A Corpse in Shining Armour (40 page)

He tried to smile.

‘A man may say anything when somebody’s pointing a pistol at him.’

‘It’s true though, isn’t it?’ I said.

He didn’t answer. I shifted the chair round so that I was looking him in the face.

‘If I’m supposed to keep your family secrets, you’d better tell me why. You’re his son by the first wife, Natalie Stevens,
aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did Stephen and Miles know?’

‘No.’

‘And she?’

‘Sophia knew from the day I walked out of the blue and into her life. It’s unbelievable, that woman’s generosity. That’s why
I’m asking you to do this, in her memory. It’s all a wreck and a horror, but we must save something for her sake. You liked
her, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. So did you just come to her and tell her who you were?’

‘I didn’t intend it to be as brutal as that, but heaven help me, it must have seemed that way to her. I grew up knowing Brinkburn
was my father, I even have a few faint early memories of him. I was too young to know or care about legitimate or illegitimate.
Then my mother died. Brinkburn paid for my education, public school, Cambridge, but always through lawyers and on condition
that I used another name, not his. I chose my mother’s father’s name, Carmichael. I never saw Lord Brinkburn in all that time.
As I grew older, I was curious enough to make a few inquiries about him. I found out that he was married with sons and assumed
that I was a by-blow, perhaps one of many.’

‘Weren’t you unhappy about that?’

‘Boys are tough creatures. I thought he was behaving quite generously in the circumstances. I assumed that, when I’d finished
my education, he’d send word of what I was supposed to do. I had some idea of going into the army, but I’d need his approval
and a little of his money if I wanted a commission. So I hiked blithely from Cambridge to Buckinghamshire to see him, not
knowing he was living in Italy. I’d no intention of embarrassing him, of course. My idea was to deliver a note asking for
the favour of a meeting. I was walking up the drive with it, and met Sophia.’

‘And told her, just like that?’

He moved awkwardly and winced.

‘Almost. You saw how quick she was to form impressions. She guessed there was something. And she made it clear from the start
that there was no affection left between her and Lord Brinkburn, if there ever had been any. I told her he’d paid for my education.
When she suddenly asked me if I were his son, I saw no reason to lie to her. I said yes.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She asked me to stay. She said she needed a tutor for her sons.’

‘Your half brothers. Wasn’t that awkward?’

‘They didn’t know, of course. Oddly, it wasn’t awkward. I liked her and I liked them. And I suppose I was young, not knowing
much of the world. It seemed a reasonable arrangement to me. I’d tutor them, put by a little money, then off to the army.
Only, when I’d been with them a few weeks, Sophia said she couldn’t in honour keep quiet about it any more. She told me the
story you’ve read in her journal. She said my mother had been legally married, I was my father’s legitimate heir and she knew
enough about that first marriage to help me prove it to the world.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Told her she must do no such thing.’

‘Didn’t you believe her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t you want a title and a fortune?’

‘No.’

He said it with a force that set him coughing. I poured water. He drank it and leaned back on the pillows, and talked without
taking his eyes off my face, as if he needed very much to convince me.

‘After what she’d told me, I didn’t want my father’s name, whether it had a title in front of it or not. As for a fortune
–I’d always expected to earn my living. I shouldn’t know what to do with a fortune, particularly one I’d taken from a boy
who’d done me no harm.’

‘Why did she tell you, do you think?’

‘That quixotic sense of justice of hers. And another thing…’ He hesitated.

‘Yes?’

‘She was already beginning to convince herself that Lord Brinkburn had poisoned my mother when it suited his purposes to have
her out of the way so that he could marry Sophia legally. She thought she owed me a debt.’

‘Do you think she was right, that he did poison your mother?’

‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever know for sure. I doubted it until today. Now I think he was quite capable of it.’

‘Was Sophia surprised that you wouldn’t claim what was yours?’

‘I think she was already beginning to know me by then. I said if she tried to do anything about it, I’d go abroad and never
come back. She had to accept that. I thought nobody would ever know but the two of us; Stephen would succeed to the title
and that would be that. Then she developed this prejudice against Stephen and…well, you know the rest.’

I couldn’t help glancing at the small bottle on his bedside table that held the doctor’s sleeping draught. His eyes followed
mine.

‘Yes, that affected her judgement too. Would you please put that wretched bottle somewhere I can’t see it. I’d rather lie
awake for the rest of my life than touch laudanum.’

I took it away and put it in a cupboard. His eyes followed me there and back.

‘So, will you do as I ask and forget what I called him?’ he said.

‘Stephen and Miles heard.’

‘I shall deal with them. Stephen will succeed, Miles will be properly provided for, and that will be an end of it.’

It was their tutor’s voice speaking as well as their elder brother’s. I believed him.

‘I can’t forget,’ I said, ‘but I won’t tell.’

Particularly not Disraeli.

Amos, Tabby and I stayed at the inn overnight. Late in the evening a message was brought up to say a gentleman wanted to see
me downstairs. Stephen was waiting in the private parlour. I’d never warm to the man, but came near to pitying him. His face
was haggard, with a nervous twitch to the mouth.

‘I apologise to you, Miss Lane. I should never have implied that you were in my brother’s pay.’

I nodded acceptance of the apology. I wanted him to go. He stayed, shifting his weight from one foot to another.

‘I’d been driven half mad. I’d watched my father. I knew something was happening, but nobody would listen to me.’

‘What’s going to happen to your father?’ I said.

It seemed to me I had a right to know. His reply was reluctant.

