Slightly cheered by the thought, Robin replaced the jewels in the casket they’d come in and placed it, along with Lady Nankivell’s note, in a desk drawer for the time being. He was just turning the key in the lock when he heard running footsteps in the passage. A moment later, Sophie erupted into the room, brandishing a heavy book.
“Robin!” She was flushed and breathless, her green eyes ablaze. “Thank heaven you’re here—you must see this!”
Robin started from his chair. “Good Lord, Sophie, what—”
“You must see this!” she repeated, thrusting the book before him.
She all but vibrated with urgency. Taking the book, he opened it to the marked page, ran his eyes over the illustration and its accompanying description.
Family crest: a bull’s head, ducally gorged, proper. Coat of arms: a bend, argent, on a field, sable, between two gold cotises, engrailed.
Daventry.
Recognition struck him like a blow in the stomach.
Guy Daventry—tall, blond, and smiling. Daventry, who had been a guest at the hotel in April and had the housemaids sighing over how handsome he was. Daventry, the charismatic MP with an aristocratic wife and a brilliant political future before him.
“He was here.” Robin barely recognized his own voice. “At Easter.”
“I remember.” Sophie’s voice, along with the touch of her hand, was impossibly gentle.
He swallowed, willing himself not to be sick, and looked into compassionate green eyes. “It fits—all of it.” With stunning, merciless clarity.
“I know.”
A knock at the office door startled them. “Come,” Robin responded automatically.
The door opened to reveal Bert Vigus, the sturdy Cornish handyman who kept all the instruments at the Hall in tune. “Mr. Pendarvis, sir—just wanted to let you know the piano in the music room’s all right and tight now.”
“Ah.” Robin collected his straying thoughts. “Thank you, Bert. And the harpsichord too?” Sara had particularly wanted that fixed, he remembered.
Bert’s square, good-natured face went puzzled. “Aye, but as to that, sir—there was naught amiss with it in the first place.”
Robin rubbed his forehead. “I don’t understand. I’d heard it was out of tune?”
“Not out of tune, sir,” Bert explained. “But it couldn’t have been played, not with this great lot inside of it!” He held out a thick packet of—something, wrapped tightly in a yellowed linen kerchief and bound with twine. “Don’t know what this is, but I found it hidden in the instrument. Thought you’d best know what to do with it, if anyone did.”
***
“What a strange hiding place,” Sophie remarked in bemusement as Robin sliced through the bindings of the packet with his penknife. “I wonder why she chose it.”
“We’ll never know, but I would guess she moved this from wherever she was keeping it before. Possibly to keep it separate from everything else she was hiding.” The bindings cut, he folded back the creased linen to expose the packet’s contents.
Letters, written on good-quality stationery and addressed in a strong, slanting hand. Robin picked up the topmost one and scanned the direction. “His to her. There look to be about a dozen or so here,” he added as he rifled through the stack.
A dozen letters—the implication seemed clear enough: this hadn’t been a fleeting dalliance, but a liaison of some duration. Sophie remembered Sir Lucas’s description of how Nathalie and her lover had appeared in the churchyard, walking arm in arm “like old chums.” She stole a glance at Robin, but his face gave nothing away. She bent over the packet again.
“Not just letters,” she observed. “There’s something else… newspaper clippings?” Carefully, she extracted a yellowed column for a closer inspection.
And caught her breath when she saw Guy Daventry smiling up at her from the page.
He’d the sort of features that photographed well, and the camera had captured him full-face: high brow, beneath an almost boyish thatch of fair hair, wide-set eyes and straight nose, genially smiling lips parted to show even teeth, and a firm square chin, marked with a cleft.
That cleft… She stared at it a moment longer, wondering if her eyes were deceiving her, as she had when she’d first discovered the Daventry coat of arms. Then she lunged across the desk to catch up the photograph of Robin’s children.
“Sophie?” Robin roused from his brown study at her movement. “What’s wrong, love?”
She laid the newspaper clipping flat on the desk, then placed the photograph beside it, her hands trembling slightly. “Tell me what you see, dear heart.”
