Painting The Darkness (30 page)

Unhappily, it did not go without saying. Richard scanned several more paragraphs of defensive prose before he came to what interested him.

As to the circumstances of Lady Davenall’s murder, I deeply regret to say that there is nothing I can add to my previous account. The police have made lamentably little progress in their investigation for sheer want of evidence. In response to your specific questions, I can state quite definitely that Lady Davenall, notwithstanding her years, was a most energetic and quick-witted lady to the very end. I had the privilege of serving her as agent for more than twenty years and can therefore fairly claim greater knowledge on the subject than her own family, for I never recall any of her relatives visiting her in that time. I believe the last such visit must have been made during the tenure of my predecessor, Mr Lennox, although this is purely a supposition, since he and his family had emigrated by the time I took up my post here.

Richard tossed the letter aside, with several pages still unread. The fellow’s prolixity was unbearable. Not to mention his effrontery. He doubted if Hugo would welcome a lecture on the topic of his grandmother’s long-standing ostracism, least of all from a prosy Scotch–Irish land agent. After all, the woman’s virtual exile had been her own choice. Richard had that on no less an authority than Sir Lemuel himself. He well recalled the old man telling him on more than one occasion that his wife had gone back to Ireland shortly after Gervase had come of age and had never returned. Sir Lemuel had been damned if he would plead for a reconciliation: she was welcome to stew in the Connaught bog of her choosing. And so she had, for more than forty years, until …

He snatched the letter up from where it had fallen. A chord had sounded in his mind. What was the name? Yes – Lennox, that was it. He had heard it before, not because he had found it recorded obscurely amongst the Carntrassna papers, but because of something else, something infinitely stranger, which his memory told him he ought to recall. But what was it? For an instant, he had seemed to retrieve it, but now it was gone. He leaned back in his chair and passed a hand over his furrowed brow. It was no good. Whatever the name meant lay beyond his recall.

VII

Sunday morning in Paris. A watery sun lit the river, chaffinches sang in the trees along the Quai St-Michel, and Prince Napoleon, manfully seeking to walk off chronic depression and assorted physical reminders of the amount of wine he had consumed at the Russian embassy the night before, paused to lean awhile on the leaf-strewn parapet and glare up-river at the looming bulk of Notre-Dame.

A mood of bilious irony was upon Plon-Plon this contemptibly mild autumn day. How he, a declared democrat and barely concealed atheist, had come to be Bonapartist pretender to the Imperial throne of Catholic France he sometimes failed to understand. It had never given him a gram of satisfaction, nor yet a moment of pleasure that had not been paid for in hours of heartburn and regret. He loosed some phlegm in the general direction of the river, then turned to go.

A few yards down the street stood a news-vendor’s kiosk. Plon-Plon trudged towards it, calculating that a packet of
bonbons
might mask, for a while, the bitter taste of failure. But he was out of luck.

‘
Les journaux seulement
.’

Plon-Plon scowled. Casting his eye over the piled newsprint, he observed that the previous day’s London
Times
was
amongst it. On a whim, he bought a copy and stalked away. Irony, he knew, was everywhere. Twenty-eight years before, his cousin the Emperor had proscribed
The Times
on his account. Decamping from the Crimean front for Constantinople in November 1854, he had only heard later what the impudent ‘Thunderer’ had said of him. Yet now, as he glared at its innocuous pages, he could still remember the reports that had reached him.

From our correspondent, Paris, Sunday, 19th November, 6 p.m.: ‘Not less than three different dispatches from the front announce the departure of Prince Napoleon from the Crimea for Constantinople owing to illness. If it be so, it is one of the most unlucky things ever done by him. The effect produced by the mere rumour of his intention to quit the camp … has done more injury to him than any previous incident of his life. His chances of the imperial throne, such as they were …’

‘I suppose there are more persons than Prince Napoleon who love to strut about in rich uniforms, provided they are not called upon to endure the fatigues of field duty and the perils of war – persons who enter the military service without the remotest intention of ever experiencing its hardships, and who avail themselves of the first plausible pretext to avoid their duty, no matter at what risk of reputation. Unfortunately, in the present instance there is little excuse allowed by the public … and I doubt whether the dysentery under which Prince Napoleon is said to suffer …’

Said to suffer? Oh, he had suffered. God alone, if there was one, knew that. The dysentery was exaggerated, of course, but to accuse him of cowardice, to dub him ‘Craint-Plomb’ in the face of all he had done at the Alma and tried to do at Inkerman: it was too much.

