Prince of Secrets

by Paula Marshall

  Before she had left Oxford, her mother had asked her if she were perfectly well, and had smiled knowingly when Dinah had told her that she thought that she had contracted a slight grippe which was causing her sickness, usually in the morning.

  ‘That sort of grippe is commonly known as expecting a child, my love,’ she had said. ‘You should see a doctor when you return to London.’

  Of all things she hadn’t expected that, but common sense told her that when a man and a woman made love as often and as fervently as she and Cobie had been doing, the likelihood of a child must be strong. She wondered with a little sad amusement how he would react to learning that he was to be a father.

  Sleep was long in coming. At last she sat up, found the book she had been reading, and tried to become interested in Mr Henry James’s latest difficult offering. Perhaps, she thought, stifling a yawn, her copy of the Strand Magazine, with an adventure of Mr Sherlock Holmes in it, might prove more amusing—but she had left it downstairs, on the table by her armchair in the drawing room.

  Boredom drove her to rise and to slip on a dressing gown. She looked at her watch. It was half-past one—perhaps Cobie was already home, and had thought fit not to disturb her. She opened the connecting door into his bedroom to find his bed turned down, but empty.

  She shrugged. So he was not back. Again the notion that he was having an affair with another woman ran through her mind. She tried to dismiss it, shrugged again, and walked downstairs as quietly as she could, putting on the electric light in order to do so. She found the magazine, tucked it under her arm, and, walking through the entrance hall, prepared to climb the stairs.

  Before she could do so, the house door opened behind her. She turned in a little alarm—but surely there was no need for alarm, it must be her husband, and it was, but…

  Cobie had felt deathly tired when he had left the East End behind. He wanted only one thing and that was to be home again. I am not the man I was when I was a twenty-year-old roaming the Territory, he thought with a little amusement. I was tireless then. The desire for sanctuary led him to decide not to return to his bolt-hole to change back again into his fashionable clothes. The public clocks told him that it was gone one, and it was likely that the whole household was in bed. He would take the risk of being seen in his masher’s outfit.

  He hailed a cab; although the man stared a little at his bruised and bleeding face and his torn clothing, the money he offered was good and he soon found himself at the end of Park Lane. He opened the front door—to find the light on, and Dinah on the stairs in her dressing gown.

  She stared at him, and the sight he was presenting. She saw the bruises and the blood on his face, and that he was wearing the brown suit which she had seen among his magic things. It was torn and dirtied. He looked quite unlike the svelte and charming man with whom she had lived for nearly seven months.

  Her mouth twisted in a wry smile when he said nothing, offered her no explanation.

  ‘I know,’ she murmured sadly. ‘You can’t tell me what you have been doing, so I shan’t ask.’

  Cobie said, cursing the bad luck which had brought her downstairs in time to meet him, as well as his own folly in not having changed before he set out for home, ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ and knew how inadequate he sounded. ‘I would tell you if I could, but it is not only my secret, and even if it were I couldn’t expose you to any risk by confiding in you. I can only ask you to trust me.’

  ‘But you don’t trust me,’ she told him gravely.

  He caught her in his arms in a sudden and savage gesture, quite unlike his usually controlled self. ‘Oh, Dinah, I don’t want to deceive you, but I must.’

  He put a hand under her chin, and tipped her face up towards him. ‘Once, long ago, I was careless with a girl who was no older than you are. She loved me, but what I felt for her was only pity and a strange kind of friendship. I didn’t mean to be careless, I thought that I was helping her, but my involvement with her led directly to her death. She was killed to punish me.

  ‘Before that…’ He hesitated. How to tell her of Susanna without revealing of whom he was speaking?

  ‘Before that…’ and she could see, looking up at him, at his face, his dear, tired face, that there were dark smudges under his eyes, a great bruise along the side of his jaw, running down into his neck and that he was speaking with some difficulty, for strong emotions were tearing at him.

