A Corpse in Shining Armour (39 page)

‘And the title?’

‘In his own eyes, he’d still be Lord Brinkburn. It might even have amused him to think of Stephen and Miles fighting over
a title that belonged to neither of them, just as it amused him to take the family armour with him.’

‘A strange sense of humour.’

‘Very strange. But then, not many men witness their own funeral procession. That would have appealed to him. His original
idea might have been to travel quietly to Italy and have the armour sent out in the coffin, but he couldn’t resist an extra
touch of drama by being there in person.’

‘So you say he’d decided to kill his wife,’ Disraeli said. ‘Did he actually do it?’

‘Yes.’

For the second time that day, I saw Disraeli taken aback. That firm ‘yes’ hadn’t come from me. It came from Tabby, in her
corner. Disraeli might have been trying to speak quietly, but his discretion was no protection from ears made sharp by street
life.

‘You’d better come here and tell us,’ I said.

She came and stood beside me, giving Disraeli stare for stare.

‘Starting with the night you walked out,’ I said.

Tabby glared at me.

‘It wasn’t my fault. They were making fun of me.’

‘Never mind that now. Tell us what happened after you left the house.’

She took a deep breath.

‘It was raining. I didn’t know where I was. They’d got me so angry, I just walked round for a bit, thinking what I wanted
to do to them. It started thundering and lightning, so I thought I’d find somewhere to curl up till it was over. I was walking
along by a wall near some bushes, then this man spoke to me.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He asked what I was doing there. I didn’t know nobody was there until he spoke, and he had a dark coat and a hat on, so I
didn’t see him against the bushes. But I recognised the voice.’

‘Recognised it from where?’ I said.

‘That first night, at the little house by the river, when I thought it was a ghost and he said something about somebody coming
back to haunt somebody. It was the same voice.’

Disraeli was leaning forward, listening intently but leaving the questioning to me. I told Tabby to go on.

‘Anyway, when I didn’t answer all at once he said did I work for Lady Brinkburn. So I told him I hated all of them in that
house and I wouldn’t work there even if they paid me a pound a week.’

She paused for another deep breath.

‘What did he say to that?’

‘He laughed and said he supposed I’d just been dismissed for insolence. So I said he supposed about right. I didn’t think
you’d want anything more to do with me, see, because you’d expected me to behave proper with the rest of them, and I hadn’t.
So he said would I like to work for him.’

‘Just like that, only a moment after he met you?’

She shrugged.

‘Why not? So anyway, I said yes, and he put his hand on my shoulder and said that from now on I was his handy girl and not
to forget it.’

‘
Handy
girl, those very words?’

‘That’s what he said. I didn’t think nothing to it at the time. It was only later I remembered that Violet’s man, the one
that died, was named Handy, and I only remembered that after him and me had the falling out over the bottle, so…’

‘Don’t get ahead of yourself. You’ve just agreed to work for him. Did he tell you who he was?’

‘He said his name was Lord Brinkburn and he owned the ground we were standing on and the house and everything, though it didn’t
suit him to live there at present. So I asked him where we were going and he said I was to wait where I was because he had
things he wanted to see to, then he’d come back for me.’

‘He didn’t say what things?’

‘Nah. Anyway, I waited in the bushes there for a long time. It was getting light when he came back. He said I was to follow
him and we went all the way along the river bank, past where our little house was, to a place where he had his carriage waiting,
parked out of the way under some trees. He said he was going to sleep inside for a bit and I was to sleep underneath it, so
I did. Then later he woke me up and told me to harness the horse because we had some shopping to do. I didn’t know how to
harness the horse, so he cuffed me round the head and said I wasn’t very handy after all and did it himself.’

Tabby said it in a matter-of-fact way, as if cuffs round the head were only to be expected. I tried not to let my anger show.

‘And what was this “shopping”?’

