by Caro Peacock
‘Oh, haven’t I explained?’
‘A twenty-two-year-old man who’s as sober as a judge is about to inherit a title and a fortune. I can’t see how that poses a unique problem,’ I said.
‘It might be if his claim to the title were in question.’
‘How is it in question?’
‘The usual way–that he might not be his father’s son.’
‘This sounds even worse than the divorce case. Am I meant to be going through rumpled sheets from twenty-three years ago?’
‘If only it were that easy. It’s a matter of hints, gossip–nothing tangible.’
‘So people have been hinting and gossiping for twenty-three years?’
‘No, that’s the strange part. The hints and gossip have only begun quite recently.’
‘Since people knew the old lord was going to die soon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do we know who started the gossip?’
‘We have a very good idea.’
‘Who?’
‘The young men’s mother.’
I nearly dropped my teacup.
‘The elder boy’s own mother is saying he’s not her husband’s son?’
Disraeli nodded.
‘But why should she admit it after all these years? And what about the younger one?’
‘She’s quite adamant that the younger son’s legitimate.’
‘But that doesn’t make sense. If a woman’s going to be unfaithful, it’s usually the later children who…’
I didn’t finish the sentence because it was straying into things that should not be said.
‘Indeed.’
‘Does she say who the father was, if he’s not her husband?’
‘As far as I’m told, she takes a somewhat legendary line,’ Disraeli said. ‘There was a storm one night on their honeymoon tour. She was alone in her room in a tower by a lake in Italy, waiting for her husband to return from a visit. A man entered, at the height of the storm, without lighting a candle. She naturally assumed it was her lord and master come home and…well, you can guess the rest. In the morning, his place in the bed is empty and she thinks he’s gone out early to admire the view. Imagine her horror when her husband arrives some hours later, mud-splattered on horseback, explaining that he decided to stay the night with friends because of the storm.’
‘It’s like something from a bad Gothick novel.’
‘I gather the lady in question is fond of novels. She also paints and writes poetry.’
I stared at him, still disbelieving.
‘Of course, there is precedent for it,’ Disraeli said.
‘Precedent?’
‘You may remember that something very similar happened to the lady in the Greek myth of Amphitryon. And our own King Arthur was born of just such a visit by Uther Pendragon.’
‘May we please keep to the nineteenth century. Are you suggesting that this woman’s head has been so turned by novels and myths that she’s denying the legitimacy of her own son? Is she insane too?’
‘That’s probably the question the case will turn on.’
‘Case?’
‘Miss Lane, you can surely see what will happen if the old lord dies before this question is resolved. It will end up in court, and not just any court, either. A question like this would have to be submitted to the House of Lords.’
He sounded serious again, so I had to put out of my mind the entertaining picture of their lordships in coronets and ermine debating the story I’d just been told.
‘What about the younger son? He surely wouldn’t want to see his mother and his brother put through this.’
‘I understand that there’s no great brotherly love between them. The younger boy has always been his mother’s favourite. He takes after her, while the elder brother bears some resemblance to the father and took his father’s side when husband and wife fell out.’
‘But that would make no sense at all, if he’s supposed not to be the father’s son,’ I said. ‘And if he looks like his father, surely that settles the matter?’
‘Not conclusively. There’s a fairly general family resemblance within the English aristocracy, wouldn’t you say?’
He smiled at me and flicked one of his very un-English raven ringlets back from his face with a hand that glinted with gold rings.
‘So it’s quite possible that the mother is making all this up to try to ensure that the younger one inherits,’ I said.
‘Yes, that’s the other possibility.’ Disraeli sighed. ‘It almost makes one wish that there were some way of testing the blood for paternity, the way that scientists test for acid or alkali.’
‘If such a test existed, the whole of Debrett’s would probably have to be re-written,’ I said.
I was doing some hard thinking. There was no doubt that he’d succeeded in piquing my curiosity. At that point, I’d met none of the people involved and it presented itself as an interesting puzzle.
‘If I were to investigate, who would be my client? The elder son?’
‘Not directly. I’ve been approached by a lawyer of excellent reputation who was the elder son’s trustee, up to his twenty-first birthday, and is still trustee for the younger son for another few months. He’s a family friend as well as their legal adviser. He’s very concerned that the thing should be halted in its tracks before it becomes public knowledge.’
‘But if it’s gossip already…’
‘Gossip is one thing. Lawsuits are another.’
‘So the lawyer would be paying my fee?’
‘Yes, and I don’t think there’d be argument about anything you considered reasonable.’
‘What exactly would he expect me to do?’
‘He hoped you might make the acquaintance of the lady in question and encourage her to talk to you.’
‘To a complete stranger, about the most intimate things in her life?’
‘People usually seem willing to talk to you. You have a gift.’
‘And having gained her confidence–goodness knows how–I’m supposed to report to you and the lawyer on whether she’s mad or scheming?’
‘That’s a reasonable summary. I’ll admit, we haven’t given much thought to the details. I simply promised my friend to see if I could persuade you to take an interest.’
I stood up.
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said, not knowing that I’d be saying the same thing to another unorthodox invitation two days later.
