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John wanted to talk it all through with Barnaby, but he would doubtless be busy with the mummers’ play, which, John reminded himself, was important to Abel. He did not want to talk to anyone else at the party; he’d had enough upper class idiocy and didn’t want to be roped into the preparations or risk meeting Box. So he took a circuitous route back to his room, intending to lie down, since his head was still rather painful, and think.
Think about Box, think about Barnaby. He very much needed to do the latter. A sensible man would take a cool, logical look at Barnaby’s confession and his acts, decide he was at best dangerously flighty and at worst shockingly amoral, and stay well out of the way. John had always considered himself a sensible man. But the touch of Barnaby’s hands, gripping his for comfort. The taste of his curving mouth. The painful, hopeful look in his eyes. The way he slid so easily into John’s life, as though they were born companions, as though he’d belonged there all along.
John let himself into his room in a haze of thinking about Barnaby, and all but jumped out of his skin.
The man of his dreams—of his idle thoughts, rather—was sitting on the chair with his shoulders hunched, and the shamed and resentful demeanour of a cat fished out of a rainwater barrel. Behind him, standing with his arms folded, was the baritone.
John’s heart thumped, and not in a good way.
“Mr. Garland,” the baritone said. “Shut the door. You took your time.”
Steady, John told himself. He wondered if there was anything in here he could use as a weapon. Possibly he could smash the lemonade jug over the fellow’s head, if he was absolutely sure he could move faster and harder than a Lilywhite Boy.
“I wasn’t aware you were waiting for me,” he said, keeping his voice calm, and then, “I know you.”
“Do you?”
It was obvious now he was close up. “You stayed at Veneerings in ‘93. Your hair was black then, and you wore spectacles. You were meeting a company promoter, a very big man. The two of you asked the hotel manager to put some bearer bonds in his safe, and he opened it in your presence to do so. We changed the policy on the hotel safe after that.”
“So I should hope,” the Lilywhite said. “You’ve a good memory, Mr. Garland. I hope it’s as good on the subject of Lord Sidney Box. Sit down: we need to talk.”
“Do we?”
“Try to be a bit more helpful,” the Lilywhite said irritably. “You know very well that you and I have common cause. That prick Box is attempting to frame me for his robberies, and intended to include a murder. Since the murder in question was to be yours, that puts us on the same side. No?”
It had a certain logic, of the Lewis Carroll sort. “You’ll forgive me if that takes a little getting used to, given your profession.”
“Former profession. I’m a law-abiding citizen these days. Days? Years,” he added, with perhaps a slight lack of enthusiasm. “I should even now be enjoying Yuletide on the domestic hearth with my beloved like a respectable man. Instead, I’m sat here singing carols in this Bedlamite Christmas because Lord Sidney Box sent me a personal request to fuck up his life, did he but know it. I’m going to nail him, and you’re helping. Start with telling me why he doesn’t like you.”
“How do you know—?”
The Lilywhite jerked his thumb at Barnaby. “This one. What did you do to him, by the way?”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, he appears to have discovered a spine. He was quite belligerent on the subject of your well-being—in fact, positively threatening as to what might happen if I laid a finger on you. It was like being savaged by an Angora rabbit.” He patted Barnaby on the head. Barnaby returned a look of intense loathing. “Notwithstanding, I gathered I needed to speak to you, so here I am, waiting for someone to say something useful.”
“Hold on,” John said. “Before I talk to you, I want some answers and some assurances.”
“You seem to misunderstand your role, Mr. Garland.”
“No. I might work with you; I don’t work for you.”
Barnaby made a frantic series of facial expressions suggesting he felt this was an ill-judged strategy. The Lilywhite’s eyebrows angled sharply. “That’s a belligerent stance for a man in your position.”
“What position? I’ve done nothing wrong. You can’t threaten me.”
“I think you’ll find I can.”
“Physically,” John said, trying to pretend the thought of ‘physically’ wasn’t occupying quite a lot of his mind. “That won’t help you deal with Box, will it? You need me to cooperate with you. So cooperate with me.”
