Plon-Plon left the newspaper on the bench and headed eastwards, shuffling gloomily through the leaves on the Quai de Montebello. He had never seen her, from that day to this. He had not so much as heard her name mentioned between his discussion with James Davenall in July 1867 and his encounter with James Norton fifteen years later. He had thought she had done her worst, that day in Scutari. But now, if Norton was the man he feared he was, he knew she had not.
VIII
I had been vaguely aware for some days that Hillier wanted to talk to me. For fear that she would ask when Constance would be returning, I had done my best to avoid her. That Sunday afternoon, however, as I was heading out, she intercepted me in the hallway, with such a determined expression on her face that I knew it could no longer be deferred.
‘I must speak to you, sir,’ she said emphatically.
‘I’m really in rather a hurry.’
‘It can’t wait.’
‘Very well.’ We stepped into the drawing-room, and she closed the door. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m givin’ you notice, sir.’
‘Notice?’
‘I … have found another position.’
‘May I ask where?’
‘Mortlake, sir. A very nice ’ouse’old. I think it will suit me … very nicely.’
‘I don’t remember you asking for a reference.’
She blushed. ‘I didn’t like to bother you, sir, so … I asked your mother, bein’ as I was with ’er in Blackheath longer ’n I’ve been ’ere with you.’
It was a minor enough issue, God knows, but somehow, after all the weeks of Constance’s absence, this, on top of Ernest closing the doors of Trenchard & Leavis to me, seemed one abandonment too many. ‘When do you want to leave?’ I said through clenched teeth.
‘As soon as … it’s convenien’.’
‘Convenient? Well, Hillier, I think tomorrow will be convenient.’
‘Oh! I didn’ mean so—’
‘Or today, if you prefer.’ Her crushed look did not touch me. ‘Go whenever you damn well please.’
She burst into a flood of tears, but I did not pause to heal the petty wound I had inflicted. I slammed out of the house, cursing under my breath all the greater and lesser parties to the conspiracy James Norton and the world in general had hatched against me.
I had not realized how thick the fog had become. Its chill, white, swirling presence rose to meet me as I turned into Avenue Road. It was not yet mid-afternoon, but the fog had imposed a night of its own, in which all sounds were muffled, all vision blurred. I blundered down the streets, glad of the moist and cloaking obscurity, happy to be one anonymous figure passing, camouflaged, through a gagged and blinded world.
I had conceived a mad notion to seek out Norton at his hotel, to settle for once and all my contest with him before the courts could make it inviolably public. The fog, I think, gave my fevered plans some eerie form of safe passage to reality. Though it grew thicker as I neared Regent’s Park, my steps quickened. I noticed, all at once, that I was panting with the exertion of the pace I had set. My heart was pounding, my lungs were straining. When I put my hand to my brow, it came back damp with sweat. I plunged on through the yellowing, moving curtain of the fog, damning all my lost opportunities to have closed before now with the man who had forced me to see that one of us must be victor and one vanquished.
‘Penny for the guy, mister?’
1 heard him before I saw him, at the corner of the street: a muffled, under-nourished, saucer-eyed youth holding a tobacco-tin with, propped against the wall beside him, a guy larger than himself, straw protruding from a sack-covered head on which two buttons and a bootlace made a pair of staring eyes and a madly fixed grin.
‘Penny for the guy, mister?’
He made to rattle the tin, but no noise came. It was empty. I took half a crown from my pocket and tossed it in. His eyes grew larger still, and his mouth dropped open in a silent gasp. Then I crossed the road and we parted, he, his straw-souled friend and I.
I turned towards the steps that ran down to the Regent’s Canal, judging that the towpath would lead me to Paddington more reliably than a maze of fog-choked streets. What made me stop and look back I cannot say, but, when I did, the rimy veil lifted for an instant to show me the boy I had just left on the opposite corner. His trade was looking up. A man and a woman were standing by him. The woman stooped and dropped a coin into the boy’s tin. Perhaps she asked him for directions. At all events, as I watched, he turned and pointed straight at me. Then, just as the woman began to turn her head in my direction, the fog reasserted its mastery, closing off the scene with a blank impenetrable wall of white.
