A Murderous Relation

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  He broke a bread roll apart in his fingers, dropping crumbs to the floor. “Can I tell you a very great secret? I feel as though I might.”

  He looked from me to Stoker eagerly, and Stoker gestured in encouragement. “These are extraordinary circumstances.”

  Eddy’s expression was one of frank relief. “Yes, you feel it too, don’t you? That one might say anything here and be understood. It is quite apart from the world outside, most unreal.” He fell silent a moment, pushing the crumbs together into a pile with his finger. “I am sometimes, just very occasionally, rather afraid of it all.”

  “You should be,” I said.

  He jerked his head up, making a little moue of surprise. “Do you think so?”

  “Yes. The man who does not fear power is a man who ought not have it,” I replied. “It is a great deal of responsibility—too much for one person, in my opinion. But it is the system we have and it is for you to make of the role what you will.”

  “But what shall that be?” he asked softly.

  “What do you care about?” Stoker put in.

  Eddy considered a long moment. “I do like horses. I am very fond of polo.” He thought some more. “I like Alix of Hesse, my cousin,” he added with a blush. “She is a lovely girl, just what a queen ought to be.”

  “Very nice,” I said encouragingly. “But what of politics? What change would you like to see in the world?”

  He stared at me as if he were hearing the question for the first time, and I realized with a start it was entirely possible it was. A prince in the direct line of succession would not be so much asked his opinions as given them, and I had little doubt what reactionary views he had been fed with his daily bread.

  To my everlasting astonishment, he spoke with sudden authority. “I should like to see Ireland free.”

  Stoker dropped his pear. “You support Home Rule?”

  “I do,” Eddy said with even more conviction. “I do not know how it may be achieved, one must consult ministers and men of learning for that, I suppose. But there seems no good reason to me that they should not be able to govern themselves under supervision from London.”

  I suppressed a smile. It was not the complete and free Home Rule that the Irish themselves wanted, but he was a good deal more amenable than any other member of the royal family, I suspected.

  The mood had turned companionable; perhaps our shared captivity had created a sort of attachment that is possible only in times of peril. I had often found it to be so during the course of my travels. (A forced interlude with a Corsican bandit of great charm had ended with him vowing to give up his errant life of villainy and take holy orders. He still sent me regular missives from the monastery where he devoted himself to the making of pungent cheeses.) As I looked at this kindly, charming, and slightly moronic young man, it occurred to me that our shared blood might account just a little for our sympathy with one another.

  He turned to me suddenly, as if intuiting my thoughts. “Would you mind if I were frightfully rude? Just a little?”

  I brushed the crumbs from my fingers and sat back. “What would you like to know?”

  “How long have you known? About Papa. That he is your father, I mean.”

  “The week of the queen’s Jubilee,” I told him. “My mother died when I was very young and I was reared by friends of hers. When the second of them died, I discovered the truth about my birth. Some people had already known of it.”

  “Your uncle de Clare?” he guessed.

  “Among others,” I temporized, not wanting to invoke the names of Lady Wellie or Sir Hugo just yet. “In any event, my uncle had devised a ridiculous plot to produce proof of my parentage and put me forward as a sort of alternative queen. He thought the pope might like it,” I added with a smile, but Eddy’s expression remained sober.

  “And you refused?”

  “Naturally. I am answerable to no one,” I told him gently. “If I were queen, even a puppet, pretender queen, I should have no life of my own.”

  “As I do not,” he finished, the full mouth curving into a rueful smile. He sobered suddenly. “Wait a dashed minute—what proofs?”

  “There were documents,” Stoker explained. “A marriage contract, registry page, baptismal certificate. That sort of thing.”

  “Yes, that would be enough to put a good deal of doubt in the right quarters,” Eddy agreed.

  “But we burnt them,” Stoker told him. I did not betray the lie by looking at him. We had, in point of fact, burnt a packet of forgeries created by Stoker to serve as a facsimile of the originals. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he had switched the documents, allowing me to make a public and convincing show of burning the pages in front of my uncle while still retaining the proof of my identity. I turned to Stoker in puzzlement.

  “Uncle de Clare saw me burn what he believed were the original papers. How on earth can he expect to carry out such a ludicrous scheme without them?” I asked.

  Stoker shrugged. “No doubt he has some fresh deviltry in mind.”

  Eddy cleared his throat gently. “I was wondering, have you ever met Papa?”

  “I have not. I met your aunt Louise last year, and your mother—when was it? Yesterday? The day before? I have lost track of time now,” I told him.

  I did not mention the tiny jewel our father had sent me at the conclusion of a particularly challenging investigation. It was the nearest I had come to a gesture of acknowledgment from him, and I was not certain if I wanted more. My feelings towards my father were ambivalent in the extreme. I vacillated between craving his attention and hoping never again to hear his name. Love and hate are not incompatible emotions, I reflected. And while I neither loved nor hated him, I would never be indifferent to the man who had sired me.

  Eddy spoke again. “I will make certain you meet him when this is finished. I give you my word.”

  I resisted the urge to smile. It was the promise of a child and I would not hurt his dignity for the world. “Thank you, sir.”