The Lilywhite looked at him for a moment, his expression level and unblinking and absolutely terrifying. “You know, Mr. Garland, you’d be amazed how cooperative you might want to be, when pressed. However, I do actually want to make Box eat his own testicles and go home, so if it will speed things up, ask your question.”
“First, tell me what you intend to do,” John said. “Because I quite see you want to stop Box implicating you. But if you intend to rob my uncle’s party, or my cousin’s wedding—”
“No. Law-abiding citizen, remember?”
“You don’t sound law-abiding.”
The Lilywhite grinned. It wasn’t a grin you’d want to see in a dark alley. “I’m on holiday.”
“And what about Box? What do you intend to do to him? I can’t be part of a murder.”
“Nor can I, you bloody fool: the point of this exercise is for me not to suffer the attentions of the police. I don’t want the blame for his poorly executed crimes, so someone else is going to have to take it.”
That was exactly what John had feared. “What about Barnaby?”
“What about him?”
“If Box is arrested, he’ll say Barnaby was involved.”
“Probably,” the Lilywhite said. “He was. So?”
“He didn’t frame you. He wasn’t responsible—”
“He joined this game, Mr. Garland. If he isn’t much of a player, that’s his problem.”
Barnaby’s eyes were huge, switching back and forth between the speakers. John said, “No.”
“No?”
“I’m not helping you put him in prison. I’ll help you get Box, but not with Barnaby as incidental victim. There’s got to be some way that doesn’t have him—”
“Take the consequences of his actions? Christ above,” the Lilywhite said. “The youth of today. Has it occurred to you that he’ll be lucky to reach a cell? Box’s scapegoat doesn’t have to be me: there’s a very obvious candidate who worked at two of the three locations. If you hadn’t alibied Littimer at Veneerings, he’d have been in deep trouble. How hard would it be to give him a pocketful of jewels and an accidentally broken neck? Down a well while fleeing after robbing this house, that’s what I’d do. Even the meagre intelligence of the police could grasp that story.”
The blood had drained from Barnaby’s cheeks. John had to swallow before he could answer. “I suppose that would be a good outcome for you too.”
“It would deal with my immediate problem,” the Lilywhite agreed. “On the other hand, it would mean Lord Sidney Box fucked with the Lilywhite Boys and got away with it. That offends me.”
“If there was another way,” John said. “Some way to make Box take the blame—could he not fall down a well accidentally?”
One of those mobile eyebrows arched. “Bloodthirsty of you.”
“He was going to push me out of a window!”
“Don’t give me that look,” the Lilywhite said. “I really don’t know why people make such a fuss about the defenestration business: we only did it once. No, Box can’t fall down a well with a pocketful of jewels for my purposes. It is exceedingly hard to make the police look at the aristocracy with an accusatory eye, and I speak from experience. You pretty much need a confession, or to catch them red-handed, and Littimer claims that if Box has larcenous intentions in this house, he doesn’t know about them.”
“I don’t think Box does,” John said. “He’s had his vengeance on his father, and acquired a very nice nest-egg doing it. He’s worked out a story about share-dealing to explain where his new money’s come from, and he’s lined up a wealthy young lady to marry. I don’t think he wants to rob my uncle. I think he wants to clear his path of any remaining dangers and enjoy his life as a rich man.”
“Do you know, Mr. Garland, you’re starting to sound useful,” the Lilywhite said. “Sit down. The two of us need to speak.”
“There are three of us in here,” John said. “And you can stop being so damned rude to Barnaby. We all three of us work together to deal with Box, and then you go back to your—your domestic hearth—” He couldn’t look at Barnaby there. “—and you don’t pay Barnaby any further attention or bear him any sort of grudge, since he didn’t want to be involved in this business in the first place. Those are our terms. Do we have an agreement?”
The Lilywhite’s eyebrows climbed improbably, but he shrugged again. “If you two assist me to my satisfaction in dealing with Box, I dare say I can consider Littimer’s debt to me as settled. Very well: we have an agreement, and Littimer, apparently, has a knight. What you have I couldn’t say, but good luck with it. Now sit and talk before my patience expires.”