He looked down—and went white to the lips. “My God…”
The answers they’d sought, in a pair of photographs. A cleft in a man’s chin, a dimple in a child’s. A smile, less cherubic and more calculating thirty years later, but still recognizable.
“You see it, don’t you?” Sophie said gently. “Guy Daventry didn’t just father Nathalie’s unborn child. He fathered Cyril too.”
***
If either had any remaining doubts after that, reading the letters silenced those forever.
Not a constant record of correspondence, by any means. The earliest was dated several weeks before Nathalie’s arrival in Cornwall, inquiring after the health of baby Cyril—named, apparently, for Daventry’s father—and promising to send money as soon as Nathalie was settled in her new residence. The letter also urged discretion, entreating her to keep future communications brief and infrequent, though assistance would be provided at certain intervals.
Sporadic as they were, the remaining letters followed a similar pattern: inquiries after the child’s welfare and progress, insistence on Nathalie’s discretion, and promises of remuneration. And yet, for all that, they weren’t cold letters, Sophie mused. The tone was one of cautious affection, and Daventry’s interest in Cyril appeared genuine. If he were fond of children, as he appeared to be, he must feel some regret over this son he could not publicly acknowledge
The last letter was dated February of this year—just a few weeks after Cyril’s death, according to Robin—and the tone was markedly different:
…oh, my dear, words are inadequate to convey my sorrow for your loss. Our loss. My heart aches to think of what might have been—and of our boy’s last hours. You must let me know if you need anything, anything at all. I cannot get away just now, but I promise to be there in the spring. And we may mourn together then…
Sophie looked up from the letter into Robin’s bleak face. And yet—not wholly so; she thought she saw a faint trace of pity about his eyes and mouth. Unlike Daventry, he could mourn Cyril openly. And he was the man the boy had called Father. Papa. The man who’d taken him for outings, nursed him through illnesses, and sat by his bedside as he slipped into that final sleep.
“It’s fairly clear what happened next, isn’t it?” Robin said at last. “Daventry came down at Easter, Nathalie took him to see Cyril’s grave. And then, I suspect, one thing led to another.”
“I’m surprised Nathalie would take such a risk again.”
“Perhaps she felt she needed comfort. God knows we were little enough comfort to each other. And Daventry was grieving too.” Robin looked up from the photograph. “They don’t have any children, do they—Daventry and his wife?”
Sophie shook her head. “Just their ward—his niece, Marianne.” She gazed down at the letter again. “She must have written him—to tell him she was with child by him again.”
Robin’s face darkened. “God, he must have been furious when she threatened him. He’d have known just where to find her—and how to silence her.”
“But would he truly have done so?” Sophie asked, troubled. “He sounds genuinely grief-stricken about Cyril. Even if he were angry with Nathalie, how could he kill a baby—his baby?”
“A baby who wasn’t yet born,” he pointed out. “Some men find it easy to dismiss whatever they can’t see or hold in their hands. And he’d have s
o much more to lose now if this got out. How long would he keep his seat in Parliament if it were known he had a mistress and had fathered not one but two illegitimate children upon her? And I knew Nathalie,” he added. “She’d have milked this and him for everything she could get.”
Just as she did with every man, and it had finally cost her her life, Sophie thought.
Aloud she asked, “What do you mean to do now?”
He took a breath. “Show these to the police. In light of this new evidence, they might be persuaded to reopen the investigation. At the very least, it would be easier to have their authority on my side. But even if they don’t, I’ll be arranging a trip to London in the next few days.”
“I’m coming with you,” Sophie said at once.
Robin nodded. “Naturally, you are.”
She raised her brows. “Not even a token protest, Robin?”
He laid his hand over hers. “Nary a one. I’ve learned to my cost that I ignore you at my peril. Together, my love?”
She linked her fingers with his and smiled. “Together, dear heart.”
Twenty-three
Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.