Plon-Plon slumped down on a bench just short of the Petit Pont and wrenched open the newspaper. English
journalism
, however turgid, would at least save him from having to watch the march-past of worshippers on their way to Notre-Dame.

Here! What was this? ‘
NORTON VERSUS DAVENALL
. Affidavits are to be examined on Monday … suit filed by Mr James Norton against Sir Hugo Davenall … petitioning for the removal of the impediments to his assumption of the property and title of Sir James Davenall.’

Plon-Plon whistled. So. It had come to that. He should, he supposed, feel some sympathy for his fellow-pretender. But how could he? In recent weeks he had forgotten the name of James Norton. Now it pounced once more into the front of his mind. Who was he really? James Davenall? A worthless fraudster? Or … somebody with a different claim on the same title? For even James had known a little of that.

The Great Universal Exhibition of 1867 drew to Paris the industrial and cultural wonders of half Europe. To Plon-Plon it meant six months of mental and physical gourmandizing. There were times, then and more frequently now, when he thought he had never been happier. A morning spent making notes on the fascinating mechanical exhibits, gleaning their intricate mysteries from the attendant experts, expatiating to them on his favourite theme of powered flight; luncheon prepared by a different nation’s chef each day; then, those hours of the keenest, most savoured pleasures: the afternoon.

He had commissioned a special closed room for himself at the heart of the exhibition, furnished lavishly with Turkish rugs and divans in a plushly cushioned riot of maroon and gold. It was lit by electricity, with which he never tired of amazing his selected guests. When they had come and gone and his enthusiasm for science had ebbed, when the visiting crowds had dispersed in answer to the call of the
can-can
, when the afternoon had begun to fade into evening, then Cora would come to him to refine his lust with one more variant on harlotry drawn
from
the expertise of a dozen nations. Life, he was sure, had nothing more to offer.

In July, with the exhibition at its zenith, Sir Gervase Davenall and his son James visited Paris as Plon-Plon’s guests. They stayed at his mock Roman villa in the Champs Elysées and enjoyed, to the full, the life of the city. On the third day of their visit, Plon-Plon conferred on James the ultimate privilege: an invitation to take tea in his room at the exhibition. It was, he soon realized, a mistake.

‘You are to go to Oxford in the autumn, your father tells me,’ he said, a lull having fallen after his demonstration of the light switches.

‘Yes.’ Monosyllables had dominated James’s share of the conversation; he seemed unaccountably nervous.

‘Are you enjoying Paris? You went to see the Offenbach operetta last night, I believe.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well? What did you think of it? Did you besiege the stage door for a closer look at Mademoiselle Schneider?’

‘No. That is—’

‘
Mon pauvre garçon
. You disappoint me. Why, even the Tsar—’

‘We left before the end.’

‘Before the end?
Mon Dieu
. Why?’

‘Father recognized somebody in the audience.’ James hung his head. He was not nervous at all, Plon-Plon now saw. He was worried – about his father. ‘He became anxious. He said we had to leave at once. We didn’t even wait for the interval.’

‘Whom did he recognize?’

‘A woman. Sitting a few rows behind us.’

‘Who was she?’

‘I’m not sure. Actually, I thought you might know.’

‘
Moi?
How could I? I was not there.’

‘No, but Father said her name, under his breath, when he first saw her. He didn’t mean me to hear, of course, so I couldn’t very well ask him. Besides—’

‘What was the name?’

‘Vivien Strang. As my father’s oldest friend, I thought—’

‘Strang?’

‘Yes. That was it, I’m sure.’

‘
L’écossaise! L’écossaise encore
.’

‘You know her, then?’

Plon-Plon looked up. If only he could take back his words. There was nothing for it but denial. ‘No, James. I have never heard of her.’

‘But you just said—’

‘I was thinking of somebody else. I’m sorry. I know nobody called Strang.’

