“How dare you!” she said, as Felix jumped into her path. “What is this? How dare you?”
“We have some business to finish,” said Major Vernon, getting up and pulling out a chair for her. “Please do sit down.”
“Get a constable, Mrs Bertram,” said Lady Warde. “This man is a lunatic. He attacked me! He cannot do this.”
“The girl has already gone for one,” said Major Vernon. “Why do you not sit down, my Lady? We have business and we might as well be civil.”
“I shall not speak to you!” she said, still facing towards the doorway.
“Would you not like your parcel, ma’am?” said Major Vernon. “I understand you have been anxious to get this back.”
Now she turned a little and stared at him.
He was holding up the carpet bag.
“Is this what you have been waiting for?” he said, putting it down on the table among the artificial flowers.
She dashed forward, snatched it up in her arms and held it against herself like a child she wished to protect. But after a moment, she realised something was amiss with it.
“It is empty,” Major Vernon said. “I have removed and examined its contents. All of them. Mr Benson, the magistrate, has them. Including the account book. A meticulous piece of work. He was most intrigued by it. And we identified the clasp on that pretty diamond bracelet as belonging to a member of the Wrottexter family.”
“How dare you open my baggage? How dare you? Will you never cease with your outrages, sir? Will you not desist from persecuting me? Wait until I tell my counsel of this, he will –”
“Oh, hold you tongue, you silly woman!” said Major Vernon, calmly but with great firmness. “You have absolutely nowhere to hide now. The magistrate has seen all the evidence, and he will show it to his colleagues. When the constable comes, he will arrest you and take you before them, and they will charge you with theft and that will be an end to all this nonsense.”
“No!” she exclaimed.
“And you will eat your dinner in a cell tonight, instead of at Sir Arthur’s table. And you can look forward to a sentence of transportation at least, if not the gallows.”
“You will not, you shall not get away with this!” she said.
“It is too late to protest,” Major Vernon said. “The cat is out of the bag, so to speak.”
And he went to her and with a little struggle wrested the bag from her.
“Sit down,” he said, pointing to a chair. “And be quiet. A little composure and contrition will serve you very well.”
She was breathing hard, Felix could see, and shaking her head, in disbelief.
“I shall not be treated like this,” she said. “I shall not! Do you know who I am?”
“A thief and a murderer,” said Major Vernon. “And that is how the world will know you henceforth. Your scheming has failed, ma’am. It is done with.”
She gulped as if swallowing a torrent of words and, somewhat to Felix’s astonishment, she went and sat down as she was bid. He supposed she was planning her next outburst. In the meantime a curious silence fell on the room as they waited for the jangling of the shop bell and the arrival of the constable.
Major Vernon took up one of the posies again.
“These are pretty trifles,” he said, breaking the silence and speaking as if nothing at all was amiss. “Are they for bonnets, Mrs Bertram?”
Mrs Bertram looked a little astonished by this. She was standing by the shelves, one hand pressed to her breast, her fingers nervously picking at the pleats of her bodice.
“Er, yes,” she said after a moment. “They are the latest thing from Paris. Would you like one for your lady, sir? Or two? They are two for one and six.”
Major Vernon nodded and laid down the posy.
“Unfortunately my wife is dead,” he said. “I would be a willing customer otherwise. I should have taken great pleasure in taking her home a present like that.”
“I am sorry to hear that sir,” said Mrs Bertram. “Not recently, I hope.”
“Very recently,” said Major Vernon. He sat down at the table again, and picked up a silk rose that had not yet been bound up. “She would have been charmed by these.” He laid the rose down on the green baize with great gentleness. “Lady Warde has also lost her daughter recently,” he went on.
“Oh my,” said Mrs Bertram.
“In shocking circumstances. You may have heard talk about it. She was found in a pool, battered to death and then drowned – and with a child in the womb. It is no wonder her mind is disturbed. Loss leads us into to dark places.”
“She was... murdered?” Mrs Bertram said, clutching a little harder at her bodice.
“Yes,” said Major Vernon getting up so that his shadow cast itself over Lady Warde who sat, head bent, staring down at her gloved hands. “By a brute who had led her astray. Who had led a mother and daughter astray. A deceitful, manipulative brute. Who promised an escape from a miserable life and then cheated them of it. A piece of filth, yes, ma’am?” His tone was gentle, almost caressing, and there was a hint of the mesmeric about it. Then, as if compelled by him to do so, Lady Warde lifted her eyes and looked up at the Major. “A woman must protect her child. You did exactly that. You loved her so much. No-one ever understood how much.”
Lady Warde nodded. Felix could see there was a tear glistening in her eye.
“You were a good mother,” Major Vernon went on. “The best mother she could have had. And what a fine grandmother you would have been, had that wretch not –”
“I had to,” she said in a tiny voice that was half a sob. “I had no choice.”
Felix could scarcely believe what he had heard.
Major Vernon now laid his hand on her shoulder. She still gazed up at him for one long moment longer before she pressed her hands to her face.