Dismissing the stray snatched vision from my mind, I plunged down the steps and started along the path. I must have gone twenty yards before I realized that I had set off in the wrong direction. Muttering an oath at the absurdity of my error, I turned and began to retrace my steps.
The fog was at its thickest here. Its murkiest residue had drained into the cutting of the canal and made of it a phantom world of cotton-wool sound and unseen, barely rippling waters. A dark shape looming ahead of me represented the arch of the bridge from which I had just descended. Reassured of my bearings, I pressed on.
Then, once more, the fog lifted. I looked up at the parapet of the bridge, suddenly disclosed by the fickle plumes of vapour, and saw there a man and a woman, looking down at me.
Her dress was of inky black velvet, ruffled at the collar with white lace. On her breast, as a corsage, she wore a single blood-red rose. She was bare-headed, and her hair, scarcely less black than her dress, fell in thick unbraided tresses to her shoulders. In the set of her jaw, the intensity of her dark eyes, the flicker of an expression about her lips, the way in which she simply stood and gazed down at me in unashamed scrutiny, there was combined the disdain of an empress and the provocation of a whore.
When my eyes shifted to the man beside her, doubt ended and fear began. I knew at once who he was by the flinty grain of his eyes, the lean and grizzled cunning of his face, the square and muscular set of his shoulders. I did not need the photograph to tell me who he was, yet, in that moment, I craved the certainty it seemed to confer, longed for the proof it represented. I drew it from my pocket, glanced down at his captive image and knew there was no room for error. I had found him – or had been found.
I had not taken my eyes from them for more than an instant. Yet, when I looked back, they had vanished. The fog had reclaimed its gift.
I heard my footfalls echo in the brickwork of the arch as I raced beneath it and flung myself up the worn steps three at a time. There seemed so many more than when I had descended. Yet speed made no difference. When I emerged on to the bridge and gaped about me, there was no sound save my own panting breaths, no movement save the wilful ice-cold eddies of the fog. They had gone. And all I could do was shout the name of my quarry at the opaque deriding air.
I walked into the park and cast about hopelessly for a sign of them. There was none. I followed some of the paths I knew, became, for all my familiarity with them hopelessly lost, at length found myself by the boating lake, and eventually traced a route out by Hanover Gate. I was tired now, and the chill of the fog, as dusk approached, had crept into my bones. I turned for home, refuting in my mind all the reasons why I might simply have imagined what I had seen. Self-doubt, a lack of trust in my own senses and instincts, was gnawing at my confidence.
Then I remembered that they had spoken to the boy begging pennies for his guy. I walked back to where he had been, judging him worthy of another half-crown if he could put my mind at rest.
But he was not there. He, too, had vanished, leaving only his guy to greet me, lolling crookedly at the foot of the wall, straw bristling from his lumpen torso, button eyes still staring, bootlace mouth grinning. I heard a firework begin its invisible flight somewhere above Primrose Hill and remembered that it was Bonfire Night. The straw-stuffed guy had been abandoned. And so had I.
IX
Duty had impelled Richard Davenall to call at The Limes that afternoon. Worried by reports from Roffey that Trenchard had been pursuing an independent search for Quinn, he had telephoned the Orchard Street shop on Saturday, only to be informed that ‘Mr William has taken indefinite leave’. The news had left him sorely worried as to the young man’s state of mind.
But his journey to St John’s Wood had been a fool’s errand. The maid, flustered and tearful beyond detailed questioning, had told him only that her master had gone out, destination unknown. The prevailing fog, wispily insignificant in Highgate but blindingly dense hereabouts, rendered further enquiries hopeless. He ordered the cabby to take him home.
When he at last disembarked in North Road, chilled and exasperated by the slowness of the journey, he was aware only of a marked desire for whisky and a warm fire. Yet, as he let himself into the house and felt its familiar reproachful greeting close around him, another sensation, quite unlike those reminders of physical frailty, gripped him and sent a shiver down his spine.
