by Iain Pears
“Let me tell you a story,” she said. “A long time ago, when I was young and beautiful, I lived in Paris. I lived a fine life, and often invited people for dinner. Friends and acquaintances. Politicians, writers, musicians. That is the origin of Xanthos’s rather inflated notions of me. It amused me greatly, and when I encountered John I invited him. I wanted to show off, I suppose. Perhaps even make him jealous, although I had no notion that he was anything other than an acquaintance at the time. A pleasing man, a good companion. Someone with whom I felt comfortable.
“Anyway, he came, although not often. He didn’t approve of idle conversation with artists, and gradually his scepticism made me feel it was a foolish way of spending my life as well. One evening he took me for dinner at a restaurant, with some of his business associates and some of mine. They didn’t mix very well. A doctor began talking about hypnotism, which he practised on his patients, and mentioned spiritualism. Auras and emanations. He took it seriously and offered to take everyone to a séance with a medium who was then in the city. This was the time when Madame Blavatsky was causing such a stir, and there were many imitators of her around. Do you remember Blavatsky?”
“I read about her for background.”
“It is of no consequence. Some of the other guests were enthusiastic about the idea, and started talking about spirituality, and the poverty of the modern age, which had taken the poetry out of men’s souls. I leave you to imagine the sort of thing.
“Nothing could provoke John more. He became quite angry, and the fact that I was willing to go to this séance made him angrier still. He always held that such things were the self-indulgent foolishness of the decadent, or the miserable superstition of the peasant. Man’s future lay with the roar of a blast furnace, not with the rattling of a teacup. It appalled him that grown men were willing to countenance what he considered to be obvious charlatanry. It was the first time I had seen him angry, and I thought it strange he should become so agitated over something if he thought it so absurd. Of course, it wasn’t really about that at all. It was about me. What I was, what he wanted me to be. We had our first fight, then and there. It was undignified, embarrassing, and convinced me he truly loved me.”
“Did you—do you—agree with him?”
“In my youth I was interested in all these things. It was a fashionable amusement, and I imagine it still is. In my case it was the same as playing bridge. Something to amuse a company of guests, where we could all act out our roles. Everyone acted as though they believed it, because they thought everyone else did believe it. Not that that matters. The point is that John had nothing but scorn for any of that sort of thing, and he was not a man to change his mind.”
“So it is not possible that, say, he might have consulted a medium in the hope of discovering the identity of this child? Perhaps of talking to it, if he had known it was dead?”
“John, so overcome with grief at the loss of a child he had not cared about enough to discover, talking to shades through a charlatan? No. Not a chance in the world.”
“But he went.”
“So you tell me. If you can discover why, and it does not distract you from the main line of enquiry, then do so. Let it be another surprise to add to the ones I am already having to deal with. Is there anything else?”
“And the morphine?”
“That is none of your business.”
There was a chilly finality in her tone which brooked no objection. She made me feel like some sort of impertinent servant, and I think I reddened with embarrassment. She did not help me out and cover over my mistake. Instead she instantly reverted to a formality, a businesslike manner to indicate that I was being punished. I noticed that this was one of her many weapons in dealing with men; she would become intimate, friendly, imply a closeness, then pull back and revert to formality. Her grasp of language was flawless in that regard; she could hint at intimacy or distance, friendship or disapproval, in the mixture of tone and language and gesture. The slightest suggestion of disapproval and I was prepared to do anything to win back her favour. I do not think this was considered on her part; she could not help behaving in such a way.
I wasn’t completely ready to be self-effacing, though. If she could be stiff, then so could I. “You have instructed me to forget about your husband’s payment of money to anarchists,” I continued. “I suppose you know more than I do and think this is irrelevant as well. Please say what you want, and I will obey your wishes.”
