The Devil in Velvet

by John Dickson Carr

  “Stay, man, you go too fast!”

  There was a silence. Hitherto unnoticed, a light chatter of talk, the sense of movement and music, floated over the screen, while Charles sat motionless. His elbow was on the chair arm, his forefinger up under the side of his periwig, while he bit at his narrow line of moustache. Slowly he turned his head.

  “Sir Nicholas,” he said, “you state, and state again, that these letters ‘will’ exist. I ask but one question, and a plain one. How do you know that they will exist?”

  “Because I have read them!”

  “Read them?”

  “Yes! Such secret documents, questionless, could not be made open at the time. Not, indeed, until towards the end of the eighteenth century. You will find them printed fully in the second volume of Sir John Dalrymple’s History of Great Britain and Ireland, which, published in the year 1773, is—”

  Fenton stopped dead.

  Now, at long last, he had made the one irrevocable blunder.

  Yet Charles’s voice and expression remained unchanged.

  “Is there aught else,” he asked kindly, “of which you would warn me?”

  “There is, Sire, though you send me to Bedlam for it! It concerns Mr. Ralph Montagu. You must not appoint him Ambassador to the French court …”

  “Mr. Montagu is a very ingenious gentleman, so I hear. Yet I have no intent that he shall be appointed Ambassador to the French court.”

  “But you will, Sire! You will! Now who is Your Majesty’s ablest and most faithful minister? I dare venture you would say my Lord Danby? Well! When Mr. Montagu is recalled from France in disgrace, his spite will bring with him a number of letters. One of these, read before the House of Commons in 1679, will call the fall of my Lord Danby and almost the fall of Your Majesty’s self.”

  “Now let us reflect,” mused Charles. “I believe you, and your father before you, have been near friends to my Lord Danby?”

  “I believe so. Yet that doth not in any degree affect the fact!”

  “You have no great liking for Mr. Montagu?”

  “Upon my word, I never set eyes on the man until a while ago.”

  “Then tell me. When did you last see my Lord Danby?”

  “He—he supped at my house this night.”

  “This night,” Charles repeated thoughtfully.

  And Fenton felt the strength ebbing from him. For the first and last time in his life, he went down on his knees.

  “For God’s sake, Sire, credit what I say! Every word of it will come true!”

  Charles rose to his feet. Going to his companion, he lifted Fenton with a great heave, set him back in the chair, clapped him on the shoulder, and returned to his own chair.

  “One last chance!” Fenton pleaded, with all remaining strength. “Do you put a question. Nay, two questions! On those I stake what little hope is left to me, else allow myself but a poor madman!”

  “Sir Nicholas, you will make yourself ill,” protested Charles. “Well, well, if it pleaseth you,” he added hastily, “let it be so. Come, I have it! For this Christmastide I have planned a small journey. Now at whose house shall I be, and with whom, on the 25th December of this year?”

  Again December 25th, which was Sir Nick’s birthday and also, grotesquely, Fenton’s own. It seemed to haunt him. Suddenly­ he realized that his thoughts, concentrated on political events, must seek the trivial instead. They scattered into all corners.

  Yes, there had been something of the sort. But mentioned by whom? Ailesbury? Reresby? Evelyn? Burnet? Charles’s own collected letters? Desperately Fenton searched his mind, as a man might seek old papers amid trunks.

  “Well, ’twas of no import,” Charles assured him cheerfully. “Nor will be the other. I can’t recollect the day; but this day is the second week of June. Now where shall I be on this same date, say, in the year 1685?”

  Carefully keeping from looking at Fenton, examining the rings on his fingers, Charles did not see his companion’s face turn as white as a candle. For there could be only one true reply.

  “Sire,” Fenton would have to say, “on this date in 1685 you will have been dead just over four months.”

  He opened a dry mouth, but he could not speak. Literally, physically, he could not deal this blow. True, Fenton knew the date of his own death; but this was so remote, in his present youth, that it held no terrors. True, the King would not believe him. Yet always would remain that fang of wonder and doubt. To watch the days pass, to hear the ticking of the clock, to fear the illness that might strike …?

