“Was it something in that letter?”
She nodded.
“It proved without doubt something that I had long suspected. He had been embezzling government funds, over some years, bleeding the country dry. Juan and I knew there was corruption and I always felt it was close at hand, but never could prove it. And then the proof came today, and I had it in my hand, and I could not bear it any more. I wanted it to be over. I came back here and tried to pray for guidance but there was nothing. Just this feeling of helplessness.”
She broke off and walked across the room, her hands pressed to her face.
“And Ramirez was being despicable!” she went on. “You had him so riled up, Major Vernon. You had beaten him at fencing, and then refusing to come to lunch! He was so suspicious! He started needling me, asking all these questions about you and Felix. Then he said that Felix was the image of Lord Rothborough and wasn’t that interesting? I knew then that one of his spies had found out that I had made enquiries about Felix and he was far ahead of me in the game. I knew I had to do something. Something snapped inside me. I couldn’t bear it any longer. So I came in here and got out the gun. And I went back to him in his study where he was smoking one those disgusting cigars, and –”
“You did not fire the gun,” he said.
“But I meant to. I wanted to. I threatened him. I had it pressed to his forehead. That’s why he went back out onto the balcony. I forced him out there.”
“And the balcony was unsound and he fell,” Giles said. “We all make mistakes. All of us.”
“You too?” Her hand was on his arm.
“My wife was killed,” Giles said. “Not three weeks ago. It was that day when you were first with Lord Rothborough. I found out who was responsible and I tried to force a confession out of them, but I lost my temper and overplayed my hand. I failed and now I have ruined my case. Because of my actions Laura’s killer will probably never be punished.”
He put the last piece of the gun back into the box. He shut the lid.
“If you gave me a gun and an opportunity –” he said, and brushed his fingers across the top of the box. There was an engraved plate bearing an inscription in Spanish. “What does that say?” he said.
“It says, ‘From Juan to his little dove Blanca.’” She gave a sigh. “So what shall I do now?”
“Go to Dona Clara and the children,” he said. “They will need you.”
She nodded and went to the glass where she wiped away the tears, and adjusted her lace cap. He opened the door for her and she walked past him, her carriage now that of a queen about to make an entrance. In short it was a miracle of self-possession.
He followed her the few paces into the central reception room. The little boy who had showed him the way had not gone back to his mother but was standing there, waiting for Dona Blanca. He ran towards her as she came in and she fell to her knees and took him into her arms, whispering to him in Spanish and letting him cry out his heart.
That, he told himself firmly, was enough to justify his actions.
Chapter Forty-three
“That mark on his forehead,” said Felix. “I have an idea what it might have been.”
“It was merely a blemish,” Major Vernon said, with a suspicious lack of curiosity.
They were driving back to Ardenthwaite at a little past seven. It felt like midnight.
“It is the sort of mark a pistol might make. What if he were forced out onto the balcony and then fell?”
Major Vernon did not answer. Instead he began to massage his temples.
“I noticed a box on Dona Blanca’s dressing table,” Felix went on. “That looked like a pistol case.”
“What on earth would she be doing with a pistol case on her dressing table?” Major Vernon said. “It was, no doubt, just a box.”
“Did you not notice it, sir, when you were talking to her in there?”
“Sometimes there are questions that we should not ask aloud. That you certainly should not. Draw what conclusions you like, but keep them to yourself. For the sake of the lady in question, for your own sake –” Major Vernon made a gesture that suggested the sweeping away of some debris from a table top. “Please?”
It was not a command. It was a pained request, almost a supplication.
Felix felt his mouth dry. What exactly had passed between Dona Blanca and Major Vernon? They had been alone together for a strangely long interview.
He, for his part, had been astonished by her composure on learning the news. She was shaken, it was clear enough, but the needs of the others had been her first priority. She had brought a sort of order to the whirlwind of hysterical chaos that that Dona Clara’s extreme distress had unleashed into those about her. She knew how to deal with them all – be comforting and calm, give orders and make arrangements. She became the centre of authority. It was easy to see to how she had got her reputation as a leader.
He had not exchanged a word with her alone. He had only been able to take a public leave of her with all the usual formality, and that had felt entirely inadequate. He had been tempted to run back to her, afraid for her in some fashion, his heart stirred up in a way he could scarcely deal with.
The Major had leant back into the corner and was massaging his temples again with his hand.
“Your head, sir, is it troubling you again?”
“A little.”
“I can give you something for that when we get back.”
“Thank you.”
He did not raise the subject again on the drive back and in fact they spoke little more. The Major either slept or feigned sleep, and Felix was left with his own turbulent thoughts as the carriage crawled back to Ardenthwaite. Through the window he saw the country fade into a blackness that matched his own mood. As they finally turned up towards the house and plunged into the shadowy tunnel of elms, he wondered if he could bear to go in. Could the carriage not simple rattle and jolt on for ever into some kind of oblivion where it was not necessary to act or think or, worse still, feel?
