The Angel Court Affair

by Anne Perry

  “Why?” Vespasia said practically. “How would kidnapping her serve him? Because she is an embarrassment to the family? That is absurd. Of course he would rather she had remained in Toledo and not brought her crusade to England. But not to the point of committing the gruesome double murder of her largely innocent followers. If he is involved, perhaps it is because someone else is exerting an irresistible pressure on him, Thomas.”

  “I know he is terrified, but I don’t know exactly of what,” Pitt answered slowly, considering Vespasia’s words. “I saw his face when he spoke on the telephone, just as I was leaving his office. I had told him about Sofia’s habit of helping fugitives, penitents in trouble.”

  Vespasia’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”

  Pitt thought back to Hall’s expression. “I think he suddenly realized something rather than intending malice from the beginning. I had the impression of a man unexpectedly and severely out of his depth. You could be right that someone has made use of him….”

  “Hall is very traditional, even for a banker. Has always done the appropriate things, since the day he was born,” Narraway said. “It seems unlikely anyone could blackmail him.”

  “He is appropriate as far as you know,” Vespasia said with a smile. “Perhaps he is rather better at concealing his adventures than we suppose?”

  “I have never been as sensitive to the whispers of society as you are,” Narraway answered, smiling back. “What do you hear of Mr. Hall?”

  “Very little,” she admitted. “He is a widower of impeccable reputation, which is probably well deserved. His passions seem to be entirely of the mind. He is well educated, a natural scholar who has found his field and remained within it. I think he is virtuous, in Society’s sense. He has neither the imagination nor the appetite to step out of it.”

  Narraway winced. “What a complete damnation in one sentence.”

  Pitt agreed with him, but even the most tedious of people could surprise at times, if the spur were sharp enough. He could not forget the terror in Hall’s eyes. “He is very afraid,” he reiterated.

  “Interesting,” Narraway murmured. “I wonder what would frighten Barton Hall.”

  “Before I find that out, I must find someone to take this message to Nazario Delacruz in Toledo,” Pitt replied. “Or wherever he is. Please God he is not the man behind all of this.”

  Vespasia winced. She did not need to speak the thoughts that filled her mind; they were visible in her face: the knowledge of love, the belief in it. If Nazario was involved in Sofia’s kidnapping, it was the ultimate, terrible betrayal.

  Narraway glanced at her, then at Pitt. “I’ll go myself,” he said firmly. “I haven’t used my Spanish in a while, but it’s pretty good. And I could pay for a Spaniard to assist me. I have before. But Pitt, none of this makes sense with the information we have so far. There has to be at least one major factor we have no idea of yet. Do you know anything about Nazario Delacruz?”

  “Not enough,” Pitt admitted. “That is one of the things you will need to find out. Is the story true that Hall told of Delacruz abandoning his wife and children for Sofia? Is his family involved in this? Or his dead wife’s? They may well hate Sofia, but this seems an extraordinary degree of vengeance, and oddly timed. The wife did not die recently. And the two other women, Cleo and Elfrida, were in no way involved in Sofia’s personal affairs, so why kill them, and so abominably?”

  “I will find out all I can,” Narraway promised.

  “We will,” Vespasia corrected him.

  He looked at her, indecision naked in his face. It was not what to say so much as how to say it. “I will need to travel rapidly, and not necessarily in the most comfortable way possible,” he began. “And anyone who would murder two women simply as an example of his intent is extremely dangerous. I think…”

  “That you can do it better on your own?” Her silver eyebrows rose in surprise, and a degree of amusement, but there was no yielding in her face.

  It was clear to Pitt that this was one of the testings between them, now that the bond was so much closer than before. Vespasia was not used to anyone guiding her or telling her what she may do, still less what she may not. There was more than pride or practicality involved now; there were deep and complex emotions. She clearly had every intention of going to Spain with him, yet she needed to find a way to do it that did not openly defy him.

  And he needed to yield without appearing to do so.

  “Are you afraid that I will hinder you?” she said gently. “Or that your concern for my safety will be a distraction?”

  “You are always a distraction,” he said with a smile that held a certain pleasure, even a pride in it.

  Pitt, watching and keeping silent, was suddenly very aware how deeply Narraway was in love with Vespasia, committed for the first time in his long and varied life. It was new to him, dangerous in that it could wound him in a way he had never known before, and full of pitfalls for precisely that reason.

  Suddenly Vespasia’s pride vanished. “It is far too important for us to disagree over,” she said quickly. “This poor woman’s life is at stake in the most urgent and terrible way. Neither your feelings nor mine are important by comparison. If I can help, then you must allow me to come. My Spanish is more fluent than yours, and I have friends in Madrid and Toledo. On the other hand, if you need to move more swiftly than I can, or my presence will be a hostage to fortune for you, then I will remain in London. Not that London seems to be so very much safer, certainly not for poor Sofia.”

  Narraway drew in a deep breath, and then let it out in a sigh.

  “I will make arrangements immediately. Prepare to travel as lightly as possible, one case of moderate size. And dress for convenience rather than fashion. We shall be on trains for some time. I’m afraid it will be impossible to take a maid.” He looked at her very levelly; to be certain she was aware that there was no room for argument.

