The young lady threw her mother a shrewd glance. Although they used words to communicate at the topmost level, deeper down they employed an unspoken language, arising from intuitive sympathies. Diana replied to something that her mother had not actually stated in so many words.
‘So you think, Mama, that love, or romance, or whatever you like to call it, is something best left to the lady novelists?’
‘Well, what do you think?’
Lady Porteous waved her hand vaguely in the direction of some old portraits in oils that hung to left and right of the fireplace.
‘You know those pictures, Diana: they’re my forebears, decent old squires from the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries. That’s what I brought your father when I married him. Breeding and background. He brought the money – or rather, his father provided it. If you care to venture into that study of his you’ll see the only painting he has: it’s a little crude daub of his father. I don’t know who painted it, and neither does he. But then, your father doesn’t believe in history. He believes only in now.’
Diana said nothing. She examined one of two or three slender bracelets that she was wearing. There was the suspicion of a smile at the corners of her mouth.
‘You, my dear,’ Lady Porteous continued, ‘possess the three Bs: breeding, brains and beauty. Use them! You speak of romance, and so forth. Perhaps there are such things, but affection is easily summoned up for a man without debasing it with foolish sentimentality.’
There was a period of quiet, during which the dark woman and the dark young girl communed further on their mysterious deep level. Then the girl smiled very sweetly, and said, ‘Shall I tell you about the new fashions in Paris this season, Mama?’
‘Do, by all means, my love. Perhaps we can persuade your papa to give us some money. We neither of us have anything fitting to wear.’
For half an hour they talked about fashion, and then one of the footmen came in to remove the remains of their afternoon tea. When he had gone, Diana rose to her feet, and made towards the door.
‘Mama,’ she said, with a winning smile, ‘when you talk like that, all hard and cynical, it’s because you’re vexed with Papa. You pretend that you want me to enter into a mariage de convenance, which is what you did – or say you did, but if you keep on saying these things, Mama, you’ll actually end up believing them!’
*
‘Lardner,’ said Sir William to his secretary, ‘I fear I’m unpopular today on the other side of the passage. If you’re agreeable, we’ll stay here for a couple of hours, until the heat’s died down. Have you seen Diana, yet? She’s just in from Paris.’
Lardner smiled. He had indeed encountered Diana, just as she was coming down the stairs for tea. How elegant and confident she had grown! She had engagingly entwined her arm through his, and said, ‘Do come in to tea with us, Mr Lardner. Papa won’t mind, I’m sure.’ He had gently disengaged himself, and replied, ‘A charming invitation, Diana, but somehow I don’t think that Lady Porteous would approve.’ She had laughed then, and left him peering over his pince-nez at her as she closed the drawing room door.
‘Yes, Sir William, I’ve seen her. It’s difficult to realize that she’s the same person as the little thing who used to crawl along the hall passage.’
Lardner had been Porteous’s secretary for twenty-five years, coming to him just after the birth of Mary Jane. He had watched the children grow up, and had allowed himself to be teased unmercifully by them. In return, the girls had benefited from his cheerful, amused tolerance.
Ten years earlier, Sir William and Lady Porteous had asked Lardner, who, as Porteous knew, had no surviving kin, to take up residence with the family in Queen Adelaide Gate. Lady Porteous had explained to each of the girls, as they grew old enough to understand such nice distinctions, that Lardner was to be addressed as ‘Mr’. ‘Mr Lardner,’ she had told them, ‘is your papa’s secretary. He is not a servant.’
‘Yes, indeed, Lardner, time flies – and flies rather more quickly than one would like! When Baby was crawling down the passage, Lydia, too, was only a little girl. Mary Jane was eight or nine. A houseful of little girls! Ah, well. To work. The Hungerford case is behind us. Now, we must concentrate our efforts on the Mounteagle Substitution Scandal – a cunning and subtle scheme, Lardner, devised by the greatest scoundrel of our time – he had better remain nameless for the moment – and executed by James Mounteagle, a member of that most deadly of all species, a brilliant accountant with a criminal mind.’
