Lord Vere looked down at the drink he had in his hand, a glass of amber something—perhaps brandy. “Pater was always devilishly awkward on Violet,” he said.
Pater: Lenox was returned to his schooldays, when that was what the boys called their fathers, and he realized that in many ways Corfe, never touched by the world, remained a schoolboy still.
“How so?”
“It was a long seven years before I came along, you know. Hell for her, and everyone, that she wasn’t a boy. The next in line for the dukedom is a distant cousin, the Earl of Coverdale, so it would have gone out of the family, essentially. Including the secret of the portrait—and you have seen how mad that has driven my father, a sane man. But then I came. I was something of a miracle.”
“I see,” said Lenox.
The window had fully half of his attention. Let them have been snarled in London traffic, Mayne and Lady Violet!
“It was my sister who loved me the most. My mother is a very responsible woman, her good works, the charities, a lady of great distinction of course, and…” He trailed off, looking to the side, and the unsaid opened up a whole vista onto the coldness of the mother’s character. “Still, it was Violet who sent me packages when I went away to school at eight. And mended my trousers when I was home on hols. Wiped my tears.”
He laughed scornfully at the boy he had been, after he said this, but to Lenox it was clear that the words carried deep feeling. “A very good sister,” he said quietly.
“Oh yes, good as gold. Kind to Craig, too. Made him part of the family, you know. Had him play Father Christmas for me, which he claimed to hate, but you know. Pater is a bit of a tough nut, and Craig never had a family of his own. He loved her, too. We both loved her more because we knew nobody would marry her. Finally when it came down to it, we decided to do something for her, he and I. Craig thought of the ruse of my illness and putting the painting under my bed. Not just under my bed—he was very bright, old Craig. Christ. I still can’t credit it that he’s gone.”
“And you had known about Mr. Walters.”
“Oh, Walters! Yes. Yes. It was the subject of a great deal of discussion—within these walls. It will kill Father to hear it get out, if it does. He would rather hang in the Tower ten times over.”
“That is why I am amazed that your sister decided to defy him.”
“She felt she had a last chance at happiness. And she is such a sensible, engaging person—but she is … is thirty, you know.”
Lenox nodded. His tone implied that she might just as profitably have been ninety. “Of course. Was—”
But at that moment there was a loud sound outside, four horses stopping at the door. Lenox rose and excused himself, saying that he would check to see if it was Sir Richard. But that was not his intention; he knew the house fairly well by this time, and he slipped back to the stables and fetched his horse. Once Lord Vere and his sister spoke, he knew, he would be unwelcome at Dorset House.
It was all clear to him now, regardless. Only two questions remained. One would never be answered—whether she had shot Craig on purpose. The other was whether they would find the lost play.
He rode home, gratefully took a sip from the barrel of water the servants kept just outside the back door, then asked his coachman to water and feed Pepper and return her to the Wilcombe.
He went inside, dusty and tired. Graham and Lancelot were both out, as was Mrs. Huggins, who was, according to the chambermaid Clarissa, who looked terrified at her temporary elevation in station, pricing cloth.
“Cloth? For what?” asked Lenox.
“I don’t right know, sir,” she said, trembling.
“I’m not mad,” said Lenox carefully.
“Mad, sir!” she blushed to the roots of her hair.
She was a microscopically small and delicate person, holding a broom that as she shrank back came to be about twice her height.
He sometimes forgot that the staff must think his line of work very curious. “Angry, I mean!” he clarified quickly. “I am not angry.”
“Oh.”
“Nor am I mad.”
“No, sir,” she said, but looked unsure.
“Are you the Irish one?”
Mrs. Huggins suspected everyone of being Irish, and Lenox, in a fit of insubordination not long before, had insisted that she hire an Irish maid. That had been only a few weeks before, and he barely recognized this young person.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you’re doing capitally, from all I hear,” he said. This wasn’t strictly a lie, since he hadn’t heard anything. “Just capitally. Carry on.”
“Oh, thank you, sir,” she said, with impossible gratitude, and went downstairs as if there were a fire to put out there.
Lenox, for his part, went into his study, where he removed his jacket. He sat down in his chair, looking out through the windows. The shop across Hampden Lane—what had been the cobbler’s until that spring—had new lettering going up in its windows.
“Chaffanbrass,” he read out loud to himself.
