Think of England (14 page)

And what would he do once he’d found him?

They had nothing whatsoever in common, of race or society or taste or intellect. Velvet jackets and poetry readings were as far from his experience as shooting parties and military talk were from da Silva’s, and Curtis had never had any time for the Bohemian set.

No, this was not an acquaintance it would be possible or sensible to carry on.

And yet… He liked the man, that was the truth of it. It wasn’t just this—whatever it was, between them that he wanted to pursue. He liked his sense of humour and his quick intelligence and his dedication. Liked his mouth, and those clever fingers, and the desire, for
him
, that had smouldered in those dark eyes…

Stop this. You’ve work to do
, he told himself.
Concentrate on the job. Da Silva’s not sitting next door thinking about you.

That was the wrong mental image to have conjured up. For a brief moment Curtis pictured da Silva, naked and tousled, lying back on the bed with dark eyes hooded and one hand stroking himself, then cut off the thought savagely.

It took him several minutes to get his cufflinks in. His hand kept shaking.

Chapter Nine

Dinner was a noisy affair. Lady Armstrong and Mrs. Grayling both bubbled with high spirits, and James Armstrong was in a crowing, boisterous sort of mood. Fenella Carruth exclaimed at length on the wonders of the cave and assured da Silva he should have come. His appalled response seemed genuine.

“Good heavens, no. Not at gunpoint. I don’t take Underground trains, far less descend into the depths of the uncivilised earth.”

“Really?”

“Dear child, I can’t bear
cellars
.”

“Scared of the dark, are you?” said James.

Da Silva lifted his eyes in a soulful gaze. “Man was born to walk on the surface of the earth, not its underside. Our nature is to aspire to the sun, and gaze at the stars.”

Mrs. Lambdon clucked in support of that sentiment. Holt and James Armstrong looked, not unreasonably, nauseated. Curtis wondered how da Silva got away with it, since anyone who’d read his poetry would know he didn’t go in for anything like that sort of claptrap, but of course no one present would have done anything of the sort. One more of da Silva’s private jokes.

Miss Carruth begged Curtis to retell his uncle’s story of the Kukuana Place of Death from that blasted book, and as other voices joined in, he felt it would support his character as a good fellow to oblige. He described first the chamber of which he had heard so much, with the great stone table, and at its head a statue of a colossal skeleton, fifteen feet in height. It rose from its seat, spear held above its head, ready to strike. And round the menacing thing’s table, guests at Death’s feast, sat the kings of the Kukuanas.

“All twenty-seven of them,” he said. “Each seated under a drip of water, running down onto their heads, turning them to stone drop by drop. Shrouded in white spar. One could see their features still through the veil of stone. Twala, the king that my uncle killed, sat in his chair with his head in his lap—”

There was a general shriek from the women, followed by cries of pleasurable protest. “So horrible,” said Miss Carruth with a wriggle.

“So exotic and—and heroic,” exclaimed Mrs. Grayling.

“So disgusting,” said da Silva, and Curtis saw with surprise that he looked rather sick. “To spend one’s eternal rest seated underground—”

“We all end up underground,” Lambdon pointed out bluffly.

“But to
sit
under the earth, round the devil’s dining table, with water dripping on one’s head. What a revolting practice.” He shuddered. Curtis made a mental note to tell him about the Tibetan tradition of sky burial, which was even less appropriate for the dinner table than the Kukuana rituals, and realised that of course he’d never have the chance.

He attempted to be companionable that evening, proposing a game of whist to the younger men. Grayling was enthusiastic; Holt and Armstrong exchanged a flicker of a glance and made excuses.

That gave Curtis pause. James Armstrong was going to gaol. His antipathy didn’t matter a jot. But Holt was not involved in the Armstrongs’ crimes. He was a sportsman, a good mixer, he seemed to have entry to wide social circles. Suppose he had complained to his friend of the earlier disagreement, and Armstrong, the bumptious oaf, had dropped a hint?
I say, Curtis and that dago are rather tight, aren’t they? — Tight? You don’t know the half of it.

