‘You’re pretty sure that Heneage is involved?’
Yes, he was being taken seriously at last. Walker was suddenly the professional sleuth, his nose to the ground, sniffing at the scent of an animal long gone, but perhaps still traceable.
‘Start again, would you, Mr Dilley? Tell me again—in detail—why you thought this Heneage murdered the first girl, Lizzie Steele, leave nothing out. Take a chair,’ he offered belatedly.
Cobie didn’t refuse the chair. He sat in it, wondering when he would see Dinah again, and hoping that she wasn’t worrying about him. It was going to be a long evening, he could tell that by Walker’s expression. The chance to make Mr Dilley sweat was too good to miss.
‘Well, who’d have thought it?’ Walker grinned at Bates, who had sat stolidly taking notes while he had grilled Mr Dilley making him tell his story twice more. ‘So our swell mobster—that’s what the Yanks call them, I’m told—had to come to us for help in the end. Not so clever after all.’
‘Do you believe him, guv?’
‘About Heneage? Yes, I think I do. It begins to explain a little why our man stole the necklace. But it’s the devil of a thing to try to prove with so little to go on. I can’t go round accusing a Cabinet Minister of murder—even one who won’t be a Minister much longer, I hear. We’ll have him tailed, Bates. See to it at once.’
‘Who, guv? Mr Dilley?’
‘No, you priceless idiot, Bates! Heneage, of course! Dilley I’ll have followed later. Who knows what tricks he may get up to? But for the moment he’ll stay quiet, you see. Cunning bastard, our magician. But I don’t think he magicked poor Porter away. I’ll lay odds it hurt him to have to come to us, but give him his due, he was helping poor Nell. Odd customer, ain’t he? Even odder than Heneage. A straightforward, murderous bastard he is!’
Mr Dilley wasn’t. Not straightforward, not murderous, just a bastard. In every way. Even he knew that, and knew it the more when he reached home later than he had intended. Dinah never reproached him, never asked him where he had been, what he was doing, but the gap which had opened up between them was growing wider.
Only when he was making himself ready for bed and had dismissed Giles, did it occur to him, belatedly, that she might think that he had been with another woman. He inwardly cursed his own simple-mindedness and wondered how he could convince her that whatever he was doing, it wasn’t that.
Ten years of strict self-discipline over his emotions stopped him from rushing to her room and trying to persuade her that he was not being unfaithful, since to do so might make matters worse, not better. For a moment he considered telling her the truth, but the thought of what might have happened to Porter prevented him.
He thought of Mrs Porter’s ravaged face—and cursed again. He felt responsible for it, and wondered what Walker’s investigations, for he had no doubt that Walker would now begin them, would bring.
They brought nothing but bad news. A week after he had been to see Walker, the butler came in and announced in his aloof voice that ‘a person from Scotland Yard’ was asking to see him.
Walker had been put in the drawing room where Cobie found him staring at a painting of the Arizona desert which hung over the hearth, a symphony of brilliant colours showing the sun setting over distant mountain peaks, the desert floor, studded with giant cacti, dark below it.
‘You’ve been there, Mr Dilley?’
He leaned forward to examine the signature, and said in a voice of total disbelief, ‘C.G. You painted that?’
Cobie nodded. ‘Something I did once, yes.’
‘Another magician’s trick?’
‘If you like. Why do you want to see me, Inspector?’
‘To tell you what you’ll learn from the Press tomorrow, seeing that you came to tell me that Porter was missing, and that you feared foul play, I thought it only fair. You see I do right by you, Mr Dilley. Can you say as much for yourself, regarding me?’
‘Circumstances alter cases, Inspector.’
‘A magician’s answer which I might have expected. Right, they fished a body out of the Thames yesterday, Mr Dilley. It was poor Jem Porter’s. He didn’t drown, he was dead when he hit the water.’
He stared at his enemy’s impassive face. ‘You’re not surprised?’
‘No, I was certain he was dead, or I wouldn’t have come to you.’
