Painting The Darkness (64 page)

Sir James would go back now to Bladeney House: Roffey felt sure of it. Yet he would have to follow him for safety’s sake. Thus his instinct, which was to follow Miss Rossiter, had to be ignored. So little was known of her that he would have liked to find out more. But his instructions were clear, and Roffey was not a man to disobey those who employed him. Glancing regretfully after Miss Rossiter’s retreating figure, he started down the stairs.

VI

The Little Canonry,

Cathedral Close,

SALISBURY,

Wiltshire.

20th December 1883

My dear Richard,

I write these few lines in haste and with a troubled conscience. Constance continues eagerly to anticipate her wedding in merciful ignorance of what we know may well prevent it taking place. The fact that I am sure we are right to intervene in this way makes it no easier for me to bear the thought of the anguish we will cause her.

So far as the practical aspect of your proposals is concerned, you need have no fear. We shall travel up by the first train on Saturday morning and will therefore be in Highgate by eleven o’clock. Father does not propose to come up until Monday morning,
and
Patience will remain here with her nanny. It affords me some slight consolation to think that they will not witness what takes place.

There has been no word of any kind from James. Thus your suspicion that he might try to forewarn Constance appears to be unfounded. She is full of nothing but plans for spending Christmas at Cleave Court as Lady Davenall, plans which make her happier than I believe I have ever known her. What suffering it causes me to make an outward show of sharing her joy, whilst inwardly knowing the grief that awaits, I shall leave you to imagine. Be assured, however, that I shall not falter. I have prayed long and hard enough to be certain that what we are doing is right, for what is right is seldom easy.

May God be with you.

Affectionately yours,

Emily

VII

Sir James Davenall left home early on the morning of Friday 21st December, took a cab to Liverpool Street station and there caught a train to Newmarket. To Roffey, trailing the cab in one of his own hiring, standing a few places behind in the ticket queue and sitting a few compartments away on the train, Sir James seemed as unaware of being followed as he was careless of the possibility. But Roffey remained suspicious, for previous experience had taught him that this man was at his most elusive when he seemed most transparent.

It was mid-morning, and numbingly cold, when they reached Newmarket. Roffey left the train without hurrying and lingered in the ticket office until Sir James had negotiated the hire of a trap and set off in it. There was, at this stage, no doubt of his destination. He could have business in Newmarket with only one man:
the
recently installed owner of Maxton Grange, Alfred Quinn.

On hearing from Mr Davenall of Quinn’s reappearance at the end of August, Roffey had made some desultory enquiries on the strength of a reward being offered in connection with a spate of housebreakings supposedly organized by a man named Flynn. He had found nothing to disprove Quinn’s account of himself, but he was too old a hand to believe that a windfall inheritance in far-off New Zealand was anything other than a convenient excuse.

At length, Roffey purchased a map of the area, hired a bicycle and made a start. Maxton Grange lay some way south of the town, out along a straight road between fir-fringed paddocks. A bitter wind was blowing across the flat featureless landscape; such horses as he could see in the fields were jacketed against the chill. From a long way off, the grandiose brick-arched lodge-gates of the Grange were clearly visible, but of the house, which the map told him was set among trees some distance from the road, there was no sign. A chain was stretched across the entrance to the drive and a newly painted notice proclaimed
STRICTLY PRIVATE – KEEP OUT
. Roffey rode by without even slowing.

About a quarter of a mile further on, he stopped, leaned his bicycle against the fence and climbed over a nearby stile. A narrow path ran away arrow-straight between high but patchy hedges. The map showed it as a public footpath to the village of Cheveley, its appeal to Roffey being that it passed Maxton Grange closer than any road. He started walking, glancing to his left every few yards for a sign of the house.

This vast, open, wind-scoured country made Roffey nervous. He would have preferred the seamiest reach of London to such exposed terrain. That, it occurred to him, might be why Quinn had chosen the place: so that unwelcome visitors could be seen long before they arrived.

