Painting The Darkness (36 page)

‘
Thank you,’ she said softly. Then she turned her large dark eyes upon me, searching, as it were, for proof that she could trust me. ‘I do so fear for what may happen to me
.’

‘
There’s no need to. I’ll make sure you come to no harm. I intend to see Quinn behind bars for what he’s done
.’

‘
And my fiancé?
’

‘
If he’s worthy of you, he’ll understand. I’ll do all I can to make him understand
.’

She turned and looked directly at me, our hands still joined. ‘Bless you,’ she said, ‘for being my friend.’ Then she abruptly let go of my hand and jumped back, blushing, for she had seen, as I had not, Cook coming in with the tea
.

Chapter Ten

I

RICHARD DAVENALL LEFT
Lincoln’s Inn alone that afternoon and in sombre spirits. Russell had been unable to repair the damage done by Norton’s refusal to answer Giffard’s question, and Hugo had reacted as if the case was already won, clapping Sir Hardinge on the shoulder, insisting he should meet his mother, even suggesting he might care to dine at Bladeney House. For all this, however, Richard had no taste. It was not that he believed Hugo’s confidence to be misplaced; rather that he feared it was all too well founded. There was the rub. Norton had not merely impressed him more than on any previous occasion; he had moved him in the most disturbing way. He had woken in Richard that dormant suspicion that the noble racked creature he had watched all day in court was none other than James Davenall himself.

Chill dusk and attendant fog were settling on London as Richard emerged from Lincoln’s Inn. Turning up his collar and buttoning his gloves, he headed southwards, eager to find solitude in the homeward rush of the city. He glanced at the new and nearly complete Royal Courts of Justice, looming to his right behind tarpaulins and temporary fencing, and reflected for a moment on the sad waste his profession sowed in the lives of that misguided throng they called their clients.

He sighed and stepped up his pace, glad, at all events, to have some task to fulfil which might distract his thoughts
from
such morbid paths. Benson had passed him a note during the afternoon saying that Roffey wanted to see him urgently, so he had decided to pay the man a rare visit at his place of business. This was a shabby one-room office above a tobacconist’s shop off Ludgate Hill, and when Richard reached it, through the crowded tangled streets, he was forcibly reminded of the imperishable necessities which linked such dilapidated premises with the fashionable likes of Chester Square. Only to Richard, who moved in both worlds, was the irony of their connection inescapable.

He found Roffey awaiting him with all the self-effacing patience which was his trademark, and to which he characteristically added an apology. ‘Sorry to get you over here, Mr Davenall.’

‘Benson said it was urgent.’

‘Seeing as the hearing’s commenced, I thought you should know straight away. How’s it going?’

‘So-so. What have you found?’

‘Something on Quinn. Not much. Nothing definite. But something.’

‘Well?’

‘Keep his description, change his name to Flynn and ask a sergeant I know at Scotland Yard: then you get a man the police would very much like to find.’

‘Why?’

‘They think he’s behind a series of burglaries. House break-ins, that is. Houses of the rich and influential, town and country. Safes opened, cash, jewellery and art objects stolen. All done very efficiently, I gather, and not thought possible without inside information. A man who knows servants or ex-servants, or who knows some of the houses and owners himself, is the obvious candidate. They don’t know about Quinn, of course. That’s my theory, based on rumours circulating in the stolen-goods trade, but it fits the facts. By dismissing him, Lady Davenall may have set him on the road to a more … lucrative occupation.’

Richard smiled ruefully. ‘This would explain why he’s in no hurry to be found by us.’

‘Yes, indeed, sir. I should add that a footman was killed in one of these break-ins, so, strictly speaking, there’s murder to be considered on top of burglary. If Flynn is Quinn, he wouldn’t want anything to do with our enquiries. Unless …’

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless he’s already involved. It occurred to me that Mr Trenchard might have a point. Norton needs money as well as information to mount a case. Quinn could be supplying both. There’s not a shred of evidence for that, of course, but Norton has gone missing when he’s wanted to, perhaps in order to meet his principal. We’ve no idea where, but—’

‘It could be wherever Quinn, or Flynn, feels safe?’

