Painting The Darkness (15 page)

‘What’s odder still, the Prince left Cleave Court that same Monday. Went back to Bath to stay with his cousin. It wasn’t expected, that I know. Still, you can never rely on a Frenchman to do what’s expected, that’s what I say.

‘You keep asking about the date, and I keep telling you; I don’t know. I’ve told you what happened – as much of it as I knew. Isn’t that enough? Now, do you want another cup of tea or must Lupin and I finish the pot between us?’

VIII

Dr Fiveash returned home that afternoon. He dropped his bag in the hall and went straight into the surgery office, where Miss Arrow was in conference with his junior partner, the dishevelled and disorganized Dr Perry.

‘Ah, Dr Fiveash,’ said Perry. ‘Good to see you back.’

Fiveash nodded and pulled out his watch. ‘How are the rounds going?’

‘Oh, just off. Right away.’ Perry grasped his bulging bag and made for the door.

‘London disagree with you, Doctor?’ said Miss Arrow, after Perry had gone.

‘More than usual.’ He slumped heavily into a chair. ‘Don’t worry about young Perry. He’s thick-skinned.’

‘We do cope in your absence, you know.’ Miss Arrow was stolid and unflappable, matronly by nature and former occupation, given to pawky remarks at her doctors’ expense – above all, wholly indispensable.

‘I’ve something on my mind, Miss Arrow. It concerns Miss Whitaker. You do remember her?’

Miss Arrow frowned. ‘How could I forget the minx? You’d have thought she was Miss Nightingale herself the way she came to the rescue after my accident.’

‘Brake failure, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. A cable snapped. I’ve never forgiven Mr Westaway – he’d only just serviced it. As for Miss Whitaker, I’ll never forgive her – or myself – for the way she deserted you. But there’s no use—’

‘What did you know of her background?’

She frowned again. ‘Only what I told you, which was next to nothing. Why?’

‘She said nothing to you during her visits to you in hospital? About friends, or relatives, or where—’

‘Dr Fiveash, what is the point—?’

‘Did she leave anything behind here? When you returned—’

‘She left nothing at all, to speak of. She was very
particular
, I’ll say that for her. Everything here was in perfect order. She’d reorganized the files really rather well, I have to admit. I dare say she was allowed more time for that side of her work than I am. It’s only a pity she didn’t finish.’

‘And she left no possessions of any kind?’

Miss Arrow’s brow furrowed in thought. ‘One or two bits and pieces in her – my – desk drawer. That’s all.’

‘What did you do with them?’

‘Dr Fiveash, it was months ago.’

He smiled. ‘I know you.’

She smiled, too. ‘I didn’t throw them away, just in case … I’d have given her such a piece of my mind if she had returned for them. But they weren’t worth returning for, in all conscience. I put them in an old shoe-box.’ She rose and crossed to a tall cupboard in the corner; there was still a slight limp as she walked. The doors of the cupboard stood open on crooked stacks of jumbled papers, files and medical texts. From a lower shelf, Miss Arrow pulled out a battered cardboard box and stood it on the desk. Fiveash rose and peered in at the contents: a pen and some pencils, a bottle of ink, a needle and thread, a faded scrap of ribbon, a matchbox full of pins, a Bath omnibus timetable, a spiral-bound diary of the 1881–2 academic year. He leafed through its pages: they were blank. Beneath it, lining the base of the box, was a folded, yellowed old newspaper. He took it out and laid it flat on the desk. It was
The Times
for 12th July 1841.

‘A forty-year-old newspaper, Miss Arrow. What do you make of this?’

‘It’s from your own archive, Doctor.’

‘Really?’ He had kept all copies of
The Times
over the years that contained medical reports and this, presumably, was one. ‘What would she have wanted with this?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

He turned the first page, then the next. And there, in the top corner of the facing page, was the jagged rim of a
torn
edge, a rough rectangle ripped from the sheet. Miss Whitaker had, he recalled, sorted all the medical reports into date order. Something had attracted her notice in this one, something she had decided to remove. He folded the newspaper and replaced it in the box. ‘I’m just going out, Miss Arrow.’

