It turned out that the Disraelis had already left for a weekend in the country, expected back either late on Sunday evening or Monday morning. Tabby found that out when she went round the corner into Park Lane to deliver my note. Saturday was a restless something or nothing day with Tabby and I cooped up together, she even quieter than usual. Amos arrived in the afternoon with his account of the meeting with Sergeant Bevan.
‘He was interested, right enough. They had the inquest on Miss Maynard yesterday. The jury brought in accidental death, probably to spare the feelings of the family, though Bevan thinks the coroner was trying to guide them to suicide. He’s keeping an open mind between suicide and murder, but reckons if she was seeing this fellow, Cave, it makes suicide more likely.’
Tabby made a derisive noise.
‘Makes sense from his point of view,’ Amos said to her. ‘Overcome with shame and does away with herself.’
‘But none of us believes that,’ I said. ‘Did you tell him about Cave being in the brothel when she was killed?’
‘No, because that would have made him sure that Tabby was trailing Cave. He might guess that we know about him because of her, but there’s no sense handing everything to him on a plate.’
‘We need to speak to Cave before the police do,’ I said. It was in my mind that he might know something about Robert. ‘We know he’s at the Vauxhall Bridge workshops.’
‘He won’t be there on a Sunday,’ Tabby said. ‘I could watch on Monday and follow him home or wherever he goes.’
That seemed to be one clear thing we could do in the maze we were in, so it was agreed that Amos should take over the watch at Abel Yard from around midday on Monday, freeing Tabby to hunt for Cave.
By now, I was becoming tired of being guarded. It was three days since I’d escaped from the sloop and nothing had happened, which suggested that the gang did not consider me dangerous. They’d got what they wanted from me already. Amos and Tabby, though, were both adamant that I shouldn’t be left alone, and I had to accept it. But as Sunday wore on, the combination of tension and boredom became nearly insupportable. I tried to read in my study but by evening, as the sun moved low down the sky after another fine and hot day, I felt I had to do something. It was just possible that the Disraelis might be home. Tabby had gone down to the end of the yard with our jug to get more milk and was probably chatting with the cowman. There was no reason why I shouldn’t have waited for her to come back but a foolish spirit of rebellion had come over me. I put on my cape – too heavy for the weather – and my face-concealing bonnet and slipped out of the yard, along the mews and into Park Lane. Their butler answered the door. He was an old ally of mine and butlers do not chatter, so I saw no reason to conceal my identity. He regretted that I’d had a wasted journey. The Disraelis were not expected back until Monday morning. He’d make sure that Mr Disraeli saw my note as soon as he arrived. I walked slowly back, turning over in my mind what I’d say to him and how much I should take him into my confidence. The gates from the mews into Abel Yard were partly closed – one side pulled right across, the other slightly open. This was unusual because they were normally left open, but I supposed somebody had come in with an urgent job for the carriage repairer. They were stiff on their hinges, and I had to put my shoulder against the slightly open gate to push it wide enough to walk through. It was just starting to yield when the world exploded. I heard a shout, feet running, then something cannoning into me, sending me flying on to the cobbles. Above my head, there was a heavy thud against the door, more shouting, and the clang of something heavy hitting the cobbles just a few feet away from me, striking sparks. Then more feet running – two pairs, at least. I pushed myself to my knees and looked up. Three or four of the ragged lads who live in the mews were staring down at me. One of them bent down to help me to my feet but, before I was properly upright, Tabby arrived like a tornado. She seemed to be blaming the lads, and they were defending themselves.
‘… Two of them. Must have been …’
‘… Iron bar, look. If that had …’
‘… Seen them waiting, but didn’t know …’
The smallest of the lads was holding an iron bar about three feet long. Gradually, the story became clear. One of the lads had noticed that I was pushing the door and had come running up to help, naturally expecting a penny for his trouble. At the same time, two men who’d been spotted hanging around the mews earlier had moved in with an iron bar. The lad, showing great presence of mind, had pulled me out of the way of it, and the others had run up to help him. Two of them had tried to trip up the men as they ran away, but unsuccessfully. I asked if they’d had a good look at them and got a description of two men in their twenties – one black-haired and one brown – that might have applied to half the young men in London. All this time, Tabby was standing there, fuming. I thanked the boys and went into the yard with her.
‘They deserve something. I’ll go upstairs and get some silver and—’
At various times in our partnership, Tabby had been critical, but that was nothing compared to the tongue-lashing I had from her now. The theme of it was that if I was determined to get myself killed, in spite of her and Amos, I should tell her now and be done with it. I apologized as best I could.
