The Spy's Kiss

by Nita Abrams

  Meyer got up, crossed over to the door, and knelt by the handle. He stayed there for a moment, pressing and releasing the catch, and then vanished into the side room. “No sign of tampering with either lock,” he said, returning. “Who else in your house has the keys, Barrett?”

  “No one! And since the arrival of these letters, both keys have been on my person at all times.”

  “I have a key,” Bassington interjected. “But only to the safe, not the room.”

  “Where is it?” Meyer said.

  The earl patted his waistcoat pocket. “Here.” Then he went back to the papers.

  “Quite the little mystery.” Meyer sat down next to Barrett and grimaced. “A very inopportune time for a puzzle of this sort.”

  Barrett sighed. “I’ll resign, of course. But that isn’t the real question. The real question is, who has the letter?”

  “I already told you who has it,” muttered Bassington. “That damned French trickster Clermont. I should have had him arrested last night as soon as he confessed his lies.”

  “Colonel White has sent someone to keep him under observation,” Barrett said. “It’s true one of my footmen saw him near this room on the night of the ball. Suppose he doesn’t have it, though. Suppose the thief is someone else. What is he likely to do with it?”

  “Sell it,” said Meyer promptly. “That letter would be worth a fortune to either Metternich or Napoleon. Whoever has it can name his price. It’s clear proof the Tsar is planning to double-cross Austria once Napoleon formally cedes his eastern territories.”

  “No, it isn’t clear proof,” said Bassington, looking up from the folder. “It isn’t signed.”

  Barrett made an impatient gesture. “What of that? We have other letters in the same handwriting on the same subject with the signature appended.”

  “Correct,” said the earl. “We have them. I’ve gone through and counted. They’re all here. Clermont is missing a crucial piece of evidence. Everyone suspects the Tsar is negotiating with us; an unsigned letter cannot do much more damage than rumor has already. What will Clermont’s employers do? Compare the letter with samples from every man in the Russian court they suspect might be acting as the go-between? And, I might add, our man is one of the more unlikely candidates. So far as we know, only my cousin discovered his identity, and he died ensuring that it remain secret.”

  Meyer said slowly, “Does anyone know that the letter is missing, Barrett? Besides White and the three of us?”

  Barrett thought for a minute. “I asked Crosswell to ascertain if anyone had been seen lurking near the house last night, but I didn’t tell him why. What are you thinking?”

  “I am thinking that the thief has not read the entire letter carefully. He may not even realize it is not signed. He saw the first paragraph, which admittedly is damning, and grabbed the letter and ran, thinking he had his prize.”

  “And?” Bassington said impatiently.

  “And, if he has no notion we have discovered the loss, he may come back for more.”

  The luggage was all packed; indeed, everything except a small cloak bag was already in the dispatcher’s office at the White Horse Inn, ready to be loaded into a post chaise early tomorrow. Julien should have been in the White Horse Inn as well, sleeping in the very expensive room he had hired for the night. Instead he was halfway across London, his coat collar turned up against the rain, staring at the narrow passageway which ran between Sir Charles Barrett’s house and the adjacent one in Harland Place.

  This morning, racked with guilt at the wounds he had inflicted on Serena and Simon, he had thought himself cured of the obsession which had ruled his life. He had looked back at his misguided quest to find and confront Bassington and had sworn to forget about the past. Then Serena had appeared and presented him with a new and rather unappetizing candidate for the role of father, and within an hour he was wondering what the man had really been like. By midafternoon he was trying to recall every scrap of information about the mysterious Charles that he could. By dinnertime he was dwelling on the thought of those tantalizing diaries. He even knew where they were, as it happened: they were in Barrett’s study. Was it not at least worth attempting to open the window-door with his knife, as Simon had? What if the diaries described his mother? What if this Charles, blackguard though he was, had really loved her? He had spent every night since learning Bassington’s name in the belief that his father was an honest, respectable man who had done one bad deed. What if the reverse were true? What if his father was a villain who had briefly dreamed of marrying a good woman? Wasn’t that something he ought to know, for his own sake and the sake of the dead man?

