Keeping Bad Company (16 page)

‘Might. Might not. Can't tell with her.'

For a while I roamed the streets around Bartholomew Lane, but without success. I hadn't much hope. Tabby wouldn't be found if she didn't want to be. Obviously, she didn't want to be – at least not by me. My appearance must have come as a surprise to her. There was no possibility that she could have expected me at Capel Court. She'd decided I needed help and immediately given it, then gone away without waiting to see what happened. I gave up the search and committed the extravagance of another cab home, because something must be done urgently about Griffiths's manuscript. Eckington-Smith knew where I lived. I decided to take it straight round to my friends in Bloomsbury, Daniel and Jenny Suter, for safe keeping. None of the people in the present case would know them and Daniel's only connection with India had been composing incidental music for a play about the Great Moghul.

It was only on the way home from Bloomsbury, on foot, that a worrying thought came to me. Trying to account for Tabby's strange behaviour, Amos had suggested that she might be trying to deal with some threat to me. Was it a coincidence that she should be outside the stock exchange when Eckington-Smith was inside? In the end, I decided that it was time to call on some inside information and delivered a note to 1 Grosvenor Gate.

‘E
ckington-Smith is a parliamentary hippopotamus. There's a whole herd of them,' Mr Disraeli said.

His sixteen-hand dark bay thoroughbred tossed its head against the bit. Mr Disraeli had a tendency to raise his bridle hand when eloquent. I'd noticed that he was riding some expensive-looking new horses since his marriage to Mary Anne.

‘Hippopotamus?'

‘They keep their bodies safely under water, their stumpy legs firmly rooted in the mud and only their nostrils poking out, to sniff anything to their own advantage. Every now and then the whips will rouse them up enough to make them splodge through the division lobby and occasionally throw one of them some minor ministerial post.'

In spite of everything, I laughed, with that feeling of flying above the rest of the world that came from Mr Disraeli's company. It was common knowledge that Disraeli himself was disappointed at not being offered a ministerial post, but his worst enemy couldn't have likened him to a hippopotamus. Too clever for his own good, most of them said. I tried to be sparing of the times I asked for his help, especially when it came to getting up early to join me on my early morning rides in the park on my mare, Rancie. It was much more enjoyable than ‘At Homes', and I suspected he thought so too, but on the dangerous edge of respectability. Still, I couldn't think of anyone more likely to tell me what I needed to know.

‘Somebody remarked that if there were half a sovereign to be picked up on the floor of hell the demons would have to move quickly to get there before Eckington-Smith,' Disraeli said. ‘Still, I don't suppose he's any worse in that than the rest of the herd.'

I had my own reasons for thinking him quite a lot worse, but kept quiet from confidentiality towards Eckington-Smith's wife. It seemed even Disraeli's network had not found out that connection.

‘I suppose I can guess your interest in the fellow,' Disraeli said. ‘The same matter that we were talking about last time we met?'

‘Does he have any connection with McDruggy McPherson?'

‘Oh there are a lot of them adrift on the same raft. At present they'll work together to keep it afloat, but they'll be at his throat if it looks like sinking.'

‘Raft?'

‘Eckington-Smith and his like are investors in McPherson's opium operations. They're facing ruinous losses since the Chinese decided not to play their game. That's why there's so much urgency about getting the Government to pay them compensation.'

‘And will it?'

Disraeli shook his head.

‘No. At least, not until we've won the war against China.'

‘So there will be a war?'

‘The gunboats are already steaming towards Canton. Nice sharp little campaign, total capitulation by the Chinese and payment of compensation. After that McPherson and the rest of them might get their money, but that could be a year or more away. Still, they've got no choice but to hang together.'

‘Can they hold out for a year or more?'

‘Rumour on the stock exchange says they can't. Not many people's credit holds up so long without something to support it. Which is where McPherson's jewel collection comes into the picture.'

He looked at me sidelong and must have noticed my change of expression.

‘You knew about that, of course.'