‘That was my thought, sir. Does it help?’

‘I’m not sure, Roffey. I’m not sure at all.’

II

Cook’s hearing must have failed again, for when the doorbell rang late that afternoon there was no sign of her stirring to answer it. At length, I went myself and found a post-boy on the doorstep, stamping his feet to keep warm in the raw fog-wreathed dusk. He had a telegram for me from Constance. It was a reply to mine of earlier in the day and said simply that she was leaving Salisbury straight away. Before the night was out, she would be back with me, back to hear me vindicated. I tipped the boy and went to rejoin Miss Rossiter in the drawing-room
.

‘
My wife is returning this evening,’ I announced
.

‘
I’m glad,’ Miss Rossiter replied. ‘When will she be arriving?
’

‘
I’m not sure. Late, I imagine. I hope to be back in time
.’

‘
Back?
’

‘
Yes. I have to meet somebody this evening. A man named Thompson, who claims to know who Norton really is. I’m sorry
to
have to leave you, but …’ My words died as a stray thought intruded. Miss Rossiter had removed a forty-year-old newspaper cutting from Fiveash’s surgery referring to Harvey Thompson and his long-ago duel with Gervase Davenall. Why had I not remembered before? I could ask her now to explain why she had taken it
.

The question never reached my lips. Miss Rossiter was staring past me, her placid expression transformed by terror. With a quivering hand, she pointed towards the window behind me, still uncurtained against the onset of night. ‘Quinn!’ she cried. ‘He’s there!
’

For a second, I could not take my eyes from her fear-struck face. Then I whirled round, to find only the blank glass of the window-pane waiting to greet me
.

‘
He was there,’ Miss Rossiter said from behind me. ‘I saw him, his horrid awful face, looking in at us
.’

Reasoning that, if he had been there, he might still be in the garden, I raced into the hall and headed for the morning room, where the french windows offered the quickest route out. I fumbled for a moment with the bolts, then flung them open and rushed on to the veranda
.

There was nothing. Light from the drawing-room flooded on to the railings and the patch of lawn beyond them. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, all I could see through the fog was the garden I knew so well. The only sounds to reach my ears were my own panting breath and the derisive hoot of an early owl. I walked to the end of the veranda and waited again for signs of trespass to reach me. But there was none
.

Then I saw it. The side-gate was open, no more than a crack, but sufficient to admit a wedge of light from the porch lamp. Burrows always closed and bolted it before going home, but now it was open. I walked across, opened it wide and looked down the empty drive. If Quinn had used that route, he would be long gone by now. I closed the gate and bolted it. It was possible Burrows had forgotten to do so. I remembered him doing as much on a previous occasion, less than two months before, when Norton had first intruded on my world. Or it was possible that Miss Rossiter had truly seen her persecutor
.

I went back into the house and found her still sitting on the sofa, staring fixedly at the window. I drew the curtains, then sat down beside her and once more found my arms encircling her shoulders
.

‘
It’s all right,’ I said. ‘If he was there, he’s gone now
.’

She had been crying. I could see the track of tears on her pale cheeks. She looked at me with undisguised anguish. ‘But how far has he gone? For how long? He may just be waiting – for you to leave me alone
.’

‘
Then, I won’t leave you alone.’ My appointment with Thompson seemed unimportant in that moment, What could I buy from him that compared with Melanie Rossiter’s gift of the truth?

‘
You said—’ she began
.

‘
I won’t leave you,’ I said firmly. ‘Trust me
.’

‘
Thank you. You’re so kind. After all, I may have imagined it
.’

‘
I don’t think so. Either way, you won’t be alone
.’

III

It was slow going in Fleet Street and the Strand that evening, with a clammy fog descending to add its impenetrable layers to the encroaching darkness, but Richard Davenall did not care. Unlike most of those aboard the swaying trams or hurrying past him on the crowded pavement, he had no certain destination, no object in mind, no purpose to his journey.