  He looked around the little cul-de-sac. It was deserted. Moving slowly, he sauntered past the front of Barrett’s house. There was still no one in sight. He hesitated one more moment, and then turned into the black gap between the houses.

  It was much darker than it had been the other night, and the passage was full of puddles. Rain dripped off the eaves and windowsills on both sides and somehow managed to find the back of his neck. He almost walked past the little window, it was so hard to see anything, but his eye caught the shimmer of glass and he stopped.

  He looked up. There were no lights in the upper windows on either side. No lights that he could see at the back of the house, by the kitchen. It was past midnight, after all, on a Sunday night. He felt for the join between the window and the wall and after a few false starts managed to insert his knife into the space. He slid it along, slowly. Nothing happened. Again, in the opposite direction. Still nothing. He tried poking the knife farther in at various intervals. No good. Instead of frustration or disappointment, he realized that what he was feeling was relief. That made him angry. All very well to pursue a father who was a respected statesman, a scholar, a sire to boast of. But now, when it appeared his father was in fact a criminal, he was happy to abandon the search? That was cowardice. Gritting his teeth, he stuck the knife in as far as it would go and dragged it across, scraping his thumb on the stone until it bled.

  When the door came open, he was so startled he nearly shut it again as he flinched. The muted click of the spring releasing had been inaudible in the noise of the rain. As before, the side room was dark and silent. He hoisted himself in, this time leaving the outer door open; he didn’t want to be locked in again. Quietly, he crept across and opened the door into the study. There were no lights in the hallway outside tonight. He would have to use his small lantern. It took him a minute to get it lit; the wick was a bit damp. Then he swung the light up in a circle, looking around the empty room.

  He saw the books immediately. They were piled on a table just to the left of the outer door, unmistakable in their red leather bindings, stamped with a crest he knew all too well. They were virtually identical, in fact, to the journals of the late earl. Holding his breath, he crossed to the stack of books and picked up the first one. It was for the spring of 1807. The next one was for the winter of 1810. He opened another, and another. The oldest was from 1799. Cursing, he looked around for more volumes. There were none in sight. There was, however, a crate beneath the table. He knelt, and opened it. It was full of red leather books.

  And then he heard, too late, a soft footfall behind him and felt the barrel of a gun pressed into the side of his neck. “Don’t move,” said a stern voice. “Barrett! LeSueur! I have him.”

  The door to the hall opened; suddenly there was light, lots of light, two unshielded dark lanterns shining straight at him. The gun left his neck, and its owner stepped over towards his companions from the hallway. Julien blinked, and raised his own lantern. Facing him, looking very grim, were Barrett, LeSueur, and Nathan Meyer. LeSueur was in uniform.

  The young officer straightened and cleared his throat. “Mr. Clermont,” he announced, “You are under arrest.”

  Of course he was under arrest. He wished Meyer had just shot him. He got to his feet and looked at Barrett. “Will it—will my name be released? Is this public?”

&n
bsp; “What is your name?” asked Meyer. “Your full name. And title.”

  “Louis-François Julien de Bourbon-Condé, Marquis de Clermont,” he said wearily. He looked again at Barrett. Damn it, did he have to beg?

  Barrett understood. “Is there a name you would prefer that we use for the records?”

  He shuffled mentally through his estates until he found an obscure one. “Savignac. Louis de Savignac—no, just Louis Savignac. That will do. If this can possibly be kept from my grandfather, I would be very grateful.”

  Meyer gave him an odd look.

  “Well, Mr. Savignac,” said LeSueur. “We don’t take parole from scum like you, even if you are a marquis. If you would condescend to stretch out your hands in front of you, I can fasten these manacles and we can be on our way.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “The Tower.”

  “The Tower?” Was this some sort of nightmare, nurtured by too many evenings with Shakespeare’s history plays? “I thought it wasn’t used as a prison any longer.”

