A Corpse in Shining Armour

by Caro Peacock

  ‘Miss Lane, how delightful to see you.’

  I turned to see one of my singing pupils and her husband. He was an amiable man who fancied himself as a poet, but was handicapped by an indecently large annual income. They’d just left the floor and she was leaning on his shoulder, looking puffed.

  ‘Please do me a kindness and dance with Roderick,’ she said to me. ‘He positively loathes having to sit out, and I want a chance to talk to my friends.’

  The band struck up a waltz. Roderick bowed, offered me his arm and we were at once in a rainbow whirlpool of silks and satins. Roderick danced well and steered us expertly round clumsier couples. I laughed, from the exhilaration of the speed and the music, and a glass of champagne drunk too fast on an empty stomach.

  ‘I do believe we’re going as fast as the North Star.’

  He misunderstood me and quoted a line of his poetry about shooting stars. I don’t think he’d heard of the locomotive. As we danced past the orchestra, I recognised the flautist as one of Daniel’s friends and waved my fingers to him over Roderick’s shoulder. He winked at me. We manoeuvred past Miles and his partner, a redhead in white satin.

  ‘Just as well the brother isn’t here tonight,’ Roderick said cheerfully. ‘We don’t want blood on the dance floor.’

  ‘What about Rosa Fitzwilliam?’ I said.

  There was no point in being discreet and avoiding the subject, since the whole town would be talking about it.

  ‘Came with her aunt and left early. Didn’t dance. My wife says she looked out of spirits.’

  I wondered if she was regretting that impulsive gesture at the jousting. The waltz came to an end. Roderick escorted me to where his wife was chatting with a group of other ladies and suggested we might all go through to the dining room for a buffet supper. I said I’d stay in the ballroom for a while. I’d noticed Miles returning his partner to her group of friends or family. He was now lingering on his own at the edge of the dance floor, looking thoughtful.

  There were two questions above all that I wanted to ask him: Was Simon Handy working for you? Were you the dark-haired gentleman disturbed by a constable while trying to break into Pratt’s? I decided to ask the second question first. The fact that I had information from the police might scare him into some unguarded reaction. I began walking over to him, but I’d only taken a few steps when two gentlemen appeared in the ballroom. They’d come from outside. The elder of them, an upright gentleman with steel-grey hair, was still holding his top hat and walking cane. The younger man beside him, with dark flowing ringlets and a gold brocade waistcoat, might have fitted in more appropriately with the other guests, except there was a purposeful air about the pair of them that made it clear they hadn’t come to dance. The elder man was Oliver Lomax. The even greater surprise that stopped me in my tracks was the identity of the younger one–Benjamin Disraeli. Our eyes met. He said something to Lomax and started walking towards me. Other eyes had turned his way as well. He always had that effect on people. Various men and women greeted him and several obviously wanted him to stop and talk. He smiled and nodded, but kept walking towards me.

  ‘Good evening, Miss Lane. What a coincidence to find you here.’

  Nothing in the words would cause surprise to anyone overhearing, and it looked as if a few bystanders were trying. But a glint in his dark eyes signalled conspiracy, inviting me to admit the intimacy of a shared secret. Those eyes weren’t missing anything about my appearance, from silk slippers to swirled-up hair.

  ‘You’re looking very well, if I may say so,’ he said.

  I guessed he was wondering if I’d arrived with a male escort or female chaperone, and possibly how I came to be on such a distinguished guest list. He could never quite place me in the scheme of things and that piqued him.

  ‘A useful coincidence,’ I said. ‘I want to speak to Mr Lomax. I think he’s avoiding me. Could you persuade him to come over, do you think?’

  He placed a hand gently on my sleeve and guided me towards a great vase of lilies on a pedestal, away from the throng of dancers.

  ‘What do you want to know from him?’

  His voice was more serious now.