‘Why should they wait three days, though?’
‘They might have been here all the time, just waiting for you to do something stupid, like you did.’
‘We’d have known if they’d been here for long.’
When we got upstairs, I persuaded her to go down with some coins for the lads, but only on the condition that I shouldn’t stir from the chair by the fireplace. I lit the spirit stove to boil a kettle and steam out the dents in my bonnet, and considered. Clearly Kidson’s gang – if this was Kidson’s gang – still thought I was a threat. They were right, too, because I knew about the rescue attempt and was going to expose it, but how could they have known that? Could they have been following Tabby? I put the idea to her when she came back upstairs but she was scornful: if anybody had been trailing her, she’d have known about it.
On Monday morning, she insisted on coming with me to Disraeli’s house and took up position by the front door when I went inside. The butler sent up my name and, almost at once, I was shown upstairs to Mr Disraeli’s study. He came over and took my hand.
‘Mrs Carmichael, this is an unexpected pleasure.’
He sounded as if he meant it. He used my married name, but I guessed he still thought of me as Liberty Lane. We’d known each other from the time of my first case, when he was an ambitious and youngish MP. Now, in his early forties, he was an important man in his own party and acknowledged as one of the best speakers in Parliament. I noticed that with success his style of dress had become quieter; he wore fewer rings, had only one gold chain with a signet ring on it, and his waistcoat was a comparatively subdued brocade in dark green. A half-dozen copies of his latest novel were piled on his desk. He offered coffee and I accepted. I could see he was amused at my unfashionable costume, but he didn’t ask any serious questions until the coffee had arrived and the servant withdrawn.
‘So what brings you here, Mrs Carmichael? I’d heard that you were absent from your usual haunts.’
That meant he knew about the kidnapping, which wasn’t surprising. The smile he gave when he said it meant that he was at least as sceptical as Sergeant Bevan and thought I’d arranged it for my own purposes. Well, let him think so. He might suspect that, but if he took my story to the police, or more probably to the Home Secretary himself, he’d find it amusing to keep my supposed secret. So I gave him a smile over the rim of my coffee cup and murmured that yes, I’d been away. Then I got down to business. Without saying how I came to know it, I told him about Kidson’s sentence of transportation and the plot to free him as he was transferred from Millbank Prison to the ship. I told him about the accidental gunpowder explosion by Vauxhall Bridge and my suspicion that at least one worker from the Parliament site was involved. What I didn’t tell him was anything about Robert’s part in it, or the possible connection with the death of Felicity Maynard. I needed to know more before I said anything about those. As he listened, his expression grew more and more serious.
‘And you say it’s the twenty-fourth when the convicts are being transferred? That’s this Saturday.’
‘Yes. Probably the explosion may be just a diversion. My guess is that the rescue attempt will happen as they’re being put into boats to go out to the ship.’
‘Have you told anybody else about this?’
‘No, not about the rescue plan.’ He knew about Amos and Tabby. When it came to keeping secrets, the three of us counted as one.
It was part of Disraeli’s vanity that he didn’t ask why I hadn’t told the police about the escape plan. In a matter of importance, naturally I’d come to him.
‘I shall speak to the Home Secretary this afternoon. I suppose I can’t tell him the source of my information?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ But it was all I’d hoped. With the government alerted at the highest level, they’d have the army out at Millbank if necessary. They could do what we couldn’t and search the Parliament building site and workshops for explosives. It was just a matter of me finding Robert now before the police got to him. I thanked Disraeli, and he asked if he could get word to me at the usual place. I said I wasn’t supposed to be there, but any communication to Mr Legge at the livery stables by the Bayswater Road would reach me.
Amos arrived as arranged and Tabby left to take up an observation post by the Vauxhall Bridge workshops. I asked her to call in at the Maynards’ house on the way and see if the staff knew when and where Felicity’s funeral would be. I wasn’t sorry to see her go. Amos was concerned about the attack on me but less judgemental. It was after seven o’clock when Tabby got back, her mood a lot better than when she’d left. Which was surprising at first, because she had a failure to report.
‘If he works there, he wasn’t in today. I was there by the gates when they all came out and I wouldn’t have missed him. Saw no sign of him.’ She took a gulp of tea. ‘Somebody else was there, though, waiting at the gates. He stood out a mile. You could see the men wondering who he was. If our man had been there he’d probably have missed him. He was fidgeting around, eyes everywhere and nowhere, like a cow in a swarm of bees.’