‘You’ve only just come in.’

‘I shan’t be gone long. I’ll be back in plenty of time for evening surgery.’

IX

Even as Dr Fiveash was hastening down Bathwick Hill into the city, Arthur Baverstock was brooding at his desk in his first-floor office above the bustle of Cheap Street. Open before him on the blotter was a battered almanac. His interview of the morning with Lady Davenall had told him nothing. She had affected indifference to most of the proceedings he had described and had claimed total ignorance of the significance of any date in 1846. How she would have reacted to the suggestion that she might be a carrier of syphilis he had not been so unfortunate as to discover; that was something he would happily leave to Richard Davenall.

Tea with Esme Pursglove, however, had been a vastly different affair. She had been as cheerfully informative as Lady Davenall had been haughtily unenlightening. The almanac’s perpetual calendar, indeed, had provided Baverstock with the one item of intelligence Miss Pursglove did not possess. Sir Lemuel Davenall had hosted a ball in honour of the Princes Bonaparte on a Saturday in September 1846. Crowcroft had encountered Miss Strang in the maze the following Monday at dawn, in a distressed condition. And 20th September 1846 had been a Sunday.

X

The librarian on duty was an occasional patient of Dr Fiveash and displayed unwonted celerity in fetching for him bound back copies of
The Times
for the third quarter of 1841. Ignoring a jocular enquiry as to the object of his researches, Fiveash retreated with the volume to an alcove table, perched his pince-nez on his nose and turned up the issue for Monday, 12th July.

The portion removed from his copy by Miss Whitaker was, he now saw, one of the editorial columns. Dotted through the piece, in distinctive capitals, was the name
D
AVENALL
. Fiveash pressed the bulky tome flat with his elbows, bent low over the page, extended his tongue in a sign of concentration that Miss Arrow would at once have recognized, and began to read.

As if the indignities inflicted upon the reputation of British justice as a result of the trial, if it may be honoured with that description, of the
E
ARL OF
C
ARDIGAN
earlier this year were not a sufficient insult to public opinion, we now learn that the duelling, not to say murderous, inclinations of another Hussar officer have been the beneficiaries of selective blindness on the part of our magistracy.

It is difficult to know how else to characterize the entire want of legal proceedings against Lieutenant Gervase
D
AVENALL
of the 27th Hussars, who, it is clearly established, fought with, and severely injured by pistol shot, Lieutenant Harvey
T
HOMPSON
of the same Hussar regiment, at Wimbledon Common on 22nd May this year.

As to the cause of the duel,
cherchez la femme?
As to the outcome, Lieut.
T
HOMPSON
is, we understand, still resident in the regimental infirmary at Colchester. As to the consequences, we must seek in vain. Generous spirits may argue that Lieut.
T
HOMPSON
has suffered sufficiently for his intemperate conduct, since it appears certain he will be unable to resume his commission by reason of his
injuries
; we do not concur but we shall not demur. What of Lieut.
D
AVENALL
? Has he been cashiered and placed in police custody awaiting trial for attempted murder? He has not. Has he been arraigned before a court martial for assaulting a fellow-officer? He has not. And why not? We venture to suggest that the leniency of the authorities is not unconnected with the friendship known to exist between Lieut.
D
AVENALL’S
father, Sir Lemuel
D
AVENALL
, and the Commander-in-Chief,
L
ORD
H
ILL
.

Sir Lemuel is not an insensitive man. He has induced his son to relinquish his commission and retire, for a while, to manage the family property in Ireland. Sir Lemuel is not an unworthy man. His own military career is nothing less than a fine adornment to his family name; his conduct in the Peninsula and at Waterloo deserves ever to be remembered. But nor, we submit, is Sir Lemuel an entirely prudent man. He has demonstrated that which we all privately knew but publicly denied: that the severities of the law are not visited equally upon the son of a baronet and the son of a butcher. The one, having taken up arms illegally, is reduced to half pay and sent away to Ireland to suffer a little boredom. The other, were he to do the same, would now be labouring on the treadmill in one of our houses of correction.

