A Corpse in Shining Armour

by Caro Peacock

  I screwed up my eyes and put my hands over my ears, but it was no use because it was my own scream. A hand had risen slowly from the coffin. It was a bony, liver-spotted hand, appropriate to a corpse. My first horrified thought was that my theory was wrong after all. There really was a body in the coffin under the armour. The jolting of the journey, and my own desecration, had provoked it into this last parody of life. But as the scream died away I managed to grab another scrap of thought: corpses do not hold pistols.

  When I opened my eyes, sure enough, the hand was holding a pistol. At first sight, it had been holding it awkwardly, as if grabbed in a hurry. Now the pistol was level and there was a face behind it–an elderly face surrounded by sparse white hair, with eyes that were all pupil from the darkness inside the coffin so that they looked hard as obsidian.

  ‘Lord Brinkburn,’ I said. ‘You killed your wife.’

  Not a wise thing to say, if there’d been any hope of pacifying him, but the look on that face was beyond reach of argument and I knew he intended to kill me or anyone else who was in his way. I tried to get off my knees, with a faint hope of throwing myself out of the hearse. The eyes and the pistol followed me, the bony hand tightening on the butt. Then the air broke into a spray of diamonds and something hard and black hammered into my chest, hurling me backwards into darkness. As I went, I was aware of somebody saying something. Even in the circumstances, it struck me as odd that the Angel Gabriel should speak with a cockney accent. It took several repetitions for me to grasp that what the voice was saying was Enerunds?

  I opened my eyes. Still darkness. There was something over my eyes. I pulled it away and found it was the page’s tricorne hat. The first thing I saw was Tabby’s face inches away from mine, mouth open in a gape that was either horror or laughter. She was lying on her stomach on top of me. The broken glass all round us on the hearse floor and air coming from a different quarter showed that she’d come diving in through the back window.

  ‘Out,’ I gasped.

  Lord Brinkburn and his pistol must still be there in the coffin, though I couldn’t see him and there on the floor together we were an easy target. I grabbed Tabby by her page’s coat and rolled us over towards the shattered side panel, just aware that the hearse was now going slowly and jerkily. Stephen’s voice was shouting from the box. Glass jabbed at me through my clothes as we rolled over the broken rim of the panel and thumped down on the road, Tabby uppermost. The back wheel of the hearse ground slowly past us, then the vehicle juddered to a halt, just beyond where we were lying. Tabby rolled away from me and helped me up.

  ‘He said it was a joke. He said it was only to have a laugh on all of them.’

  She spoke pleadingly, as if expecting rebuke from me. Trickles of blood ran down her forehead and cheek.

  Stephen had jumped off the driver’s box and come running towards us, but before he got to us the mourning coach arrived at a canter. Amos pulled the mares back on their haunches, knotted the reins round the rail at the front of the box, then made an almighty vault to land on his feet beside Tabby and me.

  ‘What’s happening, girl?’

  ‘Lord Brinkburn, in the coffin. He’s got a pistol.’

  I gasped the words out as he was helping both of us to our feet. Even Amos’s quick mind couldn’t have understood what was happening, but on the word ‘pistol’ he started walking towards the hearse.

  ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘He’s dangerous.’

  The door of the mourning coach opened. Robert Carmichael and Miles bundled out, falling over each other, and came running up to us.

  ‘Lord Brinkburn isn’t dead,’ I said. ‘He’s in the coffin, but he’s alive. He’s got a pistol. Make Amos stop before he shoots him.’

  They stood stock still.

  ‘Your father’s still alive,’ I shouted. ‘But for heaven’s sake…’

  The look of stupefaction on both their faces showed that they hadn’t known. I rushed after Amos and grabbed the back of his coat, just out of pistol range of the hearse.

  ‘No need to rush in and tackle him,’ I pleaded. ‘He can’t get away.’

  ‘He will, if somebody doesn’t get hold of those horses,’ Amos said.

  The six black geldings were a churning, whinnying mass. In stopping the vehicle so suddenly, Stephen had slewed it sideways. The front pair were in a ditch at the side of the road, though still on their feet, a shaft splintered, traces twisted like seaweed.