‘The jewels that weren't stolen when his assistant was killed?'

‘Fortunate, wasn't it?'

‘I've heard that they once belonged to a maharajah,' I said.

I was taking a leap, associating those with the jewels in Griffiths's story, but Disraeli nodded again.

‘So I gather. He was flaunting an example of his stock in Westminster Hall. To reassure the creditors, I suppose. Vulgar, though.'

This from Disraeli, whose own taste in rings and neck chains had raised many eyebrows.

‘So McPherson's credit depends on the jewels?' I said.

‘Yes, and if he crashes he'll take a lot of other men along with him.'

I looked towards Rancie's ears, thinking that explained why Eckington-Smith and others were prepared to run errands for McPherson. It might also explain why they were so determined that any doubts about McPherson's right to them should not be made public.

‘Did you and your brother have anything to do with that story suggesting that McPherson had Griffiths killed?'

The question came from Disraeli in a conversational tone, as if it weren't anything of great note. I almost jumped out of my saddle.

‘My brother had nothing to do with it.'

‘But you did?'

‘Are we talking about a news-sheet called
The
Unbound Briton
?'

‘Some such scandal rag. I can't remember the title. I hear it was causing quite a stir in the committee yesterday.'

I said nothing, wishing I hadn't been carried away by Tom Huckerby's journalistic enthusiasm. My brother would be furious.

‘So did he?' Disraeli said, still conversational.

‘Have Griffiths killed? I can't prove it.'

‘And did Griffiths kill McPherson's assistant?'

‘I don't know. I simply don't know.'

My own voice sounded desperate in my ears. Perhaps it sounded that way to Mr Disraeli too because he said nothing until we'd turned and were riding back towards Grosvenor Gate. When he did speak, he was unusually serious.

‘Miss Lane, I think you should be careful.'

‘Why?'

I knew, but wanted him to spell it out.

‘There are big issues involved, and not very scrupulous men. If you or your brother were obstacles to their plans, I think they'd do something about it.'

‘It really is nothing to do with Tom. He's sure Mr Griffiths killed himself. He doesn't want me to have anything to do with it.'

It mattered more than anything to me to convince him of that.

‘Then maybe you should take your brother's advice.'

I glanced at him and saw what looked like genuine concern on his face. My heart lurched. I didn't even know if it was from fear or from surprise that he should care. He raised his hat to me, wished me good morning and cantered away towards the gate. It was one of the conventions of our park rides that we should meet like acquaintances by chance, then go our own ways.

As soon as he'd gone, Amos Legge came up to ride beside me. When Mr Disraeli was with us, he kept respectfully back, pretending to be any other groom.

‘My farrier friend, he's not getting anywhere so far with that horseshoe. Reckons it wasn't made by any of the men he knows.'

I was less disappointed than Amos sounded, not having counted very much on the horseshoe in any case.

‘He'll keep on trying though,' Amos said. ‘It's annoying him, not knowing.'

I told him about seeing Tabby. He was as much at a loss as I was about how to find her.

‘Do you remember a member of parliament named Eckington-Smith?' I said.

Amos looked as if he was on the point of spitting and only just restraining himself.

‘Reckon his backside still remembers the nails in my boot.'

‘You kicked him, then?'

I knew there'd been a rough-house towards the end of that unlovely story, when Eckington-Smith had been lying in wait for me, intending violence, but had met Amos instead. I'd never been told the details of it.

‘Should have done worse,' Amos said.

‘I saw him at Capel Court yesterday, the stock exchange. It was just after I'd seen Tabby there. It's in my mind that she might be following him.'

‘If she thinks he's threatening any mischief to you, that would account for the knife,' Amos said.

His matter-of-fact tone only increased my worry.

‘If that's it, we've got to find her and stop her,' I said.

‘Or give her a bit of a hand.'

‘No, for pity's sake. Do you want to see her hanged for trying to protect me? If that really is what she's doing.'

‘If she heard he was threatening you, she should have come to me,' Amos said.

