by Anne Perry
She took a deep breath and let it out silently.
“One cannot see a true friend suffer, perhaps even be ruined, without attempting to help.” She watched him as she spoke.
His head jerked up, his body became rigid. It was as if she had struck him. The quiet room, sunlit from the garden beyond, was permeated with fear. Still he said nothing.
She would not let it go, she could not. “Dunraithe, I need your advice. That is really why I have come at this very inappropriate hour. I do know better than to call unannounced at three in the afternoon.”
A flash of painful humor crossed his face and vanished.
“You, of all people, do not need to apologize. How can I help you?”
At last!
“Someone I know and care for,” she answered, “and for reasons which will be obvious to you, I should prefer not to name him, is being blackmailed.” She stopped. The expression on his face did not change in the slightest; indeed, it was unnaturally frozen. But the blood rushed into his cheeks, and then fled, leaving him ashen. If she had ever doubted that he, too, was a victim, she could not possibly do so now.
Had he any idea how his color had betrayed him? Did he feel the heat in his skin, and then the faintness? She looked into his eyes and still was not certain. She continued because the only alternative was to retreat.
“Over something which, in fact, he did not do.” She gave a tiny smile. “But he cannot prove it. It was all many years ago, and rests now on the word of people whose memories are dulled or whose testimony may not be sufficient.” She gave the minutest shrug. “Anyway, I daresay you are as aware as I that a whisper can be enough to cause irreparable damage, whether it is true or not. Many of the people one would like to admire actually have very little charity when it comes to the chance to cause a stir with a piece of gossip. One has not far to look to know that is true.”
He started to say something, then swallowed convulsively.
“Do sit down, Dunraithe,” she said softly.” You look as if you are quite ill. A stiff brandy might help, but I think a word of friendship might do more. You also are carrying a great burden of some sort. One does not need the eye of a friend to see that. I have shared my concern with you, and feel better for it, even if you are not able to give me any practical advice. And I admit, I cannot think what such advice might be. What can one do against blackmail?”
He avoided her eyes, looking down at the roses in the Aubusson carpet beneath his feet.
“I don’t know,” he answered, his voice husky. “If you pay, then you only dig yourself in the more deeply. You have created a precedent, and shown the blackguard that you are afraid of him and will yield.”
“That is part of the trouble.” She watched him intently. “You see, he has not asked for anything.”
“Not … asked for anything?” His words were stilted, his face drained of color.
“Not yet.” She kept her own voice level. “It is most unpleasant, and of course my friend fears that in time he will. The question is what will it be?”
“Money?” There was a lift of hope in him now, as if a demand for money would have been almost a relief.
“I imagine so,” she answered. “If not, then it may be something far uglier. He is a man of influence. The worst possibility is that he may be asked to do something corrupt … to misuse his power ….”
He closed his eyes, and for a moment she was afraid he was actually going to faint.
“Why do you tell me this, Vespasia?” he whispered. “What do you know of it?”
“Only what I have told you,” she replied. “And that I fear he may not be the only victim. Dunraithe … I am very much afraid there may be a far larger conspiracy involved than merely the misery of one man, or even two. One cannot keep one’s reputation, however justly earned, by committing an act of dishonor, possibly even greater than that with which one is falsely accused.”
Suddenly he looked at her very directly, anger and desperation in his face. “I cannot tell how much you know, even if that is why you are here, and what of your friend is mythical, what true.” His voice was rough, almost angry. “But I confess I also am being blackmailed for something of which I am totally innocent. But I will not risk having it said … by anyone! I shall pay him whatever he asks, but I will keep him silent.” He was shaking. He looked so ill as to be on the point of collapse.
“My friend is as real as you are.” It mattered to her that he did not think she had lied, no matter for what reason. “I did not know you were also a victim, but your distress caused me to wonder. I am profoundly sorry. It is the filthiest of crimes.” She spoke more fervently. “But we must fight him. We must do it together, if necessary. We must believe in one another. My friend was accused of cowardice in the face of the enemy … a sin which would be anathema to him, a shame he could not live with.”
“I’m sorry.” The words were wrung from him. She could not doubt he meant them passionately. It was in his face, the angle of his body, the clenched shoulders. “But to allow what I am accused of to be said aloud would be a torment Marguerite could not live with. And that I will not allow … whatever he does to me. There is no use arguing with me, Vespasia. I will do anything on earth before I permit her to be hurt. And she would be devastated.”
This was no time for tactful evasions. Charlotte and Marguerite would return at any moment. Charlotte had already kept the conversation on gardening alive miraculously long.
“What are you accused of?” Vespasia asked.
He was pale to the lips. Again, the answer seemed forced from him. “Suit for the paternity of the child of one of my closest friends.” He struggled for breath. “The husband passed away recently. He cannot even deny that he contemplated such a thing.” His voice rose. “Of course he did not! The child was his, and he never could have thought otherwise. But even a whisper of doubt would ruin the mother’s reputation, and mine, the more so since we were friends … and even call into question the son’s inheritance, both of his father’s title and his considerable wealth.”