Cui bono?
Not, experience compels us to conclude, the unrepentant Lieut.
D
AVENALL
, nor yet his indulgent father. Such latitude, once allowed, cannot be compressed, for such latitude, once enjoyed, is ever after expected. Who knows to what excesses Lieut.
D
AVENALL
may now feel at liberty to proceed? If it be any consolation to those who rail at such collusions of the well-connected, we take leave to doubt that the family
D
AVENALL
will ever have cause to do other than abundantly regret this unwholesome clemency.

XI

I walked up Avenue Road late that afternoon looking forward to telling Constance what I had learned from Fiveash. In my own mind, the information crushed Norton’s claim outright, but there was something brutal as well as deluded in my eagerness to tell her. It was as if I wanted her to let me see that it was more a disappointment than a relief, as if I craved the endorsement of my suspicion more than the return of a lost harmony
.

Only this state of mind can explain why, when Hillier greeted me in the hall and said that Constance was taking tea in the conservatory with a visitor, and that the visitor’s name was Davenall, I thought at once of Norton. As I thrust my hat and coat at Hillier and blundered through, some part of me, I believe, wanted it to be Norton
.

But it was Richard Davenall. He and Constance looked up first in alarm, then with puzzled smiles, as I burst through the doors
.

‘
Trenchard!’ Davenall said. ‘I thought you would be here already. Otherwise I would have called at Orchard Street. But your wife has made me very welcome
.’

‘
Good,’ I said, panting slightly
.

Constance rose and kissed me lightly on the cheek. ‘Now you’ve arrived, William, I’ll leave you and Richard together. Shall I ask Hillier to bring more tea?
’

‘
No. No, thank you.’ She nodded and went out. Abruptly, I dismissed her from my mind: Davenall would do as well as any other audience. ‘Have you heard from Fiveash?’ I said as soon as the doors had closed on us
.

‘
No
.’

I sat down opposite him, sensing but not subduing the signs of straining eagerness in my face and voice. ‘He believes somebody has spied on his medical records – in order to supply Norton with the details he made use of yesterday
.’

‘
Tell me more
.’

So I did, plunging on with all the constructions I had placed upon Fiveash’s words, scarcely heeding the frown of disquiet on Davenall’s face. Whether it was the frailty of the evidence that
disturbed
him or the excess of confidence I drew from it was impossible to tell; he was not a lawyer for nothing. When I had finished, some moments passed before he responded
.

‘
No doubt I will receive a considered report of this from Baverstock
.’

‘
Yes. But meanwhile—
’

‘
Meanwhile it is suggestive but hardly conclusive. I can well understand Fiveash making much of it in the light of recent events, but, frankly, it is flimsy in the extreme
.’

‘
You can’t seriously be suggesting it’s a coincidence?
’

‘
I think it highly probable that it is. Even if it is not, where is the evidence that she is connected with Norton? For the present, I fear it takes us nowhere
.’

‘
This is pure defeatism. I had—
’

‘
It is pure realism, Trenchard. I have to give Warburton some kind of answer by noon tomorrow. Unsubstantiated accusations that Norton has set a spy on Fiveash will not help
.’

I stood up and walked to the window. Through a screen of vine leaves, I could see Constance at the far end of the lawn, moving slowly amongst the herb borders. She had taken of late to wandering in the garden whenever I was at home, dreamily picking posies of thyme and rosemary; Burrows had even gone so far as to complain about it. But Constance would not have explained her actions even had I asked her to. Past associations called from beyond these symbols of disenchantment, disenchantment with our life but enchantment with another. I turned back to Davenall with a sigh. ‘What brought you here today?
’

‘
The urgency of the position. And I am glad I came. I see now just how urgent it really is
.’

‘
What do you mean?
’

‘
Constance fended off my enquiries politely enough, Trenchard, but it is clear to me she believes in Norton, as it must be clear to you
.’

‘
We have not discussed it
.’

‘
Not discussed it?’ He looked at me with frank incredulity. ‘Have you told her how matters stand?
’

‘
No
.’

‘
Now I see why she was so apparently incurious. I appreciate syphilis is hardly a fitting—
’