—John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
Three days later
A heavy silence pervaded the library at Sheridan House, broken only by the faint dry sound of pages turning as Sheridan read over Daventry’s letters.
Laying down the last one, he drew a long breath before looking up at Robin, seated on the other side of his desk. “Damning indeed. Though I can scarce believe it. Oh, not that Guy had a liaison with your wife,” he added. “I find that entirely too believable. But that he would commit murder…”
Amy spoke up from the sofa where she and Sophie were sitting. “He had a lot to lose, Thomas. And Mr. Pendarvis said his wife was almost certainly trying to blackmail him. Who knows what any of us might be capable of when our backs are to the wall?”
“True enough,” Sheridan conceded. “How do you intend to proceed with this, now that you’re in London, Pendarvis?”
“Some of it’s out of my hands,” Robin said somberly. “The Cornish police reopened the investigation when Sophie and I showed them our new evidence.” They could hardly have done otherwise, if they wished to preserve their own reputation, he reflected with grim amusement.
And robbery as a motive had been discredited with the return of Nathalie’s jewels. “Traveling up to London was inevitable, after that. Inspector Taunton—he was handling the case in Cornwall—came with us. The plan is to show the evidence to the London police and request their assistance in this matter.” In the spirit of cooperation, Robin had agreed to submit the letters to the police once an arrest was made. But until then he’d insisted on retaining possession, and the Cornish authorities, aware of how they’d bungled matters so far, had reluctantly accepted his condition.
Sheridan nodded. “Always best to have the support of the local authorities. Where are you and Sophie staying, by the way?”
Robin began, “We thought we’d take rooms at Brown’s Hotel—”
“Oh, don’t be absurd,” Amy broke in. “You’re both staying here, of course. Sophie, darling, you look exhausted,” she added. “Let me take you up to your room right now.”
Sophie roused with a heavy-eyed, guilty smile. “So sorry. It’s just that we’ve spent so much time traveling today—”
“No need to apologize,” Amy assured her. “I remember just how long it takes to travel from Cornwall to London. I’m always dead on my feet when I arrive.”
“Go up and rest, my dear,” Robin told her. “You’ll feel the better for it later.”
It was a sign of how fatigued Sophie was that she obeyed without question this time. The two women went out together, talking softly, their arms about each other’s waists.
Alone, Robin turned back to Sheridan, who was now replacing the letters in the envelopes, a faint groove visible between his brows.
“Guy Daventry is my father’s protégé,” he said, without looking up. “A rising star in the House of Commons. And his wife, Charlotte, is a blood relation, though a distant one.”
Thanks to Sophie, Robin was already aware of those things; that was partly why they’d shown the letters to the Sheridans. “You must rue the day I ever set foot in your house.”
Sheridan looked up with what appeared to be genuine surprise. “No—why would you think that?”
Robin took a breath. “Nathalie… wasn’t exactly an admirable person. I’m aware that very few mourn her death, though they’d never be discourteous enough to say so. And people you know could be destroyed over this. At the very least, their lives will never be the same.”
“Your life isn’t the same,” Sheridan countered. “Neither is your daughter’s. I would say that whatever may happen with the Daventrys pales in comparison to what you and she have suffered.” The artist’s green eyes were unexpectedly compassionate. “And no matter what sort of woman your wife was—if Guy killed her and the child she carried, then he must answer for it. I only wish the damage to innocent parties could be… minimized, somehow.”
“I wish the same.”
“You mean to accompany the police when they question Guy?”
Robin nodded. “The evidence was found in my home, after all, and I can claim some prior acquaintance, since Daventry stayed at the hotel. Besides, if he’s unwilling to talk to the police, perhaps he can be persuaded to speak to—the man who raised Cyril.” The boy they’d both loved. Robin would concede that much to Daventry, if nothing else.
Sheridan studied him a moment longer, then held out his hand. After a moment of blank incomprehension, Robin took it.
“I wish to be present as well, when you call on Guy,” the artist said in a tone that brooked no argument. “He’s a connection of mine, through his marriage to Charlotte. And if Scotland Yard’s finest can’t get you past the front door, then I can.”