He stood still for a moment, transfixed, whilst the door swung to behind him. It was Braddock’s afternoon off, so the upper reaches of the house were deserted. Yet that alone could not explain the atmosphere he detected. In the chilly silence there was something alert, something attentive to his presence, something, as it were, awaiting him.
He made his way towards the study. The tall ceilings and narrow passages of his father’s house enclosed and encircled him. He walked straight ahead, needing no light to guide him. At the end of the corridor the study door stood open. He could see it outlined against the faltering glow of the ebbing fire. Then he knew.
It had been an evening such as this, fog-wrapped and deathly cold, in the late autumn of 1859. He had returned from Holborn in bitter mood, wincing at the memory of a series of petty indignities inflicted on him by Gregory Chubb. He had resolved to lodge a complaint with his father, useless though he had known it would be. He had marched boldly in the direction of the old man’s study. Then, as now, the door had been half-open, firelight glowing within. Then, as now, in his imagination, an animated conversation had been in progress in the room. It was Gervase, with his father. Realizing that they did not know he was there, he had stopped and listened, as now he stopped and remembered.
‘Ten thousand pounds?’ Wolseley said disbelievingly. ‘If this is a joke, young man, it’s in very poor—’
‘It’s no joke!’ Rage was boiling beneath the surface of Gervase’s voice. ‘I require you to arrange it.’
‘As your father’s executor, I must—’
‘As my solicitor, you must do as I say – or I’ll find another who will.’
‘You have no right to talk to me in those terms.’
‘Have I the right to dispose of this money? That’s all that matters to me.’
Wolseley’s reply came as if through clenched teeth. ‘In strict law, it lies within your gift.’
‘Then, pay it and have done.’
‘I cannot do that. What has he done to earn such a sum? His salary would not amount to this in twenty years.’
‘I require no homilies. You have my instructions. There’s my signature to them. I want the money paid immediately – and then I want it forgotten. Is that clear?’
‘I warned your father that you would squander your inheritance. If he were alive today—’
There was a loud crash, as of Gervase thumping the desk. ‘Is it clear, damn you?’
There was an interval, then Wolseley replied in an icy monosyllable. ‘Yes.’
‘Good. I want him on his way at once. Can I leave you to arrange it?’
‘You can.’
‘No delays, mind.’
‘There will be no … delays. Lennox will have his money.’
Richard walked into the study and lit the lamps. Now that he remembered, it seemed even less satisfactory than when he had been unable to call it to mind. Lennox was Kennedy’s predecessor, a man who, by all logic, should have meant nothing to Gervase. Yet Gervase had paid him ten thousand pounds. Richard slumped down heavily in his chair and gazed at the desk-top which his cousin had once thumped for emphasis. There was no answer to be found in its varnished surface, no clue to be gleaned from its polished grain. The ghosts had departed. But their secrets remained.
Chapter Nine
I
THE VICE-CHANCELLOR’S COURT, Lincoln’s Inn, lit by mullioned glass and sizzling gas, furnished in stained oak and buttoned red leather, every table piled with pink-taped bundles and sagging tomes of precedent, every seat taken by wigged advocates and their whispering advisers, every bench filled with a jostling assortment of the idle and the curious, every rafter echoing with the expectant confusion of muttering voices. Such was the arena for the case of Norton versus Davenall, and such were its occupants, ranged before the vacant berth, as the appointed hour drew near, that dank November morning.
Those who knew their legal drama and its leading actors had been watching the two senior counsel, Russell and Giffard, preparing themselves on opposite sides of the court, and had looked to them for clues as to what would follow. Russell had been much the less active of the two, exuding his practised air of the casual dilettante. Giffard, by contrast, had been perpetually engaged in murmured consultations with a clutch of juniors, though whether at his instigation or that of his client was unclear. He had been observed to speak testily on one occasion to the bearded grey-haired solicitor whom rumour held to be a cousin of the defendant. Sir Hugo Davenall himself was taken to be the long-limbed tousle-haired young man who was out of his chair, adjusting his collar and fingering his lips, as often as he was in it, drumming his fingers and shooting glances around the court. These often fell, to no obvious purpose, on the elegantly dressed, veiled lady who many assumed was his mother but who had, thus far, neither approached nor spoken to him.