  “I think perhaps, just as long as we are all captives together,” he said with a matey smile, “we should be familiar. You may call me Eddy. And you are Veronica, are you not?”

  I nodded, my throat too tight for speech.

  Stoker liberated the last apple from the tray. “Excellent. Now that we are refreshed and acquainted, let us create a plan.”

  “For what?” Eddy blinked at him, the slow blink I was beginning to understand meant that he was struggling to understand or anticipate a line of conversation.

  “For escape,” I told him with a grin. “For escape.”

  * * *

  • • •

  It will never work,” I told Stoker flatly.

  He folded his arms over the breadth of his chest and stared at me with challenge in his gaze. “Have you a better idea?”

  “No, but I suspect Huxley could conjure a better scheme,” I protested. After finishing our simple meal, we had worked together to arrange as much privacy as possible for visits to the porcelain apparatus in the corner—another circumstance that leads to greater intimacy in friendship, I have discovered—and then proceeded to create and discard twelve different plans for escape. The last was, in my opinion, entirely the worst.

  Upon searching our garments for possible tools or weapons, Stoker had unearthed the paper twist of sedative he had originally thought to administer to the porter at the Club de L’Étoile. He had hit upon the notion of putting it into the dregs of the beer in his cup and giving it to Quiet Dan when next he appeared.

  “To what end?” I demanded. “It will get us past this one door, if we are lucky. There is no way of anticipating what further obstacles lie on the other side.”

  “And we cannot discover them until we are on the other side,” Stoker pointed out with maddening calm.

  “You know as well as I that getting him to drink the st
uff will be nigh on impossible, and even if you manage it, how will you ensure that he collapses whilst he is still on this side of the door? And what of his companion?”

  He ticked off the replies on his fingers. “We shall simply have to be more clever than Quiet Dan, which I am quite certain I would be even were I in a thorough coma. As far as the timing, if I put all of the wretched stuff in at one time, it will work swiftly and we will simply have to hope that it will be swift enough. And with regards to his companion, Quiet Dan is armed and we will avail ourselves of his weapon in order to secure our release.”

  I again protested that there was no point in securing our release from the room until we knew what lay on the other side.

  “This door stands between us and freedom no matter how many others there are,” Stoker retorted. “And if we get on the other side, then there is one fewer obstacle to our release.”

  “Unless we walk directly into a nest of them,” I reminded him. “We have seen my uncle de Clare and two of his henchmen, but I counted more at the time of our abduction, and for all we know, they may be lurking just outside and prepared for such an eventuality. Quiet Dan will no doubt have told them that we loosed our own bonds.”

  “They would have done that in any event when they fed us,” Stoker said.

  While we argued, Eddy’s gaze bounced from one of us to the other, as if at a tennis match.

  “I say we are not men if we do not try,” he put in suddenly. “With apologies to your sex, Veronica. Although I daresay you are the match of any man in courage,” he added gallantly.

  I resisted the urge to remind him that men did not have a monopoly on bravery. It would only confuse him.

  Before we could agree on a plan, the door opened suddenly and Quiet Dan appeared, once more holding out a revolver to ensure our compliance. He gestured for us to move towards the bed, sitting side by side like laundry pegged out on a line. When we had arranged ourselves, he stepped aside.

  I expected my uncle to visit us again; abductors, in my experience, do love to come and chat with their captives. After the previous discussion, I was rather looking forward to it. My uncle was no great wit, but it passed the time, and I straightened my tunic, anticipating an amusing few minutes whilst I sparred with de Clare over the deluded and melodramatic plot he was intent upon pursuing.

  But the figure that moved out of the shadow of the doorway and into the light was not my uncle at all. And as I looked at the familiar face, I realized we were in far more danger than I had ever imagined.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Inspector Archibond!” Eddy exclaimed, attempting to rise, relief limned on his features. I grabbed at the cloak he wore wrapped about his person and tugged him back down as Quiet Dan lifted his gun.

  “Sit down, Eddy. I do not believe Inspector Archibond is in any way being a friend to us.”

  Archibond came forward. “Shall I apologize, Miss Speedwell? I realize these conditions are primitive, but I do hope you understand they are only temporary.”

  From the other side of me, Stoker made a low, menacing sound.

  “Mornaday told me he was like that when challenged,” Archibond said to me. “A thoroughly uncivilized fellow.”

  “I suppose that depends upon one’s notion of civility,” I remarked.

  He laughed. “I must say, I very much respect your bravado. You have a stout heart, Miss Speedwell.”

  He knelt, bringing his face on a level with mine. “I must say, I am deeply intrigued by the possibilities you present. I think we are going to get to know one another quite well in the coming weeks. These fellows will ensure you do not attempt anything unwise,” he added with a jerk of the head towards Quiet Dan and his companion, who had slipped into the room behind Archibond.

  “Wherever did you find them?” I asked sweetly. “Judging from their noses and ears, they are all former boxers. And, judging from their aroma, they are also unfamiliar with soap.”

  Archibond gave me a rueful shrug. “They belong to your uncle, my dear.”

