by Tracy Grant
“Which doesn’t stop us from engaging in it. A bit like falling in love.”
Charles turned his glass in his hand. “Miss Simcox said something about a note you found on her brother?”
“God, I’m sorry. My brain’s not working properly.” Roth dug a hand into his pocket and held out a slip of paper.
Charles read it through without surprise, then folded the paper and stared as though someone had stuck a knife in his ribs. “God in heaven.”
“Darling?” Mélanie went to his side.
He held the note out without speaking. It was simple enough.
The Running Hare. Seven o’clock.
But when she folded the paper as Charles had done, she saw that it had been sealed with red sealing wax that bore a small imprint of a castle. “Sacrebleu. I suppose we should have guessed.”
Roth glanced between them. “Guessed what?”
“Have you ever heard of the Elsinore League?” Charles asked.
Addison drew a sharp breath.
“Bloody hell.” Blanca's eyes went wide.
“No,” Roth said. “What the devil are they?”
“That’s still open to question.” Charles returned to his chair. “Mélanie and I learned about them when we were investigating Honoria Talbot’s murder two and a half years ago. They were an organization my father—Kenneth Fraser—and his friend Lord Glenister began when they were at Oxford. The members were wellborn, wealthy young men both from Britain and abroad. They drank, whored, and generally indulged their appetites. Glenister would no doubt insist that’s all there was to it.”
“But you think they had a purpose beyond that?” Roth said.
“We know one of the league’s members was involved in atrocities during the French Revolution. He went by the name Le Faucon de Maulévrier, but his actual identity and nationality remain unclear. After Waterloo, families of his victims—some of them powerfully situated in the restored monarchy—tried to uncover his identity to exact retribution. Le Faucon escaped France with the help of my father and other members of the Elsinore League. Once he was safely in Britain, Le Faucon had my father killed.”
Roth frowned. “After your father had helped him escape? Why?”
“Perhaps because Father was the only one who knew where he’d gone to earth. Or perhaps because my father was in possession of papers which may have held the secret to his identity or more information about the Elsinore League. Le Faucon had his agent retrieve them after Father’s death.”
“His agent?”
“Tommy Belmont.”
“Belmont?” Raoul said. “Lord Lovel’s son? Your friend from Lisbon?”
“My fellow diplomat and spy,” Charles said. “Tommy was restless in the aftermath of the war and Le Faucon recruited him. I’m quite sure it was Tommy who killed my father—Kenneth Fraser.”
“Where’s Tommy Belmont now?” Raoul asked.
“His family say he’s visiting their interests in India. But I don’t think even they know where he’s really gone to earth.”
“You said you thought the Elsinore League had a purpose beyond debauchery,” Roth said.
“I can’t prove anything, but I’ve always suspected there’s more to them than we learned two and a half years ago.”
“Do you think they were actually French Revolutionaries?”
“I have a difficult time seeing my father as a revolutionary of any sort. Glenister claims the French members of the league ended up on both sides in the Revolution. O’Roarke? Have you ever heard of the Elsinore League?”
Mélanie turned to look at Raoul, part of her expecting a denial, part of her already braced against an admission that he too had been a member.
“Yes, I’ve heard of them.” Raoul frowned into the depths of his whisky glass. “A few vague references that don’t go beyond what you’ve described.”
“From?” Charles said.
“Your mother.”
Charles’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t realize she knew about them.”
“She knew of their existence but had as little interest as she had in most matters involving your father.”
“But?” Charles said.
“Years later in Lisbon—before you were posted there—I was at a reception at the British Embassy. I came across Colonel Cathcart in conversation with Juan Sanchez, a Spanish envoy. I caught the word 'Elsinore', so I made some comment about discussing Hamlet at a party. They both looked at me as if they hadn't the faintest idea Elsinore had anything to do with Hamlet. Then Cathcart said something about Shakespearean characters, for all the world as if Elsinore was a person, not a place. I'd have thought it a good joke except—""
"What?" Mélanie said.