One direction in which Sir Hugo’s eyes never moved was that of the plaintiff, the enigmatic Mr Norton. This man, whose claim to be Sir Hugo’s brother made him the focus of attention for all sensation-seekers, had held a pose of languid immobility between Russell and the sleek-haired solicitor recognized by the cognoscenti as Hector Warburton. He had said no more than a few words to either gentleman and had not so much as glanced at the public gallery. He had conveyed nothing, in short, beyond a quite unreasonable calmness and, whilst some were disappointed, others thought they recognized the hallmarks of a potentially entertaining confidence. Anticipation was running high.
‘The court will rise.’
Mr Justice Wimberley had entered the bench from his door behind the throne before the usher had completed his announcement and now squinted querulously around at the rows of awkwardly rising figures. He was a small, orderly, fussy little man with a bobbing, egg-shaped, sharp-nosed head that gave him, in full judicial regalia, something of the appearance of a startled and ill-tempered moorhen. He peered distrustfully at the crowded court, as if to suggest that he had expected – and hoped for – a scantier attendance, then took his seat with a resentful tug at his robe.
Just as the other occupants of the court were about to subside gratefully into their places, the creak of the door serving the public gallery alerted those with acute hearing to the advent of a shame-faced latecomer, a plainly clad lady who crept to a vacant seat with exaggerated stealth, only to have her attention drawn to a Salisbury–Waterloo return railway ticket which she had dropped on her way. Mr Justice Wimberley watched her retrieval of it with piercing censorious eyes but, if tempted to have her ejected, he was evidently dissuaded by her air of flustered sincerity. With a vague slack-wristed flap of the hand to the clerk of the court, he signalled that business might commence.
The case was called and the particulars painstakingly recited, then Mr Charles Russell, QC, rose to address the court. He spoke slowly and softly, implying by his measured composure of tone that his client’s claim had every force of sweet, natural, amiable reason. The steel he was known to possess di
d not glint, the fire he was noted for did not flare. He seemed consciously subdued, as if aware that only one man could win this case for the plaintiff: the plaintiff himself. And, sure enough, sooner than might have been expected, the man known as James Norton was sworn in to testify.
Before his examination could begin, Mr Justice Wimberley made a purse-lipped intervention. ‘You give your name as Norton?’
‘Yes, my Lord.’
‘Then, you admit it is not Davenall?’
‘Davenall is the name I was born with. I have not used it for eleven years and shall not do so until my right to it is acknowledged by this court.’
The plaintiff had made a good start. Mr Justice Wimberley seemed appeased, if not impressed. ‘You may proceed, Mr Russell,’ he said, with a faint nod in the barrister’s direction.
‘Where and when were you born?’
‘I was born at Cleave Court, in the county of Somerset, on the twenty-fifth of February 1848.’
‘Who were your parents?’
‘Sir Gervase and Lady Davenall.’
‘You were their first child?’
‘I was.’
‘And hence heir to the Davenall baronetcy?’
‘Just so.’
‘Where were you educated?’
‘Eton and Oxford.’
‘Which college?’
‘Christ Church.’
‘In which year did you graduate?’
‘1870.’
‘How would you describe yourself at that time?’
So. The preliminaries were complete. There was an audible heightening of interest and tension. Many in the gallery leaned forward, eager to hear how he would rise to the challenge. Biographical facts were one thing, convincing self-portrait quite another.
For a moment, Norton hesitated. Was he lost? No. For this was not hesitation. This was deliberation. When he spoke, it was with the dispassionate fluency of one who either did not recognize his twelve-years-younger self or did so all too well.
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