“Oh, Matthew, I’m sorry,” she said beseechingly, instantly warm again. “Please do not be angry with me, even if I am angry with you. You are a bringer of evil tidings, you know. You cannot expect me to be happy with what you tell me, and not feel resentful. It is not your fault my life has become a nightmare in the past few weeks, but it has. I ask you to be gentle with me.”
“You are not gentle with me.”
“I’m sorry if I have hurt you in any way. It was not my intention. Please believe that.”
I did not; but the very words, spoken gently and with warmth, made hope fill me once more, and undid all the good work I had done in convincing myself that our relationship was one of employer and employee, nothing more.
“Of course I do,” I said.
Reading this over, I seem like a fool. Perhaps I was; I have already explained that Elizabeth came from a world of which I knew nothing. I suppose it is evident that my disdain and suspicion were matched from the beginning by an equal fascination. Her whole way of life—the money, the servants, the clothes, the paintings, the leisure, the sheer plenty—was intoxicating to associate with. It was impossible to separate her from those surroundings, but I think she would have been every bit as intriguing had she been very much poorer. She was captivating: the moods, the flashes of anger and equal bursts of kindness; the way she moved from vulnerability to a steely determination; the sense of humour that could give way to sudden seriousness. Her unpredictability was hypnotic.
Even in the way she treated others, like Mrs. Vincotti. It wasn’t pleasant, but it made me sensible that she did not treat me like that. Not often, at least. It made me feel special. I basked in it because I needed it; it was a sensation I had never experienced before. And, when all was over, it was something precious I took away with me. She made people—men, let us be clear—feel better than they were, more capable, more handsome, more worthwhile. It was not fraudulent, a technique she had to bend others to her will so she might get what she wanted, although it was that as well. It was, I am convinced, quite genuine, a sort of generosity even though it was something that she used to her own advantage.
“One last thing, then. The money.”
“What about it?”
“It has obviously gone somewhere. It might be helpful to discover where, if that can be done. My friend Franklin…”
“No,” she said sharply. “Absolutely not. You gave me your word that you would maintain a complete discretion and you must keep to that.”
“But this is a very specialised matter,” I tried to explain. “Account books, high finance, that sort of thing. I know nothing about it, and it wasn’t what you hired me for. If you had known you needed someone to ferret out the secrets of a balance sheet I have no doubt you would not have chosen me.”
“You are an intelligent man, Matthew. And we must make the best of what is available. I do not say it would not be helpful to have expert help. Merely that you must not breathe a word of this to anyone.”
Franklin, I thought to myself with a groan. Seyd. Both knew and understood even more than I did. I thought I could rely on both of them, but what if I was wrong? What if Franklin decided to show off at work? Maybe curry favour with his superiors. I think you should unload your holdings of Rialto Investment…
“I do not know how much Franklin grasped…” I said, splitting the difference between candour and dissimulation in an equitable fashion. I felt a little warm around the collar as I spoke, and she looked at me enquiringly. I hoped I was a better liar than I felt. I
was sure that I could prevail on Franklin to keep quiet, after all.
“Anyone else?”
“And my editor hinted that some people consider you to be an agent for the Dual Alliance and are alarmed that much of the Empire’s capacity for manufacturing weapons has fallen into your hands.”
“It hasn’t,” she said shortly. “At present it has fallen into the hands of the executor. Where it will stay until these matters are resolved.”
I looked at her curiously. “Ah,” I said.
“Discover this child, Mr. Braddock,” she said with a faint smile. “And the thanks of the Kaiser will be yours.”
I looked at her aghast. She sighed with exasperation.
“A joke, Matthew. A joke.”
“Oh. Right. Good.”
CHAPTER 19
After I left Elizabeth, I went round the corner to the pub, to breathe in rancid air of normality and to order my thoughts. Please do not think that there was much chance of this. I will edit much from the account, and describe only those facts which concerned the matter of Lord Ravenscliff. In fact, they occupied my mind for only the smallest fraction of my time. The rest was taken up, almost obsessively, with my feelings for his wife. I will not dwell on them; anyone who has been in my situation will understand all too well; anyone who has not will be unable to imagine it. So I will instead pretend that, with clear head and reasoned thought, I applied myself to writing down in my little notebook the facts and the theories.