‘So who was this man? One of Kidson’s?’
‘Nah. You saw him yourself, three days ago at the Parliament site. Her brother.’
‘Felicity Maynard’s brother, watching the woodwork shops?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So does he know about Jonah Cave?’
‘Seems so. Perhaps she told him about Jonah after all.’
It seemed the most likely explanation but I still found it hard to believe. I asked if Tabby had found time to go to the Maynards’ house.
‘Funeral’s tomorrow. We going?’
‘Yes.’ At least peace seemed to be breaking out between Tabby and me. We went upstairs together to find black clothes.
The search was not very satisfactory, producing only a cotton dress I’d forgotten I’d ever had made in a blackberry colour which would just about do under my long black cloak and the usual bonnet, provided nobody looked too closely. I had no intention of being observed closely. The funeral was not held in St John’s but in a church where, presumably, the family usually worshipped, not far from Abel Yard but in the fashionable part of Mayfair. Tabby and I walked there on Tuesday morning, Tabby in her usual respectable grey. The Maynards and their many friends seemed to have decided that the violent nature of Felicity’s death should be masked by the grandeur of the funeral. They’d wasted no time in organizing it, probably while that merciful inquest verdict of accidental death was still in people’s minds. The hearse was drawn by four black horses with funereal plumes of feathers swaying on their heads, followed by a parade of at least a dozen coaches, mostly with people inside and not just sent for show – many gentlemen in tall black hats, and more carriages packed with wreaths. Inside the church, every space in the pews was taken. Tabby and I wedged ourselves in at the back. The vicar preached about the sadness of a young life cut off in its prime and God taking to himself those he loved most, and I guessed that I was not the only one picturing a body taken from the Thames or even thinking about those arguments she’d had with her mother. There’d been nothing in the newspapers – probably the Maynards had friends influential enough to prevent it – but I guessed everybody present was speculating about the cause of her death. Nobody was openly calling it suicide, or she couldn’t have had a church funeral. As for murder, the family had not acknowledged the possibility, but the question of why a fashionable young woman like Felicity should have been wandering by the Thames in the early hours must have been in other minds, besides mine. I was sitting on the end of a pew at the back with Tabby next to me, my face hidden by the black bonnet pulled forward and my cloak fastened. It was stiflingly hot and the whole church seemed like a suffocating mass of black. I was sure that Mr and Mrs Maynard wouldn’t recognize me even if they looked my way, which was unlikely. The scullery maid, Jane, was more of a risk. She was sitting a few pews forward from me on the opposite side of the aisle with what were clearly the rest of the servants, all in black clothes that looked new. There’d have been a great deal of sewing in the past few days. At least the garden boy, Toby, was not among them. Jane seemed genuinely grieved. I noticed a couple of times that she had her head in her hands and, once, the woman next to her put a comforting arm round her. I was tempted to try to get more information from her afterwards, but supposed she’d be hustled away with the other servants.
The Maynards, of course, were in the front pew. The tall, young man next to Mrs Maynard was presumably Felicity’s brother, but I could only see his back. Either side of them were various people, mostly elderly and presumably relations. It was a shock to see Sergeant Bevan, in plain clothes, sitting at the end of a pew a few rows in front of me. I wondered if he’d come from simple respect or the almost equally simple theory that a murderer couldn’t resist attending the funeral. Either way, it was essential that he shouldn’t see me. We knelt for final prayers, then stood as the funeral mutes carried out the coffin. It was piled high with white roses and delphiniums, tokens of purity for a young woman who’d died unmarried. Mr and Mrs Maynard followed behind it, the wife leaning on her husband’s arm, and yes, the young man was her brother. I glanced at his face as they went past. He was all in black and much tidier than when I’d last seen him, but still looked pale and desperately unhappy. Would she have confided in a younger brother? I guessed not, and that if she’d had any confidante at all it would be a woman friend, but how to pick her out from all the rest? Sergeant Bevan went past me without a glance, and when I got outside there was no sign of him. I followed the procession to the graveside, keeping well back. Words were said, the coffin lowered into the ground and the family led the way back to the waiting coaches. Most of the others fell into line behind them in small and silent groups, with no chance that I could see of finding anybody to question.
