December 1846, wanting a week to Christmas. A fine frosty night in London, with a sky of deepest velvet cushioning the gemstone stars. Young Plon-Plon felt more than usually pleased with himself as he strolled along King Street, twirling his cane. He had dined with his cousin, Louis Napoleon, and had worsted an opinionated American guest at the table in an argument about slavery. Louis Napoleon had looked quite shocked by his radical remarks. As well he might, Plon-Plon thought. What he was really shocked by was how a true Bonaparte conducts himself.
Plon-Plon paused at the corner of St James’s Square to light a cigar. There was nobody near him when he turned aside to cradle the flame and take the first few puffs. Yet, when he turned back to discard the match, she was standing only a few yards away.
Her cheeks were hollowed by hardship, her clothes worn by use. Only in the severity of her piercing gaze was Vivien Strang unaltered. He did not know what to do, whether to ignore her and walk ahead or admit that he recognized her. In the end, she decided for him.
‘I have followed you for three days,’ she said. ‘Since I saw you leaving the theatre.’
He did not ask why, because he knew. They had not met since the night of the ball at Cleave Court. Gervase had boasted of the prize he had won, the night after, in the maze. If nobody else knew why Colonel Webster had dismissed his daughter’s governess, Gervase did, and Plon-Plon at least suspected.
‘Have you nothing to say, Prince? Nothing to say to the woman you ruined?’
Arrogance found a voice where honour was mute. ‘Je ne comprends pas, mademoiselle.’
‘Speak English, Prince. I know you can. You wrote English – in that note to me.’
‘I wrote no note—’
‘I went to the maze because I thought you would be there. But you deceived me. You were his partner. And I was your dupe.’
‘This is not true.’
She stepped closer. ‘What did he tell you? That I consented, perhaps? If so, he lied. What I might have given you freely, he took by force.’
‘He raped you?’
‘He did worse than rape me – he destroyed me. When the Websters threw me out, I still thought, God forgive me, that there had been some mistake, that he had forged the note perhaps, that you did not know what he had done in your name. But when I came to seek your help you had vanished, scuttled away from Bath because you knew all too well what he had done.’
‘You exaggerate—’
‘No! I exaggerate nothing. The proof of it I carry within me. I am pregnant by your vile friend, mon prince charmant. I am pregnant and disgraced, rejected by my family, turned away by my friends. I am destitute – because of you.’
The truth of her words shone in the vehemence of her gaze. But the shame it inspired in him he was young enough to believe he could yet evade. He reached into his pocket and drew out a wad of notes. ‘For you,’ he said, holding out a handful. ‘And for the baby.’
As she reached out to take the money, Plon-Plon saw her expression alter. Every instinct of her pride told her to reject what every experience of her fall compelled her to accept. For this – the making of an offer she could not refuse – she hated him more deeply still.
He made to move past her, but her hand on his sleeve detained him. She was closer now than before, close enough to leave him in no doubt of the sincerity of her words.
‘One day, Prince, you will regret how you and your friend treated me.’
‘Never.’
‘But, by then, it will be too late.’
‘Bonsoir, mademoiselle.’ He shook her arm off and marched away, not daring to look back. He struck out diagonally across the square, bolstering with each step his naïve belief that he could have done with her, outpacing with every yard a hatred he thought too slow to touch him.
Slow, but not slow enough. Thirty-six years later, Plon-Plon raised his stout creaking frame from the bed and shuffled to the window. He parted the curtains and looked out along the empty cobbled length of the Avenue d’Antin. There was nobody there, no figure in the night beckoning in the guise of a forgotten sin. And why should there be? What was Norton to him? What did it matter if Vivien Strang had advanced her son to claim a birthright which, in one sense at least, was truly his? He would stay in Paris, or follow his wife to Italy. He would stop his ears and blind his eyes to their conspiracy. It did not concern him. He would tell himself so until he believed it. Norton had no claim on him. He would cling to the thought until the danger was past.
Plon-Plon returned to the dressing-table and poured some more brandy.
‘She shall not cheat my son,’ Gervase had said.