One stood out; the circumstances which led to the impossibility of finding this child meant that control of Ravenscliff ’s business empire had fallen semipermanently into the hands of the executor. And who was this Michael Cardano, exactly?
The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. What about Cort’s intervention when Ravenscliff died? He had concealed the fact for three days, and with the time bought, had arranged for Barings Bank to intervene and prop up the share price. Had the price collapsed, the City would have wanted a full accounting, reassurance that the businesses were sound. And in such an atmosphere, it might easily have been discovered that they were not sound at all. Even worse, perhaps, regrettable information about the integrity of many senior politicians might also have been revealed. A crisis in Government, together with the collapse of the greatest manufacturer of weapons in the country: not an ideal preparation for a trial of strength against our greatest foe. It was easy to see how a man like Cort might have considered the theft of a folder of papers a small thing to avert such a calamity. And I assumed, from my limited knowledge of the subject through reading spy novels, that breaking into a house and stealing papers was simple enough.
That was one question answered to my satisfaction, although perhaps not completely. But there were many others. The big one, of course, was the money. I had not learned a great deal about finance from Franklin, but I knew that, if a large sum of money is extracted from a company, it has to go somewhere. Where did Ravenscliff ’s millions go? Then there were the lesser problems of the anarchists and the spiritualist. Why was Ravenscliff associating with people for whom, I assumed, he had nothing but contempt?
To that last question, I had no answer. But as I did not have the expertise even to begin tackling the first ones, I decided this would be the place to start. Someone like the witch-woman was very much in my line of business. I had covered the murder, after all. I closed my notebook, stuffed it in my pocket and drained my beer.
I still had my scribbled notes on the story, so I read them as the omnibus clattered towards Tottenham Court Road. The witch-woman had not been a particularly successful member of her trade, largely because of personality—I had not managed to get anyone to give an opinion as to the quality of her aura or the respectability of her spiritual intercessors. Although she went under the name of Madame Boninska, this was obviously a fake; all people claiming to be mediums adopted names like that and dropped heavy hints about gypsy blood and exotic lineage. It was expected; no one would ever believe that someone born in Tooting Bec would have much skill in dealing with the far-beyond. Her real name and age remained a mystery; the police doctors guessed she must have been at least in her sixties, although they freely said (off the record) that her bloated and ancient carcass was so raddled by the effects of drink that she could have been ten years younger or ten years older. Nor was her real identity ever discovered; all that was known was that she had arrived in England a few months before her death, and had previously plied her trade in parts of Germany and France, offering her services to the gullible who went to places like Baden-Baden or Vichy. They had little enough to do, were glad of the distraction, and she had made a decent living. There was a slight suspicion that she had also supplied more human intercessors for the comfort of male customers but that was never pinned down. Why she had abandoned the Continent for London was unknown.
But, abandon it she had, and had set up above a shop selling umbrellas, from which vantage point she began to make her living, giving personal appointments to solve problems, or group sessions for reasons which escaped me but seemed to be little more than light entertainment. On rare occasions she made house calls, but preferred to receive her clients in her room, which was decorated in dark colours, with aromatic candles burning all day and night and windows permanently shrouded in heavy curtains. The police investigation revealed why she did not like to perform elsewhere. She would have had to try and convince her customers without the benefit of all the little bits of trickery and stagecraft that were found stacked in the next room. The cupboards with fake doors; the bells with string, so they could tinkle mysteriously, controlled by unseen forces; the source of a mysterious purple light, which looked as though it had been bought from a theatre; the echo chambers so her assistant could make the noises of spiritual beings unseen by the rest.