But there was one person there beside myself, standing close to the grave and watching the diggers as they piled earth on to the coffin in large spadefuls – businesslike after the restrained dust-to-dust pattering of the service. It was a woman I hadn’t noticed in the church, and she’d have stood out because she wasn’t wearing mourning dress. After the mass of black, her simple grey dress and jaunty bonnet looked positively springlike. Her posture was quite the reverse, though – shoulders drooping, white gloved hands pressed tightly together. A leather bag, larger than a normal reticule, hung from her elbow. I walked over and stood beside her. A tremor in her body showed she was aware of somebody else there, but she kept her eyes down, and we watched together as the last gleam of the coffin disappeared under the earth. Then she looked up at me.
‘It shouldn’t be so final, should it? Alive, and then just not.’
The voice was flat but educated. She was in her early twenties, some inches shorter than me, and probably near enough to beautiful when in normal spirits. Her chestnut hair came down in two orderly curves under the bonnet, her eyes were large and brown but with deep purple shadows under them, and her skin was as pale as skimmed milk. I knew what she meant and should probably have replied with some comforting piece of convention from the service, but I agreed with her.
‘So final, yes. You knew her?’
‘I shouldn’t be here.’ Her eyes were on me, but I wasn’t sure she was seeing me. ‘My mother thinks I’m with friends so I wasn’t even properly dressed to go inside.’
‘I don’t suppose it would have mattered.’
‘My mother didn’t care for her anyway. She thought she was worldly. Then, when she … when she got …’
‘Murdered?’
She flinched as if I’d slapped her, then nodded. ‘She said somebody must have pushed her in the river and that respectable women didn’t get murdered. She said I should forget I’d ever known her and not mention her. But I knew they were burying her today, so I couldn’t … couldn’t not be here.’
The gravediggers were looking at us, wanting us to move so they could work from our side of the grave. I looked at a bench by the churchyard wall and suggested we go and sit there. She moved as if she didn’t care where we went. Tabby loitered by the wall, not missing a move.
‘Had you known her long?’ I said.
‘Over a year, but it seemed longer, as if she’d always been there. I’d always wanted a sister, you see, but there were only brothers – five of them.’ We were close together on the bench, and she had to turn her head to look at me. She seemed quite incurious about who I was.
‘And she was like a sister to you?’
‘A real sister, she’d have been. At any rate, my sister-in-law, and that’s almost as good.’
It took a moment to sink in. ‘Felicity was engaged to your brother?’
‘To my second oldest one, Christopher. Both sets of parents wanted it and Felicity seemed not to mind. I think she was quite looking forward at first to being married and getting away from home. Once they were engaged, I was their chaperone for quite a lot of the time because of Mama being ill. We had such a grand time last summer – balls, theatre, picnics on the river. I didn’t want it to end. Then, of course, Christopher had to go and spoil it. I know everybody said Felicity broke it off, but that’s just because it has to be the girl who breaks engagements, never the man. He’s so dull, Christopher. Felicity and I used to laugh about it.’
‘How did he spoil it?’
‘He always had work to do. I know he’s reading for the bar, but everybody does that and a lot of other things as well. There’d be things Felicity wanted him to go to with her that he wouldn’t, and Felicity isn’t … I mean, she wasn’t a girl who liked being said no to and she said she couldn’t see the point of being married if her husband wouldn’t do what she wanted, so …’ She gave a little despairing lift of the palms. The leather bag was by her foot now.
‘And your parents were angry?’
‘Furious. They blamed Felicity, and I was totally forbidden to see her again.’
‘But you did?’
‘There were always chances to see each other – friends’ tea parties, sketching classes, shops. I couldn’t have avoided seeing her sometimes even if I didn’t want to, and of course I did want to. Then she needed somebody she could really trust to confide in. I was the only one.’
The brown eyes were still fixed trustingly on mine. She needed to talk, and if I hadn’t been there she’d probably have told the story to the dog that was scratching the earth by one of the gravestones.
‘Confide in you about her love affair?’
I detected a faint jolt of surprise, then a relieved smile at a shared secret. ‘Yes, it was such a romance. Her parents didn’t know anything about it, of course. They’d have forbidden it.’
‘Because he was just a workman?’
Her eyes opened wider. ‘Only he wasn’t, that was the point. He was several rungs above the Maynards, Felicity said, the heir to an earldom, but his father had disinherited him because he wanted to be a sculptor instead of going in the army. That’s why he was working at the Parliament buildings. They met when Felicity and her family were being shown round. She fell behind to look at something he was carving, and that was when it started. They arranged to meet again, and that was when he told her.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Jonah Cave. I think that might be the name he went under when he was working. I’m sure she knew his real name but I didn’t like to ask.’