If Armstrong talked, and Holt chose to play the rumour-monger, Curtis could be in for unpleasantness.

He felt sweat prickle along his hairline. He had no idea how da Silva could live with such poise, threatened by exposure at every corner. He felt he would go grey within a week.

The night’s sleep, unbroken by burglary, was welcome, but Curtis rather regretted his healthy look in the mirror the next morning, since he had to make a fuss about his knee. He limped into the breakfast room, from which da Silva was absent yet again, and fielded an array of sympathetic queries.

“It’s my own fault,” he insisted to Lady Armstrong’s apologies. “I overdid it. But I’m a little worried, to be honest. I may have thrown the kneecap out on the rough ground.”

“Shall I call the doctor?”

“I think I should see my specialist in London, I’m afraid.” Curtis adjusted his features to a look of regret. “It’s something of a tricky case.”

Lady Armstrong gave cries of distress and vexation and sent a heavy-eyed James Armstrong for a Bradshaw’s railway guide, which was when Curtis realised it was a Sunday.

“There’s only one passenger train to London the whole day. You could make it, just, but it’s a cursed bad one,” Sir Hubert said, frowning. “Stops everywhere.”

“And that will do your knee no good,” Lady Armstrong put in solicitously. “I fear you must wait until Monday, Mr. Curtis. Do telephone for an appointment, won’t you?”

Curtis allowed himself to be persuaded. He had no desire to spend nine hours on a stopping train to London. And, a voice at the back of his mind pointed out, he might have a chance for a talk with da Silva.

With that as a prospect, and his character as an invalid to support, Curtis declined to attend church. Everyone else was packed off in a procession of motorcars, except for Holt and Armstrong, who announced they would go for a tramp. They both looked tired, but pleased with themselves. Likely they’d made a private night of it and were off to find a pub.

With the house to himself, Curtis set off to the library.

Da Silva wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the breakfast room, and he didn’t appear to be in any of the drawing rooms. He surely couldn’t be sleeping in past ten, Curtis thought with disapproval and, feeling just a little sensation of heart in mouth, went to knock on his bedroom door.

There was no answer.

Curtis hesitated. But he did need to speak to the fellow. He turned the handle experimentally, and the door opened.

Da Silva’s room was empty.

Curtis looked around, bewildered. No unguents or studs on the dresser, no sign of occupancy. He opened the wardrobe, then the drawers. They were all empty.

It seemed that da Silva had left.

What the devil?

Curtis retreated to his own room to think. Da Silva had been up to something last night. Had he decided to change the plan? To abstract sufficient evidence of blackmail and treachery to hang the Armstrongs, along with the incriminating photographs, and disappear in the night, without a word?

Curtis wouldn’t put that past him. What he would put past him was the ability to leave the house in the night, and cover thirty miles to Newcastle—

Where there were no trains today except the milk train and that stopping train. Curtis felt quite sure da Silva would have checked Bradshaw before disappearing, and would have taken a decent train rather than one that went less than the speed of an Austin motorcar. In any case, how would he have got to the station, with his portmanteau? He couldn’t drive, Curtis doubted he could cover thirty miles overnight, and he could not imagine da Silva hiding out on the moors to avoid pursuit.

He went back into da Silva’s deserted room. This time he locked the door behind him and proceeded to search thoroughly, getting down to the floor and checking under the furniture. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, except that he had an increasing feeling something was wrong.

He found it behind the dresser. Da Silva’s flashlight.

It was cylindrical, of course. It could have rolled off a surface and been forgotten, except the bulb still worked. Except that da Silva was too careful a man to leave such things lying around. Except…

He did not like this, not at all.