That was when he told me, in confidence, the family name. I left him sitting under the picture, alone for once, looking like a man who thought he’d done a good evening’s work.
I walked home that evening to Abel Yard, my dear but rackety home in Mayfair at the back of Park Lane. The front of Park Lane is one of the most desirable addresses in London, facing directly on to the eastern side of Hyde Park, with dukes by the dozen, peers ten-a-penny and the whole of society coming and going in carriages with liveried footmen on the back. But spin those mansions round, like a child with a doll’s house, and the scene at the back is altogether more domestic, with narrow slices of workshops, sheds and dwellings crammed with carriage-makers, carpenters, glaziers, bonnet trimmers, pastry cooks, cows, chickens–all the things that the great houses need for their comfort but don’t want to know about. A stone’s throw from Park Lane, in between grand Grosvenor Square and the parish workhouse, is Adam’s Mews. Carriage horses are stabled all along the cobbled street. Grooms and drivers live overhead, some in rooms so low-ceilinged that even jockey-sized people can’t stand upright in them, with hay stores in between and pulleys for drawing up hay bales from the carts that are so often blocking the narrow mews. There was one standing there that afternoon. I managed to squeeze past it without snagging my dress and went through the gateway into Abel Yard.
The carriage-mender at the entrance to the yard had the forge roaring and was hammering at something on his anvil. Chickens scratched around the door at the bottom of our staircase. The door was locked, which mean
t Mrs Martley was out. Good. Mrs Martley might, I suppose, be described as my housekeeper, except I’m not grand enough to have a housekeeper and she’s far too opinionated to be one. A more accurate description might be that she’s my resident respectability. A woman can’t live on her own and keep up any reputation, especially if, like me, she sometimes has gentleman callers. Mrs Martley, a retired midwife in her forties, cooked and cleaned and nagged me about everything from forgetting to hang up my bonnet to still being single at twenty-three years old. As I was fumbling in my reticule for my key, something jogged my elbow.
‘Enerunds?’
The girl Tabby had appeared from nowhere, standing there in her old stableman’s cap, her assortment of shawls that never varied, winter or summer, her stockingless feet in shapeless boots too large for her. She was, I guessed, around fourteen or fifteen years old and slept in a shed next to the cows at the end of the yard on piles of sacks and old blankets. As far as she made a living, it was doing small jobs for dwellers in the yard. She’d just asked me if I had any errands for her. I thought quickly.
‘Would you run along to the baker’s and see if there are any loaves left. Here’s sixpence. Keep the change for yourself.’
Her eyes glinted. She took the coin and ran off, boots flopping, before I could change my mind.
I found my key, unlocked the door and walked upstairs to our parlour. There was a note from Mrs Martley on the table: Have gone round to Mr Suter’s. Your supper is in the meat safe. Better still. My best friend, Daniel Suter, had married a dancer named Jenny the year before. Mrs Martley had expected me to marry him and was furious. With me, not with him. Then Jenny had done the only thing that could redeem her in Mrs Martley’s eyes and become pregnant. All Mrs Martley’s professional instincts, as well as her kindness, had been aroused. She now spent as much time at their rooms in Bloomsbury as she did at Abel Yard. I hoped Daniel and Jenny were grateful. I knew I was.
I went on, up a narrower flight of stairs, into a room that was one of the delights of my life. The afternoon sun gleamed on the white walls, scattered here and there with rainbows, from the light filtering through a glass mermaid that I’d hung in the window. My second-hand couch, newly upholstered in blue to match the curtains, stood by the window. I knelt on it as I took off my bonnet, enjoying the view over waves of gleaming roof tiles with pigeons basking in the sun, to the tops of the trees in Hyde Park. Besides the couch, I had a trunk and a row of pegs for my clothes, a set of shelves overflowing with my books, a cheval mirror, a table to write on. There were still a few strawberries left in the chip punnet on my table, an extravagance from yesterday. I took off my gloves and ate them, then rummaged under the bookcase for the box where I kept my accounts. It took only a few minutes to establish what I was nearly sure of in any case–that if I wanted to keep my precarious comforts, I couldn’t afford to turn down a case as profitable as this one might be. That was true enough, but only an excuse. I’d known before I’d left Mr Disraeli that his appeal to my curiosity had been successful, and he knew it too.
The events at the jousting practice two days later only increased my curiosity. As it happened, I had another social engagement that evening after I came back from the Eyre Arms. Often weeks might pass when I didn’t go to functions except on business, but this was June, with the season at its height. An embossed invitation card had come from a former pianoforte pupil of mine, an aristocratic young married woman whom I didn’t care for greatly, who had decided that my efforts weren’t on a par with her genius. I’d heard she’d found herself a professor instead. She now intended to delight the world with a soirée of Chopin and Miss Liberty Lane was cordially invited. I didn’t much look forward to it, but my career as an investigator was not so secure that I could ignore an event which might provide rich pupils.