  “It isn’t, for ordinary criminals.” LeSueur snapped the locks closed on the bracelets. “But in any case you will not be held with the other prisoners there. For situations like this, we find it convenient to use our own cells. If you are truly concerned about your privacy, you should be very happy with your situation there. No one will ever know where you are, or what has happened to you, unless we choose to tell them.”

  24

  Scions of a noble house, especially one of great prominence and antiquity, must always be conscious that they represent not only themselves, but all the men bearing their name, whether long dead or yet to be born.

  —Precepts of Mlle. de Condé

  The human mind is a complex and devious entity. Even intelligent, well-educated people are often capable of holding two contradictory sets of beliefs simultaneously. They merely store them in different areas of their brain. For example, if someone had asked Julien Clermont the following morning what crime he would be charged with, he would have answered “trespassing.” Or perhaps, “trespassing and attempted burglary,” although in his own mind he had more right to those diaries than anyone else now living. If that same person had then asked him which official normally arrests persons charged with such crimes, and where the accused man might be incarcerated, he would have answered “the watch” and “Newgate.” He had been living in England nearly his entire life, after all. He was not unfamiliar with English law, or with London’s ramshackle system of policing its streets. And yet it didn’t occur to him to wonder why he had been taken into custody by a military officer, why he had been subjected to a humiliating and very thorough search of his person, why his cell was not a cell but a small windowless room which had clearly been recently used as an office—it still had a desk and chair in it—and then hastily furnished with a pallet and latrine bucket.

  Admittedly, he had only had five hours of sleep in the last two days. He was unwashed, unshaven, and hungry. But when two sentries unlocked the door of his room at nine o’clock and escorted him downstairs, he still expected to be taken before a magistrate. He expected to be fined, possibly deported—although the real penalty, to his way of thinking, would be the eternal contempt of everyone he had ever cared about, from his grandfather all the way to Serena Allen.

  The first clue that his expectations were wrong came when the sentries opened the doors of what he had thought would be some sort of courtroom. Instead he was shoved into what looked like a small council chamber. There was a long table, with chairs on both sides. On the left side were three officers: LeSueur, the younger Meyer, and an older man with a large mustache he vaguely recalled seeing at the ball. On the right side were Sir Charles Barrett, Nathan Meyer, and a smooth-faced man he did not recognize. At a clerk’s desk in the far corner another man, perched on a stool, was laying out pens and a blotter next to a large notebook. There was no judge. There was also no chair for Julien.

  The sentries withdrew and closed the doors behind them; in his corner, the clerk held his pen poised over the blank page of his notebook. Julien stood, weary and heartsick, looking down the table at the faces of the six men.

  Barrett raised one eyebrow at the man with the mustache. “Colonel White?”

  “I’ll let you do the honors,” the older man said. “You caught him in your house, after all.”

  Barrett nodded. “Well, Mr. Clermont,” he said, in a calm, pleasant voice which Julien found unaccountably terrifying, “I see no reason to beat about the bush. You are an intelligent man, and I’m sure you are aware that the game is up. The letter wasn’t on your person, and when we searched your luggage early this morning at the White Horse we did not find it there, either. The matter is too important to me to worry about justice in its pure form. If you will assist us in recovering it I will guarantee your safety.”

  “Letter?” Julien looked at LeSueur, who was regarding him as if he were a poisonous reptile, at the older Meyer, and then back at Barrett. “What letter?”

  “Don’t waste our time, Clermont,” said the colonel. Julien recognized the voice now; it was the man he had overheard in Barrett’s study the night of the ball. “We could just execute you out of hand, you know. We have enough evidence to hang you five times over.”