Abruptly, the Grange emerged into view through its
shroud
of trees. It was indeed well camouflaged. If the trees had been in leaf, they would completely have obscured it. Roffey shouldered his way through a thin stretch of hedge for a clearer view. It stood three fields away – recently built, he surmised, elegantly proportioned and well set up with bays, wings and gables, but somehow raw of outline, not yet rooted amongst its lawns and paddocks. Be that as it may, Quinn had done well for himself. Very well indeed.

Roffey slipped a pair of binoculars out from beneath his coat and trained them on the house. Smoke was rising from the chimneys. A servant was raking a gravel path. Everything else seemed quiet. Then, when he moved round to focus on the low line of what he took to be stables away to the right, he saw them: Quinn and Sir James, walking out slowly from the stable-yard towards the paddocks.

Quinn did not fool him, even at that distance. A heavy tweed suit, riding-boots, a switch flicking rhythmically in his right hand, a gold watch-chain glinting on his waistcoat: none of it lessened Roffey’s impression of a hard, low-born, ruthless man, cunning and brutal by turns. Sir James was doing most of the talking, and nothing on Quinn’s lined grey face betrayed a reaction.

They reached a double line of fencing and paused. Then Quinn began talking, his mouth barely moving, his eyes fixed on Sir James. There was one swift expansive gesture of the arm, as if to emphasize the extent of his property. Otherwise he was all unsmiling economy.

What were they talking about? Roffey wondered. Had Sir James come here to warn an accomplice that the game was up? Or to congratulate a former servant on his good fortune? From what little he could see, there was no way of telling.

Suddenly, the conversation became animated. Quinn brought his hand down on the fence-rail so hard that it shook visibly. Then he raised the switch in his hand and jabbed it at Sir James as he spoke. There was an aggression now in his gestures and a curl to the harsh line of
the
mouth that suggested contempt as well as anger. If the display was meant to cow or provoke, however, it was in vain. Sir James did not so much as flinch.

When Quinn had finished, turned on his heel and stalked away towards the house, Sir James made no move to follow. He merely lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly through, leaning on the fence and gazing thoughtfully into the distance. A horse came across to him from the middle of the field and nuzzled his arm, but he scarcely seemed to notice. Whatever far and secret stretch of the past or future his mind had fled to, there it stayed and, as Roffey knew, there it could not be followed.

An hour later, both he and Sir James were aboard the London train.

VIII

Richard Davenall’s house in Highgate was where Constance had nursed her beloved James back to health in the autumn of 1882. It held for her happy memories of their slow second courtship. Accordingly, she could not have imagined a more fitting or agreeable location in which to spend the two days immediately prior to their wedding. She arrived there with her sister Emily on the morning of Saturday 22nd December in the best of spirits; in that radiant mood, in fact, which only the imminence of a long-denied fulfilment can confer.

This alone, she thought later, must have accounted for her failure to notice any of the many omens there were to detect: Emily’s pensive reticent mood on the journey from Salisbury, her consultation of the clock at every station, her increasingly fretful state as they crossed London; Braddock’s stilted formality on their arrival at Garth House, his direction of them to Richard’s study rather than to their usual rooms.

All these signs should have alerted her, but, as it
was
, only when they entered the study to find Richard standing grim-faced by the fire, with, alongside him, a large, bearded man whom Constance did not recognize, did she realize that something was amiss. She crossed the room, kissed Richard on the cheek and knew at once, by the way he shrank from her and looked elsewhere, that his reservations of a month before – his hints of disloyalty to James – were about to bear their bitter fruit.

‘This is Mr O’Shaughnessy,’ he said hurriedly, turning to the other man. ‘From Galway.’

‘Your servant, ma’am.’ O’Shaughnessy stooped to kiss her gloved hand.

‘I am pleased to meet you, Mr O’Shaughnessy. What brings you to London?’

‘Duty, ma’am.’

Constance turned to introduce her sister. As she did so, she caught in Emily’s expression a flush of something close to guilt. Though she might not know this man, she did know why he was there.

‘Would you care to sit down?’ said Richard.

Constance did not care to sit down, not whilst her companions were shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and exchanging complicitous glances. But nor did she see why she should have to plead for an explanation. She stared straight at Richard, defying him to look away a second time.

‘I’m sure we’d all be more comfortable—’

‘Tell her!’ Emily interrupted, in an anguished voice. ‘Tell her and have done with it.’