"Cathcart and Sanchez both had a lot of bravado. I saw them display it on more than one occasion during the war. But Sanchez went ghost white and Cathcart broke out in a sweat.” Raoul glanced at Charles. “They were of an age to have known your father and Glenister as young men.”
“Cathcart was in Father’s set at Oxford,” Charles said. “I don’t know about Sanchez.”
“And Le Faucon?” Mélanie asked. “What do you know about him?
Raoul grimaced. “I’ve heard of his exploits if one can call them that. I’ve heard the speculation about his identity, including the possibility that he was English. But I know no more of who he was—is—than you do.”
“Is there any possibility he and Julien St. Juste are one and the same?” Addison asked.
“St. Juste would only have been fourteen or fifteen at the time of Le Faucon's exploits," O'Roarke said. "Knowing St. Juste I suppose it's vaguely possible he was that precocious, but I doubt it. It's more likely Le Faucon engaged St. Juste’s services in the past few months."
“To destroy Lord Carfax?” Blanca asked. “Could Carfax have been a member of the Elsinore League?”
"He claimed not to be two and half years ago," Charles said. "I told him what I'd learned about the league in the aftermath of Honoria's death. Carfax said his only knowledge of them had been as an undergraduate club. He didn't move in my father and Glenister's set."
“But he was connected to Glenister by marriage,” Mélanie said. “Perhaps he knows something to Le Faucon’s detriment and Le Faucon wants to get rid of him.”
“Why now?” said Charles. “And why not simply have him killed, like my father? Why all the business about seducing Bel?"
“And the list of Radical disturbances,” Addison pointed out.
Raoul leaned forward. "Miss Simcox said her brother realized what he'd really got into when he went to Chelsea and that he mentioned the name Harris. You said you knew a Captain Harris who used to work for Lord Carfax?"
Charles scrubbed his hands over his face. "I met him several times when I visited David on school holidays."
"Did Captain Harris work in intelligence?" Raoul asked.
"Probably. For a few years, Harris always seemed to be in and out of Carfax's house. Then I heard he'd sold out of the army and married and retired to Chelsea."
"So Billy Simcox's work for St. Juste involved someone who used to work for Lord Carfax.” Mélanie perched on the arm of Charles's chair. “Suppose Will’s right. Suppose the violence at all those incidents on the list you found in St. Juste's rooms was the work of agents provocateurs employed by someone in the Government. St. Juste appeared to have been decoding it. St. Juste appears to have had an interest in Lord Carfax."
Charles twisted round in his chair to look up at her. "You're suggesting Carfax is behind those incidents?"
"What do you think?"
He was silent for a moment. "That it's possible. None of which answers the question of what this plot was that didn’t end with St. Juste’s death and that so horrified Billy Simcox he was ready to turn on his employer."
“Assassination was St. Juste’s forte," Raoul said.
Mélanie looked from Raoul to her husband. They hadn't told Roth, Addison, and Blanca about the Dauphin. But the possibility that St. Jus
te had come to England not to extract the Dauphin but to eliminate him hung in the air.
"You think it's Le Faucon still trying to cover up his past?" Roth said.
“It’s difficult to imagine who could have managed to kill St. Juste," Raoul said. "But if the stories about Le Faucon are true, he might have been able to pull it off.”
“He employed St. Juste and then turned on him?” Addison said.
“He might have done. If St. Juste learned who he really was,” Mélanie said. “We know Le Faucon will kill to protect his identity.”
“Do you know anyone you can ask about the Elsinore League?” Roth asked.
“The only person living who I know for a certainty was a member is Glenister and he’s up in Argyllshire,” Charles said. “Colonel Cathcart died at Waterloo. Tommy Belmont’s family are at their country seat, and I don’t think we can get anything out of them. Carfax is going to want a report from me. I’ll sound him out as best as I can.”
