Keeping Bad Company (29 page)

The first essential was to make sure that my brother was not amongst those present. I was gambling on the hopes that he'd be too junior to be invited or, if invited, too disgusted with the Company to attend. A quick circuit of the periphery of the room confirmed my hopes. After that I lingered on the edge of various groups, watching and listening. I gathered that the evening was, unofficially, a celebration of the Company's having come through the latest ordeal by parliamentary committee more or less unscathed. Its directors were confident again, looking forward to pickings from the forthcoming war with China. The guest I was interested in arrived even later than I had. Suddenly, there he was in the centre of the crowd, surrounded as usual by a male chorus of hangers-on. Eckington-Smith was not one of them. I wasn't the only one to notice McPherson's arrival. Conversation dipped then rose again, heads half-turned then snapped back. It wouldn't be easy to get McPherson alone.

The band played a march. One of the directors made an optimistic speech. We all filed into the supper room. It was buffet style, which from my point of view carried less risk of discovery than a formal meal, but was still dangerous. A lady sits down on one of the gilt chairs by the wall and waits for her gentleman to bring food. A lady sitting on her own risks having three or four spare gentlemen converging on her with unwanted gallantry and even less wanted things in aspic. I remained standing, half hidden behind a fern in a pot. McPherson and his coterie weren't interested in eating either. They'd managed to exchange their champagne glasses for tumblers of whisky and soda and were talking together in the far corner of the room. Fern by fern, I moved towards them. One of the hangers-on crooked a finger for a waiter. He was evidently ordering more whisky, because the waiter disappeared through a door and came back with a loaded tray. I stopped him on his return journey with a trayful of empty tumblers.

‘When you've taken those back, would you be kind enough to tell the gentleman in the middle there that somebody wishes to talk to him urgently about a lady at Richmond.'

He looked surprised, but did as I asked. I watched as he delivered the message, saw McPherson's head turn in my direction then walked through the service door.

It opened on to a stone-flagged passageway, dimly lit, probably leading to the kitchens. Within seconds, the door from the supper room clattered and McPherson was beside me.

‘You again. What do you want this time?'

His tone had no pretence of manners. Evidently, he remembered snubbing me at Beattie's dinner.

‘A talk,' I said. ‘It shouldn't take long.'

‘So what does she want this time?'

‘The Rani? Nothing, as far as I know. She didn't send me. I just needed to attract your attention.'

‘What is this? What are we supposed to be talking about?'

I looked at him, making him wait.

‘Jewels,' I said.

I missed his reaction, because the door from the supper room swung open and another waiter hurried out, obviously surprised to see us there.

‘We can't talk here,' McPherson said.

‘Where, then?'

He turned without answering and led the way along the kitchen corridor, then right through another door that led back to an anteroom in the grand part of the building. Either he knew the place very well or he had a good sense of direction because a door off the anteroom took us into the library. It was a cavern of a room, two floors high with a gallery round it, deserted but softly lit by two oil lamps. The marble fireplace had no fire in it, but from habit McPherson strode across to the rug and turned to face me, as if master in his own home.

‘So.'

‘Your secret is safe with me,' I said. It was a line I'd always wanted to try, but never had the opportunity till now. ‘On conditions,' I added.

‘And what is this secret supposed to be?'

The posture hadn't changed, but just a shade of doubt was on his face.

‘That you're not a jewel thief,' I said.

I think the words ‘jewel thief' penetrated his mind first because he'd been expecting them. What he hadn't expected was the ‘not'. When that sank in the change in his expression went from doubt to shock.

‘You never had the princess's jewels,' I said. ‘Only that hawk, and she gave it to you freely. It's worked hard for you, that hawk. I wonder where your credit would have been without it.'

He wasn't a stupid man and knew when it was no use blustering. He did tell me I was talking nonsense, but only as an automatic response while he was thinking. I didn't want to give him time to think.