‘He drove us up near a chemist shop, gave me some money and said I was to go inside and ask for a bottle of laudanum, the
strongest solution they had. He made me say it over and over until I got it right. So I went in and got it and gave it to
him, and we went back to where the carriage was parked and waited there all day, until evening. Then we walked back to the
hall. He gave me the bottle and said I was to take it in at a side door he’d show me and put it by Lady Brinkburn’s bed. I
said I didn’t know where her bedroom was and I wasn’t setting foot in that house again, no matter what he did. I wasn’t going
to have them laughing at me again.’

Even now, with Tabby standing beside me, my heart lurched at the danger she’d been in.

‘He must have been very angry with you.’

‘He was, first go off. He got hold of my ear and twisted it till I thought it would come away from me head. And that was when
he said about Handy.’

‘What exactly?’

‘“I had another servant called Handy. He got above himself and wanted a lot of money before he’d do as I told him, so I took
a hammer and cracked his head open like cracking a boiled egg.”’

She even managed an approximation of that elderly, arrogant voice.

‘So what did you do?’

‘I told him if he tried that with me, I’d take the hammer to him first.’

Again, the voice was matter-of-fact. She wasn’t boasting. In her world, that was how things were done.

‘Weren’t you afraid he’d kill you there and then?’

She shrugged again.

‘He didn’t in any event. He just started laughing.’

‘Laughing!’

‘Yeah. He was still holding on to me ear, so he was jerking it up and down from laughing. Then he said I had the cheek of
the devil, so perhaps I was Handy rein-something or other.’

‘Reincarnated?’

‘Something like that. So then he let go of me ear and took the bottle back and said he supposed he’d have to do it himself
and to wait there. Then he came back and we went and found his carriage again, and he drove us all day, to the big house.’

‘What big house?’

‘The place where we started from this morning.’

‘The asylum?’

‘I didn’t see any mad people there, it was only us and some people who looked after the place. Unless he was mad.’

‘Do you think he was?’

She considered.

‘Dunno. We talked about it one day, when he’d come back from somewhere and was in a good mood. He gave me a glass of wine
and said he supposed I thought he was mad. So I said I thought he was no madder than a lot of other people, and he laughed
and said I was right and he just liked to live the way he wanted to, and that other people were always out to stop people
like him living the way they wanted to. But they were ordinary people, so didn’t matter, and him and me weren’t ordinary.’

I wished, for several reasons, that I could have heard that dialogue between the lord and the gutter urchin.

‘Was that when he told you about the plans for his own funeral?’

‘Yes. He said there were a lot of people wanted to see him dead, so he was going to give them what they wanted, only he didn’t
plan to die just yet. So we’d have this big funeral, and he’d travel in the coffin for the first stage to make sure things
were being done the way he said, then someone would come and help me let him out and the coffin would go on a boat with nothing
in it but a suit of old armour. By then, we’d be on the other side of the water, laughing at them.’

‘So you were you supposed to go away with him?’

‘He said I could go with him to Italy. Is that a long way?’

‘Yes.’

‘He said it was always warm and sunny there and a man could do what he wanted.’

How long would it have stayed warm and sunny for Tabby if his plans had succeeded and she had gone with him? Weeks or possibly
months before she’d done something to annoy him again, and that time he would have killed her instead of laughing, just as
he’d killed Handy when he’d baulked at helping his employer commit murder. But in spite of everything, there’d been a touch
of regret for a lost adventure when she’d talked about going to Italy.

‘I got the surprise of my life when I saw you in there with the coffin,’ she said. ‘Until you screamed, I thought you was
all part of the plan.’

‘You saved my life, diving through that window,’ I said. ‘You took a risk. He could have killed you instead.’

She shrugged.

‘I didn’t think about it. I just went.’

Disraeli caught my eye. His look said,
Can we believe her?
I nodded and stood up.

‘You sit down and wait here, Tabby. I’ll be back in a moment.’

Disraeli and I walked into the corridor.

‘She’d be a good witness,’ I said.

He made a face.

‘I hope to God it won’t come to that.’

‘Why? For the good name of the aristocracy?’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’

‘It seems to me quite simple. He’s killed two people at least. If he were some poor tradesman, they’d hang him without thinking
twice.’