John was glad to sit, since his legs were shaking. The jewel thief listened in silence, fingers steepled, as he gave the gist of the Trent affair and Lord Sidney’s aspirations.
“Interesting,” he said at last. “So. You became a material threat to Box once he involved himself in the Trents’ divorce. Not enough of a threat that he needed you dead, but a sufficient irritation that, if shoving you out of a window would kill two birds with one defenestration, it was worth doing. That’s a very casual attitude to human life.”
“That’s how he is,” Barnaby said. “He thinks he can do what he wants and everyone else is just a piece on his board. And the worst thing is he’s right, because we are. It’s his world, his game, and the rest of us are pawns.”
“Pawns become queens,” the Lilywhite remarked. “Or so I’m told. Personally, I’ve always felt that the best way to win a game is to douse the board in petrol and light a match. Box failed to have you killed, Garland; his next step was to discredit you very thoroughly indeed. That should have sufficed, and indeed it did, to his knowledge. The divorce was awarded and you didn’t stick your oar in. So why escalate matters now? Why pick a fight with a beaten man?”
John felt himself redden at the flick of light contempt. Barnaby said, “First, John is not beaten. And secondly, it’s because he’s beaten.”
“Do try to make sense, Littimer.”
“Box is a bad winner,” Barnaby pressed. “He rubs it in. He wants you to know you’ve lost, and to demonstrate that you’re so cowed, you don’t dare fight back. I should know,” he added bitterly. “He had me doing as he wanted, so there was no need to keep on at me, but he did. He might have let me believe he respected my skills or some such, but instead he sneered.”
“He sneers when he borrows money,” John said. “Ivy told me he’s so superior about it that people hardly notice he’s a leech.”
“Interesting,” the Lilywhite said. “Very interesting. You know, it seems to me that Lord Sidney has two very serious weaknesses at this moment.”
“What are they?” John asked, since someone clearly had to.
“He’s very close to winning. He’s stolen his fortune and got away with the theft, his heiress is willing, his social position secure. It’s either in his hand or ripe for plucking, and the people who might threaten any of those things are all disgraced or disposable.”
“Sorry,” Barnaby said. “I thought you were giving his weaknesses.”
“That was the first of them,” the Lilywhite said calmly. “The second is that he’s a bad winner, which in turn will make him an even worse loser. Littimer.”
“Yes?”
“You’re a fucking useless henchman and a semi-competent jewel thief at best. How are you as a stage manager?”
Barnaby’s eyes narrowed. “Excellent, since you ask.”
“Glad to hear it,” the Lilywhite said. “So how would you go about staging a tragedy?”
***
IT WAS A VERY LONG conversation, which only ended when the clocks chimed seven, and Barnaby realised his choir was due to sing. After some brisk discussion on the indispensability of baritone voices in an ensemble, he took the Lilywhite with him. John lay on the bed with his bruised head swimming, exhausted and quivering with nerves.
He didn’t have the strength to go down to dinner, and didn’t think he could face Box anyway. He just lay, hungry but too tired to do anything about it, until there was a knock at the door and Barnaby came back in with a towering plate of sandwiches and two mugs of beer precariously balanced on a tray.
“Hello. I thought you might be hungry.”
“Great Scott, you’re a marvel.” John sat up on the bed. Barnaby took the chair. “That is a lot of sandwiches.”
“We’re sharing. I can’t face dinner.”
“Nor I.” John dug into a roast beef sandwich, liberally spread with mustard. “Are you all right?”
Barnaby exhaled, ruffling his lips. “I think so. Terrified, of course, but better for being here with you. You, who told a Lilywhite Boy to stop bullying me, and made him promise to leave me alone. John—”
“It’s nothing. It was the obvious stipulation to make.”
“Obvious,” Barnaby repeated. “To you, perhaps. I can’t believe you did that.”
“It sounds like you told him off yourself.”