  ‘I want to ask what he knows or suspects about the murder of Lord Brinkburn’s valet. He made it very clear that I wasn’t supposed to meddle with that, but it’s no use. I’m sure it’s linked with the other question.’

  ‘And have you made any progress with the other question?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve spent some time with Lady Brinkburn. I don’t understand what she’s doing, but she’s not mad. Did you know Mr Lomax was trying to put blinkers on me?’

  ‘I assure you, Miss Lane, no man in his senses could mistake you for a cart horse.’

  ‘It’s no joke. When you recommended me, did you tell him that I could be relied on to find or fabricate the evidence he wanted to keep everything tidy? Was I being paid to make sure the House of Peers could go on dozing comfortably, with no vulgar scandals?’

  He raised his eyebrows, refusing to be annoyed.

  ‘No. I recommended you as a person remarkably skilled at discovering awkward truths.’

  ‘Then hiding them?’

  He looked me in the eyes for a moment before answering. We both knew that our association had started with something that must stay hidden.

  ‘I told him you could be discreet, when necessary.’

  ‘There’s a long distance between that and lying to order, and I want to tell him so. So will you please ask him to come and speak to me.’

  Another waltz was in progress, the floor full of whirling couples. Oliver Lomax was working his way round the fringes with some difficulty, barged into by dancers, blocked by groups of people laughing over their champagne. He seemed to be trying to get to where Miles Brinkburn was standing, still on his own. Disraeli’s eyes followed mine.

  ‘I’m afraid Lomax is rather preoccupied.’

  His voice was grave.

  ‘Why? What’s happening to Miles?’

  My mind went to the intelligent policeman and the probability that Miles knew something about Handy’s death. Was the family lawyer coming to warn him of imminent arrest?

  ‘Lomax has some sad news to deliver,’ Disraeli said. ‘He asked me to come here with him because I know our hostess. A ballroom is not the ideal place for passing on such news, but we can hardly have a son dancing the night away when his father’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Yes, at the asylum this afternoon. The message was brought to Lomax’s chambers this evening.’

  We watched as Lomax skirted a chattering group and came alongside Miles, who didn’t seem to have noticed him till that moment and looked surprised. Lomax said something and put a hand on Miles’s shoulder. The young man’s face turned pale and he hung his head. After a few more words they began walking towards the door together. People were looking at them now, aware of something wrong.

  ‘What about Stephen?’ I said. ‘Does he know?’

  ‘We can’t find him. Lomax is hoping Miles might have some idea where he’s gone.’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  The death of the of old lord had raised the stakes. Now Stephen was the new Lord Brinkburn. Anything the younger brother might do to overturn that would have to be done decisively, with even more eyes on him than in this crowded place.

  ‘I’ll go back to Buckinghamshire first thing tomorrow,’ I said.

  Disraeli looked surprised.

  ‘I thought you wanted to speak to Lomax.’

  ‘I do. But whatever the answer is, it’s there, not here.’

  Somehow, in a way I still couldn’t fathom, the answer lay in a twenty-three-year-old journal in a green-shaded library. I didn’t tell Disraeli about that. There was too much to explain. Miles and Lomax had vanished through the doorway into the hall.

  ‘I must go,’ Disraeli said. ‘Lomax came in my carriage.’

  ‘Is somebody telling Lady Brinkburn?’

  ‘Lomax thinks that shou
ld be Stephen’s duty, if they can find him. If not, Lomax or Miles will have to tell her. You’ll excuse me, Miss Lane. Let me know what’s happening. And good luck.’

  He gave a quick bow, as if we’d just finished the waltz together, and walked away through the now subdued dancers. I supposed my friends were expecting me in the supper room, but I’d lost my appetite. After waiting ten minutes or so for Disraeli to get clear away, I walked out of the ballroom and past the heraldic banners into a summer night still humming with music from half a dozen wide-open doorways.