The woman was a total fraud, in other words, and it was unfortunate that we reporters—who love a good tale of human foolishness—printed all this in cheerful detail before the police managed to interview her clients, as many of them refused to come forward out of simple embarrassment. If she had ever had an appointments book, it had vanished as well, as had the assistant, who, it emerged, had been a prostitute trying to improve herself.
All in all, then, a squalid business, as was her death. For she had been strangled with the velvet tie of the robe she wore when performing. The murderer had acted with force, and thoroughness; making sure of the matter by then crushing her skull with a heavy brass candlestick. There had been little struggle; the room was hardly disarranged at all. And it was unclear when the murder had taken place. There was a suggestion that the assistant, whose name was Mary, might have come back shortly afterwards—someone thought they had seen her in the street—but, if so, she had then fled rather than contact the police. Which was unfortunate, as the police never for a moment considered that she might have been responsible.
With her had gone the most valuable source of information, for she alone of the living might have known who had come that afternoon, at what time Madame Boninska had probably been killed and why. For nobody else had seen anything that day. And without her evidence there was no chance of solving the case. More alarmingly perhaps, I realised I had given Lady Ravenscliff some slightly inaccurate information: Madame Boninska had been found two days after her husband fell from his window, but the police doctors were not at all certain when she had actually been killed. The degree of uncertainty meant it could have been before Ravenscliff had dropped from the window, perhaps after. The police had concentrated their limited efforts on finding Mary, who was the only one who could enlighten them and, when they proved unsuccessful, had more or less given up. Their collective opinion was that she would turn up eventually, and they could reopen the case when she did. Until then, they had other things to worry about.
I had not been excessively diligent. Murders are rare, and it did have some of the exotic characteristics which turn a squalid death into an interesting story, but in general we follow the police lead unless t
here is good reason not to do so. In this case, the official reasoning seemed sound. The girl was crucial and there was not much to be done until she rematerialised. I wrote a sidebar on mediums and a piece on the fashion for the occult while I waited for some development, but could push it no further. If they couldn’t find her, there wasn’t much chance I could, and I did not have the leisure to try.
Now I did, and I also had a very much better reason to do so than a few column inches in the Chronicle. So I prepared to do all those reporterly things that I had omitted first time round.
The first thing was to talk to the neighbours. The police had already done that, and I had seen their notes one night in the pub, but I was now interested in different questions. They had asked if anyone had been seen arriving or leaving on the day of the murder. To which the answer had been no; no one in particular. But I was now interested in two days previously as well, when Ravenscliff ’s diary said he had an appointment. This wasn’t likely to lead to much, but I wanted confirmation that he had gone there.
So I called in at the umbrella shop, as the proprietor had been the most useful of interviewees to the police, and I hoped he would prove the same for me. He was the only person, in fact, who had noticed anything at all, and had been the one who had discovered the body. It was rent day, and he had gone to collect. As the lady was too uninterested in the material things of this world to take the mundane matter of paying debts too seriously, he had refused to go away, kept on knocking and had eventually gone in. She apparently had something of a history of pretending to be out when he came to call, and she was three months in arrears.
Mr. Philpot was the sort of man who had no first name. The sort whose wife addresses him as Mr. Philpot after they have finished making love, if they ever do. He is the butt of jokes from his betters, who scorn his ilk for their respectability, and lack of imagination and utter dullness. The very epitome of the English lower middle classes; a shopkeeper, with standards to maintain and a small place in society to defend. I liked him; I have always liked the Philpots of this world, with their honesty and trustworthiness and decency. I even like their small-mindedness, for they are content with what is theirs, and proud of the little they have. Only if that is threatened do they become testy, but what group of mankind does not? They respect their betters, and fear those below them. They go to church and reverence the King, and sweep the pavement outside their shops every morning. All they want is to be left alone, and in return they provide the nation with all of its substance and solidity. If a factory worker kills his wife, or an aristocrat fathers a child, it is scarcely remarked upon; if a Philpot does so, it is a shock. Philpots are held to higher standards than most of mankind, and on the whole they live up to them.