‘And you will send him down for life, sir.’
‘Ah, but will I? You know how the substitution works. Enterprises of impeccable pedigree are infiltrated and destroyed, and their assets moved to secret locations. It has been continuing, despite Mounteagle’s arrest and detention, which means that others have been trained in the special techniques of deceit, and set to work. It’s a great, amorphous plan, Lardner, and Mounteagle’s only a part of it…. But come! To work!’ The two men turned their attention to a collection of folders arrayed on a great mahogany table, and worked in silence for some time. Then Lardner spoke.
‘Sir?’
Sir William had donned small wire spectacles to read the documents spread out before him. He peered over them at his secretary.
‘Yes, Lardner, what is it?’
‘Well, Sir William, it’s just that I can see ramifications arising from this brief that could be dangerous. To you personally, I mean. Have you considered such a contingency? Mounteagle…. Well, you said yourself that he’s only part of it.’
Sir William put the folder that he was reading aside, and gave the secretary his full attention.
‘When this case comes up for trial at the end of the month, Sir William, it will be a cause célèbre. It will, I venture to say, be the crowning achievement of your many years at the Bar. I may say, too, that you have tied up Mounteagle so thoroughly and ingeniously in this submission that, despite your suggestion to the contrary, he will assuredly go down for life.’
Sir William smiled, and relaxed deeper into his great padded chair as the secretary continued.
‘Now, sir, when you secure the downfall of Mounteagle, there will be other fruit on the tree ripe for plucking. In the normal way of things the police will sweep many of the lesser lights into their bag. But one of these people – the man behind Mounteagle, I mean – is no petty minion. I am referring to Gideon Raikes.’
‘Excellent!’ cried Sir William. ‘I thought that’s where your thoughts were leading! Very well. We’ll name names. Mr Gideon Raikes, as you know, is a respected financier, the amateur of Art, the chairman of This, and the patron of That. He is also a villain of the first water, a damned scoundrel. If I destroy Mounteagle, there will be an almighty crash, and very soon afterwards, Lardner, your precious Gideon Raikes will come tumbling down. And England will be well rid of him!’
The secretary leaned forward in his chair.
‘I must ask your pardon, sir, but you seem not to have understood me. I spoke of danger to you personally. Mr Fetlock rushed round here while you were absent, to tell me the verdict in Regina versus Davidson. Raikes will see the conviction of Albert John Davidson as a personal threat to himself, and to his safety. Society is still mesmerized by him, but a further blow of great magnitude, such as the conviction of Mounteagle, will open Society’s eyes, and send Raikes reeling.’
‘Excellent!’ cried Porteous again. ‘Really, Lardner, you renew my optimism. Raikes is more than a great criminal; he bears a personal animus against me, for reasons best forgotten, but real enough—’
‘Well, there you are, Sir William! This man is your implacable foe, and his safety is threatened. What if something were to happen to you before Mounteagle comes to trial?’
Sir William was silent for a few moments. Then he stood up, struck a favourite courtroom pose, and delivered himself of a short speech. The professional habits of a lifetime made him reply to Lardner in this way. But for all that his words were sincere enough.
> ‘My dear Lardner,’ he said, ‘I must thank you – and thank you most sincerely – for your solicitude. It does you credit, and I shall not forget it. But a Queen’s Counsel must operate without favour, and without fear. I am quite aware that Raikes may go to desperate lengths, but that will never deter me from my public duty. I will be careful, yes; I may ask the police to provide some discreet surveillance. But in the end I must take my chances with the rest of them. I must; otherwise Justice will be dethroned, and the likes of Mounteagle and Raikes will reign in her stead. And that must never be!’
Sir William sat down again, opened a folder of papers, and began to read. Soon, though, his attention wandered. What a splendid help and support Lardner had proved to be over the years! Poor fellow, he had begun his training as a solicitor, but chest illness had prevented him from taking the requisite examinations. Despite that, though, he had many friends in lesser legal circles, who kept him well informed of the current state of criminality.
Could there be danger? Would that desperate scoundrel Raikes dare to interfere with the administration of justice? It would, after all, be as well to talk to the police. Not yet, perhaps, but soon.