‘Lomax says no legal offence has been committed, although the funeral was a joke in very bad taste. It has been agreed that
my father’s mental condition makes it necessary that he should be kept in a secure establishment for the rest of his life.
That is being attended to.’

In his words I heard the soft thuds of the upper classes closing doors against unpleasantness. I wanted to scream that two
people had died. No use. Stephen added, in a voice so low I could hardly hear it: ‘And Robert says we are to thank you.’

Before we left next morning, I went to inquire after Robert’s health. He heard my voice at the door and called to me to come
in. The doctor stayed tactfully in a corner packing up his bag. Robert looked better and claimed to have slept well.

He smiled and put out his hand to me.

‘Stephen spoke to you?’

‘Yes. I guessed you’d sent him.’

‘I had a talk with both of them yesterday evening. They’ve seen sense, I’m glad to say.’

If the doctor had been listening, nothing in Robert’s manner or voice would have told him his patient had just talked his
way out of fortune and title. Trying to keep my own voice as light, I asked what he intended to do now, as if we were simply
discussing plans for the next few days. His reply showed he knew I meant more than that.

‘In all honesty, I don’t know. Nearly all my adult life has been looking after Sophia. I feel as if I’m coming out of a chrysalis
and I don’t know yet what kind of creature I am.’

‘I think a good one,’ I said.

He glanced to make sure that the doctor’s attention was on his bag, then raised my hand to his lips and kissed it, not in
the exaggerated chivalrous way as Miles might have done, but quite simply.

‘I shall travel, I think, when I’m well,’ he said. ‘I’d appreciate it very much if you’d allow me to write to you.’

‘Yes. Yes, please.’

He was still holding my hand. A knock sounded on the door.

‘Her journal,’ I said. ‘I still have it.’

The door opened to let in a maid with a steaming bowl of gruel. He let go of my hand slowly.

‘Keep it. I think it’s safer with you than anybody. To our next meeting.’

‘To our next meeting.’

Tabby and I saw off Amos, riding the gelding and leading the mare, and later took our seats inside the coach back to London.
I’d negotiated to buy garments from one of the maids at the inn, so that Tabby could be decently dressed. She’d been ungratefully
reluctant to exchange her page’s costume for skirts and a mob cap, but was more cheerful by the time we arrived back in the
city.

‘So what’s happening next?’ she asked, as we turned into Abel Yard.

‘I hope nothing for a week or two,’ I said.

She looked quite disappointed. Again, that dreadful feeling of responsibility struck me. As far as I’d had any plan for her,
it was to give her a more orderly life. I’d done quite the reverse. All I’d achieved was to feed her voracious appetite for
drama. When I watched her putting down our bags and looking round the untidy yard with the air of somebody coming home, I
knew Tabby had added herself to my list of unsolved problems.

A few days later I paid another social call on Celia.

‘My dear, where have you been? Surely not another aunt? Country relatives are all very well, but one shouldn’t take them too
seriously. Now, I want to know everything you’ve been doing.’

So for the next twenty minutes or so I savoured the taste of chocolate and the scent of roses without saying a word, while
she prattled on happily about people I didn’t know. Then:

‘…and you must have heard the latest on the Brinkburns, even down in the country. It turns out that the old man wasn’t dead
after all! I can’t think how that rumour started, but perhaps it was a mix-up at the asylum. And all that business about the
mother was a mistake as well. It seems that she was writing a novel, poor woman, and there was this young bride in it who
was on her own in a tower by a lake in a storm and well…you know. She talked to her friends about this novel and I suppose
they were only half listening, as people do, and they got the idea into their heads that she was talking about herself, which
I suppose should be a lesson to all of us. Anyway…’

She paused for breath and took a sip of chocolate.

‘…Stephen will inherit when the old man really does die at last, as everybody thought he would, and he and Miles have made
up their quarrel. They were actually seen at a private dinner party together last night, though of course they can’t go to
balls and things because of being in mourning for their mother. I must say, Stephen is being very gallant and forgiving about
the whole thing, which is…’

I managed to break into the flow, though I had to raise my voice to do it.

‘What do you mean, Stephen’s being forgiving? Stephen’s the one who’s won, isn’t he? It should be Miles being forgiving.’

‘Oh, my dear, you have been out of things, haven’t you?’ She looked at me pityingly. ‘I thought everybody knew. In spite of
Stephen being the heir, Rosa Fitzwilliam has decided to stay with Miles. Of course, Stephen is broken hearted, though now
everybody knows the inheritance business is settled, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of girls just queuing up for a chance to
console him. Of course, everybody’s saying Rosa could have done better, but she does love Miles, so I suppose it’s all very
right and romantic.’

I sat there marvelling at how easily the social order seemed to repair its wounds, and wishing it were the same for people.
Celia must have mistaken my expression for shame at being so far behind-hand with the news that mattered.

‘My dear, it really does puzzle me how you manage to know so little about what’s really happening in the world.’

‘I suppose I have a kind of talent for it,’ I said.

Caro Peacock
acquired the reading habit from her childhood growing up in a farmhouse. Later, she developed an interest in
women in Victorian society and from this grew her character of Liberty Lane. She rides, climbs and trampolines as well as
enjoying the study of wild flowers.

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By the same author

Death at Dawn

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Copyright Page

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s
imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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This edition published by
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2010

Copyright © Caro Peacock 2009

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EPub Edition © MONTH 2009 ISBN: 978-0-007-28348-4

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