Death by Silver (35 page)

“He said he’d been staying at his club most nights.”

“Now and again. Most nights he goes home to his wife. Some of his friends at his club know, and cover for him. I’m surprised he managed to pull it off as long as he did.”

“Could he have been with her the night of the murder?”

“He could have been. It’s likely enough. But she can’t speak for him in court, not when they’re married.”

“I’d still like to hear it from him,” Ned said. “Would you give me his address?”

“I’d better take you to him,” Albert said. “Better to apologize myself right off. And, no, don’t apologize yourself. I see it’s the best thing. That still doesn’t make it sit well.”

Ned paid for a cab rather than wrangling with train schedules, feeling it was the least he could do. It deposited them in a long terrace, the houses small but their little gardens neatly kept. Albert was leading him toward one of the houses, where a spray of clematis climbed halfway up the wall, when he stopped.

“The train must just have gotten in,” he said. Ned followed his gaze to see Reggie walking down the street, carrying a brown paper parcel under one arm. He was nearly to his own walk before he saw them, and then stopped, betrayal plain on his face.

“I told him the truth,” Albert said flat out. “I’m sorry to have done it, but it’s for the best.”

“You still think I killed my father,” Reggie said.

Ned looked him in the eye. “Did you?”

“No!” Reggie swallowed hard. “I don’t expect you to understand how it was, Mathey.” He glanced nervously at the house.

“Tell me, then,” Ned said.

Reggie led them reluctantly inside and into a tiny parlor, clean but cheaply decorated, with pictures that might have been out of magazines pinned up to the walls. Ned was reminded suddenly and sharply of Reggie’s room at Toms’, where he’d tacked up pictures of sailing ships and tigers in India, a suggestion of some more colorful inner world. Ned folded himself onto the uncomfortable sofa.

“What’s this, then?” a young woman said, appearing at the parlor door. She was fresh-faced more than beautiful, her cheeks brushed with freckles and her hair in a fringe with strongly set curls. She was wearing an apron over her day dress, with her sleeves rolled up. “Oh, Mr Wynchcombe, Reggie never said you were in town. You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you?” She shot Reggie the look of a wife who would have to scramble to manage any such thing, and would have appreciated warning.

“We’re only here to talk to Reggie for a moment,” Albert said. “We’re engaged for dinner already, I’m afraid.”

“That’s a shame. I’d better let you have your talk, then.” She retreated, shutting the door behind her.

“So that’s Mrs Reggie Nevett?” Ned asked after her steps in the hall had retreated.

“We’ve been married this seven months. I wasn’t thinking of marrying her at first – I just wanted to talk to her, and then to take her out and spend an evening with someone who smiled at me. And then it came to me that…well, that I loved her, and she loved me. But I knew if my father started in at me, I’d give in to him in the end. He was always stronger than any of us were. He got what he wanted, and if you crossed him, he’d make you sorry for it.”

“So you went and did it before he knew anything about it,” Albert said, sounding like he approved. Ned found he did himself; he wouldn’t have credited Reggie with that much backbone.

“We did. I was going to tell him the week after, but…we were so happy together, and I didn’t want to spoil it all, and I just…I kept putting it off. And then after a while I realized I’d waited too long, and he’d be furious at me for lying to him. So I had to go on lying. I didn’t know what to do.”

“It might have been simpler just to tell him,” Ned said. “Although then I suppose he might have cut you off.”

“It’s not as if he gave me an allowance,” Reggie said. “We’ll be all right now, with what he’s left me…” He flinched at his own words. “I know how that sounds. But I’d made up my mind that I’d manage if he wrote me out of his will. Cora was willing to have me without any expectations. I just hadn’t worked myself up to say it to his face.”

“You could have gone away.”

“With what? I can barely afford the rent on this place on my salary, and the bank’s in the City; if we went away I wouldn’t even have that. Cora makes do with just a girl to come in, but I know it’s hard on her. At least she hasn’t had to deal with the family yet, or with talk about how she’s not good enough and never will be. That’ll come, now, I suppose. I wish there were a way the two of us could get clean away, but there isn’t.”

There probably wasn’t, for a man like Reggie, Ned thought. He might cherish daydreams of running off to South Africa or Australia, or at least of getting a job outside of London, but he wasn’t ever likely to do it. And he wouldn’t cut his friends even if they were cold to his wife. But he had married her, which suggested a streak of defiance Ned hadn’t known he possessed.

“I expect the money won’t hurt,” Albert said.

“No. But I didn’t kill him for it.”

“What happened that night?” Ned asked, as gently as he could.

“He asked where I’d been the evening before, and I said I’d been with a girl I met in a shop, a girl I liked. He…well, he made some indecent remarks about what I ought to do with a girl like that, and said it was time he found me someone to marry. I said that he couldn’t tell me who I’d marry, and he said he’d be…” He dropped his voice. “Be damned if he couldn’t.”

“Not what you hoped.”

“What I expected,” Reggie said, unexpectedly dryly. “But I had to get out of the house somehow. I had a dinner party to go to with Cora. I’d been meaning to make some excuse to leave, but I couldn’t think of one, and the guests were arriving, and it seemed that starting a quarrel was the only way to get out of there. I barely made the train as it was, and we were late to dinner.”

Ned frowned. “Do you mean to say that you actually met friends for dinner, that very night?”

“The Thwaites, next door,” Reggie said. “We haven’t been able to see anyone who knows my family, but it seemed safe enough to visit the neighbors, and Cora wanted so badly to get out for the evening. We were there until after midnight.”