“And after that, it was all fear, and confusion and you did not know what you were about,” Major Vernon went on, still quiet, still so gentle. “What happened was an accident. I understand, ma’am. I understand.”
She began to weep into her hands, and then, as if collapsing under the weight of his hand, she slithered from the chair and onto her knees, bent over, and howling like an animal in pain. It was an awful sight and a sound worse still.
“Forgive me?” she rasped. “For the love of God, will you forgive me? I did not mean to... I pushed her aside, and she... ”
Major Vernon stepped back, his hand on his mouth, breathing hard.
“The stairs,” Lady Warde began again, in awful strangulated tones of agony that chilled the heart to hear them. “I did not realise she was so close to the top of the stairs. I did not mean... Dear God, I did not mean... Forgive me, sir, forgive me!”
Epilogue
Northminster, September 1840
“It’s certainly a very fine house,” Giles said. “Quite an undertaking, though.”
“Yes, but nothing I can’t manage,” Sukey Connolly said. “Now, I must show you the garden. It’s the best part of all.”
“Of course.”
He followed her along the flagged passageway to where a glazed door opened onto a very pleasant, old-fashioned walled garden.
“I had no idea the gardens in Silver Street were so large,” he said, as they walked along a lavender-edged path towards a patch of orchard.
“No, it’s a bit of a wonder, isn’t it?” she said. “My sister couldn’t believe it either. And look at these apple trees – well, I don’t suppose we will get a crop like this every year – it has been a good year for them – but these are good-keeping apples. And there is an apple store. Waste not, want not...” she said, stooping to gather up a few windfalls.
“Here, you missed these,” he said, picking up a couple for himself and dropping them into her apron, which she had turned into an impromptu container. As he did so, their eyes met but only for a moment, for she looked away nervously. At the same time, a raft of clouds blew over the sun and a grey chill descended on the garden.
“Only if you wish to tell me,” he said.
At first he had not questioned Sukey’s good fortune. Unexpected inheritances did occur, and he knew nothing of the circumstances of her late husband’s family. Her plan to put the money into a high-class lodging house, letting rooms to gentleman, struck him as sensible, even though he was surprised she had chosen to do it in Northminster. Yet she had family in the town, which was reason enough. But when he had realised that the handsome house in Silver Street belonged to the Rothborough estates, he had grown a little uneasy.
“You mean you have guessed,” she said, with a sigh, turning back towards the house and away from him. “I knew you would sooner or later. And we have been meaning to tell you, sooner rather than later, so –”
She was having difficulty with the door, now that she had her load of apples. He went and opened it for her, and she went straight into the kitchen. He stood at the door and watched as she put the apples into a bowl. She spent a few moments arranging them to her liking and then turned back to him.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said.
He had determined that he would not force either of them to say a word, should they not wish to. The moment for heavy-handed moralising seemed long past. Who was to say he would not have done the same thing himself, given the opportunity? It was not exactly immoral, for he knew the scruples of both of them, but rather irregular. Such arrangements were not that uncommon. How could he really object? He did not want to banish either of them from his existence: he had discovered that they were both too important to him for that, and he found in this attempt of theirs, something touching.
“I think I do,” she said, turning an apple in her hands, minutely examining it rather than look directly at him. “I can’t bear not to. And he...” She glanced across at Giles and went on, “Oh, this isn’t the way we wanted it, but in the end, it just seemed that any other way wasn’t –”
She turned away again and placed the apple back in the bowl.
“And at least this way,” she continued. “I have something to do. Something on my own account.”
He nodded.
“You will be your own mistress here,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, quite.”
He went and sat down by the fire, and stared into it for a long moment, considering the situation. She came and sat opposite him. It felt very comfortable to be in her presence again. He had been travelling between Northminster and London for nearly six weeks, attending endless meetings, and he was tired. He had missed her company more than he knew.
“It’s a fine house, and I am sure you will do very well with it,” he said. “Have you had many enquiries?”
“None as yet,” she said. “But I don’t want any just yet. I haven’t advertised. I wanted to get the place perfectly in order and the servants properly trained.”
“Very sensible,” he said. “And what will you charge, say for that large sitting room, upstairs, and the bedroom and closet behind?”
“It would depend. With all meals and washing, I should say about a guinea and a half a week.”
“And with a manservant – who would obviously need his own room, but who would make himself very useful about the place?”
She stared at him.
“Do you mean a particular man-servant?” she said. He nodded. “But, Major Vernon –”
“I am on the verge of losing my quarters,” he said. “I thought you might be able to help me. With this fine, empty lodging house of yours?”
“Of course,” she said. “But are you sure?”
“I owe you a great debt – both of you,” he said. “And I think my presence here might help repay it. Everything will look even more unexceptional if I am here, don’t you think?”
“That’s very true,” she said. “More than true.”
“And I shall be very comfortable here,” he said. “That I can be sure of.”
She smiled again and said, “But why are you losing your quarters at the Unicorn?”
“Because I shall soon no longer be Chief Constable.”