  Early the following morning the North Star from Paddington whirled me back to the bank of the Thames.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  By mid-morning I was walking from the Dumb Bell to the village, planning to collect Tabby from Mrs Todd’s. I walked fast, still gripped by the urgency of the night before. Very soon the news of Lord Brinkburn’s death would be brought to his widow, if it hadn’t arrived already. Lady Brinkburn could hardly be expected to grieve deeply, but the decencies would have to be observed and it might be more difficult to find out what I needed from a household in mourning.

  I found Mrs Todd in her garden, picking gooseberries. When I asked after Tabby she sniffed and told me she was at Violet’s.

  ‘She’s been round there most of the time you were away. With respect, you should watch out or Violet will be getting her into bad ways.’

  I didn’t tell her that Tabby was in bad ways already.

  When I got there, Tabby was with Violet in the weed patch in front of her cottage, the baby kicking and gurgling on a blanket in the sun.

  ‘Violet’s been showing me a lot of things that belonged to Mr Handy,’ Tabby said, without greeting or preamble.

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Writing and stuff.’

  ‘Would you show me?’ I said to Violet.

  She gathered up the baby and we all went inside, to a fug of boiled cabbage smell and the ever-circling flies. While Tabby tucked the baby in its crib, Violet opened a door in the cupboard part of the dresser and brought out a bundle loosely wrapped in clean sacking. I hoped for letters, even another journal, but when she put it on the table and undid the sacking, it turned out to be an assemblage of oddments: pieces torn from newspapers, prints, a few loose leaves of paper with handwriting on them. Violet and Tabby watched hungrily as I turned them over.

  ‘What do they say?’ Violet asked.

  Like Tabby, she’d never been taught to read. If she’d hoped for any messages of tenderness from Handy, she’d have been as disappointed as I was. There were receipts from stagecoach companies in Italy, France and England for places booked, cheap prints of views in various Italian cities, paragraphs from English-language newspapers in foreign towns listing eminent arrivals of the week, with Lord Brinkburn’s name underlined in black ink, a programme for a performance of Don Giovanni in Venice given five years before, receipted food and drink bills from various hostelries–all the detritus of a travelling life. Four pages on better quality paper, its deckled edges slick and grey from much fingering, turned out to be prints of erotic drawings, showing women in a Turkish bathhouse. Those, at any rate, Violet could understand, though she didn’t seem embarrassed by them.

  ‘His lordship liked pictures,’ she said.

  ‘When did Handy leave all these things with you?’

  ‘He had some every time he came back. He said he wanted to remember things.’

  There were only half a dozen notes consisting of two or three sentences at most, all in the same black handwriting, the words sprawling across the page. They were the kind of notes a man might give his servant to deliver, fixing appointments or offering conventional thanks for hospitality. Presumably the people who received them had scanned them and given them back to Handy. One, dated three years before, read: Sir, The bearer of this, one Handy, is a thorough rogue but may be trusted for our present purposes. It seemed sad that this motley collection was all Handy had to show for a lifetime of travelling and service.

  I was bundling them up so that Violet could put them away when a smaller piece of paper slithered out from between two of the erotic drawings. Both the thick, greyish paper and the drawing on it set this scrap apart from the rest. This was a sketch, in charcoal, of a boy perhaps twelve years old, with a round face and untidy dark hair. The artist had caught a malicious look in his eyes and a twist of his mouth that seemed at odds with the round face and childish posture, hunched on a rock with his knees drawn up. A few pine trees were sketched in behind him. If you looked closely at the boy’s hairline, there was a patch that might have been the edge of a birthmark or, equally probably, a smudge of charcoal.

  ‘Is this Handy?’ I said to Violet.

  ‘Yes. Somebody drew him when he was a boy.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t know. He never said.’

  But I knew the moment I saw it. The observant, nervy quality of the sketch was so like Lady Brinkburn’s work in her honeymoon journal that it might have come from its pages. Only the texture of the paper was different. It looked as if it had been torn from one of the small pads that artists carry with them to jot down impressions. Lady Brinkburn had drawn Handy as a boy and must have liked him enough to give him the picture–unless he’d stolen it, of course. So when and why had she come to hate him?