He told himself he was being nonsensical, and made himself go down to the library again, where he read through
The Fish-pond
as if it might provide some sort of clue. He wished he could go up to the folly—not that he rationally thought da Silva would be waiting there; still, the urge nagged at him—but he had to keep up the pretence of his bad knee.

He made himself wait until lunchtime, with da Silva still absent, before enquiring as airily as he could, “Where’s the poet? Communing with his muse?”

“Mr. da Silva? He, ah, left early this morning.” Lady Armstrong threw him a meaningful look.

James Armstrong gave an ostentatious cough that sounded like, “Asked.” Rapid glances of delighted shock flashed round the table.

“James.” Sir Hubert’s tone was warning.

“Well, honestly,” James began, and subsided at his father’s frown, adding a mumbled, “I did say, though, mater.”

“Enough of that.” Sir Hubert set about talking golf. Curtis pretended to listen, thinking frantically.

The implication was clear: da Silva had been evicted for some crime against hospitality. Stealing the silver, buggering the footman, breaking into his host’s private files. It was, of course, possible that he’d been caught prowling and packed off, and that would explain how his possessions had been removed. And yet, and yet…

It was an hour’s drive to Newcastle station. The milk train left at half past three in the morning; surely da Silva would not have been thrown out at such an hour. But if he had been sent to cool his heels on the station platform waiting for the morning’s stopping train, might the Armstrongs not have mentioned it when Curtis proposed to catch the same train? And wouldn’t Curtis have heard a car returning at some point this morning?

There was nothing conclusive here, nothing he could pin down, but the hairs on the back of his neck were rising.

He set himself to be as convivial as he could for the rest of the meal, and observed to Lady Armstrong that he rather thought his leg might be feeling better. “I dare say you’ll think I’m a dreadful worrier for making such a fuss—”

“Oh heavens, no! I do know how it is when one has a nagging complaint,” Lady Armstrong assured him. Mrs. Lambdon, animated by that, launched into an account of her own chronic health problems, which saved Curtis the effort of doing anything but nodding courteously along.

The rest of the day seemed to last forever. Curtis took a stroll round the grounds. He gave the excuse that he wanted to see if his knee was damaged or simply strained by the previous day’s walk.

There was, so far as he could see, no disturbed ground under the redwoods, no evidence of a shallow grave or a deep one, and he cursed da Silva and his vivid turns of phrase even as he let himself into the folly. That was empty too. It smelled of cold stone and wood must. It ought to have smelled of male sweat, and spunk, and the stuff da Silva used on his hair.

The absurd thought came to Curtis that if something had happened to da Silva, if there had been foul play, he would never touch his hair again. His throat tightened crazily then, and he stood alone in the desolate folly, choked by the absence of a man he barely knew.

The endless, horrible day dragged on. Curtis ranged over the grounds till twilight fell, seeing nothing, then retreated to the library again before dinner, because the presence of the other guests was beginning to scrape on his nerves like barbed wire on skin. He was staring at a page of an Oppenheim novel he thought he’d read before when Armstrong and Holt came in.

“We’re looking for Grayling,” Armstrong said. He seemed a little more friendly than he had the previous night. “Want to make a fourth at billiards?”

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

“Missing your partner?” asked Holt with a touch of nastiness.

“Who, da Silva? Hardly. I like to win now and again.” He was not in the mood for this bloody pointless banter, the endless meaningless chaff of people without purpose or employment in life. Holt was right about that much; it was no way for men to live. Although Holt seemed to enjoy it well enough.

Another day, and he would leave this damned place, Curtis told himself. One more day to look for da Silva.

Recklessly, he asked Armstrong, “What happened there? Pinching the spoons, was he?”

Holt glanced at Armstrong and opened his mouth, but Armstrong was already replying cheerfully, “Caught him fuzzing the cards. Holt was quite right about him being a sharp, you know.”

“Well, by God,” Curtis said. “I owe you an apology, Holt, you’re quicker on the uptake than I. I was quite in the dark about that.”