Barnaby made a face. “He said something intimidating about getting rid of you if I didn’t do it, and I just—snapped. I told him, if he hurt you, I’d go to the police and identify him and Box together, and be damned to the consequences. I said I’d see him in hell. He told me not to be silly. There’s something extraordinarily deflating about threatening someone you’re terrified of and being told not to be silly. Oh, I do not like that man. I don’t know how you had the nerve to face him down like that.”
“After nine years in a hotel, you get used to arseholes. And he wasn’t entirely bullying, at least not in the way Box is. He was testing, I think, trying to find out what sort of use we might be. He listened to you once you started planning, didn’t he?”
“A great deal more than Box did.” Barnaby picked up a sandwich and put it down again. “Do you think this is going to work?”
John had no idea. The Lilywhite and Barnaby had come up with the plan, mostly via the jewel thief tossing out thoughts, and Barnaby spinning them into a connected shape. It was ingenious and amoral and he suspected had all kinds of potential to go wrong, but as the only person in the room who had never planned a crime, John hadn’t felt qualified to comment.
“You’re the expert,” he said, because there was no point picking holes now. “The Lilywhite approved.”
“Or, to put it another way, it’s my idea so if it doesn’t work it will be my fault, and he’ll blame me, and Box will kill me, and I’ll have let you down again. Oh Jesus, John. I’m extremely close to panicking at this moment, and trying quite hard not to. Could I possibly—I don’t suppose—”
John put down his sandwich and held out his arms as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Barnaby slid down off the chair, onto his knees, so that he knelt by the bed with his head on John’s thighs, taking deep, shuddering breaths. John stroked his hair, loving the feel of it under his fingers. “Ssh. It’s all right.”
“You keep saying that and it’s not,” Barnaby said into his legs. “It is very much not.”
“It will be. You’ve had a cursed rough time of it: no wonder you’re near the end of your tether. And don’t say it’s your fault, as if that makes it less rotten for you. I should think it makes it worse.”
“It does, rather. And you’ve had a rotten time yourself, but you seem calm as a, an oyster.”
“Oyster?”
“I was going to say clam, but calm as a clam just sounds like you can’t spell. I think I’m going mad.”
“Well, don’t,” John said. “We’ve no time for that. Chin up. You’ve come up with the very devil of a scheme, and we’ve got a very devil of a man to help put it into operation. We’ll deal with Box for good, and it will be over. No more nightmare, no more Captain Algy. The Lilywhite will go back to his respectable existence with his beloved—he did say that, didn’t he? I wondered if I was hallucinating.”
“Oh, no, I worked that out,” Barnaby said, looking up. “It’s a dog. A damn great mastiff, I expect, which he calls Beloved because that’s an amusing name for a hellhound. He feeds it live cats. It must be a dog, John, otherwise we have to consider an actual human being sharing that man’s bed and telling him off for leaving his socks on the floor, and I don’t think I have the mental capacity.”
“There’s no accounting for taste,” John said, although this understated the matter considerably. “The point is, he’ll go away, and so will Box, and you’ll be free of it all.” He wasn’t entirely sure of that, but he wanted it to be true, and Barnaby needed to hear it. “You can start again.”
“I would like to do that,” Barnaby said. “I really would. Would you?”
John ran his fingers through Barnaby’s hair, over his ear. “Maybe we can talk about that when you take me to the Cafe Royal.”
Barnaby’s eyes were locked on his, pupils huge. “Really? Because God knows I have not shown myself to advantage in this awful mess, but if you will truly give me another chance, I will earn it. I promise you on my soul. I’ll have to, because you— Oh Lord, this is the worst time to say it and horribly presumptuous of me, but you feel like home, you always did. Like everything worth having in the world. You’re so utterly right, and if you could let me try to be right for you—”
John reached for his hands. “You saved my life, and told off the Lilywhite for me. It’s not a bad start.”
Barnaby sniffed. “Angora rabbit.”
“Be fair: that was quite funny.” He grinned at Barnaby’s outraged expression. “Come on, get off the floor. Have a sandwich. We’ve plenty to do and you’ll need your strength.”
“Won’t I just. Is this going to work, John?”
“It is,” John said, willing it. “It’s got to.”