by Garth Nix
Fortunately, or perhaps shockingly (though Truthful innocently thought of it as merely another of her great-aunt’s eccentricities), Lady Badgery’s house had numerous secret passages. Truthful’s bedroom had a hidden door in the wardrobe, leading to a passage that communicated with both a lesser saloon and one of the guest bedrooms on the other side of the house, now given over to the Chevalier de Vienne. So it was quite easy for Lady Truthful Newington to enter her room, a cold compress against her forehead, lock the door behind her and reappear as the Chevalier de Vienne an hour later, from an entirely different room.
Contrary to the instructions of the man Truthful knew as Major Harnett, Truthful stopped at Lady Badgery’s parlour before she went out. After knocking and announcing herself in her male identity, she entered to find Lady Badgery examining a music box, cleverly in-laid with mother-of-pearl in the shape of tiny harpsichord keys.
“Ah, my dear boy,” said Lady Badgery. She put the box down as Truthful entered, and tilted her head to listen to the delicate air it slowly picked out, winding its way down to a tuneless murmur. “Or perhaps I should say, young man. You are obviously going out this evening.”
“Yes, cousin,” replied Truthful gruffly, casting a look at one of the maids, who was putting a glass and a bottle of ratifia on the satinwood side table.
“Eliza, please go and fetch some port for the chevalier,” said Lady Badgery, smoothly catching Truthful’s conspiratorial gaze. “Dworkin will instruct you.”
“Yes, milady,” replied the maid, bobbing her head to both Lady Badgery and the elegant young Frenchman as she hurried from the room.
“I take it that you have finally found some clue, some indication of the whereabouts of the Emerald?” asked Lady Badgery, gesturing to Truthful to sit down beside her.
“I’m afraid not,” said Truthful, with a heartfelt sigh. “But I accidentally met a man today, a Major Harnett, who had heard about the loss of the Emerald, probably from—”
“The odious Lady Troutbridge,” interrupted Lady Badgery. She slapped the table, making the music box jump and jangle. “She arrived in town the day before yesterday, and has lost no time in spreading that tale. Parkins told me this afternoon.”
“Major Harnett said he’d heard it last night, but he didn’t say where,” exclaimed Truthful. “Then he suggested that I should consult with someone who is expert in these affairs. General Leye. And he invited me to join them both at White’s tonight for supper.”
“Ned Leye . . .” said Lady Badgery. She frowned and scratched the bridge of her significant nose. “I did consider consulting him. You will have to be careful, my chevalier. He is a very accomplished sorcerer, and has a reputation for seeing through enchantments and glamours. It would mean ruin for Lady Truthful if a certain, albeit necessary deception were to be discovered.”
“I know,” replied Truthful, her elegant white hands briefly clasped in anxiety. “But I really do need help. If General Leye is as clever as everyone thinks he, I’m sure he can help me find the Emerald. My . . . my reputation, or lack of it, is of no consequence.”
“It is of every consequence!” snapped Lady Badgery. “However—”
A knock on the door interrupted any further conversation, but instead of Eliza, Agatha entered, carrying a tray with a decanter of port and several glasses.
“Where is Eliza?” asked Lady Badgery, who was not fond of her great-niece’s cantankerous maid. “And why aren’t you attending Lady Truthful?”
“Eliza was suddenly taken ill, milady,” replied Agatha. “And Lady Truthful has gone to bed with a headache. Will that be all, milady?”
“Yes, Agatha,” said the Dowager Countess, waving her hand to dismiss her. “Please ask Parkins to look after Eliza, and call Doctor Embury if she needs attention.”
Agatha nodded, and mumbled something appropriate as she turned to go. As her head bent, Truthful noticed that her expression was quite twisted, as if a secret, hidden visage of malice had come to the surface for a moment. Then, as she straightened up and went to the door, it was the old Agatha again, grumbling and cantankerous but with no trace of that cold and cunning look that had flashed across her face the moment before. It had happened so quickly that Truthful wondered if she had imagined that sudden grimace.
