The Constant Companion (14 page)

Masters, when questioned, was at a loss for an answer. The fact was he had ordered the servants not to intrude too much on the newly-weds’ happiness and only to go into a room if directly summoned. Now faced with his master’s grim and unshaven face, it seemed a peculiarly silly excuse.

After he had breakfast and been barbered, Lord Philip began to feel a trifle better. He sent a footman in search of his wife. When Constance at last entered the room, it was with some irritation that he noticed that she was dressed to go out. Not only that, but her new walking dress of
peau de soie
sported a ridiculous ruffle at the neck and her bonnet, which prettily shadowed her face, was a miracle of the milliner’s art, being at least a foot high and embellished at the side with two osprey feathers. She looked very smart and dashing, and Lord Philip would have been the first to appreciate the ensemble on any female other than his wife. As it was, he felt she was making herself unreasonably conspicuous. And so he told her.

And Constance, who had nourished dreams of her husband’s eyes lighting up with pride and love when he saw the transfiguration, felt furious and humiliated.

But she showed her hurt feelings by remaining icily calm and dignified, listening patiently to her husband’s tirade with a weary smile pinned to her mouth.

“If you have quite finished,” she said at last, “I have several duty calls to make.”

Now Lord Philip badly wanted to haul his wife off to bed that very minute, and had she shown one sign of softness or affection, he would have done just that. But he felt humiliated because the intensity of his desire was not reciprocated—not knowing that this intensity was manifesting itself in a very arrogant and bad-tempered expression on his face. So he merely made her a very stately bow which Constance replied to with a deep, court curtsy.

Lord Philip watched his wife leave and then decided that action was the only thing to reduce the pain of rejection that he felt. He would go and find Peter and put on the gloves in Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Saloon for a few rounds, and then he would continue his pursuit of the Comte Duval. If he could at least discover the identity of the comte’s friend—the English traitor—then he would feel he had achieved something.

Constance alighted from her carriage and stared gloomily at Lady Eleanor’s house. Duty demanded that she return the call. To her delight, her groom returned to say that Lady Eleanor was at the Kensington villa. So all I have to do is call on that horrible Besant woman, thought Constance.

Her face lit up in a smile as she saw Mr. Evans walking down the steps towards the carriage.

“How is Lord Philip?” asked Mr. Evans, after bending over her hand.

A shadow crossed Constance’s face. “Well,” she said curtly.

“And what are we doing today?” demanded Mr. Evans. “Is my lady taking French lessons?”

Constance felt the secretary was being a trifle forward but she was nonetheless fond of this quiet, unassuming man so she said the first thing that came into her head to cover her irritation. “Oh, I shall soon,” she laughed. “If only to find out the meaning of things like ‘espion’ and ‘trahison.’ Now, what have I said, Mr. Evans?” An awful thought struck her. “Oh, dear! They are not
oaths
, I trust?”

“I am afraid they are indeed,” said Mr. Evans primly. “I told you you would be well advised to leave that accursed language alone!”

“Indeed!” replied Constance in a chilly little voice. ‘What
is
there about me,’ she thought crossly, ‘that positively encourages people to tell me what to do and what not to do?’ “You must excuse me Mr. Evans. I must call on Mrs. Besant.”

The carriage moved, off, leaving the secretary standing in the middle of the road, staring after it.

Mrs. Mary Besant was unfortunately at home. Thanking the social laws for limiting duty calls to only ten minutes, Constance resigned herself to China tea and English malice.

“I am
so
glad you called, dear Lady Philip. Oh, how
formal
we are,” shrieked Mrs. Besant. “As if I didn’t know you when you were nothing but a little waif from the country. I shall call you Constance and you shall call me Mary, and we shall be devoted friends.”

“Quite,” said Constance, feeling thoroughly embarrassed. Time is a peculiar beast. If one is having a perfectly miserable and humiliating time, then the seconds crawl and cough their way round the clockface. Constance stared at an ugly marble clock on the mantel and wondered if it had stopped.

“And you have become such a young lady of the world, so quickly,” gushed Mrs. Besant, snapping up saffron cakes with her great yellow teeth. “To turn a blind eye when Lord Philip flirts with Lady Amelia is very wise, very wise indeed. Husbands cannot bear a jealous woman, you know.”