James looked doubtful. ‘If you’re sure. It’s just that—’

‘Nobody!’ Plon-Plon rose to emphasize that the subject was closed. He crossed to his desk. There, his eye was suddenly taken by the small tulip-shaped bulb mounted beside the onyx ink-stand: another of his gratifying technological indulgences. It was glowing red, signalling that a visitor had arrived by the private entrance and was awaiting admittance.

James, too, had noticed it. ‘What’s that?’

Plon-Plon feigned unconcern. ‘This? Oh, it is not important. Excuse me for a moment.’ He crossed hurriedly to the door and passed out into the vestibule. Ahead lay the main entrance, but he turned right, parted a heavy curtain and stepped into a dimly lit antechamber.

Cora was waiting there patiently, reclining on a divan and smoking a Turkish cigarette. The long black dress she wore would have seemed impeccably modest but for the fact that it was fastened from shoulder to toe by buttons, which happened to be undone from the hip down. ‘What are you doing here?’ he hissed.

Cora fluttered her henna-tinted eyelids and crossed her legs, displaying the shapeliness of her thigh to maximum effect. ‘This is the time you said, my sweet. Don’t you remember?’

Then he did remember. Gervase had complained of James’s shyness with women and had confided his
determination
that the boy should receive a thorough sexual education whilst in Paris. Plon-Plon had volunteered Cora’s services and agreed to act as go-between. It was, he had felt, the least he could do. But now it was different. Now there were too many echoes, too many reminders of other bargains, other deceptions, long ago.

‘The plans have changed, Cora. Go home.’

Cora uttered a mew of protest. ‘Plon-Plon! I was looking forward to it! Usually, the young ones cannot afford me.’

Plon-Plon smiled and closed the newspaper. Cora hadn’t gone home, of course. A few more buttons had been undone, Plon-Plon had dispatched James on a guided tour of the exhibition and Cora had soothed his troubled conscience for the rest of the afternoon. As for what James had continued to wonder about the mysterious Miss Strang, or what, in due course, he might have discovered about her, he did not know. It was, he acknowledged, better that way. For did he not have his own reasons for wishing he had never heard the name of Vivien Strang?

‘The high military grade which the Prince enjoys was not won by valiant services in the field nor after the slow lapse of years. Neither distinguished military talent nor the right of seniority had anything to do with it, and when he was authorized to assume the general’s sash and epaulettes it was not solely for the purpose of needless ornament … Whatever the cause, unless indeed he was actually dragged, it is said that no man in his position should quit the field who had once entered it.’

They would have had to drag him, too, had he known what awaited him in Constantinople. When the first torrent of his rage subsided, and as soon as was consistent with the progress of his illness, he judged that a diplomatically dutiful call on the military hospitals at Scutari would do something to redeem his reputation. So, accompanied by an
aide
-de-camp and assorted English and French newspaper correspondents (not including the representative of
The Times
), he descended on the Sisters of Mercy, inspected one of the wards and distributed cigars to a clutch of clamouring amputees.

He had intended to make a swift departure, but the journalists urged him to visit the British hospital as well, where the famous Miss Nightingale had recently established herself, and he did not wish to deny them the chance of describing their encounter.

The British barrack hospital was a vast reeking warren of filthy corridors and cavernous wards. Miss Nightingale regarding the impromptu visits of dignitaries as matters of no importance, they were obliged to seek her out. Before they had penetrated far into the complex, Plon-Plon regretted ever entering it. Row upon row of deathly still or screaming, twitching men, many still in their mud-caked uniforms, patched and clotted with blood. In the gloomy corners of the rooms, on the very bandages of the wounded, insects crawling, infection working, death advancing. Clutching a cinnamon-scented handkerchief to his nose, Plon-Plon blundered through the gore.

Halfway along one of the murky corridors, a nurse hurried out of a side-ward, holding a basin of bloodstained water, and very nearly cannoned into him. Both jumped back a pace. Plon-Plon began to utter a magniloquent apology for the benefit of the journalists. Then his mouth went dry. He could not speak. He was looking directly into the nurse’s eyes, and she into his. It was Vivien Strang and it was she who recovered herself first.