“You may take my carriage, of course,” said Lady Badgery after Agatha had shut the door. “It wouldn’t do to ride up to White’s. And do come and tell me all about it when you get home. Even if it’s late . . . or early.”
“I will,” said Truthful, smiling.
“Good,” replied the Dowager. “I am sure I will get a much more accurate picture of White’s from you than I ever have had from my, shall we say more masculine friends?”
“You can be certain of an accurate tale, cousin,” laughed Truthful. She sprang out of her chair, and bowed low over her great-aunt’s proffered hand, enjoying the freedom of pantaloons over her usual cumbersome dress, despite a feeling that it was quite improper to do so.
Shortly before ten o’clock she stepped down from her great-aunt’s carriage outside the bow windows of White’s, where the famous glamourists Brummel, Alvanley, Mildmay and Pierrepoint had once lounged and made disparaging comments about passers-by. Truthful didn’t look towards the window, however, in case she saw someone making just such a disparaging comment about her, or rather, the Chevalier de Vienne. Instead, she walked swiftly up the steps, the porter only just opening the door quickly enough.
The major domo inside, seeing a face unknown to him, quickly came forward to ask if he could be of any assistance and to politely eject this young sprig if he was not a member or invited guest.
“I am a guest of General Leye’s, monsieur,” said Truthful, trying to be at her gruffest and most French. “I am the Chevalier de Vienne.”
The major domo smiled, and bowed his head, crooking his finger at the same time to summon a waiting footman to take Truthful’s hat and gloves. “James, the Chevalier will be joining General Leye’s supper party.”
Two minutes later, Truthful was standing outside a heavy door deep inside the club. She had caught a quick glimpse of some sort of gaming room as they had traversed a corridor; heard snatches of laughter, talk and the click of dice and chink of glasses; and several whiffs of smoke from cigars; then they had passed on from the better known parts of the club towards a private dining room.
The door was opened by Major Harnett, and the footman announced, “The Chevalier de Vienne, sir, to dine with the General.”
“Come in, sir!”
Truthful walked in slowly, and saw that the room was quite small, and dark. There were only a half dozen candles burning in a tarnished silver gilt candelabra set on a corner table. In the soft light she saw a portly, balding gentleman, with a prominent nose and bushy eyebrows, his tall form resting in a leather armchair rather like a folded-up vulture. She knew him at once from drawings and the famous caricature by Thomas Rowlandson, published at the height of Leye’s success as a spycatcher in 1815, shortly before Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and his subsequent immurement in the stone of Gibraltar.
“Bonsoir, Chevalier,” he said. “Je suis heureux que vous ayez pu vous joindre à moi ce soir. Vous avez déjà rencontré . . . Major Harnett, je crois?”
“Oui. Major Harnett et j'ai rencontré ce matin,” replied Truthful carefully, as Harnett stepped towards her from behind the General’s chair and inclined his head. The General’s French was very fast and fluent, but she had managed to follow it without difficulty. She cast a glance at Harnett as she spoke, partly to see if he had understood the General’s French, and partly to admire his dress — although she told herself it was merely for the purpose of furthering her own disguise.
For the ink-stained coatless ruffian of that morning had been replaced by an expensive elegance that stopped short of dandyism. From his astonishingly white knee breeches to his cravat tied in the waterfall mode, he was attired as a man of taste and consequence. Even his jet-black hair had succumbed
to order, swept back in a style Truthful could only admire without recognizing it as being done in the fashion known as à la Brutus.
Supper was a simple affair of white soup, cold meats, poached salmon, curiously cut vegetables that Truthful wondered were some sort of private joke and various cakes and trifles. But neither the general nor Harnett ate very much, and Truthful followed their example, though she did not do so when it came to drinking the port. Though she knew she drank considerably less than would be usual for most young men of her class she hoped her supposed asceticism and devotion to religion would be sufficient to explain her abstinence.