‘Why don't we sit down and I'll tell you what I think happened,' I said, settling myself into one of the leather armchairs on either side of the fireplace.

He remained standing.

‘And why don't I have you thrown out?'

‘Do, by all means. It will make an excellent column in the newspapers: A certain well-known trading gentleman throws a lady into the street for defending his honour.'

‘
You
,
defending my honour!'

‘But then, the last thing you want is your honour defended, isn't it? You had to choose between honour and credit. Or should I say, creditworthiness. You made sure that everybody knew how angry you were about that paragraph pretty well accusing you of jewel theft. That was as good a way as any of spreading the story all round town. Like back in Bombay, hiding your hawk on poor Mr Griffiths's desk.'

‘
Poor
Mr Griffiths!' Now he was genuinely furious. ‘Why will you and everybody else persist in regarding that man as some sort of saint? There are things I could tell you that might make you think differently about your beloved Mr Griffiths.'

‘Yes, I'm sure you could. So why don't you?'

That took him by surprise. I looked up at him and nodded at the vacant armchair opposite. He sat down as if he couldn't believe he was doing it. We both waited.

‘You were going to tell me about Mr Griffiths,' I said. He said nothing. I let the silence draw out before speaking again. ‘Very well then. Shall we start where he started, in his pamphlet?'

‘I haven't read the confounded thing.'

His irritation sounded genuine.

‘It starts with three young men sailing to India', I said. ‘He calls himself The Griff and the other two The Merchant and The Soldier. It's pretty clear that you're The Merchant.'

A shrug, as if he didn't care one way or another.

‘Much later, the three meet again by chance in a small state in the Maratha that the Company's pretty well taken over. At least, it was chance as far as he was concerned. He hints that The Merchant may have been there by arrangement with The Soldier. The prince has a beautiful and ambitious sister. There's a small war, then an unsuccessful uprising against the prince. Does that sound familiar?'

He was still managing to look bored.

‘I've spent most of my life in the East and travelled all of India from Ceylon to the Punjab. The circumstances you describe are things I've witnessed a dozen times or more.'

‘The prince had an amazing collection of jewels,' I said. ‘They vanished. It's no surprise to you that Griffiths thought you were in possession of them. He came very close to accusing you in public.'

‘The man was practically insane on the subject. Some people told me I should have sued him for slander, but it was of no account to me.'

‘Except that you deliberately provoked him by wearing that diamond hawk in public. Just as you did in Bombay, by trying to make it look as if he'd stolen it and even killed your assistant for the jewels. Very clumsy, that was – and I don't think you're a clumsy man.'

That surprised him. He recovered almost at once, but not before I'd caught that reassessing glance at me.

‘So let's move on to the night before Mr Griffiths died,' I said. ‘You visited him.'

‘If you're going to accuse me of murdering the man, please come to the point so that I can rejoin my friends.'

‘A few days ago, I might have done exactly that. But I didn't know then what Mr Griffiths told you. More to the point, I didn't know what you said to him.'

His eyebrows joined in a black bar over angry eyes.

‘It was a conversation between the two of us. Nobody knows what we talked about.'

‘Are you sure?'

And no, he wasn't sure. I could sense his mind moving fast, wondering if they could have been overheard. By the boy Anil, perhaps. I pressed on while he was still wondering.

‘Mr Griffiths had asked you to meet him so that he could apologize. He'd learned from a source he trusted that you did not have the prince's jewels and never had them. He was an honourable man . . .'

‘Honourable!'

‘In that respect at least. He offered to make public amends in any way you wanted. At the very least, he was determined to tell all your friends and business acquaintances that you were innocent and write to the newspapers.'

A snort from McPherson, but no other attempt to interrupt.

‘A very formal letter it would have been, I suppose,' I said. ‘“Mr Griffiths would like it to be known that he entirely withdraws any imputation he has made, directly or indirectly, against the honour and integrity of Mr Alexander McPherson.” Still, more than enough to do the damage.'

