The Arnifour Affair (23 page)

“It's too late for that.” Lady Arnifour gave him a pained smile. “You inhabit every part of this.”

“Yes . . . ,” Colin started to slowly circle the room, ending up by the doors, which he quietly pulled shut, “I'm afraid that you do, Victor.”

“Then it's settled.” Kaylin made to rise from her seat. “I'll have Mrs. O'Keefe send for the inspector and we'll finish with this horrible business.”

“I'm afraid it won't be quite so easily done.” Colin remained at the doors. “And we'd best all be of the same mind before our dubious inspector is summoned.”

I glanced at the faces around me: Lady Arnifour, veiled and grim; Kaylin, flushed with emotion; Eldon, locked behind his bottomless tumbler; and Victor, who looked worn to the bottom of his very soul. While they each harbored their own set of resentments, I couldn't tell who was capable of so heinous a crime: a crime against two of their own.

“First, let me state for the
last
time that Nathaniel Heffernan is innocent of these murders,” Colin said. “Nathaniel probably cared more for Elsbeth than anyone else in this room. He alone understood the binds of family. Certainly more than you, Victor. Your determination to keep the truth from ever being borne out prevented you from showing so much as a hint of affection to her, a profoundly regrettable decision on your part. Or you, Lady Arnifour, as you unwittingly found yourself encumbered by a child who came to represent the worst mistake of your life. You would have done yourself and the child far better to have followed your first instinct and given her away.”

“What are you talking about?” Eldon asked, looking around at the assembled faces for an answer that would not be forthcoming.

“Hush!” Lady Arnifour finally snapped. “That you insist on sitting here is reprehensible enough, but I do not owe you any explanations.”

“Which does bring us to you, Eldon,” Colin quickly spoke up. “You have clearly chosen to climb into the bottom of a cask rather than face the ambivalence of your parents, wearing the wounds of your childhood like a badge of honor. Very different from your sister, Kaylin. My dear, you've allowed your mother to shroud you in a veil of fragility even as you extol the increasing howl of suffrage—”

“Really, Mr. Pendragon,” she interrupted. “What horrible things you're saying.” She twisted around to get a clear view of her mother. “And whatever does he mean about a child you should have given away?”

Lady Arnifour stared across the room at Victor, her pallor ghostly white. “I'm afraid I've made some terrible mistakes, little one. I can only hope you will forgive me. . . .” Her eyes held Kaylin's even as her face remained inscrutable. “Elsbeth was not your cousin. She was born to me. She was your half sister.”

“What?!” Kaylin pulled back from her mother. “That can't be—”

“It's true.”

She looked about to swoon as she glanced from her mother to Victor, who had dropped his eyes and sagged forward in his chair. Nothing more needed to be said. The truth had been there all along.

Lady Arnifour slowly began to speak again, telling the same story to her children that she'd already confessed to us. And once again there seemed to be something freeing in her words, and I understood that to be true. But while Lady Arnifour seemed to gain strength from the imparting of her story, neither of her children looked to be likewise affected. Eldon's expression grew increasingly aghast while Kaylin started to cry softly into her handkerchief.

“Mr. Pendragon is right,” Lady Arnifour finished with the assurance of hindsight. “I should have set her free from the start.”

Several seconds crept past before Eldon turned and stumbled back to the bar. “Is there any bloody wonder I drink so much?” he mumbled to no one.

“Why didn't you tell us?” Kaylin said in a pitifully small voice. “How could you have let us think . . .”

“I know.... I was wrong.... I should have . . . I just . . .” Her words trailed off in the absence of any reasonable explanation.

“Did Elsbeth know?”

“I don't think so.... She never spoke to me about it.” She glanced over at Victor, but he kept his head down. “I suppose I can't be certain. I have no way of knowing what your father may have told her.”

“No wonder Father hated you,” Eldon said as he took a deep drink.

“Eldon! . . .”
Kaylin howled.