It was still remotely possible he’d come back into town in a cab late that night, Ned supposed, or that he was lying about seeing the candlestick still in its accustomed place before he left the house. But he simply couldn’t believe it of Reggie. If he’d ever contemplated murder, he would have gone on dreaming about it for years without screwing up his courage enough to do it. Ned wasn’t sure whether to consider that a fault or a virtue, under the circumstances.

“Then you can’t very well have been sneaking around cursing a candlestick,” Albert said.

Ned let it rest at that. “I don’t suppose you know who
did
do it?”

“Poor old Victor,” Reggie said. “I never thought he hated the pater the way Freddie and I did, but I suppose he must have. Only he had the nerve to do something about it.” He bit his lip, looking suddenly twelve years old again, and embarrassingly near tears. “It’s going to be awful, with the trial and the…well, afterwards. I don’t know how we’ll stand it.”

Ned started to say there was hope, but stopped himself. If the murderer wasn’t Victor, at this rate it seemed likely it was someone else in the family, and that wouldn’t be any better.

“You’ll get through,” Albert said, and that was probably all there was to say.

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After standing Albert to dinner at his club, Ned saw him into a cab and made his own way homeward on the omnibus, feeling a twinge of concern about the way his expenses on this case were mounting. If his client were convicted of a murder he didn’t commit, his own purse ought to be the least of his worries, but he couldn’t help being aware that he could ill afford not to be paid at all.

The omnibus was crowded, and several couples out for the evening were squeezed into its lower deck, turning the bench seats into a crush of bright skirts. Whether the ladies were married to their companions or merely keeping company, he wasn’t sure, but their laughter and looks fondly exchanged with the gentlemen made him sharply aware that he was going back to his rooms alone.

It might be worth dropping by Julian’s lodgings so that they could compare notes. It was really the responsible thing to do, he told himself, and began working his way out onto the omnibus platform, trying to tread on as few toes as possible in the process.

The streets that bordered the British Museum were still populated even at this time of night, but it was quieter once he turned the corner into Coptic Street. He found himself aware of the sound of his own footsteps, and then, the back of his neck prickling, of a sound familiar from school but not since: someone was behind him, far too close, matching their footsteps to his.

He turned in time to see the hard-faced stranger behind him swing something short and heavy at his head.

Ned threw up a hand but couldn’t entirely ward off the blow. The thundering pain made him falter, and the man came at him hard, driving him back against a wall, his arm bruising Ned’s throat.

He was wiry and strong, but not tall enough to hold Ned easily that way, and Ned took the opportunity to punch him hard in the side. The man staggered enough for Ned to throw him off, and Ned pressed his advantage, slamming the man against the wall and catching at the hand that held the short length of pipe. The man fought him fiercely, elbowing him in the ribs and kicking at him, and finally twisted free.

The man swung for him again with the pipe, and Ned managed to dodge neatly enough out of the way, but he couldn’t keep that up forever. He wished for some weapon, even his metaphysician’s case. All he had was his wand in his coat pocket, and short of poking someone in the eye that was little use in a fight at close quarters.

He grabbed at the man instead, bearing him down under his own weight. They went down on the paving stones, and Ned rolled him over, the tactics of schoolyard fights coming back to him as they grappled. They were fighting too close for the pipe to be much use, but there were deadlier equalizers, and the man was twisting in his grip, trying to get at something in his pocket. If he got a knife in his hand –

Ned hit him in the face, and heard the crack of the man’s head hitting the paving stones. He rolled away and scrambled up. The man did have a knife in his hand, and Ned kicked it, sending it skittering across the pavement. The blade caught the light for a moment and then disappeared in shadow.

The world pitched abruptly, and he staggered, bracing himself against the wall as the street spun around him. The man was dragging himself to his feet by the time the nauseating spinning stopped, and Ned braced himself for another fight. Instead the man turned and ran, and Ned didn’t trust his balance enough to follow.

He leaned against the wall, his heart pounding. He touched his fingers to his forehead and drew them away unbloodied, which he felt was a good sign. The ground remained thankfully steady under his feet, but his head still throbbed, and he felt battered and scraped in every part.

He should have shouted for help, he realized, but he’d never thought of it in the heat of the moment. There seemed little point in calling for the police now. He reached into his pocket and found his coins still there. His would-be robber had gotten nothing for his efforts. If he were a robber. There were surely easier targets, although Ned supposed his clothes implied he was carrying enough money to make a robbery worthwhile.

This wasn’t the place to think about the implications, anyway. He was grateful Julian’s rooming house was so close, and made his way there, aching with each step. He knocked on the door and waited with minimal patience for Mrs Digby to open it.

She stared at him, and he glanced down at himself, realizing his coat and the knees of his trousers were streaked with mud, his knuckles scraped bloody. “And what happened to you?”

“I’ve met with a bit of an accident. If I could come in…”

“I suppose you’re for Mr Lynes.” She ushered him inside then shut the door behind him. “I’ve known him to keep rough company, but I wouldn’t have thought it of a gentleman such as yourself.”

Ned realized that she suspected he’d been in a drunken brawl, and wasn’t sure whether to be offended or inappropriately amused. If he had to take part in bare-knuckles bruising, he’d at least have liked to have a few drinks inside him first.

Mrs Digby knocked peremptorily on Julian’s door and gave him a hard look as she stomped off. He suspected he’d lost whatever goodwill he’d managed to cultivate with her. It would have been better to explain, but that had seemed more trouble than it was worth.

Julian opened the door. “Mathey, I hoped you might – what happened?”

“Someone doesn’t like me. He was following me. Probably after money, although he didn’t get away with any. My head hurts like the devil.”

“For God’s sake, sit down,” Julian said, and Ned let himself be steered inside; he wasn’t sure he needed Julian’s supporting arm, but he couldn’t say he minded it at the moment either.