  ‘You keep back,’ Amos told me.

  He ran to the horses, drawing the knife he always kept in a sheath at his waist, and slashed through the front traces, freeing the pair in the ditch. They clambered out and bolted away down the road. Amos managed to grab what was left of the traces and pulled the others round before they could follow. This slewed the hearse so that the open side was towards us. The coffin was still there, with no sign of anybody inside it.

  ‘He can’t have got away,’ I said. ‘We’d have seen him.’

  Stephen faced Carmichael and Miles.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll believe me now. Go and look. That coffin’s empty,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not empty,’ I yelled. ‘He’s in it. Don’t go in there.’

  I was desperate, wondering what I could say or do to make them understand the danger. Then the problem solved itself. The face with the obsidian eyes reared itself up over the edge of the coffin and the hand pointed the pistol at the group of us.

  Somebody screamed. Not I this time; it was Miles. After that, silence. Stephen took a step towards the hearse. The pistol moved so that it was pointing at him. He stopped.

  ‘He’s done you no harm.’

  That was Robert Carmichael’s voice, remarkably steady, speaking to the man in the coffin. He walked forward, past Stephen. The pistol aim shifted to him. Stephen, voice hoarse, told Carmichael to stop, but he went on walking towards the hearse.

  ‘It will only make things worse,’ Carmichael said, as if reasoning with a difficult child. ‘Give it to me.’

  And he added two syllables that none of us had expected to hear. Beside me, Miles gasped and Stephen jerked his head round and stared at Carmichael. Carmichael took another step forward. The pistol cracked. He fell to one knee and the hearse lurched forward. I ran to Carmichael. His head was down, fists clenched against his chest with blood seeping between them.

  Amos came running up too, shouting to somebody I couldn’t see to keep hold of the horses. Carmichael raised his head and looked at me.

  ‘Not dead.’

  He sounded surprised. Gently, Amos took Carmichael’s hands and moved them away from his chest, then drew the jacket aside. Carmichael winced.

  ‘Yes, you’ll live,’ Amos told him, as casually as if they were discussing a hurt hound. ‘Glanced off the collar bone. We’ll get you lying down in the coach there.’

  He helped Carmichael to his feet.

  ‘The pistol,’ Carmichael said. ‘Get it before he reloads.’

  Amos nodded.

  ‘You all right with him?’ he asked, transferring Robert’s weight to me.

  Like a man on a routine errand he strolled across and into the hearse. Lord Brinkburn hadn’t moved since firing the shot.

  ‘I’ll take that, sir,’ Amos said, quite politely, and removed the pistol from his unresisting hand.

  Stephen walked over and helped me support Robert.

  ‘Did he say…?’

  ‘Later,’ I said. ‘Get him to the coach before he loses any more blood.’

  Between us, we walked Carmichael towards the mourning coach. Lomax had just climbed out of it, looking as if the events of the morning had aged him ten years. He glanced from the disabled hearse to Robert and back again, opening his mouth to ask what was happening. Lord Brinkburn chose that moment to crawl out of the coffin, stiffly as a clockwork toy, face expressionless.

  ‘Cornelius,’ Lomax said.

  The horror on his face and in his voice left no doubt that he hadn’t been included in the plot. Lord Brinkburn glanced
once in his direction, then concentrated on manoeuvring himself out of the hearse, shuffling over the floor on his buttocks, setting his feet unsteadily on the ground. He was wearing a shirt and old-fashioned black breeches, dragging the velvet pall cloth after him. Stephen looked at me over Carmichael’s head and made a move as if he wanted to go to his father.

  ‘Cornelius?’

  Lomax’s voice quavered, begging for reassurance. Lord Brinkburn glanced at his old college friend as if he didn’t recognise him, then straightened himself up as best he could, leaning on the side of the hearse, and tried to drape the pall round himself like a toga.

  ‘Hadrianus imperator sum.’