For Sukey would be gone the day after next. She would have packed her boxes already. It was too much to hope that she had done it with tears in her eyes. She would have no tears for him, not after what he had said.
How easy it was to break a thing: a neck, a back, a heart. A flower trough and a faulty balcony could kill a man, and a careless show of temper could break a woman’s heart in half. How could he have said that to her?
He remembered her misery at hitting him, her horror at herself for what was only a little slap, which he had deserved. But what he had done was far worse.
He followed Major Vernon into the house and went with him upstairs. His condition was a little patchy but nothing to alarm. His duty there discharged, he did not go downstairs as he ought to the little parlour where his parents would be sitting after dinner, but into the library where he intended to smoke many cheroots and drink brandy until he fell asleep in his chair.
And there he found Sukey, sitting in the large tapestry covered wing-chair, where he had himself sat for many hours, nursing his own wounds. She had huddled herself up in it, her knees drawn up under her chin, her skirts wrapped tightly about her and looking wretched and yet so lovely that he was in that moment both miserable and full of impossible hope.
She stumbled up from the chair at the sight of him, and was at once making for the door.
“I thought you would be downstairs,” she said, slipping past him.
“I can’t face them,” he said.
He wanted to catch her arm and stop her from going. But he did not quite dare. Instead he blocked her way and gestured back to the chair.
“Please, let me apologise, at least? Before you go –” She stood there knotting her fingers, avoiding his gaze. “Please?”
At length she nodded, and then went back to the chair and sat down with more decorum this time, perching herself on the edge, ready for flight. Felix was minded to kneel down by her, but thought that he ought not alarm her with such a
dramatic gesture. So he took a chair and placed it nearby. He found he too was perching, his nerves now making him shake. He had the sense that this was fate giving him an excellent hand and that he must play it right or all was lost.
“What I said to you,” he said, “was unforgivable, and I do not expect you to forgive me for it. Please just understand how much I regret every word of it and I am so sorry, so very sorry –”
“I do forgive you,” she said and then sighed. “Of course I do. What you said was perfectly understandable given what I had just said. I deserved it.”
“No, no, you didn’t, not at all,” he said, pulling his chair closer. “How could you have deserved that?”
“Because I shocked you. And you obviously had not even let such an idea cross your head and I had been... well, thinking of it even before your father mentioned it.”
The honesty of this was humbling.
“I have had such ideas before,” he said. “In relation to other women. But with you, it just seemed –” He broke off. “I want you as my wife, Sukey, not my mistress.”
“Then we had better never see each other again,” she said. “Because I can’t be your wife and life is not a fairytale, is it?”
“No,” he said, thinking of the day’s events. “No, it certainly is not.” He took a deep breath. “Maybe we must take our happiness where we can find it. Maybe –” He reached out for her hand. “I can’t bear the thought of never seeing you again, and if this is the only way, then –” He bent over and kissed her hand. “We will do it.”
He straightened and looked her in the face. There were tears in her eyes and she nodded solemnly and pressed her hand to his cheek.
“We shall,” she said. “Somehow or other.”
Chapter Forty-four
“Are you not supposed to be resting, Major Vernon?” said Sukey Connolly, meeting him in the hall, dressed to go out.
“I have got my taste for freedom again,” he said, taking up his hat. It was true his room had felt like a prison last night. His mind and spirits had been churned up but his trains of thought had been curiously productive. The headache which tormented him for some hours seemed to have made his faculties work harder. “I am only driving into Market Craven to do a little business. Holt will be with me.”
“Have you told Mr Carswell?” she said.
“I haven’t seen him yet this morning. Therefore he cannot forbid me, can he?”
“No,” she said with a slight smile. “He cannot.”
“Do you have everything you need for your journey?” Giles said. “Do you have any commissions for me?” She shook her head. “It is a shame you have to leave so early, but I understand that such good opportunities do not come along often. Your brother-in-law was very to the point about it in his last letter.”
“He would be,” she said. “It’s because my sister gets anxious about me. I’ve always been something of a bother to her, I suppose. They are glad to know I’ll be out of trouble.” Then after a moment she added, “You’ve not mentioned to him the business with Mr Carswell?”
He shook his head. “That was not my business to tattle about.”
“Thank you,” she said and glanced away, her expression a mixture of pain and embarrassment.
It was a sorry business, but it was to be hoped that separation would, in time, lessen the attachment. Yet it was a cruel remedy and he wished, for both their sakes, it could be otherwise. He knew he would feel her absence keenly. She was a kindred spirit.
They spoke no further for Holt came in, announcing that the gig was ready.
Market Craven was a picturesque town in the process of slithering from pleasant obscurity into something quite new and altogether dismal. Four extremely large textile mills had been established there within three years, and the place showed abundant signs of all the human misery and vice that came with a supposed advance in prosperity: old stone houses, falling into disrepair and packed to the rafters with the hands who had swarmed into town to find work. The old town sewers were not equal to this and on a fine day at the end of July, the place stank to high heaven. It was far worse than Northminster, where they had begun to address the problem in at least some districts of the city.