“What an… er… interesting house you have,” said Constance in a flat voice, completely ignoring the previous remark. In truth, Constance thought Mrs. Besant’s home horrible. It looked like a furniture warehouse, since Mrs. Besant could never bear to throw anything away. Ugly William and Mary gate-legged tables squatted beside delicate Chippendale chairs. China vases of Dynasty Staffordshire held bunches of wilting flowers. The pictures on the walls were so black and dirty that they looked like framed treacle toffee, and a multitude of greenish mirrors doubled the clutter of the room. Dust motes swam in the pale yellow light of the hot afternoon and a trapped bee buzzed his desire for escape, echoing the frantic desire for escape in Constance herself.

“I often receive compliments on my house,” said Mrs. Besant, smugly proceeding to recite a long list of them. “I don’t believe in these modern fads—all this Egyptian nonsense. Give me a comfortable sofa with a back to it, I always say,” said Mrs. Besant, complacently slapping the arm of an overstuffed monster and sending a little cloud of dust up into the somnolent air. “Now, you must tell me all about your marriage. How does it feel to be a bride?”

The question was innocent in content but almost leering in its delivery as Mrs. Besant leaned forward, all teeth and eyes, as if ready to swallow up the secrets of Constance’s marriage bed.

The marble clock gave a little sigh and reluctantly choked out the hour. Constance leapt to her feet.

“Thank you for an interesting visit, Mrs. Besant,” she said, nervously tugging at the satin ribbons of her reticule.

Mrs. Besant looked at her in a baffled way. There was no way she could keep a guest after the regulation ten minutes was up, so with a reluctant sigh, very like that of the marble clock, she allowed Constance to escape.

Constance climbed into her carriage and leaned back in relief. To her surprise, she saw Mr. Evans peering in the open window.

“Mr. Evans!” she exclaimed. “How nice to see you again. Can I set you down anywhere?”

“I would indeed be grateful,” said the secretary, climbing into the carriage with alacrity. “It is uncommon hot. Could you possibly set me down at Mr. Rider’s.”

Constance gave the instructions to the coachman. She had a sudden longing to get out of London, away from the smell and the press of the traffic and into the cool, green quiet of the country—with Philip, of course, she thought with a sudden painful lurch of the heart. “I believe if I had put my arms around him this morning,” she thought miserably, “then everything would have been all right. If I am so jealous of him with Lady Amelia, could he then not be jealous of me going to the opera with Peter?”

She was so engrossed in this novel thought that she failed to notice the secretary’s strange nervousness and only looked up in surprise when the carriage stopped outside the Riders’ mansion.

“Please allow me to offer you some refreshment,” begged Mr. Evans. He saw the hesitation on Constance’s face. “I know it is forward of me,” he added in a low voice, “but I am of good family, you know, but my low station in life and my lack of fortune often bar me from the conversation of intelligent women of the world. I feel you understand how it is—to be always patronized.”

Yes, Constance did know, and her kind heart was touched. Having little acquaintance in London, she had no further calls to make. Philip’s aunt, Lady Agatha, had removed to Brighton. Also, if she rushed home right away, it would probably be to find her infuriating husband absent. Did he indeed spend the night with Lady Amelia? She was so tortured, again with this anguished thought, that she followed Mr. Evans into the house, almost blindly.

She roused herself from her thoughts at last to notice that Mr. Evans was ushering her into a small, book-lined study. “I shall fetch the refreshments myself, Lady Philip,” he said. “The servants are all mostly at the villa in Kensington, and the ones here have been allowed the day off.”

As he went off in search of refreshments, Constance sat down, feeling suddenly ill at ease. It was wrong, she knew, to be sitting alone with this secretary in a house empty of servants. For the first time she wished she had brought her maid, Bouchard. She would stay but a few minutes and then leave.

Mr. Evans came bustling in with a decanter and glasses. “I would prefer tea,” said Constance. “It is a trifle too warm to be drinking wine.”

Mr. Evans stood on one foot and then the other, looking for all the world like a bewildered crane. “The kitchens,” he bleated feebly. “Alas! I do not know my way about the kitchens. I fear…”

“Never mind,” said Constance. “Wine will do.”