‘Dead in your service, Mr Dilley. What are you going to say to his wife?’
Cobie’s iron composure nearly cracked. Rage ran through him like wildfire. Rage at himself for putting Porter in danger. Rage at the man—or men—who had killed him.
He turned away. He knew that sometimes the rage showed, and he didn’t want that. Let Walker think him the heartless magician—one whose magic tricks had failed on this occasion.
‘Nothing to say, Mr Dilley?’ Walker mocked at his back. ‘Poor Nell Porter is left penniless. Ready to help her with some of your dirty money, Mr Dilley, that you got from the sale of the Heneage diamonds?’
Cobie felt that he was about to suffocate. ‘If I were the magician you think I am, then I would open the coffin and bring him back to life, would I not? Seeing that I can’t do that, the least that I can do is see that his widow doesn’t starve.’
He still couldn’t turn round, and had spoken in his iciest voice to the wall before him.
‘Don’t like to face me, do you, Mr Dilley? Not such a joke after all?’
His enemy swung round to offer Walker a face he could hardly recognise as that of the jesting magician.
‘Damn you, Walker,’ he began, and then, ‘No, not that. Have you any idea who did this thing?’
‘None. Like the dead girls there are no clues, no clues at all. Are you sure that you have told me all that you know? He was killed over a week ago. Where were you then, Mr Dilley? I need to know. I suspect everyone, you see.’
Cobie had recovered himself. The inward nausea had begun but he was controlling it. ‘I was in Oxford, Inspector, staying with my wife’s mother and her second husband, Professor Louis Fabian. I went there to collect my wife, and stayed overnight. Even I, magician though I am, cannot be in two places at once.’
‘Then I can strike you off my list, can’t I? Except that you could have hired someone to do that deed for you. Do gentry like you have become ever do their own really dirty work, Grant? Like to stay spotless, do you?’
Cobie thought of the wild young outlaw he had been, a gun on each hip, grimy from head to toe, only his guns clean. He stifled a desire to laugh, and said politely, ‘If you like to think so. But I don’t think that you really suspect me, Inspector. Do you want me to identify him? One would like to spare his wife.’
‘Indeed one would,’ mocked Walker, ‘but no need. I knew him well. He was my guv’nor once. He was never a careful man, Mr Dilley, and in the end I guess that carelessness killed him.’
‘Oh, I killed him, Inspector—’ and Cobie’s voice was still ice ‘—by sending him on this mission. You’ve been telling me so ever since I walked into this room. But be sure of one thing, those who killed him will pay for it.’
‘My job, not yours,’ returned Walker rudely.
‘Then see that you do it. Do you need anything more from me?’
‘Nothing. I simply wish that I had never met you. Death and destruction follow you about, Mr Dilley. You are not the man your society friends think you.’
Cobie was about to answer when the door opened and Dinah walked in. She looked enchanting in a blue and white striped walking dress, navy blue shoes and a big cream straw hat with a wide blue band and a large blue bow.
‘I’m sorry, Cobie. I wasn’t aware that you had a visitor.’
Walker said, grinning and showing his teeth, ‘Oh, I’m about to leave, Lady Dinah.’
‘No tea?’ remarked Dinah. She could feel the tension in the room, it was written on the faces of both men. A kind of feral delight on Walker’s, a stern impassivity on her husband’s classic features gave them both away.
S
he felt a desperate desire to bait them both and didn’t know why. ‘You’re sure you won’t have some tea, Inspector? I can have it here in a moment,’ and she made for the bell.
‘Kind of you, Lady Dinah, but no.’
‘Oh, do stay for tea, Inspector,’ and Cobie’s voice was savage. ‘I believe it’s chocolate cake today, the cook’s speciality, you mustn’t miss that.’
Walker looked embarrassed for the first time while he refused tea and cake. It wasn’t Mr Dilley who was causing the embarrassment but his pretty young wife. The brute didn’t deserve her, he thought, not for the first time.