“We are a little well-dressed for this, perhaps,” Giles said, as Holt drove the gig along a dreary thoroughfare where a ragged populace filled the pavements.
Holt, who took great pride in his appearance, shrugged.
“Those girls were high class tarts, sir,” he said. “They didn’t climb out of the gutter. No need for us to get into it.”
It was Giles’ intention that morning to attempt to locate the two prostitutes he had seen with Edgar and Don Luiz at the dog fight. He hoped they might have witnessed the transaction with the bracelet, and perhaps could give some information about its theft. It was a quest that could easily be perfectly futile, but Giles felt he must attempt it.
They turned into a broad street leading to the Market Place where the post office and the principal inns were to be found. Here it was more orderly and prosperous looking.
They left the gig at the Saracen’s Head, which was clearly the best inn in the town, and Holt went to make his enquiry in the tap room, while Giles put his own discreet questions to the waiter in the coffee room. Between them they were able to establish where they should go next. The suggestions had been a house in Water Street, and several alleys in the vicinity of the Corn Exchange. Giles elected to investigate the first.
“Ask for Mrs Honeywell,” said Holt, grinning broadly.
“That can’t be her real name,” Giles said. “I hope to God it is not.”
The house was shuttered and drowsy looking. Noontide was not the most auspicious time to call, perhaps, but the maid who opened the door to him took in every detail of his appearance with a practised glance and admitted him without hesitation.
She took him upstairs to a large sitting room, where the midday heat was much in evidence, and the sun came in only through chinks in the shutters, making it hard to see anything much. Here sat four females in their wrappers playing cards. Three of them rose at once and left the room, leaving only one at the card table. From her appearance Giles guessed this was Mrs Honeywell. She was handsome, but hard-looking, and she gave him the same careful appraisal as the maid.
“Interesting time to call, sir,” she said, gathering up the cards.
“Forgive me. I was bored,” he said, sitting down opposite at her. “And I have heard excellent things about this establishment.”
“Have you?” she said. “From whom?”
“Acquaintances,” he said.
She shuffled the cards with a deft hand.
“And I think I saw some of your young ladies at Byrescough the other week,” he added.
She furrowed her brow.
“Perhaps you did,” she said after a moment.
“Will you let me have a look?”
“Show me you are in good faith, sir,” she said.
He put a sovereign on the table and her manner visibly softened.
“You will not be disappointed, sir,” she said, getting up. She rang a bell. There would be wine coming soon, he knew, and in the rooms beyond the girls would be getting ready to reappear, in quite a different guise.
He had been in such places before. Indeed at one time he was shamefully familiar with them. He had been inducted into them as a raw ensign and continued, as his finances permitted, until about the age of four and twenty. But then a fellow officer contracted a particularly nasty case of the clap and almost died from it. That had cured him of the habit.
But, here, he found that that old fascination resurrected itself, despite his better efforts. It was a lamentable stain on his character he knew, but one which he could not erase. Although he had a legitimate reason to be there, in that stuffy parlour, waiting for the girls to appear, the sordid excitement of it all held him in its claws.
He felt dangerously weak and desirous, as if he were there to make a transaction,
not find a witness. His body suddenly craved the distracting pleasures of congress and the brief, stupefying peace that came after.
His wife was dead, taken from him by malicious fate, just as he had begun to know what it was to love her again, and now what was left but the yawning grave? He was wretched and hungry for oblivion, and now the girls came in, their dull wrappers exchanged for more luxurious silk ones. They smiled at him, offering him a salve for his pain. How easy it would be, and how in that moment he craved it, although at the same time his disgust at himself was considerable.
“Would you mind opening the shutter a little?” he said to Mrs Honeywell. “I can’t see properly.”
She obliged and they all stood blinking as the bright sun filled a portion of the room, catching their rouged cheeks, carefully tweaked ringlets and the trinkets that they wore. These girls were pretty scraps, plump and clearly not ill-treated, not like the desperate creatures who found their way into the cells at Northminster having been caught soliciting. One of them was most certainly the girl who had been with Edgar and who then went to sit on Don Luiz’s knee.
“That one,” he said, pointing her out to Madam Honeywell.
The girl led him down the passage way, up a few steps into a room which was dominated by a large bed in glossy mahogany, hung with fleshy pink silk. All the furnishings were quite new and the linen looked spotless. Mrs Honeywell was clearly doing well.
He wondered how much money this little business was pulling in. He would not have thought there was enough money in Market Craven for such a high class operation, but it was a discreet location, and men might come considerable distances for pleasure under the guise of business, especially with the railway. A man would not raise any suspicions with his wife with a journey to such a town. If she was at all upset, she could be pacified by a gift from the glossy-looking haberdashery in the square next to the Saracen’s Head. A large sign had advertised that it sold ‘French silks, Italian gloves and all the fashionable novelties.’
“What’s your name?” he asked the girl.
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