Roth nodded and got to his feet. “I should go. I have to make arrangements for Simcox’s body and write up a report for the Chief Magistrate. We’ll talk tomorrow. Or later this morning, rather. We should visit this Captain Harris and see if we can learn what so turned Billy Simcox's stomach in Chelsea.”
Randall, who had returned from conveying Simon to the Albany, drove Roth to Bow Street. Raoul was persuaded to return to the dressing room of the guest suite, which he’d been sharing with Simon. “It will be clearer in the morning,” Mélanie said to Charles when they were alone again in their bedchamber.
“Will it?”
“There’s always the hope. Charles—” She studied his haggard face and deep-set eyes in the lamplight. “I know it’s not easy, having to confront matters about your father again.”
“Which father?”
“I was thinking of Kenneth Fraser, but both of them actually.”
He pulled his shirt over his head. “Whatever the Elsinore League were, they went beyond Kenneth Fraser. This is hardly the first time I’ve had to hear Father’s name in the past two and a half years. And while I confess I’m not thrilled by O’Roarke’s presence under our roof, in the circumstances I think I’m managing pretty well.”
They finished undressing in silence and stumbled into their bed. The sheets were cold, but the feather bed felt like heaven.
“You're going to see Carfax in the morning?” Mélanie asked, pulling the covers closer against the chill.
"I can't put it off much longer."
"We could turn it to our advantage. If you could distract him or get him out of Carfax House—"
“No.” Charles blew out the candle and lay back against the pillows.
“You don’t know—“
His fingers closed round her wrist. "Mélanie, so help me God if you break into the Carfax House without telling me—“
"I wouldn't."
He released her. "Wouldn't you?"
"Not now."
Several seconds of silence followed. She could hear the wind lashing tree branches against the house and smell the smoke from the recently extinguished candle. “What are you going to tell Carfax?” she asked at last.
"I'm not sure. If he's been having me followed, he already knows some of what we know. I'll have to sound him out, see how much he's uncovered. When I told you I wouldn't expose any of your former comrades, I didn’t realize that nearly everything we'd discover would involve someone you'd worked with one way or another."
She rolled onto her side toward him and curled her feet up for warmth. "Would it help if we went over—"
"Thanks. I need to work this out for myself."
"I used to be rather good at helping you figure out how to approach Carfax."
"Thank you, my dear. I'm all too well aware that we've had entirely too many conversations about Carfax."
She pushed herself up on one elbow. She could see the the line of his nose and jaw, but she couldn’t read his eyes. "Charles. It's different now."
"Is it?” The pillow rustled as he turned his head. "Our divided loyalties are in the open. But they're still divided."
"Fair enough. But—"
“You’re on very thin ice here, Mel.”
"I can take it if you're angry."
"I'm not angry. I'm working through options."
"You have a right to be angry."
"I did that two months ago. All it got us was a hole in the salon wall."
"It isn't funny."
"I expect some people would find it hilarious. Go to sleep, Mel."
"I'm beyond being sleepy."
“So am I, but—“
“Good.” She leaned over and pressed her lips against his bare chest.
He caught her by the shoulders and held her away from him. “We’re done with that.”
“What?”
“Intercourse to defuse the situation, to distract me, to placate me—“
“Charles—“
“I’m not Julien St. Juste.”
She sat up, the air cold against her bare skin. “What the devil’s that supposed to mean?”
“That I know sex can be a very effective weapon but it’s not one I care to have turned on me.”
“Darling, I wouldn’t—“
“Oh, yes, you would. You’ve done it ever since our wedding night. But I didn’t know you were doing it. I do now. The rules have changed.”
Chapter 24
'Love' is a sadly over-used word. Of course, I love you, though don't let it get about that I resorted to such commonplace phrases. What is more, I trust you, which is something far more rare and precious…
Simon Tanner to David Mallinson,
11 June, 1809
Simon let himself into the flat in the Albany with his latch key, lit a candle on the table in the entrance hall, and made his way down the passage. Tim Marsden, who had been David’s valet since Oxford, would have gone to bed long since. Simon insisted he not wait up, and Marsden had eventually relaxed his standards enough to go along with him.