‘Of course she should. Or to me. But that's not Tabby's way. She doesn't talk about things, just goes off and tries to do something about them.'

Sometimes effectively, occasionally disastrously, as we both knew.

‘What I can't understand is how she'd have heard about it,' I said. ‘I don't think she ever met Eckington-Smith while I was working on the case. Saw him a few times, but that was all.'

‘Unless she found him hanging about waiting for you.'

‘No. Eckington-Smith wouldn't be standing outside my door with a knife or pistol, once you'd scared him away. He'd hire somebody.'

‘Same thing. She might have followed whoever it was and found out.'

Talking about it like this made it seem all too likely. Amos saw how worried it had made me.

‘Do you want me to see what I can find out?'

‘Would you, Amos?'

‘I'll have a word with Eckington-Smith's groom or driver, see if they've noticed anything. He still lives in the big place in St John's Wood, I suppose?'

‘I don't know. He may have moved somewhere smaller after he had to give up his wife's money.'

Amos said he'd see what he could do, which was comforting. I was all too aware that concentrating on my brother's problems had made me less attentive than I should have been to Tabby.

Later that day I raised my spirits by visiting one of my best friends Beattie Talbot. The excuse for the visit, as far as it needed one, was giving music lessons to her children. It kept my hand in, just in case the investigating business failed and I had to go back to teaching, but was a pleasure in any case. George's and Beattie's comfortable and unobtrusively well-run home in Belgravia was always an oasis in dark times. Beattie probably knew more about me than anybody else, though I didn't burden her with the details of my cases. She'd been totally sympathetic in the matter of my brother's return and his disapproval of me and had been racking her brains to find a way of helping. Over tea after the music lessons, she shared one of the results.

‘We'll give an Indian dinner party for your brother. You know how George loves to meet new people. It will help convince Tom that you're highly thought of and have some more-or-less respectable friends.'

That was understating it. George, newly knighted, was a Yorkshireman who'd become one of the most respected businessmen in London and a generous philanthropist. He had an insatiable interest in politics but refused to belong to any party. Their hospitality was well known and many plans and new friendships had been launched at one of Beattie's dinner parties. George fancied himself, with some justice, as a picker-out of talent and liked doing what he could to help his friends' careers with suitable introductions.

‘George was just saying to me the other day that he thought he should be better informed about India,' Beattie said. ‘He'll find the right people to invite. You must ask your brother for the names of any of his friends he wants to be there.'

‘I don't think he's been in London long enough to have many.'

‘There must be some. Perhaps I can find some Indian musicians with those curious instruments they play. Would your musical friends know anything about that? And I never know about – what is it? –
nautch
girls. Are they respectable dancers or the other thing?'

I promised to ask Daniel about Indian musicians but couldn't give an opinion one way or the other on
nautch
girls, so Beattie decided we'd do without dancers. As usual, an hour in her company was such a lift to the spirits that we were soon giggling together like fourteen-year-old girls.

‘Cook and I shall have such fun experimenting with recipes,' she said.

She knew some ladies on her charity committees – widows mostly – who'd lived in India while their husbands were serving there and would ask them for recipes.

‘I dare say that means we'll have to invite them, but it will help balance the table. We'll ask the younger ladies, like you, to wear muslins and Indian shawls. I wonder about drinks? In the novels, the men are always calling for whiskies and sodas, but you can hardly serve that with dinner, can you? And what's a
chota peg
?'

We moved on to the guest list. No more than sixteen, she thought, or twenty at the very most.

‘And we must invite Mr Calloway. I don't think he has any connection with India, but he's so good at putting people at ease and getting them to talk to each other.'

A sidelong glance at me. Beattie had not yet abandoned her hope of pairing me up with young Mr Calloway from the Foreign Office, though neither of us had encouraged her. I probably looked embarrassed, remembering that the last time Mr Calloway and I had seen each other was when I'd been carried off by a brother in a bad temper. Beattie was apologetic.