Then, remembering the way in which she had spoken to them, something about her struck him, something in her manner which didn’t quite match the impression of charming innocence which she gave off. The hunter in him was aware of false notes and he had detected one there.
Was it conceivable, could it possibly be, that unworldly young Lady Dinah was a match for her husband? As his blond and civilised beauty concealed the true man he was, did his wife’s seeming naïveté also cover something deeper? Was the magician’s wife also his assistant, who walked the stage performing tricks of her own to conceal his?
And did the magician know?
Chapter Eight
The magician did not know, but he had his suspicions. There was something about Dinah these days which intrigued him: something which told him that she was an even more complex person than he had first thought her.
Cobie had even come to the conclusion that she would be able to understand, and to approve, of why he was carrying out his ruthless campaign against Sir Ratcliffe and his wickedness. The only thing which prevented him from confiding in her was his continuing fear that if Sir Ratcliffe thought that she knew of his secret and murderous life he might make her his target in an attempt to get at his enemy. He dare not take that risk—best that she know nothing—even if she suspected something. He dare not risk losing someone whom he had come to love so dearly, even if he dare not yet tell her of his love.
There was no doubt that Inspector Walker’s sudden reappearance, and his strange manner towards Cobie, was telling Dinah that, in the words of her maid when she forgot herself and reverted to the language of the days before she achieved respectability, ‘something was up’.
What that something might be was difficult for Dinah to imagine. Why, for example, should Cobie steal the Heneage diamonds? And if they were not the reason for Inspector Walker’s re-appearance in their life, what was? What in the world could he be doing that the police should be interested in it? She had read novels in which the most unlikely persons were master-criminals. Could Cobie be one of them?
If he were, should she confront him with her belief? And if he were not, what would it do to their marriage if she came out with something so apparently crass? Added to that was that she feared that something else had happened—to her, this time. Something which she would normally have told Cobie of at once, but if he were engaged in a truly dangerous venture she did not care to add to his secret worries yet another which might distract him—and thus put him in even further danger.
It was bad enough that he was a principal witness in this wretched Markendale business, and so she told him that night when they were playing their nightly game of cribbage before retiring to bed. It had become something of a ritual: Cobie said that it soothed his nerves, and it certainly soothed Dinah’s these days.
‘I shall not be happy until the Markendale action is over,’ she said, ‘I do believe that it has cast a shadow over all our lives. Violet has become more fretful than ever, and she’s not the only one.’
Cobie, busy collecting the cards and putting them and the pegs which they used as counters back into the beautiful box in which they were stored, looked up, and answered her, drily for him, ‘I’m not exactly delighted by being the principal witness either, seeing that I am an American and therefore something of an outsider. I understand that the date will be set for the near future—and then we shall all of us have something real to worry about. Except you, my dear.’
Dinah gave him as artless a look as she could.
‘Oh, I shall worry about you, Cobie.’
‘Now that I do forbid,’ he said, walking over to her and kissing her. ‘Your role is to be supportive, to sit in the courtroom looking charmingly innocent so that the jury will think that the husband of such a cherub could never be other than an archangel himself.’
‘Do archangels have wives?’ Dinah riposted smartly. ‘I thought that there was no marrying or giving in marriage, in heaven.’
‘Minx,’ said Cobie, charmed as ever by his young wife’s mixture of erudition and sly wit, ‘for that you shall be royally rewarded in bed—the place where all our worries can be forgotten.’
Except that Dinah could not forget them, and later, after their joyful lovemaking was over, she lay awake, wondering yet once more about the true nature of the enigmatic man she had married, the man who had never told her that he loved her, and who had also ordered her never to love him.
Except that she did, and so she must continue with the crusade on which she had embarked at Moorings, the crusade which had as its aim her determination that he would love her as passionately as she loved him.
Thinking so, she fell asleep at last—to dream of him again.
Fortunately for all concerned, the cat sprang out of the bag at last: the date of the Markendale hearing was set for the last week in November since both plaintiff and defendants were determined for their own reasons that it should be held as soon as possible. The whole of society buzzed and roared at the news.