No light shone from the sitting room or the first bedroom, but a faint glow came from the back bedroom, theoretically David’s though in fact it was where they both usually slept.
Simon pushed open the door. His lover was sitting in an armchair by the dying embers of the fire.
“Simon?” David pushed himself to his feet. “For God’s sake where have you been?”
Simon closed the door. “Attending a secret meeting to plot illegal activities with dangerous subversives.”
David’s gaze flickered over his face. “Oh, Christ. You mean it.”
“More or less.” Simon took off his greatcoat and laid it over a chairback. “You’d better sit down, this is going to take a bit. I think I’ve told more lies in the past few days than in the entire time you’ve known me.”
David drew a sharp breath, but returned to his chair. Simon sat opposite him and told him about Raoul O’Roarke and the pamphlets smuggled out of France and Hapgood and Will Gordon and the events of the evening.
“No one’s hurt?” David said when he had done.
“O’Roarke has a knife cut, but it’s not serious.”
David stared across the room at an oil of the Seine in winter that had been painted by Simon’s father. “I know there’ve been times in the past you haven’t told me things. When you thought I was better off being able to deny any knowledge of your activities.”
“Occasionally. “ Simon touched his lover’s face. "We may not have made vows in a church, but I know what I owe you.”
“You wouldn’t take vows made in a church seriously anyway.”
“Probably not. That doesn’t change the general point.”
David put up his hand and covered Simon’s fingers with his own. “I trust you with my life. I think you trust me with yours.”
“But?”
David drew their clasped hands down to the chair arm. “But I know there’s a part of you that despises me for being part of a government that technically would
hang us for what we do every night.”
“Every night may be a bit of optimistic exaggeration.”
“That doesn’t change the general point.”
“You aren’t part of the Government. You’re in the Opposition. And I don’t think I could ever despise you even if you turned Tory. Well, maybe then.”
David gave a faint smile, but his gaze remained serious. Simon tightened his grip on his hand, as though he could bridge the chasm David had alluded to. "In the interests of disclosure, I should tell you that Charles also told me about your father and what Lucinda overheard. And also about Bel and Oliver.”
David’s gaze darkened. “I could—“
“Strangle Oliver? So could I have done at various points through the years. But I don’t think he’s indifferent to her.”
“If he cared about her at all—“
“People can hurt people they care about. Worst of all, I sometimes think.”
“You don’t betray someone you love.”
“You think Bel doesn’t love Oliver?”
“I don’t— I don’t know.” David looked down at their clasped hands. “Last night on the terrace— Pendarves confronted you?”
“He accused me of corrupting Will. Politically speaking. Which may have a grain of truth to it, save that Will’s far too self-possessed to be corrupted by anyone.”
“So the reason you lied about talking to Pendarves was to protect the business with the French pamphlets?”
“Mostly. I was afraid Pendarves would let something slip if they questioned him. He’s never been a very good liar.”
“And?”
“And?”
“Did you know Oliver and Sylvie St. Ives were in the garden? Charles told me this evening when I was leaving Berkeley Square.”
“Yes, actually. I didn’t see what it had to do with the murder.”
“Because at that point you didn’t know the murdered man was Bel’s lover.”
“Quite.” Simon sat back on his heels. Past debts of friendship hung heavy in the air. “That does change things."
Charles woke with a thick head, a dry mouth, and eyes that refused to focus. Difficult sometimes to tell lack of sleep from a hangover. His wife was curled against him with one leg thrown over his knees and an arm draped across his chest, though he had a distinct memory of not making love to her the night before. It had been important, though he couldn’t remember why just yet. Oh, yes. The papers in Carfax House. His meeting with Carfax. Mélanie’s attempt to distract or placate him.