‘Cheat Hugo?’
‘No. Not Hugo. My son.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘Nobody does, Plon-Plon. Nobody does.’
But that, thought Plon-Plon as he swallowed the brandy, was Gervase’s error. Somebody did understand. Somebody whose bulky shape he could see, dimly reflected, in the mirror before him. He understood all too well.
V
The Bow Street magistrates proved as compliant as Bucknill had predicted. On Wednesday 22nd November 1882 they dropped all charges against William Trenchard and consigned him to the care of Ticehurst Asylum. After his brief appearance in court, Trenchard was taken down to the cells, there to await transport to Ticehurst. And there, in the hour or so that he waited, he received a visitor: Richard Davenall.
‘How are you, Trenchard?’
‘Mad. Didn’t they tell you?’
‘You must see that this is in your own interests.’
‘I see that it’s in Norton’s interests.’
‘You’ll find they have every facility at Ticehurst.’
‘Except liberty.’
‘Bucknill is an excellent man. He believes he can help you.’
‘Nobody can help me.’
‘You must try to put all this behind you.’
‘Why? What have I to look forward to?’
‘Listen to me, Trenchard—’
‘Listen to me! Have you read my statement?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you know it’s true.’
‘At Ticehurst, you will come to see these delusions for what they are.’
‘At Ticehurst, I will remember what others wish to forget.’
Richard stood up, exasperated by his inability to refute what Trenchard had said. ‘I see you’re not to be reasoned with.’
‘Tell me, where is Constance?’ Suddenly, Trenchard’s voice was meek and pleading.
‘She is staying with me.’
‘And Norton?’
‘In the circumstances, I cannot tell you. Constance is well. As is your daughter. Perhaps, in time, they will be able to visit—’ He broke off. Trenchard was weeping, his head bowed in shame, his shoulders shaking with each strangled sob. ‘I’m sorry,’ Richard said. ‘Truly sorry.’
Suddenly, Trenchard rose to his feet, the legs of his chair scraping back angrily across the stone floor of the cell. He looked straight at Richard, his face trembling with the effort of self-control. ‘Where is she?’ he murmured. ‘Where is Melanie?’
‘Perhaps … she never existed.’
‘If I’d kept the photographs, I could have asked Fiveash to identify her.’
‘But you destroyed them?’
‘Yes. I threw them into the river and watched them float away … watched her float away.’ He paused for a moment, then said: ‘Bucknill told me the name Melanie derives from the Greek word melaina.’
‘So?’
‘It means black. Black as her hair. Black as her heart.’
‘You must forget her.’
His eyes opened wide, reaching past Richard into the mystery which had claimed her. ‘I cannot forget her … until I see her again.’
Two warders escorted Trenchard to Charing Cross station in a covered van, Bucknill and Richard Davenall following in a cab. During the journey, Richard sought to draw the doctor out on the subject of Trenchard’s obsession with
Melanie Rossiter.
‘In my opinion, Mr Davenall, the connection between Dr Fiveash’s sometime secretary, Miss Whitaker, and the prostitute called Melanie exists only in Mr Trenchard’s imagination. I doubt Melanie was even her real name.’
‘Trenchard imagined that, too?’
‘Quite possibly. From a subconscious layer of knowledge, he might have chosen the name to fit his image of the woman he believes to be persecuting him. He could never have found the Miss Whitaker he was looking for. Therefore, he invented her. She appeared out of the fog: by day a damsel in distress, by night a succubine temptress. Until we have cleared the fog from his mind, he cannot be rid of her.’
‘And you can clear it?’
‘As to that, only time will tell.’
‘But you are confident there was no conspiracy against him?’
‘Of course. His delusions are classical and unmistakable, Mr Davenall. Rely upon it, that is all they are: delusions.’
But Richard could not rely upon it. Bucknill’s diagnosis would have swayed him utterly – had it not been for one stubborn memory. He could not intervene between Trenchard and his fate; indeed, he could only watch helplessly when, half an hour later, the train drew out of Charing Cross and bore Trenchard away into obscure confinement. But he could impose his own test of reality on the memories Bucknill had called delusions. He could impose it – and await the result.