  ‘No more of that,’ Stephen said sharply. ‘You’re not the emperor Hadrian. You were never mad, not in that way. You deceived everybody, except the keeper of the asylum. I suppose you made it worth his while.’

  ‘Why?’ Miles said plaintively. ‘What was he doing?’

  For probably the first time since childhood he was appealing to Stephen like a perplexed younger brother. Stephen didn’t answer. Lord Brinkburn said nothing, hunched under the pall more like a soft-shelled turtle than an emperor.

  ‘He killed your mother,’ I said to Miles. ‘I think he probably killed Simon Handy too.’

  After what had happened, there was no gentle way of saying it. Besides, the urgent thing now was to get Robert to medical help. Amos had seen that. He’d managed to find a couple of bystanders to hold the hearse team and was already on the box of the mourning coach, turning it round towards the town. He shouted to Miles and Stephen to look after the other horses then brought the coach to a halt and signed to me to bring Robert on board. Tabby helped.

  ‘Am I coming with you?’ she said, sounding remarkably unconcerned.

  She’d even managed to retrieve her tricorne hat and jam it on her head at an inappropriately jaunty angle.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ I said. ‘You have some explaining to do.’

  I made Robert lie back on the seat and wouldn’t let him talk on the short and fast journey back to Kingston. As soon as we came to a halt in the yard of the inn, Amos jumped off the box and told one of the stable lads to run for a doctor. The yard was crowded as usual. Various curious people came to gawp as Amos helped Robert inside. Intent on the two of them, I took no notice until a familiar voice sounded behind me.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Lane. In the middle of the excitement as usual, I see.’

  I spun round, and there was Mr Disraeli, elegant as ever, with the faintly amused air he cultivated. But there was just a shade more anxiety in his expression than was appropriate for a cynical man of the world. I tried to match his calm.

  ‘Have you come down for Lord Brinkburn’s funeral? If so, you’ve wasted your journey. It’s been cancelled.’

  ‘For lack of a body, I presume.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘How in the world did you know that?’

  ‘I didn’t know. There were rumours. Didn’t you receive the note I sent you?’

  ‘I thought…’

  I started to explain and gave up.

  ‘I believe we need to talk,’ he said.

  We walked side by side towards the door of the inn.

  ‘Am I still coming with you?’ said a cockney voice from behind us.

  Disraeli looked over his shoulder. When he saw the funeral page, with blood-streaked face and hair coming down under the piratical hat, his jaw dropped. I’d never seen that happen before and didn’t expect to again.

  ‘Is that yours?’ he said.

  I nodded. Tabby followed us in.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘So how did you know?’ I said to Disraeli.

  He and I were sitting on either side of an empty fireplace in the inn’s back parlour. I’d told him what had happened as briefly as I could, trying not to shudder when it came to the hand rising out of the coffin. Tabby stood by the door, dabbing at her face with a damp cloth, which was all she’d accept in the way of medical attention. Luckily, the scratches weren’t deep. Disraeli answered my question in a low voice, obviously uneasy about her presence, but I wasn’t letting Tabby out of my sight.

  ‘I didn’t know anything for certain, but there were rumours around legal circles,’ he said. ‘There’d been an argument between Stephen and Oliver Lomax, and one of the clerks must have been listening. Stephen was claiming that the madness was a pose and his father wasn’t really dead. Lomax thought Stephen was talking nonsense, trying to muddy the waters about this inheritance business. I thought you should know what was being said, but it seems you were ahead of me.’

  I didn’t disillusion him, having my professional pride.

  ‘I think all the time Stephen was away from London, he was keeping watch on that so-called asylum,’ I said. ‘He had a much clearer idea of what his father was capable of than any of us realised.’

  ‘Brinkburn must have been planning it for a long time,’ Disraeli said.

  ‘Yes. Probably ever since Robert Carmichael knocked him downstairs.’

  Disraeli’s eyebrows rose.

  ‘The tutor?’

  ‘Yes. Brinkburn thought he and Lady Brinkburn were lovers.’

  ‘Were they?’

  ‘No.’

  He gave me a look as if asking how I could be so sure.