  Too well, in his imagination, he saw that cold dawn in the great bedchamber, and heard a weak voice from the bed order the last clock wound up, with grey February light stealing through the window curtains. And Charles, who had lived through days of agony with a jest on his lips, died at last with the Catholic faith in his heart.

  “Sire,” Fenton answered clearly, “I can’t tell.”

  “And there’s an end on’t,” smiled Charles. His tone changed. “Nay, I call you no madman. This strain of prophecy, on occasion true but more often false, hath run in all old families. Minette had it. Perhaps that is why …”

  Pausing abruptly, he held up his hand.

  “Stay; that music; that song! I detest these boys’ voices which have neither the vigour of the man nor the allure of the woman. Yet here, though ’tis strange for so idle, sauntering a fellow as myself, is the song I most favour.”

  “The glories of our blood and state

  Are shadows, not substantial things;

  There is no armour against fate

  Death sets his icy hand on kings. …”

  On it went, with its queer sombre rhythm of “Sceptre and Crown, Must tumble down,” in the lyric by John Shirley. Voice and viol throbbed. Charles sat listening, his head forward in the gleaming peruke, his long chin in his neck lace.

  But, when it had finished, he sat up as grim-faced as any City man of business.

  “Now, Sir Nicholas. You say you are here to warn me. But, God’s fish! How I must warn you!”

  “Warn me, Your Majesty?”

  “I need not tell you that you walk forever in danger. But are you sensible you have a deadly enemy in your own household?”

  Fenton’s heart seemed to turn over.

  “Inside? Outside?” he exclaimed. “I have tried to sound the truth. Would I could find it!”

  “As, for instance!” said Charles, setting the tip of one fore­finger against the tip of another. “On 10th May you were set about the ears by two bullies in a small street, of no conspicuousness, called Dead Man’s Lane. ’Twas Green Ribbon work. Yet how could they know you would be there, and at that time in especial? Someone warned them. Had this occurred to you?”

  “Sire, it was the first thing I did think of! When I returned home that night, I questioned my door porter as to what letters had passed in morning. All seemed harmless.”

  “Then you are not aware who betrayed you? And hath betrayed you time after time?”

  “I fear not.”

  “Sir Nicholas, it was your own wife.”

  There was a short silence, while Fenton hated what he had to do. He stood up, looking straight down into the red-brown eyes, half-hooded.

  “Sire,” he said quietly, “you lie.”

  Again a silence, while all light noise seemed blotted out.

  Charles’s heavy hand came down on the chair arm, his powerful fingers gripping the outer end of it. There was a slight crack of wood as he twisted sideways. His foot, still with indolent leg cocked up on the footstool, shot out and sent the heavy footstool spinning across to thud against a heavily padded leathern screen, all but toppling it over.

  Still Fenton’s gaze did not waver a hairline from his own. Fenton could see the Stuart rage, always dangerous and seldom predictable. In the half-hooded eyes he saw it tu
rn slowly to a kind of bewilderment, then a wonder and doubt. “This man,” the eyes seemed to say in perplexity, “is honest.” The doubt, groping, became conviction and then a kind of admiration.

  Charles stood up, towering six inches above his companion.

  “Man, I love you for that!” he said in a deep growl, and with as much sincerity as he was ever capable of feeling. “What crawler, what flatterer at this court durst have said it? My brother, ay; but James is too honest for safety. Bruce, Chiffinch, Berkeley; but Berkeley is dead.”

  Abruptly Charles held out his hand.

  “Have done with this foolery of hand kissing,” he said. “Grasp my hand in friendship, man, and know that a thoughtless fellow may be grateful!”

  Fenton’s head was bent, his fists clenched.

  “Under humble favour, Sire. I would not touch the hand of the Creator Himself, unless He denied or else proved the words He had spoken.”

  Charles bowed very slightly.

