told him with a grin. ‘Life’s my game, Walker, and I make up the rules by which I play. As you do. Tell me, do your superiors know that you are disobeying them by pursuing me? No, don’t answer, your face says it all. You’re as bad as I am, Walker, only you won’t admit it.’

  Walker knew at last why men killed. He swung away, roaring at Alcott and Bates to follow him. His last sight of Mr Dilley was of him singing his promised song to a bewitched little girl who was gazing up at him as though he were Lord God Almighty.

  Lady Dinah Grant didn’t think that her husband was Lord God Almighty, but she was pleased to see him when he returned to Paris to collect her, after the three weeks he had promised her were up.

  An old flame of the Marquise’s, the Chevalier de Saulx, had been their escort into French society, and Dinah had entered so many houses on the Faubourg Saint Germain that she had become quite dizzy. No one seemed to think it odd that her husband had deserted her after a mere week’s honeymoon. One expected Americans to do such things. He was busy making money, no doubt. Love could come later. They were both young, Milady particularly so, it seemed.

  Everyone agreed that Milady Dinah, or Milady Grant as she was mostly incorrectly called, was charming in the most original way. She grew even more poised, even more original as the Marquise’s lessons continued daily.

  When Cobie arrived, she walked towards him with the slightly swaying gait which the Marquise had taught her, dropped her eyelids over her eyes, held out her hand, and greeted him as coolly as though she were a beauty with a score of Seasons behind her.

  Cobie bowed over the hand. ‘I must congratulate you, Lady Dinah, on time well spent.’

  She answered him in French—she had spoken nothing else since he had left. Those were his instructions, the Marquise had said. ‘He wishes you to be fluent: to speak it as easily as you do English.’

  Her French had been that of a schoolgirl, but the intellect which would have made her a scholar was now devoted to perfecting it instead of learning Greek.

  ‘Another month,’ the Marquise had told her, delighted, ‘and you would have been mistaken for a Parisienne.’

  She so informed Cobie after Dinah had gone up to change for dinner. They were all due at the British Embassy. The Ambassador was a friend of both Mr Jacobus Grant and the Marquise de Cheverney. He had already been, like many others, enchanted by Lady Dinah Grant.

  Lady Dinah enchanted herself. Like the old woman in the song she constantly asked herself, ‘Can this be I?’ She said as much to her husband when she entered the Embassy on his arm.

  Cobie looked at her. She was wearing a gown of the palest turquoise silk, shot with amethyst. He had put a tiny pearl and amethyst tiara on her head, an amethyst necklace around her neck, amethysts in her ears and there was a ring for her finger. He had brought them with him from London. It was a Dilhorne tradition that the men of the family always, at some point early in their marriage, bought amethysts for their wives, in memory of the Patriarch, the dynasty’s founder, who had bought amethysts for his young wife nearly eighty years ago, in Australia.

  Why he had followed the tradition, Cobie didn’t know. Particularly since he never openly acknowledged his Dilhorne blood. He was aware that there was constant speculation wherever he went as to who and what he truly was. This amused him, rather than annoyed him, but for the first time he realised that he didn’t want such speculation to touch or hurt Dinah.

  Those few who had seen old paintings and drawings of the Patriarch could be in no doubt of Cobie’s being a Dilhorne. He was a larger, handsomer version of Old Tom, the name his surviving sons sometimes called him when they weren’t acknowledging him as the Patriarch.

  ‘And you are still Lady Dinah Freville inside?’ he said, surprising her, once again, by his ability to read her.

  ‘Yes. Very much so. I cannot believe that I have changed so much in a month.’

  ‘Clothes, good food, attention, kindness—all these help to transform a person. Yes, you have changed, more than I could have hoped. As much as I could have wished.’

  ‘You knew that I would.’ Dinah’s tone was accusing.

  ‘If you were loved and cared for, yes.’

  ‘You have not loved or cared for me.’ Again there was almost accusation in her voice.

  ‘You don’t think so?’ he asked her. ‘I thought that you were cleverer than that.’

  He was right, of course. So much of what Madame had done, had been done because of his instructions.

  Her next question wrung his hard heart a little. ‘Shall I forget it all when next I see Violet?’ she asked him simply.

  ‘No,’ he told her. ‘On the contrary. For the first time you will meet her as an equal. Superiority will take a little longer.’

  They were walking up a wide stairway now, flunkies bowing them on. At the top they would be received. Once Dinah would have shuddered at the mere notion of doing what she was now doing without thinking. The Marquise and the Chevalier were behind her, both of them lending her their support—but theirs was as nothing, she understood, to that of the man beside her, who was her husband, but not yet her mate.

>   The new savoir-faire which she had learned—and was still learning—informed her that if she wished, she could make him hers at any time and place of her own choice, whenever she pleased. She didn’t need him to tell her that now. Once she would have done.

  At the top of the stairs she saw the pair of them in a large gilt-framed mirror—and gasped. She was prepared for her husband’s splendour. Evening dress became him as nothing else did. His grace, his elegance, were even more marked in it than in any other costume. But she was not prepared for the sight of herself.

  She was his complement in every way. Her dark beauty matched his blond elegance. His bright blue eyes made hers seem the darker. The subtle shades of her gown were enhanced by his midnight hues. But in the confidence of their stance, the way they looked about them, there was nothing to choose between them. The girl who had hunched her shoulders and bent her head lest the world look her in the face had gone.

  ‘Yes,’ Cobie said in her ear. ‘We go well together, do we not?’

  She wanted to say, Do you read minds—on top of everything else you can do? But it wasn’t necessary for him to read her mind. He had needed only to see them reflected in the mirror, a handsome pair fit to be portrayed by James Tissot, the painter and recorder of aristocratic life.

  After that, the night was easy. Dinah had only to pretend that she was in the Marquise’s drawing room, the book balanced on her head, making conversation to imaginary aristocrats, ministers, courtiers, and entrepreneurs. At last she was able to convince herself, and everyone else that she had the potential to be Violet’s best.

  Only when she was alone in the carriage with him, going home, did she allow her shoulders to droop, to become, once again, little Dinah Freville, Violet Kenilworth’s unconsidered sister.

  Cobie, sitting opposite to her, put a long finger under her chin to push it up. He said briskly, ‘Oh, no, Dinah. When we put on a mask, we must wear it until the play is over. It is not over yet. You must sit up, and entertain me.’