*
Adelaide Porteous wondered why she should have felt impelled, after Baby had left the room, to rise from her sofa and stand in contemplation of the portrait of her father, which hung in a deep alcove to the right of the fireplace. Her mind had been preoccupied with her family’s future, not her own past life.
The fine, full-length oil-painting was one of the few items salvaged from the ruin of her family’s fortunes, and brought out of storage when she and William had moved from their modest house in a street off Russell Square to the spacious splendours of Queen Adelaide Gate. Her father had been thirty years old when the portrait was painted, which was why he looked so haughty and upright, posed in front of the great oak tree near the gates of Astley Court. He wore court dress, with knee breeches and white stockings.
It was almost certainly her own fancy that made her see the weakness and indecisiveness in the artist’s depiction of her father’s face. It was as though the skilled painter had subtly hinted at his subject’s essential evasiveness in those pale-blue eyes. Or perhaps he had caught the sadness of recent bereavement?
This likeness of Sir Roderick Astley, Baronet, had been painted in 1843. In the dark background the artist had depicted a proud image of Astley Court, and it had always fascinated her to think that she had been lying in a cradle in that house while her father posed in the grounds, a shotgun cradled in his arm, and a brace of freshly-shot pheasants lying at his feet. She had been born in the January of 1843. The painting was dated the August of that year. Her father stood beneath the great oak tree. She lay in the cradle. Her mother lay in the churchyard, dead in childbirth.
All that Roderick Astley had ever possessed was pedigree. The Astleys had been at Astley Court for 600 years, in fortified castle and medieval grange, in spacious Elizabethan hall, and elegant Queen Anne mansion. Every acre of their land had been mortgaged to outsiders, and Adelaide Astley had grown up as her father, and his patrimony, declined into inevitable ruin. She had matured into a beautiful, but wild and ungovernable girl, fiercely protective of her weak, debt-ridden father.
Father and daughter lived amiably together in their shabby, half-ruinous mansion with its flaking stucco and leaking roofs, ministered to by a couple of old servants who had got into the habit of not being paid for their labours. And then, in 1865, just after her twenty-second birthday, her father had borrowed enough money to take them both to London.
He had rented one floor of a house on the fringes of Mayfair, and made his last desperate bid for solvency by launching his daughter into Society. He would provide the breeding; someone else, without breeding, could provide the money. And so, at one fateful glittering social occasion, she had been introduced to a young lawyer with expectations – Gideon Raikes.
A noise outside in Queen Adelaide Gate jarred her back into the present. She looked around the luxurious room, and felt the surface of the veneered cabinet standing below her father’s portrait, as though needing confirmation that all these things were real. Why did the very memory of Gideon Raikes fill her with such terror? A foolish question. She knew the answer perfectly well….
Why, oh! why, did her husband choose to launch a crusade against that man, of all men? Had he forgotten those early days? Was he so consumed with self-regard that he could not sense the dangerous serpent lying in wait to strike?
Adelaide Porteous resumed her seat among the cushions, and recalled her youngest daughter’s parting words. Minx! How dare she be so pert? She permitted herself an indulgent smile. Baby had never lost the power to charm and delight her. She had always had winning ways, even as a tiny little girl. After her birth, the doctors had told Lady Porteous that she would have no more children. Maybe the girl sensed her mother’s protective tenderness. What a beauty she was becoming!
Beauty…. Adelaide suddenly recalled the library of her now vanished childhood home, and the calf-bound book that she had taken down at random one day when her father was out with the hounds. Why was she becoming afflicted by these phantom glimpses of a forgotten past? Beauty…. What had that poem said, the poem in the calf-bound book?
Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour;
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair.
Arnold Box hurried down Fleet Street, which seemed to be crammed tight with a tangle of horse-drawn omnibuses. There was a certain amount of shouting and swearing, and Box could just see a sergeant of the City police beginning to stride purposefully into the carriage-way. Ahead of him he could see the familiar bridge carrying the London, Chatham and Dover Railway across Ludgate Hill, with the dome of St Paul’s looming up beyond in the haze.