  “I am perfectly able to dress myself, Victor,” she said, smiling at him. “And I have traveled before on journeys that were far more interesting than they were comfortable.” She turned to Pitt. “We shall accomplish all that is in our power to do.”

  Pitt rose to his feet, as she did. “Thank you,” he accepted.

  CHAPTER

  9

  NARRAWAY AND VESPASIA SET out on the train to Dover the following evening. They had less than two weeks in which to travel to Toledo and speak with Nazario Delacruz, tell him what had happened and persuade him to return to London with them in order to face the appalling dilemma of the ransom demand.

  “He should not be hard to find,” she said as they made themselves comfortable in the carriage seats. “Toledo is not a very large city, and Sofia will be known by repute, if not personally, by any local church.”

  “It’s not finding him that concerns me,” he replied. “It’s how to do it in the least cruel way…”

  She looked at him with a level, candid gaze. “There is no gentle way to tell him the truth, my dear. And you must not lie to him. That would be really unforgivable.”

  He felt a twinge of guilt. “I am not thinking of sparing his pain,” he answered quietly, although there was no one else in the carriage. “I need his mind clear, not clouded by emotion. It is necessary that he listen and think as clearly as possible.”

  She smiled ruefully. “Of course. How do you propose to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But before I approach him at all I would like to find out how much of Barton Hall’s version of his first marriage and its end is true.”

  “Even if Sofia is extremely to blame, and Nazario’s first wife took her own life in despair of being abandoned, does that alter what we must say or do now?” she asked.

  “No, of course it doesn’t. But it may cast a totally different light on what sort of a man he is. I need to know what to expect of him, whether I can trust him, rely on him, or not.”

  Vespasia looked away from him for a moment. “I know,” she agre
ed. “You have to consider the possibility that he is involved in the plan himself. He may have grown tired of her, as he apparently did of his first wife, and be willing to permit someone to murder her, and thus set him free.”

  “Vespasia!”

  She turned to look at him.

  The sunlight on her face showed the beauty of it, the strength of the bones beneath the flesh, the high cheeks and arched brow. But it also picked out the fine lines with which candlelight was so much gentler.

  “You think that is brutal?” she asked. “Of course it is. But Sofia is a professional woman, beautiful in her own way, certainly articulate. He may have been fascinated with her to begin with, and then accustomed to her, and finally tired of her endless drive, her opinions, her very hunger for life. Perhaps he has found someone younger, more easily impressed with him, more pliable to his will. It can happen.”

  “If in the first place it was only infatuation,” Narraway said with conviction. “Not if it was love.”

  “That is one of the things we must find out, if we can,” she agreed. “She might grow tedious after a year or two. People consumed in a crusade can be. I have known a few.”

  Beyond the carriage windows the rich fields and pastures of Kent streamed by, dotted with woodlands here and there. It was not far to Dover and the sea.

  “I must see what I can learn about her,” Vespasia went on. “The woman, not the saint. I have been thinking who I might know that would still be in Spain. Another woman’s assessment could be useful.”

  “How do you know anyone in Spain, especially Toledo?” Narraway asked. “In fact how do you speak Spanish at all?” He was puzzled. She had never spoken of Spain before. He realized that in spite of their friendship and the many things they had spoken of there were decades of her life about which he knew very little.

  “It’s not very interesting,” she said. “When I was newly widowed I went to Spain because I wanted to escape the London Season’s endless sameness, people’s commiserations and encouragement, their transparent plans to arrange my life for me.” She looked away and Narraway saw pain in her face. He wanted to touch her, but it seemed intrusive.

  “I felt as if I had escaped,” she said very quietly. “And I was ashamed because I should have felt as if my life had ended, not as if it had just begun. I felt a very strong desire to begin it somewhere else, where I was not known. I suppose I see something of myself in Sofia, just a little. I gather she too was escaping when she went to Spain.”

  “Perhaps there is a likeness,” he said with a smile, and a sudden upward surge of happiness that she had not felt such a loss of her husband that it could cloud her happiness now—his happiness for the future.

  She raised her eyebrows slightly. “Indeed…then I shall look up old acquaintances and see what I can learn informally about Sofia, and her friends or enemies, what was thought of her by those who did not regard her as a saint. By the way, do we know when she had this religious conversion?”

  “No.”

  “Then I shall try to find that out as well.”

  “And I shall see what I can learn of Nazario, and of his first marriage, and if he has any other romances in view.”

  “I hope not,” Vespasia murmured. “I would very much like to believe differently. We have only Barton Hall’s word for any of that part of her life.”

  She was right, and as the train rattled on its way Narraway brought to mind all he knew of Barton Hall. He was a banker, one of the invisible people who held the reins of financial power so steadily one forgot they were there.

  They authorized huge loans and advised on the investment of fortunes. They probably had an unspoken knowledge of what most of the great families were worth, and exactly who owned which vast tracts of arable land or small blocks in the heart of London on which palaces were built or the residences of foreign princes. Such knowledge was a power in itself.