  “Yes, you are in the right of it,” said the King of England, with far more dignity in accepting the rebuke than any man alive could have shown in resenting it. “You shall have your proof. Are you acquainted with your wife’s handwriting?”

  “I am well acquainted with it, Sire.”

  From an inside pocket Charles took out a thin grey letter sheet, folded in fours for a seal but now much frayed and lined.

  “This,” he said, “we intercepted after its intelligence had gone by mouth to the Green Ribbon. Pray read it, Sir Nicholas.”

  Fenton tried to unfold it with steady fingers. His eye instantly caught Lydia’s handwriting, the date of 10th May, and then:

  “He hath but a minute gone from me (in hys owne Bedchamber), where he saith my Ilnesse may be cur’d by a Doctor of Physick. But he is gone below-stayres to give a Brisking to the Sarvants, poor Wretches, with a good Cat-of-Nine-Tayles. I fynde time to write these, at past Ten of the Clock. The Brisking, as I think, may be above an Houre. You will fynde him in Ded Man’s Lane, as He so said in my Hearing, which I take to be Strand, sure between Noone and One of the Clock; it may be earlier or later. Yours in the Good Cause!

  “Lydia F.”

  It was curious. Something appeared to be wrong with Fenton’s eyesight, and his knees shook.

  “I—I observe,” he said clearly, “that ’tis addressed to a Mrs. Wheebler, dressmaker, at La Belle France in Covent Garden.”

  Charles made a gesture of impatience.

  “Nay, they must have a clearinghouse for their spies’ intelligence; and of a surety not at the King’s Head. Here is a fine fantastical one; for who would suspect a dressmaker?”

  “Were there,” Fenton cleared his throat, “were there other letters?”

  “I believe so. One we all but intercepted, save that …”

  “Save that my wife had—had found another dressmaker, at La Belle Poitrine in Southampton Street?”

  “Nay, for all this you must go to Sir Joseph Williamson and Mr. Henry Coventry, my Secretaries of State. But this letter of your wife I well recollect. Our fellow had a tack at copying it, but was compelled to leave off in haste and reseal it. One line he had, which was: ‘If you kill him not the next time, I will abandon the Green Ribbon.’”

  Mechanically Fenton repeated the words.

  Then he tried to go down on one knee, but was restrained by the unsteadiness of his legs.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, “I would—that is, I would try at some apology for the speaking of vain and foolish words.”

  The King gripped his hand, pulled him to his feet, and stepped back.

  “Your apology is accepted, Sir Nicholas,” Charles said gravely. “Let’s say no more of it. But you observe … Hold up, man! What’s amiss?”

  “Nay, Sire, I did but stumble against a chair. Any man, you yourself, may stumble against a chair. In my own home I have put a few of these betrayals, that’s to say, chairs, for comfort’s sake. Yet ’tis easy to stumble against a chair.”

  Charles looked at him, pondering.

  “Now what’s the matter for this? Hum! All my informants tell me you and your wife are in bitter disagreement, raging and skreeking at each other.”

  “Your informants, Sire, are … mistaken.”

  “Well, well, even so! God’s fish, what’s one wench or another, save that all are alike in what concerns you?” He hesitated, and turned away. “Yet I confess I remember the old, long-gone days of Frances Stuart. —Keep your heart locked up, man!” he said in a fierce, muffled voice, and turned back again. “There’s the first and last rule of life.”

  “I shall try to obey it, Sire. Have I now leave to go?”

  “Of a surety, if you so desire. But you have been a loyal and faithful servant, sir. Is there no honour, no preferment, with which I can award you?”

  “There is none, though I am much conscious of Your Majesty’s graciousness. I … stay, though! There is one thing!”

  “I would hear it.”

  “On the fringe of Whitehall is an old man who calls himself Jonathan Reeve. Though his title and estates were stolen under Oliver, he is in truth Earl of Lowestoft.”

  “Was he not,” Charles interrupted suddenly, “one of the three at the King’s Head? One of you,” and the deep voice shook with pride, “who sang my health as you held the stairs against thirty swords?”