“Let him say what he wants,” Lady Arnifour said. “What does he understand of love? The only thing he's ever loved is a bottle.”

“Whiskey is that only thing that makes living with you tolerable. It should have been
you
in that field that night—”

“How dare you!”
Victor leapt to his feet.

“Enough!” Colin moved to the center of the room and for once I was glad to see him chastising this herd of cats. “Since I am no longer working for a fee I don't feel the least obliged to subject myself to a moment more of this twaddle.
I
shall ask the questions and each of you will answer, and only after I've finished and left this house behind may you choose to continue this discourse. Failure to follow this directive will bring a rash of blue-suited bobbies and Yarders down upon your heads so quickly that you'll each be explaining yourselves from now until the turn of the century. Are we clear?”

No one answered.

“Very good. Then I should like to know about the relationship between the Earl and Elsbeth; does anyone deny that they were having an affair?”

The stoic faces that countered his question confirmed what we already knew.

“Fine.” He allowed a tight smile. “I also know one of you had a row with Elsbeth about that affair the night she and the Earl were attacked. Would anyone like to confess? . . . Or shall I do it for you?”

“There's no need,” Victor spoke up. “We both know it's me you're talkin' about. But I've got nothin' to hide. And you're right, Mr. Pendragon, I was no kind of father to Elsbeth and will have the rest a my life to think on it. But at least I tried to help her that one time. I knew she was goin' out to that barn to meet the Earl. I also knew he was usin' her 'cause he knew how much it was hurtin' his wife. It was unforgivable—”

“And this from the man who cuckolded him,” Eldon sneered.

“Not another bloody word!” Colin snapped. “Go on, Victor.”

“I confronted her that night after her argument with Nathaniel. Told her she was bein' played a fool.” He shook his head. “She didn't care what I had to say. Even denied it right to my face, but after a few minutes I could see she was takin' some joy in it. I think she was proud of herself. Thought she had it all figured out.” He rubbed his forehead. “Then she just started hollering that I had no right to say anything to her. And she was right. I was just the help to her. I never earned the right to say anything.” He slumped back in his chair and looked drained. “I was no one to her.”

“Victor . . . ,” Lady Arnifour muttered.

“And what about you, Eldon?” Colin said as he turned to the young man. “Did you ever argue with your father over his affair with Elsbeth?”

“Me?! Now why the hell would I give a ruddy toss about what
he
was doing?”

“Because he was ruining the estate,” Colin answered. “Your inheritance. But then he was holding you off with a threat of a different sort, wasn't he? While you worried that someday you'd be left with nothing more than a mountain of debt and a house crumbling about your feet, your father was keeping you at bay by refusing to share in the profits from his lucrative clubs unless you did his bidding.”

“Clubs?!”
Lady Arnifour stammered.

“Yes, I'm afraid Warren Vandemier's been holding out on you.” A tight smile teased Colin's lips. “But you know that already, don't you, Eldon?”

I was mystified as I turned to look at Colin, wondering if he was inventing things just to elicit a reaction from Eldon, until I saw Eldon flush in the span of an instant.

“I assume Abby Roynton let that slip . . . ?” Eldon said as he struggled to regain his composure.

Colin's eyes flashed as a corner of his mouth curled up, making it clear that he had indeed garnered much more information from the seductive widow than he'd admitted to me.

“That woman . . . ,” Lady Arnifour hissed.

“What I want to know, Eldon . . . ,” Colin spoke over her, “. . . is what the argument was about between you and your father the night
before
the attack? At the Whitechapel club. The one a lovely young woman who worked there was only too eager to report to me.”

“You would take the word of an addict?” Lady Arnifour reproached.

“An addict can be far more honest than someone with something to hide. Am I wrong, Eldon?”

“No,” he said with defiance. “She wasn't lying. I was there that night. And we had a hell of a go of it. I'm just glad I got a chance to tell him what I thought before someone made the laudable choice to snuff him.”

“Then tell me . . . ,” Colin continued over Lady Arnifour's outburst. “. . . Tell us all what you said.”