***
“I’ve put you in the Green Room,” Amy told Sophie as they walked along the passage. “And Mr. Pendarvis in the Amber Suite, just across the hall.”
“The Green Room? What could be more appropriate for me?” Sophie asked, smiling.
Amy laughed. “I confess, I had a similar thought. But really, it’s one of our nicest guest chambers, with its own little parlor as well. Although,” she added mischievously, “I cannot guarantee you complete solitude. You’ll have a companion—of the feline persuasion.”
“Oh, Tatty!” Sophie exclaimed, feeling ridiculously pleased by the news. “Is she well? And has she been behaving herself?”
“As to the first, yes, she’s fine—living on the fat of the land,” Amy assured her. “As to the second, she’s behaving about as well as one can expect—from a cat. She’s taken a fancy to Thomas, as most females do. I may have to acquire a Russian Blue of our own when she goes home with you. Or perhaps a Siamese—they’re very striking, if one can get used to their voices.”
“Amy, thank you,” Sophie said, stopping to embrace her. “For the hospitality, for looking after Tatiana—and, well, everything. And I’m so sorry if we’ve brought trouble to your door by coming here.”
Amy returned her embrace. “Nonsense! You’ve done nothing of the kind.”
“Well, the Daventrys are connections of yours,” Sophie pointed out. “That’s why I thought you and Thomas should know what Robin and I discovered. I didn’t think you should hear about it by accident.”
“Better to know than not know,” Amy said bracingly. “I shall be sorry if Guy does turn out to have murdered Mrs. Pendarvis, but not so sorry as to want him to get away with it. And no matter what happens, my dear, you and Mr. Pendarvis have our support.” She paused, her lips quirking in a wry half smile. “Remember that—unpleasantness in Cornwall, five years ago?”
“I’ve never forgotten,” Sophie confessed.
“Nor have I, actually. Relia jumped right into it, for James’s sake,” Amy added, her smile turning fond and reminiscent.
“I held back—I was afraid of getting too involved. And of making bad worse. But sometimes you have to get involved, don’t you? Especially when it comes to people you care about.” She kissed Sophie on the cheek. “Have a good rest, my dear. And if you should need anything else, just let me know.”
The Green Room was every bit as nice as Amy had promised: light, cool, and pretty, with walls tinted a delicate jade and graceful furniture fashioned of some pale wood, ash or maple. Glancing around, Sophie spied Tatiana perched on the window seat, gazing down into the street below, and called softly to her.
Ears pricking, the cat looked around, then leapt down to greet her errant mistress with a plaintive mew. Sophie scooped up the cat and cuddled her close, taking comfort from the rich, throaty purr.
“So, am I forgiven?” she asked, sinking down on the bed with the cat still in her arms.
Tatiana purred even louder, and Sophie scratched her under the chin. Sara had mentioned wanting a kitten, she mused. Until that could be arranged, perhaps the girl would enjoy spoiling Tatiana? Not that the cat required further spoiling…
Despite her fatigue, her mind insisted on remaining active, sifting restlessly through all that had happened and still was to happen. Disconcertingly, in the midst of more serious reflections, her thoughts kept returning to the minor, though not insignificant, detail that Robin would be lodged just across the hall from her—in closer proximity than he’d been in weeks.
Yearning pulsed through her, sharp and sweet. It seemed an eternity since their brief idyll in Oxfordshire when they’d been all in all to each other, before tragedy had caught them up in its toils. And hard to banish the fear that they might never know such happiness again.
We will, Sophie told herself firmly. This was no time to lose faith in him, in them.
But just now Robin was preoccupied with thoughts of Nathalie, Cyril, and that baby who would never see the light of day. Little wonder if he’d no attention to spare for anything or anyone else. At least he was no longer shutting her out—that, in itself, was a victory. Indeed, it seemed tacitly understood by everyone that she meant to accompany him tomorrow—to Scotland Yard and the Daventrys’. They could hardly stop her from doing so, after all.
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