When I got home after returning Rancie to the stables I warmed a pan of water for a good all-over wash, then dressed in my new ribbed silk, the colour of bluebells. It had two rows of lace down the bodice and wonderful sleeves that puffed out from shoulder to elbow, then came tight to the wrist with a row of three silk-covered buttons. It was a struggle doing up the buttons on the right sleeve with my left hand, even with the help of a button-hook, but when I looked in the mirror I knew it had been worth it. The event was in Knightsbridge and I’d decided to walk there across the park to save a cab fare, so I tucked a cloth into my reticule to give my shoes a surreptitious wipe before I faced the front door and footman.
My former pupil hadn’t improved greatly as a pianist, only added a layer of affectation to her modest competence. I sat there in her over-decorated drawing room on an uncomfortable gilt chair, wishing I hadn’t come. Then, in a pause between nocturnes, a woman’s voice hissed from the row behind.
‘Elizabeth.’
It seemed to be directed at me, even though it wasn’t my name. I ignored it. It came again, more urgently, actually in a note’s rest in the music. I turned round and saw a face I’d never expected to see again. A lovely face, framed in red-gold hair dressed with a rope of creamy pearls, a little fuller than when I’d last seen it two years ago, cheeks soft as peaches. Celia. When she saw she had my attention, she beckoned and flicked her eyes towards the room next door. She thought we should get up there and then, in mid-nocturne, and go and talk. She always had been impatient. I put a finger to my lips, tried to sign wait and turned round, but I could feel her eyes on the back of my neck, hear the silk hiss of her dress as she fidgeted.
I sat oblivious of the music, hurled back suddenly to a time I revisited as seldom as possible. Celia and I belonged in different worlds. She had a rich husband who adored her, a London house and a country estate. She was as good natured as a child and just as self-centred, without a thought in her lovely head about society, art, politics or anything outside her own circle. In spite of that, and even after a gap of two years, there was something that bound us as closely as sisters. I’d met her at the lowest point in my life, a few hours after I learned my father had been murdered, and she’d been kind. The events of the weeks that followed had deprived her, too, of people she’d loved. I’d played a part in that. I knew I wasn’t to blame. Or if there had been any blame at all, I’d cancelled the debt by helping her elope to a marriage that even London gossip admitted had become a by-word for happiness. I’d been pleased when I heard that. If I’d wanted to meet her again, it could have been arranged easily enough, but I was scared of the feelings that meeting her might bring back. There was no help for it now, though. When the music finished at last, she was waiting at the end of my row.
‘Elizabeth! I don’t believe it.’
She’d first known me under an assumed name, and although I’d told her my real one she’d never managed to remember it. The soft lisp was still there in her voice, the grace in the way she moved. She was wearing pale apricot silk with a wide sash in a darker tone. A triple necklace of pearls and diamonds gleamed against her skin. She put her hand on my arm, laughing at the wonder of it.
‘Where have you been? What have you been doing? I’ve been thinking about you so much since…since that night.’
The night I’d helped her elope. The night I’d seen her brother die. Her brother had killed my father. Celia would never know that. If she’d tried, she could have found me over the last two years, but Celia lived by impulse and didn’t look far under the surface of things. There was nothing but pleasure at seeing me again in her voice and face, no tension in the hand on my arm.
A slow tide of people was carrying us towards the next room where refreshments were laid out. She kept her hand where it was, talking all the way.
‘It really is a miracle. We’ve been in town so little this season, just a couple of appearances at court and so forth. Have you been presented to Queen Victoria yet? Isn’t she quite charming, and she talks so amusingly. But it’s such a labour to get Philip to leave the estate for more than a week at a time. He’s totally devoted to agricultural improvement, especially pigs. How many other wome
n do you know whose chief rival for their husband’s attention weighs thirty stone and grunts?’
People were beginning to turn towards us. She was laughing about her husband, but her voice was full of love for him and she was clearly happy. My dread began to melt away. Celia might claim to have been thinking of me, but she lived almost entirely in the present and after that first reference she didn’t want to talk or think about the past. She brought her face close to mine.
‘And I must tell you, I’m breeding.’
It took me a while to jump from pigs to people and offer her my sincere congratulations.
‘Yes, it will soon be showing, so there won’t be many more parties this season. It’s due in November–isn’t that convenient, such a dull time of year with no parties.’
We’d reached the doorway. Our hostess was standing at the other side of it so before we were allowed to reach the refreshments we had to pay tribute to her performance. Celia told her the mazurka thing was so cheerful you wanted to dance to it, meaning it as a compliment, and got a sour look. I said the performance was charming, meaning it as an insult, and received a thin smile. We progressed to the buffet and a gentleman who knew Celia fussed round us with plates and glasses. Skilfully, she managed to keep the food and wine but lose the gentleman, and found us two chairs on our own. She forked up poached salmon with eager appetite.
‘And you, my dear, are you…?’
She glanced at my ring finger. I shook my head. She gave a disappointed pout.
‘I was sure you would be by now. I hope you have friends looking out for you.’
I laughed.
‘My friends know all too well what I’d say if they did any such thing.’
‘Is there somebody?’
I shook my head and forked up salmon. She looked into my face.
‘Was there nearly somebody?’
‘Well, yes, perhaps nearly.’
‘And did he marry somebody else?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, my dear, I’m sorry.’
‘Not at all. I’m glad of it. She’s a far better wife for him than I’d ever have been.’