His face clouded. ”My father was vile and loathsome, and he cheated or used everyone in his life to get whatever he wanted. And I include in his notable list of dupes Abigail Roynton, as remarkable and vivacious a woman as there's ever been.” He smirked at his mother. “So it was my pleasure to carry on my father's questionable carnal finesse when it became clear that he'd tired of the extraordinary widow. I will admit, at first I only seduced her to raise the old sod's ire, but I quickly realized that she was a font of information about him, and a willing one at that. I knew I'd be able to use what she confided in me if only to protect my
own
best interests. And I was right.

“Abby told me he'd not only founded half a dozen clubs in town, but that he'd also invested in that many more in China. Most of his employees were smuggled in on cargo ships from Shanghai. They'd arrive as indentured slaves and my dear father would seal their fates by making them addicts.” He finished another shot of whiskey and took the time to pour a refill before continuing. “The only thing I couldn't figure out, the only thing even Abby didn't know, was where the hell he'd gotten the capital. I knew it had to be coming from somewhere unsavory, but I never dreamed he was bilking it from his own wife.” He shook his head. “And to think it was over her bastard child. How repulsive we've all become—”

“You have no right!” Kaylin howled.

“Please!”
Colin bellowed. “Will you go on. . . .”

Eldon tilted back another quick sip. “I decided to have it out with the old swindler. I told him he could either cut me in on his other businesses or I would confess to my mother everything I'd found out.” His eyes seethed with anger. “You can just imagine my astonishment when he only laughed at me. Now I know why. How pathetic I must have looked, threatening to turn him over to the very person who was bankrolling him. Consistent right up to the end, aren't I!” he growled.

“And what about you, Kaylin?” Colin turned to her, looking smaller than ever from her perch on the couch next to her mother. “What did you make of your father's character and livelihood?”

“There have already been too many ugly revelations here, Mr. Pendragon,” she said quietly. “I haven't the heart for any more.”

“Ah, but you mustn't refuse. We are finally getting somewhere.”

“You will mind yourself, Mr. Pendragon,” Lady Arnifour warned. “I've had about enough of this.”

“Of course you have. We can summon Scotland Yard if you'd prefer. I'd be perfectly content to continue with the inspector and a stream of bobbies in attendance. But let me assure you, this
will
be done. You were saying, Kaylin?”

“What is it you want from me, Mr. Pendragon?”

“The truth. Were you aware of your father's dealings?”

“Absolutely not.” She glanced over at her mother with what looked to be both pity and regret. “He left me alone. I have nothing to say against him.”

“Did you ever visit him at his club in Whitechapel?”

“And why would I do that? Those places represent everything I despise.”

“How so?”

“They prey on weak-minded people, Mr. Pendragon, and foster addiction in the name of business.” Her voice was tight. “Women are treated like baubles, dangled in front of eager clients with no greater expectation than to entice them to ruin their lives. And haven't you been listening to my brother? Those same women are enslaved, their loyalty assured by virtue of the dependence on opium they're forced to cultivate. Isn't that reason enough?”

“My apologies.” He nodded his head slightly.

She nodded back, but her glare was wintry cold.

“I can see you've given this a great deal of thought. It's commendable that you're able to be as compassionate of your father's memory as you are. I assume you've made your peace with him.”

“I have.”

“And Elsbeth?”

“Elsbeth?” She shook her head and dropped her gaze. “I had no quarrel with her,” she said.

“Oh?” Colin furrowed his brow as he continued to scrutinize her. “Then I am confused. Elsbeth was a woman you thought to be your cousin and yet you've already admitted by your silence that she was also someone you understood to be having an affair with your father. I also recall you being most disparaging when discussing your father's trysts with Mrs. Roynton. So while you demurred to name Elsbeth as the new object of your father's affection, you made it clear that you neither condoned nor excused him or his mistress. All of which makes me believe that your coyness is decidedly unconvincing.”