The secret of finding out where Box lived, was to spot the great electric lamp hanging in front of the offices of the Daily Telegraph. When you saw that, you prepared yourself for the sharp turn left into Cardinal’s Court. Unless you knew it was there, you’d miss it. As soon as you turned into Cardinal’s Court, the clamour of Fleet Street seemed to be turned off like a tap. All you saw were the tall ranks of old, redbrick lodging-houses, with their white stone window sills and rectangular sash windows. The court was set with fine cobbles, with a central gutter, a water-trough that could be filled from a cast-iron pump, and its own particular gas lamp in the centre. The view from Cardinal’s Court comprised the rear portions of the buildings in Fleet Street, and a similar view of the less flattering portions of some decaying properties in Fetter Lane.
Inspector Box climbed up the five steep steps of number 14, and entered a narrow, cluttered hallway. He was greeted by a not unpleasing aroma of fried fish. Mackerel? No, herring. Very nice, too. ‘Furnished Lodgings for Single Gentlemen’, proclaimed the cardboard notice in the downstairs window. It sounded rather forbidding, but in fact number 14 was a cosy, cheery place. There was room for two single gentlemen. He was one of them. The other was an elderly man called Lucas, a typesetter at the Telegraph.
He was half way up the stairs when a woman’s voice called out, ‘Is that you, Mr Box? I’ll be up with your dinner, presently.’
‘It is, Mrs Peach. As promised! I’m home till six.’
Arnold Box closed the door of his sitting-room, removed his overcoat, and hung it on a hook behind the door. It was nice to be home for a while, away from the constant demands of King James’s Rents, though there were times when his work would follow him to Cardinal’s Court. He had a feeling that it would do so that day, as Mackharness had promised to send this Dr Oake to see him.
He sat down in his leather armchair near the fire. Mrs Peach always made sure that the fire was burning cheerfully at tea-time. His little round table had been set for dinner with a white cloth, gleaming cutlery, and the cut-glass cruet that he’d bought one day for 6d at a street market in Farringdon Road.
Box wondered what
the new sergeant would be like. Jack Knollys. Jack, if you please! Not John. He’d held his tongue about that matter, but everybody knew that Mackharness and the Chief Constable of Surrey were old army mates from Crimean days. Maybe Old Growler was doing a favour for a pal…. Still, it would be best not to judge this Knollys before he’d seen him.
The slide show had gone very well. He’d bring the magic lantern back tomorrow. The oak bookcase where he kept his collection of novels looked forlorn without the tin case standing on top of it. Perhaps he’d get PC Kenwright to bring it down for him. For all his size and girth, PC Kenwright had nearly died of rheumatic fever earlier in the year. His divisional superintendent had arranged for him to be taken off the beat, and given indoor duties. Mackharness had heard about him, and brought him to King James’s Rents. It was odd how a uniformed man, who’d spent most of his time on the beat, had taken to St James’s Rents immediately. Visitors often assumed that he’d always been there.
Box glanced at his crowded mantelpiece, where, among a welter of ornaments and photographs, a picture of the late Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, stood in a wooden frame, to which Box had gummed swathes of black crepe. The duke and PC Kenwright had both caught influenza in January. Kenwright’s had turned to a near fatal fever; The Duke of Clarence had died of pneumonia on the 14 January, aged 28.
What was the name of that place in Essex? Bardley. A bit of a backwoods, according to Mackharness. ‘Nearest railway station, Bishop’s Longhurst.’ Sergeant Isaac Bickerstaffe. That was the sort of name that suggested a slow-moving kind of man, the type of man you’d find in the back of beyond. Not surprising, really. You didn’t expect to find geniuses and prodigies out in the sticks.
Garrotted…. It seemed odd, somehow. This unknown lady of quality had not been manually strangled, according to Superintendent Parker’s report. She had been garrotted, choked from behind, with some kind of silken ligature. Why did he think of it as an old-fashioned kind of crime? It stirred some memory, but not from his own time as a police officer.
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