  ‘Before that, Dinah, I fell in love with someone unsuitable, and she loved me, but she believed that it was wrong for us to marry because she was so much older than I was. My careless attempts to persuade her to give way to me, to marry me, resulted only in pain and distress for both of us. Because of my self-indulgence, that pain and distress lasted for years and marred both our lives—mars hers still.

  ‘The third woman who loved me, I could not love, although I liked her, and I brought misery into her life as well. You see why I tell you not to love me. The last thing I want is to bring down some sort of misery on your head because of what I may be doing.

  ‘When this is over, I promise you, I will keep nothing from you again, because I shall not embark on anything which might bring you harm, or would distress you if you knew of it. Believe me, what I am engaged in dates back to before our marriage, and I am bound by everything I believe in to follow the path I have laid out for myself. The only thing is—you must not suffer because of it.’

  Dinah could feel him trembling as he spoke. He was quite unlike the carelessly confident man whom she had known since that first afternoon in the library at Moorings.

  She said, ‘I shan’t reproach you again.’

  She did not say, I worry about you because I love you, Cobie, because he had told her not to love him. Besides, she could see quite plainly that in his present mood to trouble him with her love could only bring him more pain than he was already suffering.

  Looking down at her loving, trusting face, temptation struck him. Oh, how much he wanted to give way to her, to confide in her, to lift from his back the burden he was carrying. The burden on his conscience of yet another death. He wanted her to tell him that he could have done nothing else, that he had been right to kill Linfield to save himself and Walker.

  But it would be mere self-indulgence of the kind which he had never permitted himself. To have her carry that burden… He shuddered. Dinah felt the shudder and put out her hand to stroke his forehead. ‘You have a fever?’

  ‘Of the brain only,’ he muttered. He wanted oblivion.

  ‘Come to bed,’ he begged her. ‘Just to sleep with me. I want to hold you in my arms, nothing more, forgetting all else.’

  ‘If that is what you want,’ she said.

  Together, hand in hand, they walked upstairs, to do as he wished. To lie in each other’s arms, not to make love, but to share in comfort and companionship which sometimes are as powerful and life-giving as the act of love itself.

  Hervey Beauchamp came to see Cobie two days before Sir Ratcliffe’s action was due to reach the courts.

  He began without preamble. ‘I am here to express my master’s gratitude to you for the return of his letters, and for your conduct during this miserable business up to the present moment. All the defendants in this ridiculous action, which Sir Ratcliffe has chosen so unwisely to bring, have behaved themselves with dignity. My master would like to reward you in some way, but has asked me to inform you that, since you are an American citizen, he can do little other than express his gratitude through me. You are as aware as I am that to commit anything of what has passed to paper would be most unwise.’

  Cobie allowed himself a small smile when this noble speech reached its end. His bruises were beginning to fade, and he had completely recovered his usual controlled manner. Indeed, on the following morning, sitting with him at breakfast, Dinah had been of the opinion that she had dreamed the night before when he had held her to him so desperately, saying nothing, human contact alone being enough for him. He had reverted so completely to his normal
self that she might have assumed she had dreamed everything were it not for the bruises on his face.

  ‘A little premature, is it not,’ he said, coolly, ‘to tell me this before the action begins? Who knows, Sir Ratcliffe’s counsel might make mincemeat of us all—he has the reputation for doing so.’

  ‘That is precisely why the Prince wishes to thank you now. He feels remiss that he has said nothing direct before. He is aware, also, that you and the rest acted as you did to spare him what Sir Ratcliffe has insisted on: an appearance in court. He is grateful for that, too.

  ‘Now I must speak on another matter. I am told that an Inspector, Walker by name, from Scotland Yard, has been troubling you over the matter of the missing Heneage diamonds. I can, if you wish, muzzle the man. I know where to say the word which will compel him to retreat. I can do nothing about Sir Ratcliffe who is shouting abroad his belief that you stole his diamonds as well as joining in blackening his name. Him I cannot silence, but Walker I can.’