She must have made the perfect confidante: open-mouthed at her friend’s daring and too naive to ask awkward questions. I asked if he worked as a woodcarver and she nodded.
‘Did she tell you he went to her house?’ I said.
‘They’d meet in the garden at night. She’d go down to him. She said he was such a gentleman she knew she could trust him. But, of course, they had to be careful.’
I decided not to tell her he’d been inside the house regularly. What good would it do to pull apart the fairytale she’d made of the affair? ‘Careful to keep it from her parents?’
‘Yes, but more than that – there were his parents.’
‘But you said he’d been disinherited.’
‘Yes, but his father thought he’d come crawling back and was angry when he found that he’d disgraced the family by taking on a workman’s job. Jonah told Felicity that his father was paying men to keep a watch on him. He thought they might try to kill him.’
‘Jonah told Felicity that?’
She nodded. ‘That’s how it must have happened. Somehow Felicity must have found out that Jonah was in danger that night and gone across to the site to warn him. Perhaps she found him, then they killed her, or killed her before she could get to him. Or perhaps they were both killed and his body hasn’t been found. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to be at the funeral. I thought if he’s alive, he’d want to be there.’
‘Would you have recognized him?’
‘No, I’ve never seen him. But if he’d been there, wouldn’t he have said something, let them know that she died trying to save him?’
I almost smiled, thinking of the conventional funeral being disrupted by an aristocratic woodcarver. It would have been something from a novel, and I was sure this girl would be a keen consumer of them. Her gloved fingers settled on my wrist.
‘You were inside the church? Was there anything at all?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Oh.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve told the police anything of this.’
Her mouth dropped open and she drew away from me. ‘Of course not. Her parents would find out about him and my parents would know I’d been seeing her and … No, I couldn’t. You won’t tell them, will you? Say you won’t.’
‘I won’t tell anybody in authority that I’ve seen you. I don’t know your name and, if you like, we can keep it that way.’
She nodded, still scared, realizing for the first time how much she’d given away to a stranger. In any case, Sergeant Bevan wouldn’t have thanked me for bringing him such a farrago. She lifted the leather bag on to her lap. It looked surprisingly heavy. She saw my eyes on it, considered for a moment, then opened it.
‘He did this.’ She opened the bag and took out something swathed in pink silk. A feeling of unease, almost of panic, came over me. Under the silk was a carving of a pair of lion’s hind feet. They were beautifully made in unvarnished oak wood. The lion they belonged to must have been sitting upright on his haunches, because an inch or two of upper leg curved out above them and a tail wrapped round. It was a clever piece of work, and at first I couldn’t account for the feeling it was giving me, as if I wanted to run away. Then it came to me that it was caused by the smell. I made myself take in my hands, my heart thumping. Curls of freshly chiselled wood were in my mind and the frothing mane of a rocking horse. The smell from my childhood. The smell of the jacket arm that had been round my face when I was captured. The girl’s eyes were on my face, anxious.
‘Is something wrong?’
‘No.’ I made myself look at it closely. The inside of the carving was hollowed out, making a space that might take a small bird’s nest, and a groove ran round the upper edge, suggesting that it might be a drawer. If the rest of the lion were to scale it would be a moderately large piece, too big for a mantelpiece or a dressing table but too small to stand on the floor. I handed it back. ‘It’s beautifully carved. Where did you get it?’
‘Felicity gave it to me for safekeeping. It was his present to her.’
‘Just the hind feet, not the whole lion?’
‘I think it was from something he’d been working on. She knew if she hid it in her room her mother’s maid would find it. That was when she told me about him. I thought that if he’d been here at the graveside today I’d have found some way of giving it back to him.’
‘And now?’
‘I think I’ll leave it here, on her grave. It should have been with her in the coffin, but I couldn’t see how to do it.’
We looked across to the grave. The sextons had finished their shovelling and were placing the wreaths over the raw earth, handling them surprisingly carefully. We waited until they’d finished and walked away, then went over to the grave. The girl stood for some time, her head bent and her fingers clasped over the carved wood in its silk covering. Then she slid it out of the silk, knelt and tucked it quickly in between two wreaths of roses, just a corner of the wood showing.
‘If he comes to her grave, he’ll see it there,’ she said.
No sense in telling her that Jonah Cave was unlikely to come anywhere near it. We stood there in silence for a while until the clock struck.