“No – ?” she said in astonishment. “Why?”
“I have a new job. Superintendent of the Northern Counties Criminal Intelligence Office.”
“Which is?” she asked.
“An experiment which may yet fail,” he said with a smile. “But hopefully it will not. It is an idea I had, and Lord Rothborough took it up and ran away with it.”
“As he does,” she said with a smile. “And if it was your idea, then I am sure it will be a good one.”
“We shall see,” he said. “I have a year to prove the worth of it.”
After Sir Arthur’s disgrace and resignation, the county magistrates, in consultation with the Home Office (orchestrated by Lord Rothborough) had asked Giles to take over as acting Chief Constable pending the amalgamation of the two forces. Giles had accepted, but on the condition that he could help find his successor. At that point, he had known he did not want to continue indefinitely as he had before, but what else he might do was still not clear in his mind. However, as he began to meet the men who put themselves forward for the job, and talking to them about the problems they had encountered in their own constabularies, a notion had begun to form in his mind. He had not spoken of it until one evening, dining alone with Lord Rothborough, when the cloth had been cleared away and the port was on the table, he had ventured to speculate aloud.
“What is really needed is a criminal intelligence gathering operation for the Northern counties,” he had said.
“On the lines of military intelligence?” Rothborough said.
“Yes, but a little more than that,” Giles went on. “A cadre of trained men to deal with serious crimes, complex crimes that an individual constabulary may not have the ability to deal with. There are moves to create something similar at Bow Street, I understand. But we have different circumstances in the North, different problems, different terrain. Captain Lazenby, the man I have recommended for Northminster, was extremely interesting on the subject of the lawless gangs in his district, that are causing much local misery. They are complicated in their structure, hard to break up and bring down. That is the the sort of problem we need particular skills to deal with.”
Rothborough had smiled.
“I can think of a man to put that plan into action, if he were so inclined.”
Giles had demurred in the first instance, but the idea, once articulated, had taken hold of him. He had found himself fleshing the idea out in the form of notes, and then a long letter to Lord Rothborough. He had been aware even as he wrote it that he was setting himself on an irrevocable course, because the Marquess would find his proposition irresistible. It had been like giving a child a toy.
-0-
It had been Felix’s first intention to go straight to Silver Street the moment he reached Northminster.
His journey back from Scotland had been tiresome. Over a week with his parents back in Pitfeldry even more so. His only comfort had been Sukey’s letters. Conducting a clandestine correspondence in Pitfeldry had been an interesting business. On the one hand, it had been extremely irritating to be forced into such subterfuges, but on the other, it had been oddly exciting. He had never had a correspondence like it. Sukey’s letters were so extraordinary that it almost made being away from her almost desirable.
Crossing the station yard he saw Lord Rothborough’s carriage and Lord Rothborough himself strolling across to meet him.
“I thought you were still in London,” Felix said, shaking his hand.
“I came back with Major Vernon this morning. Are Mr and Mrs Carswell well?”
“Yes, much better for being safely by their own fire,” said Felix.
“Good. Where are you heading? Can I drive you?”
Felix could not really refuse. He was burdened with luggage.
“Si
lver Street, if that isn’t too much trouble?”
“No trouble at all,” said Lord Rothborough. “In you get.”
The carriage set off and they sat for a few moments in silence.
“That is for Mrs Connolly, by the way,” said Lord Rothborough, pointing to a large hamper sitting on the floor. “You may give it to her from me.”
“What is it?”
“A surprise for her,” he said. “And tell her, if she does not care for it, it can be changed.”
“You won’t come in?” he knew he must ask, though he was desperate to see her alone.
“No, no, I must get on. I have a few more calls to pay. Take that in to her, and I will have your luggage taken to the Unicorn.”
“Thank you,” Felix said. “I was going to write to you tonight. I had a letter yesterday from –” He did not quite know how to refer to her, so hesitated before choosing “– Dona Blanca.”
“Oh?” said Lord Rothborough.
“She is sailing for the Caribbean.”
Lord Rothborough sighed.
“Of course. I hope she knows what she is doing. Well, of course she does, that is self-evident, and one should not underestimate her political instincts, but I would rather she had decided to stay in Europe a little longer. Does she give you any more information than that?”
“You can read it for yourself,” said Felix, taking the letter from his coat. The letter had disturbed him. He had written to her, in the first instance with some difficulty, on Sukey’s good advice. Yet he had not been satisfied that his letter had said anything that he felt ought to be said. In truth he did not know what it was he was he was supposed to say to her, especially as he was attempting to write it in the presence of a woman who was darning a sock of his, a woman who had taken him as her own child, and loved him without question, for all his faults.
Dona Blanca’s answer was as unsatisfactory. No doubt it had been equally hard for her to write – there was a sense of her reigning in her natural feelings, of relinquishing again any right to affection. It had ended with with the suggestion that further letters would probably not be wise. “I shall always cherish your letter but I am anxious that you should feel no obligation towards me. I have done nothing to earn it.”
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