  I asked Violet if I might borrow the drawing. She was reluctant at first, but relented after I promised to take good care of it. Finally Tabby and I said goodbye to her and set off for the village shop to place an order for some provisions.

  ‘I want you to go to the hall for me,’ I said to Tabby. ‘The steward there is Mr Whiteley. Go to the back door, say Miss Lane presents her compliments to Mr Whiteley and would be grateful for a word with him tomorrow about the cottage. Have you got that?’

  She repeated it, word perfect.

  ‘Then you wait there until somebody brings you out his reply,’ I said.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if I just found him and asked him?’

  ‘Yes, it would be easier, but it’s not how things are done.’

  From her expression, she accepted it, but grudgingly.

  ‘Were Violet’s old things any use then?’ she said.

  ‘Possibly. You did well to find out about them, at any rate.’

  She grinned.

  ‘I’ve found out something else as well.’

  ‘From Violet?’

  ‘Nah, from Polly. It’s about her ladyship.’

  ‘Have you found out about her old maid Suzy?’

  ‘Oh, she died years ago. Something else.’

  I opened my mouth to ask what, then remembered that we were standing in the middle of the village street with probably half a dozen people watching from gardens and porches.

  ‘Good, you can tell me when you get back from the hall.’

  I watched her walking briskly along the road under the hot sun, then turned back to the woodland path and made my way to the cottage. Everything seemed as we’d left it, with no trace of intruders. After the hurry of travelling and London it was blissful to be back with the sound and smell of the river. I sat watching the swans, planning the conversation I’d have with Mr Whiteley. It would have nothing to do with the cottage and, if my suspicions were right, he wouldn’t expect it to be.

  Tabby was back sooner than expected, while I was still sitting on the river bank, dabbling my toes in the water. She came bouncing through the hollyhocks, humming with news, like a honeybee coming back to the hive loaded and dusted with pollen.

  ‘Did Mr Whiteley send a message?’ I said.

  She nodded, and delivered it in a mock-pompous voice.

  ‘Mr Whiteley sends his compliments to Miss Lane and will do himself the honour of calling on her at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  So the steward preferred to have his conversation with me at the cottage rather than the hall where we might be overheard. That was no surprise.

  ‘Were they busy at the hall?’ I said, wondering if a m
essenger from London had arrived.

  ‘Not particularly, no. I heard one of the maids saying they must draw the curtains because his lordship was dead, but they didn’t seem that bothered. Oh, and there’s another message for you.’

  She felt in her pocket and produced a folded square of paper, good quality and delicately scented. It was addressed to me in Lady Brinkburn’s hand, but with less than her usual neatness. The writing inside looked equally hasty.

  Miss Lane,

  Would you do me the kindness of coming to tea tomorrow? I shall send for you. Please don’t bother to reply.

  Sophia Brinkburn

  ‘Did Mr Whiteley give you this?’ I said.

  ‘Nah, a lady. I think it might have been her ladyship. She came running across the grass to give it me.’

  That sounded wildly unlikely.

  ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘She was wearing a green dress with white lace. She was quite old, more than forty probably, and her hair had a bit of grey in it, but more brown. She spoke in a deep sort of voice, like this.’

  The last two words were a passable imitation of Lady Brinkburn’s soft and low voice and the description fitted. From the description of her dress, she’d been in no hurry to change into widow’s weeds.

  ‘And she came running across the lawn to you?’

  ‘Well, more walking fast, I suppose. But she was hurrying and panting.’

  ‘Did she say anything to you?’

  ‘She asked was I your maid.’

  ‘How would she know that?’

  ‘They kept me waiting at the back door long enough for the whole house to know it. I thought they might give me a cup of tea at least, but no. Any rate, I said yes, I was your maid. And she said would I give you this note and be sure I put it in your hands and nobody else’s.’