VI
Pale December sunlight, warming the conservatory glass, had lulled Canon Sumner asleep. He sat now, cushioned and cake-crumbed in his wicker chair, dozing gently, whilst on the opposite side of the low table, James and Constance set down their tea-cups in careful silence and exchanged a smile which spoke of the pleasure they took from the old man’s drowsy benevolence.
‘He is quite reconciled, you know,’ Constance murmured.
‘You could reconcile him to anything.’ It was true. Canon Sumner had arrived in Highgate torn between horror at Trenchard’s conduct and suspicion of James’s motives, but all his scruples had melted away when confronted by his daughter’s evident happiness. Faced with that irresistible commodity, he had conferred upon her his old, weak, indulgent blessing.
‘Recently,’ Constance continued, ‘nursing you back to health with my family about us, I’ve been happier than I’ve dared to admit.’
‘You’ve made me happy, too,’ said James, squeezing her hand.
‘I feared Patience might not like you, but it seems I needn’t have worried. You’ve quite won her over.’ Patience, whom Emily had taken for a walk into Highgate Village that afternoon, was young enough to have accepted that her father had simply ‘gone away’ and to have warmed instantly to her ‘Uncle’ James.
‘That’s because she takes after you.’
‘Perhaps.’ Constance looked down. ‘But how long can it go on, James – this taste of what we might have enjoyed together all these years?’
‘Must it end?’
‘Once your recovery is complete, I shall have no excuse to remain here.’
‘Nor shall I, but Richard insists he wishes neither of us to leave.’
‘Nevertheless—’
‘Why not stay? It need only be for as long as this wretched case lasts.’
‘But how long will that be?’
‘Six months, perhaps. It isn’t so very long, compared with eleven years.’
‘And then? What when it does end, James?’
Their eyes met. ‘When the case is finished,’ he said slowly, ‘when the law acknowledges me for who I am, then I will feel entitled to come to you and ask—’
‘What? What’s that you say?’ Canon Sumner was awake, blinking and gravel-voiced, struggling to persuade himself that he had never been asleep.
‘Nothing, Father,’ said Constance. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ the old man continued, pulling himself upright in his chair. ‘About that poor soul you said Lady Davenall is evicting.’
‘Nanny Pursglove?’
‘Yes. It sounds like a deserving case to me. After all, she is a resident of the diocese.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
‘There are vacancies at the Wilton almshouses. The Archdeacon told me so. Miss Pursglove could live there. Very comfortable, I gather. Would you like me to mention it?’
‘Oh, do, Father,’ said Constance, smiling. ‘I think that is an excellent idea. Don’t you agree, James?’
‘Yes,’ said James. ‘I do indeed.’ He, too, smiled, reflecting as he did so that perhaps Canon Sumner’s interruption had been a blessing in disguise. There was, after all, no need of haste. Indeed, if Constance was to be persuaded to see the future as he did, there was every argument for caution. All, he now felt certain, could be his so long as he continued to tread carefully. All – including Constance – in good time.
VII
Richard Davenall could tell by the apologetic slant to Roffey’s expression that he had no progress to report.
‘Not a chink of light anywhere, sir. If the woman exists, she’s covered her tracks well.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Looking for one prostitute in London is like looking for one stalk in a haystack, if you’ll pardon the expression. I’ve been put the way of several called Melanie, but none of them even remotely fits the bill.’
‘What about the Bristol end?’
‘I’ve spoken to the butler of every wine merchant in the city. None of the families boasts a son engaged to a former housemaid. None of them has ever employed Quinn as a footman.’
‘And in Bath?’
‘Miss Whitaker lodged in Norfolk Buildings, right enough, and Quinn was acquainted with her landlady’s husband, but that’s as far as it goes. I couldn’t persuade the landlord of the Red Lion to repeat the story he supposedly told Trenchard; he flatly denied having seen the two together.’
‘Do you think he’s telling the truth?’
‘It’s hard to say. Either that or he’d been warned off. He was very tight-lipped.’
‘Any other news of Quinn?’