  ‘Oh, you need not trouble about Inspector Walker,’ Cobie told him carelessly. ‘He and I have come to terms. He no longer thinks that I stole the diamonds. My file, he informs me, is closed. And there is the end of the matter.’ He rewarded Beauchamp with his charming smile.

  Beauchamp said slowly, ‘And there is no other matter over which he is plaguing you?’

  Cobie’s eyebrows rose. ‘Is there another matter, sir? I think not.’

  Beauchamp said, apparently irrelevantly, ‘I hear that he is the man in charge of the search for the murderer of the three children whose bodies have been found in the East End. I had been hoping to hear of the arrest of…a certain person…before now. Something which might have solved all our problems, but evidence, I am told, is hard to come by.’

  ‘It always is, seeing that we neither live in the Far West of my own country, nor in Lewis Carroll’s nursery rhyme. You remember, sir? “‘I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,’ said cunning old Fury.” Life would be much easier if the constraints we bind ourselves with when trying to control crime were not so severe. On the other hand—’

  ‘On the other hand,’ returned Beauchamp briskly, ‘we might end up by hanging the wrong man in our zeal to hang someone!’

  Cobie bowed his head. It was nice to know that the powerful arbiters of English life, who mainly operated behind the scenes, were looking after the man who had looked after the Prince’s welfare. What did surprise him a little was that Beauchamp obviously knew of Sir Ratcliffe’s responsibility for the death of Lizzie and the others. Did he also know that Cobie Grant was Mr Dilley—and had burned down Hoskyns’s brothel and put him in the way of his death?

  After that, it seemed somehow inevitable that Walker should turn up at his office looking cheerful. ‘Getting nearer, Mr. Dilley,’ he said. ‘Sorry about that, sir. But I always think of you as Mr Dilley.’

  ‘No need to be sorry, Inspector. It is near enough to a name I might once have legitimately used. But if it troubles you, Grant will do. Sir seems a bit grand for a mere magician.’

  This mild joke brought a smile to Walker’s face. ‘Speaking of magicians, I met Father Anselm on my last visit to Sea Coal Street—I was after further evidence about Lizzie Steele—and he told me that you are giving a magic show for the children on Christmas Eve as part of their little concert.’

  ‘Did he, indeed?’ Cobie’s smile was genuine for once. ‘Did he invite you to it, Inspector? If he didn’t, then I will. I promise not to lure you or any of your minions on to the stage this time!’

  ‘Aye, and I’ll bring the Missis. Likes a magic turn, she does.’

  It was plain, thought Cobie, that saving a man’s life obligated both saved and saver. He was not sure who was the most in debt!

  ‘That’s not what I came to see you about, though. I’ve traced the other name you gave me. Linfield being out of the way, now, so to speak’—which was a delicate way to refer to someone whose dead body you had thrown into the Thames, Cobie thought, amused again.

  ‘Mason’s a different proposition—a sly timid man, not a thug like his dead pal. I can put the frighteners on him, and no mistake. I’ve other bits of evidence, too. Sir Ratcliffe had better look out—if we don’t get him for one death, we’ll get him for another—but before that he’ll be having his day in court. Ready for what he might throw at you, are you?’

  This was said kindly, not mockingly, as it would have come out before his and Walker’s strange rapprochement.

  ‘Been investigating me, has he?’

  ‘So I hear. A word to the wise, and all that. Forewarned is forearmed,’ and Walker put his finger by his nose. ‘Best not to be surprised by what might be thrown at you—about the past, not the present.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind, Inspector.’

  ‘Aye, you do that, Mr Dilley. You might find that you need all your magic tricks in court. Sir Halbert Parker’s a devil. I know. I’ve seen him in action.’

  Which was the same warning which Beauchamp, the grey man had given him, and his own counsel. ‘What I tell you three times is true’, his favourite author, Lewis Carroll, had written, and he must pay heed to him.