  “That is the man, Sire. But he is old, and helpless, and broken. He will accept no farthing from anyone; I have tried. Yet if, in some fashion, the Treasury might restore his title and estates?”

  “It shall be done. But for yourself?”

  (If you kill him not the next time, I will abandon …)

  “Nothing, Sire, except to—to serve you as well as I can.”

  “Nay, but I’ll take one precaution!” Charles said grimly. The mocking, satiric lines were in his face again. “Being an idle fellow, as you may have heard, I am perhaps overfond of tales and legends. Now there is one tale, told of several kings and one queen, which facts prove ever false. But we’ll do better; we’ll make legend come true.”

  Slipping a cameo ring off his right hand, he pressed it down over one of Fenton’s fingers.

  “If they come at you with swords, Sir Nicholas, we need have no fear. But my Lord Shaftesbury, upon his return, may have subtler shifts against you. Should he try such (treason, it may be), send that ring to me. It was given me by my father; our names are graved inside. It shall not go unheeded.”

  (You will fynde him in Ded Man’s Lane. … Lydia, Lydia, Lydia!)

  “I thank you, Sire.”

  “Now hold; bear up!—Mr. Chiffinch!” thundered Charles, in a voice which caused an instant dead silence through half the Banqueting House.

  Chiffinch slipped in heavily past the edge of one screen.

  “Look to it,” said the King, “that Sir Nicholas shall go to his home in one of my coaches. After that, return here.”

  Fenton, as he backed away out past the screen, contrived a grave, courtly bow despite the shaking of his legs.

  “Your servant, Sire,” he said.

  When both he and Chiffinch had gone, Charles remained for a time indecisive, stroking his cheek. Then he went to the little fireplace, again setting his hands wide on the mantelshelf and looking down at a grate of fiery ash where the centre log had almost burned in two. He was still standing there when he heard Chiffinch return.

  “And what did you make of him, Will?” he asked without turning round.

  “Nay, I can’t fathom the man,” growled Chiffinch, a privileged character. “But he is honest.”

  For a moment Charles was silent.

  “If I am a cynic, Will, I have reason to be. Poverty and exile ever sharpen the wits. If also I intrust few men and no women, I have reason for this too. Yet …”

  He kicked at the centre log, which burst apart amid a
shower of sparks.

  “I tell you this, Will! There goes a man with a broken heart.”

  * Pack.

  CHAPTER XVII

  AUDIENCE IN LOVE LANE

  AND YET FENTON HIMSELF would not have thought this, or said so, in the darkness of the huge, velvet-stuffy coach which jolted him to his home.

  He merely felt numb. Ordinarily, the coach would badly have hurt his body bruises, but there was nothing. He felt no pain in his heart; no tendency to rage or revile; nothing. But it was extraordinarily difficult to make his arms and legs move as they should.

  “I must think this out,” he kept repeating to himself. “I must think this out from the very beginning.”

  He remembered how, as he went out from Whitehall Palace into Pebble Court, with torches shining about and the great coach in attendance, he had taken out his watch. He was astonished to find the hour was not quite eight-thirty. All his audience with the King, all that went into it, had taken less than an hour.

  How strange is time! Fenton felt his hand begin to shake badly; he knew, in horror, he might drop the watch. Gently Chiffinch had taken it from his hand, under the torchlight, and replaced it in his pocket. In his other hand, unseen, Fenton clutched Lydia’s crumpled letter. He managed to convey it to the pocket of his coat.

  And now the great coach drew up before his door.

  “I must think this out,” he doggedly repeated in his mind.

  Though he was glad to be assisted down the steps, yet he smilingly pretended he needed no help. Afterwards he remembered preaching a mild, calm-voiced sermon to Sam, the door porter, that he need not remain there so late. It was deepening dusk, not yet dark. Sam bowed, opening the door for him, and then vanished.

  But Giles, ever present, stood in the hall and held up a candle. When he saw Fenton’s face, Giles’s thin lips tightened.