Excitement grew to a crescendo when it was learned that the Prince of Wales had been subpoenaed to give evidence. Given the lofty nature of all the participants in the action, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Coleridge, was to preside and a special jury was to be called.
Beauchamp and Sir Francis Knollys, the Prince’s Private Secretary, Cobie was told, were doing their utmost to try to persuade Sir Ratcliffe to withdraw, but he remained adamant. The stakes were too high for him to do so. More, if he were to win, the damages which he would be awarded would save him from the ruin which he faced.
Cobie was interviewed by defence counsel in his chambers. All four defendants, Lords Kenilworth, Dagenham, Rainey and Cobie himself, had met and had agreed to hire Sir Darcy Spenlow, QC, to represent them. He had the reputation of being a cross between a fox and a lion in court. In private he was a small man, mild of manner although, as Cobie soon discovered, his questions were sharp and searching.
‘Before I begin to discuss this matter with you, Mr Grant, I had perhaps better inform you that Sir Ratcliffe has engaged as his counsel the man regarded as the most formidable ever to lead in any court. He is the Solicitor-General, Sir Halbert Parker, QC.’
Cobie had no idea how to respond to this news, other than not to respond at all. Privately he wondered where Sir Ratcliffe was finding the money to hire such a star.
Sir Darcy began without further preamble. ‘Now let me turn to preparing my own case. I have been reading the statement which you and your co-defendants have made, and it seems to me that in many respects your own evidence is crucial. I note that the other defendants are all in their mid-forties and early fifties. I should like to know how you, a very young man, came to be such an important member of the party.’
Cobie replied with all the earnestness at his command, ‘I had seen on the first night we played baccarat that Sir Ratcliffe was cheating, but being an American I felt diffident about starting such an accusation on its way. When it was plain that others were also aware of what he was doing, I made my own doubts known. More, I have an excellent memory and was able to remember the exact details of how he was manipulating his cards and counters.’
‘Will you now tell me precisely what you saw, Mr Grant, in detail, if you please. I want nothing to be obscure.’
Plainly and lucidly Cobie took Sir Darcy through the whole business of the baccarat games in which Sir Ratc
liffe had taken part, and of how he had made the most careful observations after the committee had asked that he watch Sir Ratcliffe.
Sir Darcy began to make notes. What he was hearing tallied with what the other defendants had told him, so he moved on.
‘If your memory—which is claimed to be remarkable—were challenged in court, you would consent to allow it to be publicly tested?’
‘Indeed. I have no qualms about that.’
Sir Darcy, still making notes, continued, ‘I understand that Mr Hervey Beauchamp was present at these meetings, but he did not sign the declaration which Lord Kenilworth drew up. Why was that? Did he have some doubts on the matter?’
‘None at all. He thought, as one of the Prince’s entourage, that it was better that he should only be an adviser, not a signatory. He wished, at all costs, for the matter to be settled in a way which would avoid not only public scandal, but damage to his master, the Prince.’
He hesitated. ‘That, I think, motivated all of us in allowing Sir Ratcliffe to sign a paper which, while tying his hands, allowed him to avoid public obloquy—providing none of us talked, that is.’
‘Providing none of you talked,’ agreed Sir Darcy, shaking his head. ‘Someone talked. Sir Ratcliffe said that it was you. Did you talk, Mr Grant?’
Cobie shook his head, delighted that for once in his life he was able to stick to the perfect truth. ‘No, I didn’t talk—whatever he thinks.’
‘Do you know who did talk, Mr Grant?’
‘No, but I think that I could hazard a guess—which is not evidence.’
‘Which is not evidence,’ repeated Sir Darcy. ‘You are an American citizen, I understand, Mr Grant. One thing which Sir Ratcliffe’s counsel will try to do is to destroy the defendants by attacking their good faith. Where he cannot do so, he is likely to allege that their character and reputation are so bad that their word cannot be relied on. Is there anything in your past which might enable Sir Ratcliffe and his counsel to attack you on that score? If so, you had better tell me now.’
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