  Dinah didn’t believe Violet, even though on the same day she was telling her for the third time that her husband had been Susanna Winthrop’s lover. She had arrived in Park Lane, full of her news. ‘Have you heard, my dear? Susanna Winthrop has lost her baby. They are still betting on whether Apollo or Sir Ratcliffe was the father.’

  She was sitting at tea when she came out with this spiteful dart. She was as elegant as ever, but to a critical eye her age was beginning to show. The most critical eye was her own. It was this which was causing her venom towards Dinah, who had not only taken Cobie Grant from her, but had also turned into a rare beauty.

  Dinah put down the teapot and rose to her feet. Her voice was nearly as icy as her husband’s when he was angry. Violet was later to think numbly that she must have learned the trick from him.

  ‘I think you ought to understand, Violet,’ she said, ‘that I am not prepared to listen to abusive scandal about my husband in his house and my drawing room.

  ‘I don’t believe a word of what you are saying. I neither know nor care who was the father of poor Susanna’s baby, but I am certain that whoever he was, it wasn’t Cobie. If you wish to be received here again as other than a mere acquaintance, welcome only on formal occasions, you must refrain from making such remarks about him. I leave you to explain to Kenilworth and Rainey why this must be so if you persist in your wicked spite.’

  Violet opened her mouth—and shut it again. Her sister’s expression was implacable. Something else she had learned from him, no doubt.

  ‘Really, Dinah,’ she pouted. ‘What a fuss about nothing. I was merely telling you the latest gossip—not passing judgement on its truth!’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to hear it. I detest back-biting. I would have thought that you might be sorry for poor Susanna. I know how much she wanted the baby. She has not had the happiest of lives.’

  Dinah had realised immediately, even as he had told her, that the older woman whom Cobie had loved once, and who had rejected him, to both their subsequent pain, must have been Susanna. After his confession to her the other night, she was also sure that he was telling her the truth when he had implied that so far as he was concerned it had been all over between them for years.

  She sat down again, and began pouring tea as though nothing had happened. For the first time she had put Violet down, and both sisters knew that henceforward it would be Dinah who dictated the terms on which they lived and met, not as heretofore, the other way round.

  Oh, yes, the whirligig of time was bringing in its revenges—for Dinah, as well as for Cobie.

  Chapter Nine

  On the day that the Markendale action began the New York papers were full of screaming headlines telling how Mr Jacobus—Cobie—Grant had made a fortune in the stock market on no less than three fronts. He had brought off a coup in Public Utilities, another in
the world of mining where he was now the owner of the biggest Trust in that area, and finally one in diamonds.

  Afterwards Dinah was to think of that time in amazement, that while Cobie had been coping with Walker, with the action which Sir Ratcliffe had brought against him and doing a myriad other things, he had also been busy creating an enormous fortune as though nothing else in life mattered.

  The American papers called him ‘The Dollar Prince, part of London’s swell set, friend of the Prince of Wales and a leader of fashion’. All that, and well on the way to becoming one of the world’s richest men into the bargain—and he hadn’t yet reached thirty! The headlines became ecstatic.

  By the next day the news had reached London—to be added to the excitement there which Sir Ratcliffe’s action was already causing. Most of those interested—and the interest was enormous—were compelled to follow the case in the Press. Admission to the court was by ticket only—and the judge had been considerate enough to his family and friends to see that they were given the lion’s share of the tickets! There was also room for the Prince’s entourage and his friends—the court had been altered to accommodate him and them in comfort.

  Cobie was remembering other courts of law in which he had been present. He had never before been the accused or a defendant in a civil action such as this one was, only a witness. Dinah had insisted on attending—he had thought that morning that there was something transparent about her beauty these days. She hadn’t yet told him that she was expecting his child. Rightly or wrongly, she didn’t want to do so with the shadows of the action, and his other secret activities, hanging over them. She wanted it to be a joyful event which they could both celebrate.

  She was sitting next to Violet who had come to support Kenilworth, and was wearing her most splendid furs. They could see all the defendants as well as the Prince, Hervey Beauchamp and Sir Francis Knollys, who were both there to advise him.