  ‘So Brinkburn had decided to kill his wife?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but he had no intention of hanging for it. He pretended he was mad to have a chance to do his plotting without interference and set up an alibi, then announced his own death and confirmed it in people’s minds with this very elaborate funeral. If there were any doubts cast on it or questions asked later about how Lady Brinkburn died, he’d have been safely out of the way in Italy. I dare say he’d conveyed a fair amount of the family money over there to live comfortably for the rest of his life.’

  ‘And the title?’

  ‘In his own eyes, he’d still be Lord Brinkburn. It might even have amused him to think of Stephen and Miles fighting over a title that belonged to neither of them, just as it amused him to take the family armour with him.’

  ‘A strange sense of humour.’

  ‘Very strange. But then, not many men witness their own funeral procession. That would have appealed to him. His original idea might have been to travel quietly to Italy and have the armour sent out in the coffin, but he couldn’t resist an extra touch of drama by being there in person.’

  ‘So you say he’d decided to kill his wife,’ Disraeli said. ‘Did he actually do it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  For the second time that day, I saw Disraeli taken aback. That firm ‘yes’ hadn’t come from me. It came from Tabby, in her corner. Disraeli might have been trying to speak quietly, but his discretion was no protection from ears made sharp by street life.

  ‘You’d better come here and tell us,’ I said.

  She came and stood beside me, giving Disraeli stare for stare.

  ‘Starting with the night you walked out,’ I said.

  Tabby glared at me.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault. They were making fun of me.’

  ‘Never mind that now. Tell us what happened after you left the house.’

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘It was raining. I didn’t know where I was. They’d got me so angry, I just walked round for a bit, thinking what I wanted to do to them. It started thundering and lightning, so I thought I’d find somewhere to curl up till it was over. I was walking along by a wall near some bushes, then this man spoke to me.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He asked what I was doing there. I didn’t know nobody was there until he spoke, and he had a dark coat and a hat on, so I didn’t see him against the bushes. But I recognised the voice.’

  ‘Recognised it from where?’ I said.

  ‘That first night, at the little house by the river, when I thought it was a ghost and he said something about somebody coming back to haunt somebody. It was the same voice.’
/>   Disraeli was leaning forward, listening intently but leaving the questioning to me. I told Tabby to go on.

  ‘Anyway, when I didn’t answer all at once he said did I work for Lady Brinkburn. So I told him I hated all of them in that house and I wouldn’t work there even if they paid me a pound a week.’

  She paused for another deep breath.

  ‘What did he say to that?’

  ‘He laughed and said he supposed I’d just been dismissed for insolence. So I said he supposed about right. I didn’t think you’d want anything more to do with me, see, because you’d expected me to behave proper with the rest of them, and I hadn’t. So he said would I like to work for him.’

  ‘Just like that, only a moment after he met you?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Why not? So anyway, I said yes, and he put his hand on my shoulder and said that from now on I was his handy girl and not to forget it.’

  ‘Handy girl, those very words?’

  ‘That’s what he said. I didn’t think nothing to it at the time. It was only later I remembered that Violet’s man, the one that died, was named Handy, and I only remembered that after him and me had the falling out over the bottle, so…’

  ‘Don’t get ahead of yourself. You’ve just agreed to work for him. Did he tell you who he was?’

  ‘He said his name was Lord Brinkburn and he owned the ground we were standing on and the house and everything, though it didn’t suit him to live there at present. So I asked him where we were going and he said I was to wait where I was because he had things he wanted to see to, then he’d come back for me.’

  ‘He didn’t say what things?’

  ‘Nah. Anyway, I waited in the bushes there for a long time. It was getting light when he came back. He said I was to follow him and we went all the way along the river bank, past where our little house was, to a place where he had his carriage waiting, parked out of the way under some trees. He said he was going to sleep inside for a bit and I was to sleep underneath it, so I did. Then later he woke me up and told me to harness the horse because we had some shopping to do. I didn’t know how to harness the horse, so he cuffed me round the head and said I wasn’t very handy after all and did it himself.’