This visit is definitely a mistake, thought Constance. The room was unbearably warm. She took a sip of her wine and wrinkled her nose. The wine was very heavy and warm and tasted almost medicinal. She chatted resolutely of this and that to the now strangely silent secretary, and at last gathered up her reticule and parasol, preparatory to taking her leave.

“You have not finished your wine,” said Mr. Evans.

Constance was about to protest that she did not want any more wine, but a lot of the old Constance—shy, irresolute and timid—had come back.

So, to save argument, she downed the remainder of the glass in one gulp, dropped a demure curtsy, and found
she
could not rise. Something seemed to have happened to her legs. She stared up at Mr. Evans with swimming eyes. The books on the shelves began to swim round and round in front of her eyes, going faster and faster until they became a blur. She stretched up a hand appealingly, gave a faint sound between a whimper and a moan and collapsed senseless on the floor.

Mr. Evans stood looking down at her. Her face was very white and covered in sweat. He touched the bell.

Lady Amelia’s butler, Bergen, and Constance’s lady’s maid, Bouchard, came into the room and stood staring at the unconscious girl on the floor.

The secretary turned on them and said in a sharp voice which would have astounded his employers: “Now you know your part. You are being highly paid to keep your mouths shut. When you have done your job, you will stay in your respective employ for four weeks, and then you will both give notice and leave. You are being paid never to return to London again. Bouchard—you will dress yourself in Lady Philip’s clothes. Return to her home, masquerading as her ladyship. Make sure none of the servants sees your face. Lock yourself in her room and when it is dark make your escape to your own quarters. Bergen, after dark, Bouchard will let you in by the side door. You are to rob Lord Philip’s jewel box. That is your part. You will keep the jewels as your payment.”

“And what if his lordship returns?” said Bouchard.

“Arrangements have been made to keep Lord Philip away until late,” said Mr. Evans.

“Who’s behind this?” queried Bouchard suspiciously.

“It’s none of your business,” snapped Evans. “The less you know the better for your own safety.”

He averted his eyes as Bouchard stooped and began to undress the still body. He then noticed Bergen watching avidly. “Come out of the room until she has finished,” he said, drawing the butler out of the door.

“What becomes of her?” asked Bergen, licking his pale lips.

“That is none of your affair,” said Evans haughtily. He felt suddenly like a general. He felt more important than he had ever done in his life before.

Bouchard eventually appeared from the study and joined the two men. Constance’s frivolous bonnet concealed most of the maid’s face. The dress was a trifle tight at the seams and short at the ankle, but it would have to do.

“Hold the parasol over your face and
don’t talk
,” said Evans. “I will give instructions to the coachman.”

When the Cautry carriage had rolled off, Mr. Evans returned to the silent house. He stared down at the unconscious girl, relieved to notice she was still breathing. He had been afraid he had put too much chloral in the wine. He sat looking at her for a long time, suddenly wondering what to do.

Although it was still early evening when he returned home, Lord Philip Cautry was extremely angry to learn that his wife was lying down with the headache. He rattled the door of her bedroom and called her name several times but only silence greeted him and the door was locked. “Sulk as much as you like, madam,” he called through the door. “I have to go urgently to my sister’s villa in Kensington. But if this door is still locked when I return, I shall break it down.”

And Bouchard, crouched on the other side of the door, now back in her own clothes, gave a sigh of relief as she heard his angry footsteps clattering back down the stairs.

Mr. Evans wearily opened the side door of Lady Eleanor’s town house. The Comte Duval slipped in as quietly as a shadow.

“Have you done it?” he asked eagerly.

“Yes,” whispered Mr. Evans, his wife face gleaming in the dark.

“What did you do with the body?” hissed the comte.

“Tied stones to it and threw it over Westminster Bridge. Nobody saw me. Lady Philip sank down into the water, and the last I saw was her white, white face staring up at me as if begging for help,” shuddered Evans.

“It’s the Welsh in you,” said the comte with a laugh, “all that poetic imagining. You have done well. France is proud of you.”

“That’s nice,” said Mr. Evans dully. “That’s very nice indeed!”