They were all in it. Richard, the Irishman, her own sister: she saw that now. They had joined forces to some purpose she could not guess at. ‘Tell me what?’ she said at last, struggling to retain her composure.

Richard pursed his lips and glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece; it showed ten minutes to noon. ‘It might be best … if we waited.’

‘Waited for what?’

‘Tell her now,’ Emily pleaded.

‘Very well.’ Richard faced Constance, this time without flinching. ‘This gives none of us any pleasure, my dear, but it has to be done.’ He sighed. ‘Your eyes, I fear, must be opened. Opened, that is, to the truth. If you had agreed to postpone the wedding … But let that pass. I am sorry. Truly sorry. But I cannot let you marry James … in ignorance of his real identity.’

She glanced from one to the other of them. Richard pained. O’Shaughnessy embarrassed. And Emily torn between fidelity to her sister and to whatever higher truth she thought she was serving. ‘What do you mean, “his real identity”?’

‘He is not who you – who
we –
thought he was. He is not James.’

They were mad. They had to be. How could Richard – or Emily – believe such a notion? After all that she and they had suffered for the sake of acknowledging James, how could they doubt him now? It made no sense. Yet, when she looked into her sister’s eyes, she saw that it was so. They had deserted him. They had deserted her.

‘His real name is Stephen Lennox, a half-brother of James. Astonishingly similar, as we know, but not James.’

‘You believe James to be an impostor?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve changed your mind about him?’

‘Yes.’

‘As have you, Emily?’

Tears were flowing down Emily’s face. But they were not the tears of indecision. ‘He is not what he seems, Constance. He is not true to you.’

‘And you, Mr O’Shaughnessy? What is your part in this?’

O’Shaughnessy cleared his throat as if to answer, but Richard did so for him. ‘Mr O’Shaughnessy was Stephen Lennox’s tutor for eight years. He will be able to identify him.’

‘Identify him? I cannot believe you mean this, Richard.’

‘I fear I do, my dear.’

There was a tap at the door and Braddock looked in. ‘Sir James has arrived, sir.’

‘Show him in,’ said Richard. ‘And ask Benson to join us. Then come in yourself.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘It would be as well if we had as many witnesses as possible,’ Richard explained when Braddock had gone. ‘There must be no room for doubt.’

Constance could not speak. Her faith in James was intact, but around it lay the ruins of her faith in Richard and in Emily. From the horror of what they believed she could only recoil. When James entered the room, she flew to his side and found, in the strength of his clasp and the confidence of his gaze, the comfort she craved.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, Connie,’ he said, holding her close and staring across the room at the other three. ‘I’m here now.’

‘Do you know what they’ve been saying?’

‘Oh, yes. I know. Surprised to see me, Richard? Perhaps you thought I wouldn’t show up.’ With the gentlest of touches, he disengaged himself from Constance. ‘This gentleman, I take it, is the celebrated Mr O’Shaughnessy.’

‘You know who he is,’ snapped Richard.

‘Do I? Perhaps we should let Mr O’Shaughnessy be the judge of that.’ The door clicked shut behind them. He glanced back at Braddock and Benson, who stood side by side, solemnly attentive. ‘The party appears to be complete. Well, gentlemen’ – he smiled at Richard and O’Shaughnessy in turn – ‘shall we proceed?’

IX

After all the difficulties he had experienced earlier in the year, Plon-Plon felt bemused by the absurd ease with which he had now accomplished his task. There he stood, in Vivien Ratcliffe’s large and comfortably furnished drawing-room, a December gale rattling the window
beside
him and buffeting the rhododendrons in the long and sloping garden beyond the glass. And there she stood, a tall grey-haired woman, more wizened than he had expected, yet also more gracious of bearing: the one Strang sister to break free, or be cast out, of her father’s house.

Behind her, the fire roared and crackled in the grate and the wind moaned in the chimney. She did not speak, but her eyes – the only part of her that had not grown old – searched his face with all their proud preserved intensity. He wondered what Gervase would say if he could see her now, frail and elderly, but as defiantly haughty as ever. Would he still think the wager had been worth the prize?