‘Damage? Miss Lane, do you realize what nonsense you're talking? Even if I accept your account of what Griffiths said to me – and I don't – how could a public acknowledgement that I'm not a thief possibly do me damage?'

‘Because it was a choice of being thought either a thief or a bankrupt,' I said.

His fists were clenching and unclenching on his knees. Big fighter's fists. If he could have solved his problems by punching the life out of me, I don't think he'd have hesitated. But a man doesn't make fortunes without being able to think several moves ahead. He'd assume I'd have told somebody all this before confronting him. I only wished I'd thought of it. Faintly, the music of another march drifted into the library. Supper was over.

‘You needed that opium compensation money urgently,' I said. ‘You can't pay your debts. If you have to wait a year or more for it, you can only survive if people think you still have assets – like a fortune in jewels. If the world believes that, you may just be able to hold out. You've been keeping up appearances very well – donations to orphans and so forth. The last thing you wanted was Griffiths declaring to the world that you didn't have the jewels.'

‘So I killed him to stop him, did I?'

‘No. I should have thought that once, but I know you left him alive and spent the next night at Richmond with the Rani.'

‘She's not a rani.'

‘Princess, then. Your old friend, the princess.' He didn't deny that at least. More than friend, I suspected. ‘Mr Patwardhan took you to her. He's the witness that you couldn't have killed Mr Griffiths. But somebody killed him. That's my only interest. If you help me by telling what you know, then I'll give you the promise you wanted from him. I won't tell the world that you're poor and honest.'

I could do that. In their different ways, both Tom Huckerby and Mr Disraeli would love the story. McPherson must have guessed that I wasn't bluffing. Fists unclenched, hands flat on his thighs, he started talking. Once he'd decided, he told his story unemotionally, as if reporting to shareholders.

‘I'll start from when my assistant Burton was killed. Griffiths wasn't responsible. In case you're wondering, I wasn't either. It was just what it seemed to be, an attack by robbers. I'd ridden out alone to meet him and talk to him before he arrived in Bombay. I knew we had to talk up my assets – such as they were – and the old story about the missing jewels had come into my mind. I was sorry Burton was dead, but as I was riding back it came to me how I might use it. I put my hawk on Griffiths's desk, assuming that he'd find it and immediately make a song and dance by accusing me of trying to blame him for Burton's murder. It worked better than I'd expected because your brother found it first, Griffiths went straight off to the governor and the whole of Bombay was talking about the jewels, just as I'd hoped. By the time we all arrived in London, the idea that Burton had been attacked because of the jewels and that most of them were in my possession was as firmly fixed as I could have wanted. Griffiths couldn't have managed the thing better if I'd been paying him for it.'

‘Then the princess arrived in London,' I said.

‘Then the princess arrived in London. I don't know why, but one thing I do know is that woman has been scheming about one thing or another ever since she opened her eyes in the cradle. She's as devious and ruthless as Cleopatra and Lady MacBeth combined and she ate men as casually as sugar almonds. Griffiths was besotted with her.'

And not only Griffiths, I thought. Talking about her, McPherson had lost the reporting to shareholders tone. It took him a few deep breaths to get it back again before he went on.

‘She was the one who told Griffiths I didn't have the jewels. Pure mischief-making, I suppose. That would be like her. So that's the story. You wanted it. Whether it helps you to find out who killed Griffiths or not, I don't care. But I've kept my side of the agreement and I expect you to keep yours.'

His hard dark eyes looked into mine.

‘Not completely,' I said.

‘Not keeping your agreement completely?'

The fists had clenched again.

‘I meant you haven't kept yours. In two respects. One is that you haven't told me why you went out to Richmond that night to see the princess.'

‘Her man, Patwardhan, suggested it. She wanted to apologize to me for any part she had in the misunderstanding.'

‘And you cared enough to see her late at night? Wouldn't it have waited till morning?'