‘None at all.’
‘What about Harvey Thompson?’
‘The police think he was murdered by one of the many people he apparently owed money. They seem happy to leave it at that.’
A silence fell, during which Richard stroked his beard and contemplated the barrenness of Roffey’s enquiries. Then he said: ‘You don’t think Miss Whitaker and Melanie Rossiter are one and the same, do you?’
‘No, sir. I can’t say I do.’
Richard rose and moved to the window. His back was turned to the other man when he said: ‘Very well, Roffey. Thank you for your efforts. I rather think we’d better leave it there.’
‘As you wish, sir.’
‘There’s no need to submit a written report. I’d rather there was no record of this.’
Roffey cleared his throat. ‘What about Quinn?’
‘You’d better drop that as well. Strictly speaking, I no longer have a client on whose behalf to engage you. See Benson with your account. Usual terms.’
‘Very good, sir. I’ll bid you good day, then.’
‘Good day to you, Roffey.’
As soon as the door had closed behind his visitor, Richard returned to his desk and slumped down wearily in his chair. He had as good as known that Roffey would find nothing, but still he had had to put it to the test. Now he had done all he could reasonably be expected to do. Now he had established, seemingly beyond doubt, that there had been no conspiracy against Trenchard. If only he could believe his own conclusion, he might put his mind at rest. But that he could not do. For, unlike Roffey, Richard Davenall had the evidence of his own eyes to tell him that all was not what it seemed.
It was the afternoon of the day following the shooting at Lincoln’s Inn: Wednesday, 8th November 1882. The operation to remove the bullet from James’s right side had been pronounced a success, and all fears for the state of his lung, close to which the bullet had passed, ha
d been calmed. Richard therefore made his way up the stairs of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in better spirits than he had known for some time: he was looking forward to congratulating his cousin on a lucky escape.
It was with some uncertainty that he traced the route Emily had described to James’s ward. Indeed, after several wrong turnings, he was obliged to seek directions. These took him, at length, to the correct landing and a lofty anteroom to the ward itself.
At the far end, a nursing sister was in conversation with a lady. As Richard approached them, his shoes squeaking on the polished floor, the lady turned and walked away past him, glancing at him as she went. She was sombrely dressed, in grey overcoat and black turban, her dark hair drawn up beneath it. Richard would have paid her little attention but for the flash of her eyes in his direction as they crossed. It drew his own eyes to her, and he was aware, for a fleeting instant, of a disdainful manner and a startling beauty combined in a presence wholly at odds with the functional disinfected surroundings.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ the sister said.
‘Oh … yes. I’m looking for Mr James Norton. I’m his cousin.’
‘My, he is popular this afternoon.’
‘Really?’
‘That young lady was asking after him.’
‘Isn’t Mr Norton well enough to receive visitors, then? I thought—’
‘You can see him if you don’t stay long. Come with me.’
The sister bustled ahead, and Richard followed, all thoughts of the dark lady who had come to ask but not to visit retreating before concern for his cousin’s health. He never thought to ask James who she might have been. Indeed, she soon lapsed altogether from his mind. Then, a week later, he read Trenchard’s statement. And there, waiting for him, was the description of Melanie Rossiter that was also a description of the lady he had seen at the hospital. ‘There was no mistaking the regal tilt of her jaw, nor the calm dark-eyed severity with which she greeted me.’ There was not indeed. Richard knew then that Trenchard’s ruthless seductress and the fashionable young lady asking after James were what all logic said they could not be: the same person.
Chapter Thirteen
I
RICHARD DAVENALL WAS, by breeding and training, a cautious man. He knew, better than most, that suspicion counts for nothing in the absence of evidence. Accordingly, for all the doubts he harboured about his cousin, he continued to behave in every way as a considerate host should. There was nothing he did, as the winter passed, to imply that he had ceased to be the staunchest of James Norton’s allies, nothing he said, as the months slipped by, to suggest that he had ceased to trust him. Yet perhaps, when all was said and done, there did not need to be. Perhaps, in the end, intuition was enough to tell James that something had changed between them.
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