The initial talk was inconsequential, mostly of the sporting variety, the kind of conversation Truthful was used to overhearing from her cousins. Nevertheless, she listened carefully, not least so she could relay some of it back to her great-aunt. She also learned two small but useful facts. One was that Harnett’s first name was Charles, and the other, that he was very much a confidant of General Leye, and furthermore was even known to that still more-famous general, the Duke of Wellington. So he was a man of some standing after all, which made it curious that he was not a member of White’s.
After dinner, the two men lit cigars, Truthful declining both a cigar and the offer of snuff. She would have liked to try the snuff, for she had heard of several women of great ton who took snuff like men but she feared her inexperience with the stuff would be too telling, even in a Frenchman destined for the priesthood. She did, however, accept a brandy as they moved from the table to the chairs set around a fire, newly kindled by the servant who had just finished labouring with lucifers and bellows. But even with the fire lit, there was no great increase of light in the room, particularly as two of the six candles on the side table had gone out.
“Now,” said the General, as the servant left the room, “We shall get down to business. Which is, I understand, the theft of the Newington Emerald. Perhaps you could tell us all you know, Chevalier.”
“Lady Truthful has described to me everything that happened in great detail,” said Truthful. “I shall relay it as she told it to me, if you are agreeable.”
Both men indicating their assent, Truthful told them the whole story, from the arrival of the Newington-Lacys up to “Lady Truthful’s” arrival in London, with occasional interruptions as the General asked questions or wanted her to elaborate on what she had said.
Truthful concluded her tale by saying that it was a fortunate circumstance that he had arrived in time to take up enquiries for Lady Truthful, in the absence of any other male relatives.
“Very fortunate,” said General Leye dryly. He raised a silver-cased eyeglass and looked at Truthful with his great eyebrows wrinkled together. She paled as he stared at her. He blinked, let the monocle fall into his open hand and glanced at Major Harnett. His brow cleared, and the corner of his mouth quirked into a faint smile, there and gone so quickly that Truthful was unsure whether she’d seen it happen. On balance, she thought she had seen it, and General Leye had seen something too. But the smile gave her hope.
“It is fortunate, too,” he added, “that Lady Badgery is a woman of great resource, not to mention a very fine sorceress.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Harnett, oblivious to this sally, “is these Newington-Lacy cousins. Why head off to secure a replacement gem instead of searching for the stolen one? Their leaving looks suspicious in the extreme.”
“Adventure!” interrupted the General. “Remember when you were under twenty, Charles? Any excuse to escape to adventure was welcome. Why you took it yourself, joining the colours.”
“Oh,” said Truthful, suddenly seeing her cousins’ eagerness to help as less unselfish concern and more simple high spirits. Or indeed, the effect of spirits . . . she hadn’t mentioned the rum punch to the General and Major Harnett.
“Not that it doesn’t do them credit,” said General Leye. “Brave lads. But they didn’t think it through. Neither did Lady Truthful. Now, we rule out the cloud-catcher or smoke-devil. Nothing of that sort could even touch an objet de puissance like the Emerald! That would have been a bit of misdirection from someone. Easy enough to swirl a bit of cloud about, don’t need much talent or power for that. No, there has to be a human agency at work and as always, I suspect a fairly obvious one.”
“An obvious one . . .” said Truthful, her voice faltering.
“Lady Truthful has been too trusting. I fear she suffers from a blindness common in the well-bred. Plain as the nose on your face.”
“Blindness,” mused Harnett, a lock of his dark hair escaping to fall across his brooding forehead. “Yes, yes . . . I see.”
“You mean you know what happened to the Emerald?” asked Truthful. “After simply hearing my, that is my version of Lady Truthful’s story?”
“I have a very good suspicion that must be tested,” said the General, leaning toward the fireplace to firmly stub out his cigar on the head of a bronze firedog. He settled back in his chair and said, “Those of higher rank do tend to forget the servants, both for good and ill. Too used to paying them no mind. Not sensible, for many reasons.”
“You mean . . .” faltered Truthful.
“The maid. Agatha. Only possible person. Don’t believe anyone else could have entered in the short space of darkness. The Emerald was knocked to the floor when the table went over. It must have been picked up when Agatha brought the lamp in. I expect she curtsied, did some bent-over truckling or something similar?”