Sounded like a butcher—he hoped not, because of the smell. He was tired, but he began notes on the case, trying to write down all he could remember of his conversation with Corfe. Still, his eyes kept wandering to the window, the empty storefront, and he leaned back farther in his leather chair, and it was warm, and his eyes were so heavy …
What rest could do for a soul! When Lenox felt himself stirring half an hour or so later, lying comfortably tilted back in his thickly upholstered desk chair, he let himself linger in that half-state of sleep a little while longer, his eyes closed. He felt the coolness of the high-ceilinged room and the warmth of the day even each other out. He felt the air go in and out of his nostrils.
What a creature one was, after all, it turned out—thirsty, tired, and then to drink, to sleep, how joyful it was to be alive in a body sometimes.
He slowly let his eyes open. A noise had woken him. Something to do with the front door perhaps, but he could tell, through the innumerable small specks of comprehension that every person registers without naming, that it was nothing to do with him. He let himself turn to the street, body quiet, eyes heavy still, though open now. He watched the people pass, experiencing that dispassionate, affectionate, removed sensation of one who has just woken up. He had been to the other world; it was no bad thing to sit here, between ways, for another moment.
Finally he yawned, stretched his arms, shook his head, and stood up. He retrieved his notebook from the floor and went out into the hallway.
The noise had been a telegram, it turned out.
It was from the asylum in Edinburgh, and was quite to the point.
No patient of name Belmont received here STOP Nor Irvington STOP William Wellburn
He felt a chill run through him. Wellburn was the head physician there.
As he stood there, contemplating this telegram, trying to remember Belmont more vividly in his mind, Mrs. Huggins came in.
This was odd, as she would usually have entered by the servants’ door. “Good evening, Mrs. Huggins,” he said.
“Good evening, Mr. Lenox. Please excuse my intrusion. I had hoped to offer you some forewarning that—”
Behind her burst through Lancelot, who looked, first, thoroughly pleased with himself, indeed was whistling, and, second, a wreck, with two swollen red eyes, a split lip, and a gash across his cheek.
“What happened?” asked Lenox.
“I got in a fight!” said Lancelot excitedly.
“What, with a bear?”
“It was with Lord Decimus Spate, sir,” said Mrs. Huggins. “He was riding in the park. Master Lancelot called him a name, I fear.”
“Decimus Spate?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But he’s twenty-two! He did this to a child?”
“It was a very bad name,” said Mrs. Huggins. “I have spoken to Lancelot about that.”
Lancelot placed himself in front of Mrs. Huggins importantly. “Here’s how it was. He shoved Wutherington-Fassett out of the way while we were playing skittles in Hyde Park—reckless as you like—and I called him a pompous fool—I thought that sounded good—and he said always to make way for horses—and I said I would, but he was a horse’s ass, so I wouldn’t—and he said well didn’t I think I ought to apologize—and I said I did, to horse’s asses, for confusing them with him—and that was a pretty good one to get off—and he said who was I—and I said who was he and why was he so fat—”
“Oh, Lancelot,” said Mrs. Huggins despairingly, lovingly.
Lenox sighed. It was true that Decimus Spate had begun eating twenty-two years before and permitted himself only very brief cessations of the activity since—and was very sensitive about the results.
“Then he shoved Wutherington-Fassett again—and I called him the name—and he got down from the horse—and I caught him a lovely poke in the ribs before he knew what was on—and he set upon me—but altogether, Mrs. Huggins, wouldn’t you say I got the best of it? How would you rank it?”
“For shame, Master Lancelot,” she said.
“I thought you were pricing cloth,” Lenox said.
The housekeeper’s brow darkened. “Is that what the Irish girl said?”
Lenox threw up his hands. “I am going to my club to dine. Put ice and raw beef on this child’s face—and you’d better wire Eustacia and say he’s been in a fight, but he’s all right. Lancelot, you’ll write a letter of apology—”
“Never!”
“—tomorrow. Good-bye.”
He left in a reasonable semblance of ire. But Lenox had always hated the Spates—Decimus himself was a great lump of unthinking brutish aristocratic matter—and before he went, he whispered to Mrs. Huggins to give him something soft to eat, like Italian pudding.
He wondered, as he walked briskly down Hampden Lane, if one day he would be a father after all, and the thought filled him with such terror that he almost forgot the telegram he had in his pocket.