His face crumpled and his voice trembled now.
“To have anyone think that I could have behaved in such a way would kill Marguerite. She is … very frail. You know that. She has never ever been strong, and of late she has suffered … I simply will not allow it!”
“But you have done nothing wrong,” she pointed out. “There is nothing for you or Marguerite to be shamed by.”
His lip curled. The bright sunlight streaming through the windows showed the contempt in his face. “And do you imagine people will believe that … all people? There will be whispers, glances.” He laughed derisively. “Some well-meaning busybody will be sure to tell Marguerite what is being said, probably in the guise of forewarning her, perhaps in simple malice.”
“And so you will do what he asks of you,” Vespasia said. “The first time, and the second … and maybe the third? By which time you will truly have done something to be ashamed of, and his hold upon you will be real!” She leaned forward a little. “How far will you go? You are a judge, Dunraithe. Justice must be your first loyalty.”
“Marguerite is my first loyalty!” His voice was raw, his fists clenched. “I have loved her nearly all my life, and I will do anything to protect her.”
Vespasia said nothing. He did not need her to repeat that for him to betray his trust, sell his honor, would also devastate Marguerite. He must see it all in her eyes. He could not bear to look beyond the first danger and deal with them one at a time, pay the cost and think about tomorrow’s evil afterwards, hope then for some escape. Perhaps someone else would defeat the blackmailer before that?
The French doors opened, and Charlotte and Marguerite came in in a gust of bright wind and billowing skirts. There was color in Marguerite’s cheeks, and she looked excited and happy.
Dunraithe made a mighty effort to master the pain and the fear that had been so naked in him a few moments before. His whole expression changed. He straightened his body. He s
miled at both the women, extending his warmth towards Charlotte as well.
“Your garden is quite lovely,” Charlotte said with very real admiration. “What marvelous things can be achieved when you have both the art to see what should be done and the skill to do it. In the nicest way, I am perfectly envious.”
“I am so glad you enjoyed it,” he said. “She is very clever, isn’t she?” The pride in him was enormous, a thing of unalloyed pleasure.
Marguerite beamed with happiness.
The tea was brought, and it was now almost four o’clock anyway. They sat making another half hour’s trivial conversation, then said their farewells and the carriage was called.
Vespasia told Charlotte what she had learned as they traveled back to Keppel Street.
“I am very afraid that this is far bigger than we had at first supposed” she said grimly. “I am sorry, my dear, but you can no longer keep your knowledge of Brandon Balantyne’s involvement from Thomas. I realize it will not be easy for you to tell him how you have become aware of it, but you have no alternative now.”
Charlotte looked at her steadily. “Do you really think this is some kind of conspiracy, Aunt Vespasia?”
“Do you not think it looks like it?” Vespasia replied. “Cornwallis, Balantyne, and now Dunraithe White.”
“Yes … I suppose so. If only he had asked for money!”
“He would still have to be stopped,” Vespasia pointed out. “Money is only the beginning.”
“I suppose so.”
It was not an easy conversation, as Vespasia had predicted, but Charlotte broached the subject as soon as Pitt returned home. For once he was quite early, coming into the kitchen in his stocking feet and finding her busy putting away clean crockery. She did it immediately because once she had determined to do it, she could not settle to any kind of peace of mind until it was accomplished. She had rehearsed it several times, never entirely satisfactorily.
“Thomas, I have something I must tell you about the Bedford Square case. I don’t know whether it is relevant or not … I hope not, but I feel you should know.”
It was not her usual pattern of speech, and he caught the difference, turning from the sink, where he was washing his hands, and looking at her with surprise.
She stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, half a dozen plates in her hand. She took a deep breath and then spoke, without waiting for him to ask or allowing him to interrupt.
“I spent the afternoon with Aunt Vespasia. One of her friends, Judge Dunraithe White, is also a victim of this blackmailer who is threatening Mr. Cornwallis.”
He stiffened. “How do you know? Did he tell Vespasia?” His voice was high and sharp with incredulity.
“Not easily, of course,” she answered, putting the plates back on the table and passing him a clean towel. “But they are old friends. I occupied his wife, who is a most excellent gardener. I must tell you more about that—I know! Later,” she interrupted herself quickly.
“Vespasia spoke alone with Mr. White, and he confessed to her his situation. He is absolutely distracted with worry and fear, but the accusation is that he fathered the eldest son and heir of one of their closest friends. And now that the friend is dead and cannot deny it, the blackmailer is saying that he was actually going to sue Mr. White ….”
Pitt winced, his expression conveying plainly how he appreciated the hurt. He dropped the towel over the back of the chair nearest to him.
“And Mr. White said such a thing would devastate his wife. She is very frail and so they have no children of their own. He adores her, and will pay any price asked of him rather than allow that.”
Pitt hunched his shoulders and pushed his hands hard down into his pockets. “That’s Cornwallis, White, and, I heard today, also a man named Tannifer, a merchant banker in the City. He’s accused of fraud with his clients’ funds.”
“Another one!” She was startled. It was looking increasingly as if Vespasia was right and the problem was far larger and more serious than any individual blackmail for greed.