  “I cannot believe you have thrown in your lot with such a madman,” I told him. “I never much cared for you, but I at least thought you were of sound intelligence. I see I was mistaken.”

  Eddy spoke up. “I must insist that you release us at once, Inspector,” he said. I marveled at how he managed to give the impression of looking down his nose at a man who was on eye level with us, but it was bravely done.

  Archibond shook his head. “I am afraid that is simply not possible, sir. Not at present.”

  “Have you sent the ransom note to my family?” Eddy demanded.

  Archibond’s expression was inscrutable. “No.”

  “Well, get on with it, man!” Eddy exploded. “You cannot expect us to stay here forever.”

  “I assure you, that is not at all my expectation,” Archibond said evenly.

  “What exactly is your expectation?” I inquired politely. “Please do tell us if this is a personal kidnapping or if your motives are political in nature. You have attached yourself to my uncle’s plan, so I can only assume you are in sympathy with the Irish cause.”

  Archibond shuddered visibly. “Heaven forbid.”

  “Then you are simply anti-monarchist,” I guessed. “Casting your lot with the Irish to topple the throne entirely and let us reinvent ourselves in England as a republic?”

  Archibond smiled. “Not even close, I’m afraid. But you are correct in that the present incumbent has entirely overstayed her welcome. We, all right-thinking Englishmen—and Irishmen,” he added at a low grumble from one of his ruffians, “are quite finished with being ruled over by a German hausfrau and her band of inbred ne’er-do-wells. It is high time that they were replaced. It is high time all of you,” he said with a significant glance at Stoker and Eddy, “were replaced.”

  “I told you,” Eddy muttered. “Anarchists.”

  “Near enough,” Archibond allowed. “Our current systems make a show of serving men of merit, but they are a lie. Without the proper connections, without the proper name, the proper schools, a man cannot make his way in the world according to his abilities. It is time for that to change.”

  “You ought to try America,” I suggested. “They are quite enthusiastic about self-made men there.”

  Archibond gave me a thin smile. “I would far rather reshape my own country, thank you.”

  I shook my head. “You complain you are not making your way in the world, yet your ascent through the ranks at the Yard has been meteoric, I am told.”

  “Not through my own merit,” he said in real bitterness. “I was given advancement upon the recommendation of my godfather, who was Home Secretary at the time.”

  I remembered hearing something of the sort when we had first made Archibond’s acquaintance. Something else niggled at the corner of my memory, a bit of scandal from the English newspapers when I had been abroad in Madeira.

  “The Home Secretary? The one who was forced to resign after his wife sued for divorce claiming he had another family tucked away in—where was it?”

  “Barnstaple,” he supplied. His expression was grim. “His fall affected all of us. My sister’s fiancé broke off the engagement and she has been forced to come and keep house for me instead. My own career at the Yard has been effectively ruined. I will never climb higher because I have no patron to smooth the way. Sir Hugo has made it perfectly apparent that I have achieved all I may ever hope for under his aegis.”

  “Still, to be second at Special Branch is no mean feat. Why is that not enough for you?”

  “Because everything I have worked for has been ruined by the peccadilloes of another!” he protested. “And what of the thousands of others, trammeled under the boot of tyranny, without prospect or hope of improvement? You could step one foot outside this door and meet dozens, nay, hundreds of men who will live and die in the statio
n to which they were born, never knowing what they might have been with the proper education, with training and opportunity.”

  I gave him a pitying look. “You cast yourself as a benefactor and yet I suspect your largesse will begin and end with you, Inspector.”

  “I would see this country refashioned for the good of all,” he countered coldly.

  “It is the dream of an adolescent,” I told him. “I have met one or two anarchists on my travels, and without fail they are exceedingly childish. Anarchy is the sort of idea one may embrace at university, but one would be very ill-advised to take it home and marry it. Their plots have frequently been catastrophic failures,” I added. “No one yet has brought down civilization as we know it to remake the world.”

  “It is only a matter of time before someone succeeds,” he insisted. “And I intend to be that man.”

  “So you have abducted the future king and entered into a conspiracy with an unrepentant Irish radical who would install a puppet queen? Hardly a marriage of like minds,” Stoker pointed out.

  Archibond’s gaze slid away and he did not answer.

  “How does murdering Madame Aurore fit into your scheme?” I asked.

  He did not flinch. “A necessary casualty and not a particularly regrettable one. Any further questions?”

  “I can think of a few dozen,” Stoker said amiably. “To begin with, how did de Clare find you?”

  “I found him,” Archibond said. “He very nearly died the last time he encountered the pair of you, but he dragged himself out of the Thames and his henchmen spirited him back to Ireland to recover and to brood on his losses. When I learnt of Miss Speedwell’s true identity, it was an easy enough matter to track him down.”

  “How did you discover my birth?” I demanded.

  He shrugged. “The files at Special Branch hold all sorts of secrets and Sir Hugo is often too busy to notice where I have been wandering. I studied the files in hopes of discovering something, anything, I could use to leverage myself into a better position. Those file drawers are full of nasty little scandals—adultery and profiteering and cheating at cards and gambling. But imagine my delight when I learnt your secret, Miss Speedwell. It cast all the others into gloom, I assure you.”