‘Oh, no. I’m supposed to be meeting Mama in Bond Street. You won’t tell the police about me, will you? Promise?’
I promised. She picked up the leather bag and hurried away out of the churchyard gate.
I waited for a few minutes, resisting the temptation to follow her and see where she lived, and when Tabby and I started walking towards the gate, another figure came in. We stood back against the church and watched as he went over to the graveside. At first, unreasonably, I imagined that the young woman’s gesture had really conjured up a grieving Jonah Cave, but this was nothing of the kind.
Tabby breathed, ‘Him again. Felicity’s brother.’
His black clothes were new and stiff. A black gloved hand clutched a top hat with its mourning bands trailing down among the flowers. I’d have stood there and waited for him to go, but suddenly he looked up and saw us. Puzzlement was on his face as well as sadness. He was probably trying to place us among the relatives and friends who’d attended the service. I made a sudden decision and walked over to stand opposite him. He watched me all the way.
‘We almost met before,’ I said. ‘At the Parliament building site.’ The edge of the carving was just visible among the roses, but he’d given no sign of noticing it.
He blinked, swollen pink lids coming down over moist grey eyes. A shallow cut on his chin showed his hand had not been steady when he’d shaved that morning. ‘I … I don’t …’
‘My name’s Liberty Lane. I’m a friend of your parents.’ He might have heard the name Carmichael among their friends, but my maiden name would have meant nothing to him.
‘Oliver Maynard. How d’you …’ But his voice trailed away before he could finish the conventional greeting. I decided that the intense stare he was giving me wasn’t personal – he was simply trying hard to find his bearings. It was cruel perhaps to unsettle him even more, but something had been in the back of my mind since I saw him.
‘I think you were trying to find out what had happened to your sister.’
A nod.
‘You got there very quickly,’ I said.
‘What … what do you mean?’
‘I gather you were visiting friends in Yorkshire when she died?’
Another nod.
‘Your family didn’t know she was dead until Friday. The news of it can’t possibly have got to Yorkshire before Saturday morning. The fastest coach in the world couldn’t have got you to London by the time I saw you, could it?’
‘Why … why are you asking this?’
‘Because I’m trying to find out what happened to your sister, too.’
Silence. He looked away from me at last and down at the grave.
‘You were very close to her,’ I said.
‘Close, yes.’
But I wondered if he’d felt closer to Felicity than she to him. ‘Did you know she was seeing a man in secret?’
His whole body gave a jerk, as if I’d hit him. ‘How did you know?’
I said nothing.
‘She … She wrote to me.’ His voice was hardly audible.
‘Telling you she was seeing a man?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t approve?’
‘I … I needed to discuss it with her. I left Yorkshire on Wednesday and got to London late on Thursday. I went to the house on Friday hoping to see her before I spoke to our parents and found …’
‘That she was dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she tell you the man’s name?’
‘No.’
It came too promptly. I suspected he was lying.
‘Do you think the man she was seeing killed her?’
‘I don’t know.’
I wondered whether to tell him that I knew the man’s name and that he couldn’t have killed Felicity because he was in a brothel at the time, but it was too complicated and I was becoming sure that young Mr Maynard was lying about some things at least.
‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘My parents will be wondering …’
He turned without so much as a good morning and walked quickly towards the churchyard door. When it closed behind him, Tabby came over to me. Her hearing is the sharpest I know, but she’d been standing too far away to hear our conversation. I gave her the details of it.
She whistled. ‘So she’s seeing a man in secret and she puts it in writing to her brother. You believe that?’
‘There’s something wrong somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.’
‘Something’s wrong everywhere, if you want to know what I think. For one thing, he says he got here on Thursday, but I saw him in the garden on Wednesday night. He’s up north with friends, right? Somebody writes to him to say his sister is letting down the family so he comes straight back here, gets a message to her telling her to come out and meet him, hits her over the head and throws her in the river. Family honour.’
I couldn’t argue, beyond saying that young Mr Maynard did not strike me as the type to do anything so decisive and violent, and we both knew from experience that this was hardly an argument at all. I told Tabby about the smell of carved wood and my memory, though I left out the rocking horse.
‘So it was Jonah Cave that grabbed you?’
‘Among others, yes, I think so.’
She said she’d keep a proper watch on the Vauxhall Bridge workshops as soon as we’d worked out the timings with Amos. She wasn’t risking letting me out of her sight.