‘Lord or tradesman, the man’s insane. We don’t hang madmen.’

‘So what will happen? Will he be allowed to go off to Italy, or be shut in some other so-called asylum with freedom to come
and go?’

‘We’d have to make sure that didn’t happen again.’

‘We?’

‘I’ll have to speak to his sons, of course.’

As before in our acquaintance, it struck me how much Disraeli needed to be at the hub of things. Favours to friends, or even
friends of friends, who might be useful in his political career were only part of it. He wanted to know how society works,
the way a clock-maker wants to know about cogs, springs and ratchets. That knowledge was power to him, though what he hoped
to do with the power wasn’t clear to me.

‘I shall speak to Lomax when he’s recovered,’ he said. ‘You’ve earned your fee and it should be paid.’

‘I’m sure he won’t see it that way. I was supposed to help settle the question of succession smoothly and quietly. It’s still
not settled.’

‘Ah yes, the succession. I have an idea that the old man won’t outlive the humiliation for long. Of course the eldest son
will have management of the estates as soon as Brinkburn’s declared officially insane.’

His tone was musing, almost absent minded. My question had been a test to see how much he knew.

We came into the stable yard. It was full of grooms and lads dealing with a mass of over-excited black horses. Amos stood
head and shoulders above the rest. He gave the halter ropes he was holding to a couple of lads and came over to us, raising
his cap to Disraeli. Disraeli, who knew Amos’s worth, returned the compliment with a tip of his silk top hat. I asked Amos
if any of the horses had been hurt.

‘Nothing worse than a strain and scratch or two. They’ll be all right when we get them settled.’

‘Is the hearse here?’ Disraeli asked him.

‘Couple of draught horses are bringing it in now. I sent the carriage back for the gentlemen.’

Disraeli said he would wait inside, and please to tell him when the gentlemen arrived. I had a word with Amos, then went to
reclaim Tabby. She jumped up when I came in.

‘Are we going back to London now?’

‘Not quite yet. I’m going to ask them to send you in something to eat and drink, but I want you to do an errand for me first.
Would you please find the landlord and ask how the gentleman is who was brought in wounded.’

She grinned and went. I settled into a chair, thinking that even Disraeli didn’t know anything. With his appetite for secrets,
he’d have relished those two syllables I’d heard from Robert Carmichael. But I’d no intention of telling him. Not yet, at
any rate, and perhaps never.

Tabby was back within minutes, grin even wider.

‘He wants to see you.’

‘Who? The landlord?’

‘Nah, the gentlemen who got shot. I couldn’t find the landlord, so I asked somebody where the gentleman’s room was and went
in. He says…’ She screwed her face up, trying to remember accurately. ‘He says, “My compliments to Miss Lane, and if she can
spare a few minutes I’d be very grateful for a talk with her
.
” Second room on the left, it is, top of the big staircase.’

No point in lecturing her about keeping to instructions, so instead I took mine from her and went.

I knocked on the door. It was opened by a man carrying a doctor’s bag. He was on the point of leaving.

‘He’ll do very well,’ he said to me. ‘Nothing but gruel and toast for the next twenty-four hours and total rest. I’ve left
him a sleeping draught. Make sure that he takes it. I shall return tomorrow to change the dressings.’

He obviously took me for a relative. I didn’t disillusion him. The room was dim, curtains drawn. A maid stood at the washstand,
piling bloodstained cloths into a bowl. Robert was in a bed by the wall, propped up on pillows.

‘Miss Lane, thank you for coming.’

His voice was strong but his face was as pale as the borrowed nightshirt he was wearing. He glanced at the maid then looked
a question at me. I asked her if she would be so kind as to tell the kitchens to make gruel. She left, taking the bowl of
cloths with her.

‘Thank you. Are they back yet?’

‘On their way.’

‘Would you come over here–I’m sorry I can’t get up.’

I sat on a chair by the bed.

‘Are you hurt at all, Miss Lane?’

‘No.’

‘I want you to do me a favour.’

‘What?’

‘Forget what you heard me say to him.’

‘You called Lord Brinkburn father.’