Crossing Trafalgar Square, he found himself – if anything, against his inclinations – walking along the north side of Pall Mall, a route which he knew would take him past the club to which he had once belonged and to which Hugo still belonged. He had resolved to disregard the fact, but when he came abreast of it he could not resist glancing across the road at the familiar, mutely lit doorway. What he saw there stopped him in his tracks.

The bay window to the left of the club entrance gave
on
to what had been known in his day as the Shelburne Bar. Being less private than the other bars, it had always attracted the younger, more ostentatious members. Sure enough, there they still were, lounging beneath the gleaming chandeliers, parading their accents and postures for the admiration of their fellows. Richard looked across at these specimens of the people whose legal affairs he had for so long handled and realized, not for the first time, that the work he had once enjoyed was now, in the truest sense, hateful to him.

Then he looked closer. There, at the centre of the carousing ruck, was Hugo. He might have known. Sir Hugo Davenall, never one to believe that any celebration could be premature, was indulging to the full the victory he had sensed was his at Lincoln’s Inn. He would have bought everybody in the room a drink by now, would have crowed to them of his triumph and defied them not to share his pleasure. There was Freddy Cleveland, smiling alongside him, and that fellow Leighton, besides several others whom Richard dimly recognized. Hugo himself, hair awry, cigarette drooping from grinning mouth, champagne-glass in hand, was clearly already drunk, his troubles for the moment forgotten, the remote possibility of failure excluded from his mind.

‘Not a pretty sight, is it?’

The voice had come as if from nowhere. When Richard whirled round, it was to find James Norton standing behind him in the mouth of a narrow alley, barely visible in the depth of the shadows.

‘Hello, Richard,’ he said. ‘What brings you here?’

‘I … I could ask you the same.’

‘Put it down to nostalgia. I wanted to take a look at the old place. What should I find but Hugo? Putting on a floor show.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sorry. It must be an Americanism I picked up along the way. Cigarette?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Please yourself. I believe I will.’

As Norton pulled his cigarette-case from an inside pocket of his overcoat, lamplight glistened on its silver surface. Richard caught his breath.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Is it this that caught your eye?’ He took out a cigarette, then snapped the case shut and tossed it into Richard’s awkward grasp. ‘Papa gave it me for my twenty-first birthday.’ Richard turned it over in his hands. The initials ‘J D’ were visible, elegantly inscribed at the centre of the design. ‘Remember it?’

‘I … I’m not sure.’

‘Even if you were, it wouldn’t make any difference. Would it?’ Norton lit a match and eyed Richard calmly, then touched it to the cigarette and blew it out. ‘Even if I could make you believe me, you wouldn’t act on it. Would you?’ He reached out and retrieved the case.

‘I can’t believe what isn’t true.’

‘You’ve known me since the day I came to your office. There’s no need to pretend now.’

‘I’m not pretending.’

‘Why do you think I refused to answer Giffard’s question?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes you do. It’s because I love her, Richard. If I didn’t, I’d have dragged her into that courtroom and had Russell force her to acknowledge me. But she deserves better of me than that. Which is more than I can say for my family.’

‘You’ve no right—’

‘I’ve every right!’ His voice was suddenly bitter. ‘Why do you think I lied about how I contracted syphilis? What good did it do me?’

‘Perhaps you thought it would win the court’s sympathy.’

‘That’s nonsense, and you know it. I’m trying to save the family’s good name, if that means anything to you.
I’m
giving all of you every chance I can to see reason. But what have you offered me in return?’

‘Mr Norton—’

‘The name is Davenall! You know that.’

‘I know no such thing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really think—’

‘Wait!’ Norton’s hand touched his shoulder in a placatory gesture. ‘Don’t turn your back on me, Richard. I may lose tomorrow, for our family’s sake.’

Richard paused, a moment longer than he knew he should. The gentle pressure of that hand on his shoulder moved him now he had looked away. More than any words, it begged him for once in his life, to trust the promptings of his soul.

‘Look at Hugo,’ Norton murmured. In the brightly lit, bay-windowed bar, Sir Hugo Davenall was laughing to drunken excess at his own or another’s joke. Freddy Cleveland was slapping him on the back. All his friends were about him, gathering him in the lap of a camaraderie that counted for nothing.