He looked at her gravely. “Have you considered that perhaps General Balantyne is also being blackmailed? I know you would rather not think so, in view of the murdered man on his doorstep, but I can’t dismiss it just because I would prefer to.”
Now was the time. “He is.” She watched his face to see how angry he might be. He stood absolutely still, all kinds of emotions conflicting in his eyes, anger and amazement, pity, understanding, and something which for an instant she thought was a sense of betrayal. She went on talking, quickly, trying to cover the moment. “I went to convey my sympathy for his new tragedy … really that the wretched newspapers had raised the Christina business all over again, as if living it once were not enough.” Now what was in his face was unmistakably pity, memory of indescribable pain, not for himself but for Balantyne, and understanding of what she had done. “I knew something else was extremely wrong,” she went on, smiling at him now. “And I offered my friendship, for whatever comfort that was. He told me, with great embarrassment, that he is being blackmailed over an incident in the Abyssinian Campaign twenty-five years ago which never happened, but he cannot prove it. Most of the other people concerned are either dead or abroad, or senile.”
She took a breath and hurried on again. “No one has asked him for money either, or anything else, but he has had a second letter, and it is very threatening. Such a charge would ruin him and Lady Augusta, whom I don’t care about, but Brandy too. He is trying to find anyone from the campaign who can help, but he hasn’t succeeded so far. What can we do, Thomas? This is dreadful!”
He remained silent for several moments.
“Thomas …”
“What?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about General Balantyne earlier. I wanted to see if I could find something and prove his innocence of the accusation.”
“You also didn’t want me to know because it would make me suspect him of killing Albert Cole, because the snuffbox was his,” he said levelly. “Did he give it to Cole?”
“No … he gave it to the blackmailer. He was asked for it, as a pledge, and it was collected by a boy on a bicycle.” She waited for what he would say next. How angry would he be about that? She really should have told him.
He regarded her steadily.
She felt the color hot in her face. But if she were in the same position over again, she would do the same thing. She had no doubt whatever that Balantyne was innocent. He needed defending. And Augusta would certainly not do it.
Pitt smiled with a curious little twist. He knew her rather too well for comfort at times.
“Your apology is accepted, even if it is not entirely believed,” he said gently. “I suggest for your leisure-time reading you try Don Quixote?’
She winced now, and lowered her eyes. “Are you ready for supper?”
“Yes.” He sat down at the table and waited for her to lay plates for them, put away the rest of the plates, finish preparing the meal and then serve it.
Vespasia did not know about Sigmund Tannifer, but what she did know was enough to cause her such grave concern that she used the telephone, an instrument which she found quite marvelous, to ask her friend Theloneus Quade if she might call upon him that evening.
He responded by offering to call upon her instead. She was tired enough to accept with gratitude. Had the offer come from anyone else she might have declined, even with asperity. She refused to concede any more to age than was forced upon her, and most certainly not in front of others. But Theloneus was different. She had come to realize that his love for her had transcended his initial fascination with the beauty she had possessed even into her sixties, and the core of which was still with her. Now it was a love for the person she was and the experiences they had shared over a lifetime through a tumultuous century. It had begun, for her at least, when the Emperor Napoleon had threatened the very existence of Britain. She remembered Waterloo. Queen Victoria had been a child then, and relatively u
nknown.
Now she, too, was an old woman, who wore black and was empress of a quarter of the world. Steamships sailed the seas, and the Thames Embankment was illuminated by electric lights.
Theloneus arrived a little before eight. He kissed her on the cheek, and for a moment she smelled the faint perfume of clean skin, laundered cotton, and felt the warmth of him.
Then he stood back. “What is it?” he asked with a frown. “You look extremely worried.”
They were in her sitting room. There was still bright sunlight outside. It would not be dark for nearly two hours, but there was a coolness already in the air, in spite of its golden brilliance.
He sat down, because he knew how it irritated her to have to stare upwards.
“I spent much of the day with Charlotte,” she began. “We called upon Dunraithe White. I am afraid you were correct in your fears for him. He confided in me the source of his anxiety. It is worse than you thought.”
He leaned forward, his thin, gentle face creased with worry.
“You feared premature senility, or even madness, didn’t you?” she asked.
He nodded. “At worst, yes, I did. What could he have told you that you find even more serious?”
“That he is being blackmailed ….”
“Dunraithe White!” He was aghast. “I find that almost impossible to believe. I never knew a more predictably righteous man in my life. Or a more transparently honest one. What on earth can he have done for which anyone could blackmail him, let alone which he would pay to keep secret?” His face was creased in lines of pity and concern, but underlying it all was still incredulity.
Vespasia understood. Only his love for Marguerite made Dunraithe White vulnerable, and that was what was so frightening. The blackmailer must be close enough to him to have known that, otherwise he would not have wasted his time with the attempt.
Theloneus was waiting for her to explain, watching her.
“He is not guilty of anything,” she said softly, “except the desire to protect Marguerite from the whisper of unkindness, true or untrue.” Then she told him of the accusation and Dunraithe’s response.