  “For trespassing?” Then even his tired brain began to function at last. Colonels did not convene tribunals in the Tower to interrogate trespassers. He should have known what was happening the minute he saw Nathan Meyer pointing the gun at him last night. Resignation and despair suddenly gave way to rage. Julien swung to face his tormentor. “This is your doing, isn’t it? You’ve persuaded them I’m some sort of spy.” He pointed an accusing finger. “You turned Bassington against me; that’s why he wouldn’t listen to me the other night. I would have called you out after your visit to Boulton Park, but I thought it beneath me to kill a vulgar old catchpoll for being overzealous at his job. I let it go. I let it go, but you didn’t. You kept after me, had me followed. And now you’ve somehow arranged this farce of a tribunal.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Julien saw LeSueur forcibly restraining the younger Meyer, who had risen halfway out of his chair.

  Barrett said, still in that same calm voice, “Mr. Clermont, you can hardly accuse Mr. Meyer of overzealousness at this point. Bassington has told us about your stratagems to gain access to Boulton Park. You were seen lurking near my study on Friday night during the ball. Saturday night you were seen in the vicinity of my house again, both by Bassington’s guard and by a link-boy. Sunday morning I find an important letter missing from my safe. Sunday evening you reappear in my study—demonstrating, I might add, an intimate knowledge of that room and its special features. It is useless to protest your innocence.”

  He retorted hotly, “It may be useless, but what else am I to do? I am innocent.” Then, recalling his activities of the past month, he added, “Innocent of stealing papers, at least. I do not deny forcing my way into the earl’s household. I regret it now deeply, but I believed I was justified at the time.”

  “Do you deny that three of us here found you in my study last night?”

  “No.”

  “How did you know of the hidden entrance?”

  He tried to keep his face from shouting “Simon.” “I accidentally witnessed someone using it and deduced where it led.”

  “What were you looking for there?”

  “It is—a personal matter. A family matter. Related to my purpose in visiting Boulton Park.”

  “A family matter? In my study?” He sat back. “Very well, what was your purpose at Boulton Park?”

  “I am not at liberty to say. I confided my reasons to Lord Bassington.”

  White leaned across the table and said in a low tone to Barrett, “Did you invite Bassington this morning?”

  “Yes, but he refused to come,” Barrett said in the same low voice. “He is very distressed, as is the countess. He gave me a statement, however, which does not support Mr. Clermont’s v
ersion of the facts.” He turned back to Clermont and raised his voice again. “Do you deny that you were also in my study late Saturday night?”

  “I do.”

  “You were observed in Manchester Place at three in the morning. A link-boy then saw you emerge from the private walkway by my house, a walkway which leads to the concealed entrance to my study, two hours later. Mr. Meyer saw you approach by that same route last night and gain entrance to my house. Do you still deny you took that letter?”

  “I know nothing of any letter. Yes, I deny it.”

  “Where were you, then, during those two hours?”

  With Serena Allen. Coming just one step short of duplicating his father’s crime against his mother. He couldn’t think of a plausible answer, and he certainly wasn’t going to tell the truth. He settled for the simplest lie. “I went for a walk.”

  “In the middle of the night? A two-hour stroll which miraculously wound up one street away from where it had started? Nowhere near your own lodgings, or any neighborhood where late-night entertainment is available?”

  “Yes.” He prayed that Barrett would not ask him to describe his route.

  “Did anyone see you while you were walking? Anyone save the guard and the link-boy?”

  “No.”

  White made an exasperated gesture. “Mr. Clermont, do you think we are children? Do you understand the consequences to yourself of this absurd pretense? You are accused of a capital crime. You have been offered a very generous inducement to cooperate.”

  Pride goeth before destruction. “I went for a walk,” he said, setting his jaw.

  Barrett sighed and looked at LeSueur. The young officer stood and opened the door, beckoning to the two sentries. Julien found himself seized, not gently, and marched down three more flights of stairs to a small basement room. It looked more like the Tower he had pictured: stone walls, stone floor, small barred window. LeSueur kept him there for what seemed an eternity, still on his feet, hungry and thirsty and dizzy with fatigue, asking the same questions over and over again. By the end he had condensed all his answers down to two phrases: “I am not at liberty to say” and “I went for a walk.”