  Before leaving London Narraway had reminded himself very briefly of exactly who Hall’s bank dealt with. It was mostly those silent giants of respectability, the Church and the Crown. The Prince of Wales had borrowed money for years, and frequently not repaid it. But that was done largely privately, from friends rich enough and unwary enough to lend it. The Church of England’s property and income ran into the millions, but were untouchable by scandal, largely because they were extremely discreet. It invested in things that those of sensitive conscience might find distasteful. There was an aspect of profiteering. Beyond doubt the Church were sham landlords, but to what degree he did not know. “Residential property” covered a multitude of things. They also invested in coal, heavy industry and arable land. Was there a degree of speculation, perhaps less respectable?

  So why was Hall so afraid, to the point where his fear had disturbed Pitt?

  The answer must lie in another area of his life. He had been a widower for some years, and appeared to be perfectly content to remain so. His pursuits were academic, and in keeping with his position and reputation. Was there a darker and far more secret side to him?

  Narraway doubted it. But then he had not foreseen any of this appalling shambles with Sofia Delacruz. He had feared no more than the Englishman’s traditional embarrassment at public and inappropriate emotions. Religion was observed quietly, and largely in private. If one questioned at all, it was in writing that nobody else read. And of course it was not done by women!

  Hall had been a gifted academic, gaining firsts at Cambridge in economics and history, very appropriate to a man whose ultimate aspiration was to become governor of the Bank of England. Narraway could not imagine Hall falling madly in love, enough to sacrifice all he had and plunge into the unknown.

  But then he could not have imagined it of himself either!

  He glanced at Vespasia beside him, and wondered for a hectic moment what wild, unforeseen things he might have done, had she asked him to! Probably anything. But the key to that lay in the fact that it would not have been wrong. She would never have asked that of herself, still less of anyone else. Which was the other great difficulty that weighed on his mind. If this whole trip to Toledo turned out to involve issues of crime, vengeance or matters that genuinely concerned Special Branch, it might require him to take moral risks, decisions that were gray, hard to justify.

  The ugliness of that was part of his responsibility in the past, and now was the heaviest weight Pitt carried. In fact it was the reason Narraway felt Pitt was so good for the role. His sensitivity to moral judgments would mean they were never easy for him. He would never justify, or shift the blame to others. He would make mistakes, and learn to live with them. The man who could take them in his stride was not safe with such power.

  Nor was Narraway safe now. There were many things he had done that he preferred Vespasia did not know about. Some were hard decisions, but right ones. Others he thought he knew about at the time, but now was much less certain. He would never ask her about past acts of hers, past secrets, certainly not past lovers. In fact he was quite certain that he preferred not to know. He was a bit startled to find himself jealous.

  But the present issue was whether he would have to take decisions and actions that would make Vespasia see him in a different light. She might understand, at least intellectually, but would they disturb her in a man with whom she was intimate, a man whose name she had taken, and therefore was allied with not only privately but publicly?

  There had to be secrets between them, matters from the past that remained confidential and always would.

  He knew already that Hall had been to Eton and Cambridge, an impeccable pedigree! Dalton Teague had done the same. Was that why Teague was now involving himself in looking for Sofia? An old school loyalty carried on through university? They would also have been there at the same time, but unlikely friends. Hall was brilliant, a natural scholar, without charm or athletic ability. Teague had been the exact opposite, handsome, charismatic, one of the best cricketers who had ever played for England. Everyone had expected him to fail his exams—and
he had surprised them by passing well.

  But friendships could happen between the most unlikely people—just like marriages. Some of them even prospered.

  Again he looked sideways at Vespasia and she turned suddenly and met his gaze, smiling at him, and he was ridiculously pleased. He nearly put out his hand and touched her, then realized how sentimental that would be, as if they were twenty! He felt the heat burn up his face, smiled awkwardly and turned to look out of the window at the wide expanse of countryside speeding past them.

  They made a late afternoon crossing of the Channel to Le Havre, from where they were going to catch the train south to San Sebastián, on the northern coast of Spain, then south again to Madrid, and from there finally to Toledo.

  It was one of those lazy, early summer days when from the deck of the ferry the whole world was blue. The sky arched over them almost unblemished and the light seemed to brim over and dazzle the breaking water that foamed away at the stern. Gulls followed in their wake echoing its pattern with their wings, swooping, climbing then drifting as if life were all one exquisite pattern of the tide.

  The breeze moderated the warmth of the sun, although not its ability to burn, but it was barely strong enough to unravel Vespasia’s hair as they stood together in the stern watching the white cliffs of Dover recede in the distance. It was hard to remember that their mission was urgent and terrible.

  “Victor, what do you make of Dalton Teague’s concern in looking for Sofia?” she asked. “I can’t believe that he agrees with any of her teachings. They go against every privilege of birth or wealth. She regards gifts of any sort as an obligation of service, not a birthright.”

  “The aristocracy originally regarded it so, and the best of them still do,” he pointed out. “Teague is related to several of the old families. The Salisburys, and the Dukes of Devonshire at the very least.”

  “I know,” she agreed, still staring at the white wake curling over behind them.