“Agatha!” said Truthful, stunned. In hindsight, it was obvious, of course, once the magical intervention was discounted. The dropping of the smelling salts, her voluminous dress billowing out as she knelt, covering the Emerald, so she could pick it up with her left hand while fetching the smelling salts with her right.
“But Agatha has been . . . Lady Truthful’s maid since she before she was twelve! Seven years!” she exclaimed. “What could she do with the Emerald anyway?”
“Certainly couldn’t sell it,” replied the General, reaching across to pour himself another brandy from the decanter on the side-table. “She would be very unlikely to have the contacts of a proper jewel-thief. She probably stole it for someone else. Given the Emerald’s properties, it’s more than possible she had been waiting to steal it for seven years. Who did she work for before she came to Lady Truthful, d’ye know?”
“No,” said Truthful, who really didn’t know. A second later, she realised that would be the only possible answer the chevalier could give. Looking back at the General, she saw the twinkle in his eye again, and with a sinking heart she knew that he had penetrated her disguise, but wouldn’t give her away if she were clever enough to keep up the deception. Harnett didn’t appear to have noticed, and the General was enjoying pulling the wool over his young colleague’s eyes.
“Pity,” said the General. “I would investigate this Agatha closely, and her past employers. Is she still with Lady Truthful? She hasn’t run away, or disappeared?”
“No, she is still there,” replied Truthful, thinking back to the last time she’d seen Agatha, and her surprise entrance into Lady Badgery’s room. Had she been listening at the door? Probably, she decided, as she thought back over the years of their association. Agatha had never been close to her, not like Parkins was to Lady Badgery. Strange, thought Truthful, that this had never crossed her mind before. Agatha had always been there, cantankerous and difficult, though generally efficient. But she had never shown any kindness or given the slightest hint of affection. Now, as Truthful thought of just how much Agatha had been an accepted part of the background of her life, she realised she knew very little about the maid, her true character and her private life. Or what she might have been before she came to look after a little girl of twelve.
“I suggest that she be questioned immediately,” continued the General. “I am sure Major Harnett will be willing to assist you.”
“Certainly!” exclaimed Harnett, as if he had been waiting for his cue. “I shall be delighted. To tell t
he truth, I shall welcome an opportunity to meet Lady Truthful, if all that is said about her beauty is true. Mind you, most recognised beauties have too much pride and ice bound up in their looks. I daresay Lady Truthful’s just another of those! What do you think, de Vienne?”
“I don’t believe so, ” replied Truthful, her back stiffening. Was she a proud beauty? Were people really talking about her like that?
“I heard she cut Trellingsworth in the Park the other day,” continued Harnett. “Cut the poor fellow dead. Just acted as if she hadn’t seen him. I mean, Trellingsworth is a fool, but to cut him like that! The man won’t recover for a week. She must be the very devil for haughtiness.”
“Now, now, Charles,” said the General, seeing Truthful staring at Charles as if she was about to either burst into tears or brain him with the poker. “You’ve embarrassed the poor chap. Remember Lady Truthful is his cousin!”
“What’s that matter?” asked Charles. “My sister’s an out-an-out harpy and I’m the first to admit it.”
“Perhaps Lady Truthful really didn’t see Mr Trellingsworth,” said Truthful, which was, in fact, the case. “The Park is full of trees, and Mr Trellingsworth does tend to wear a very, very disguising shade of green.”
Charles opened his mouth to answer, but the General smoothly interrupted before he could begin.
“This isn’t the time for you to making commentaries on young ladies, Charles. I suggest you go and tell Westingham to bring de Vienne’s carriage around, and you can accompany him to Grosvenor Square and question this Agatha. No time like the present, I always say.”
“But it’s almost midnight,” protested Truthful. “Surely a commotion at this hour . . .”
“Best time,” interrupted Harnett. “She’ll not be expecting it. You can ask Lady Truthful to call her for some reason, and we’ll be waiting to question her. Simple, really.”