A Corpse in Shining Armour (3 page)

‘I say, that was a most capital blow at the quintain. I only wish I could do half so well.’ Then, to Amos: ‘Would you be kind
enough to introduce me, Legge?’

Amos did it correctly enough, though I sensed he wasn’t pleased.

‘Miss Lane, this is Mr Miles Brinkburn. Mr Brinkburn, Miss Liberty Lane.’

Miles Brinkburn’s shapely eyebrows flicked up and down. He might have been surprised by my first name–a cradle gift from
my two radically minded parents–or perhaps he was registering my unmarried state. Under my gloves, he couldn’t have seen
whether I was wearing a ring. Either way, there was a hint of speculation in those eyebrows that made me annoyed enough to
speak my mind.

‘That was a downright unchivalrous trick you played.’

He bowed in the saddle.

‘Then I am rebuked. Should I have challenged him to single combat?’

‘If you do, you’d better stipulate that it’s on foot,’ I said.

He winced. It had been ungenerous to remind him that his brother was the better rider, but I wanted to see how he reacted.

‘Beauty has a right to severity, Miss Lane. I hope I may be permitted to alter your poor opinion of me.’

I gave him a cold bow and moved my hand on the rein, indicating that we wanted to ride past him. He stood his ground.

‘You obviously have an interest in knightly pursuits, Miss Lane.’ (I hadn’t particularly, but didn’t interrupt.) ‘I wonder
whether you might be interested to see my ancestral armour.’

I’d heard some unlikely lines of invitation from gentlemen to ladies, but this was the most blatant yet. I decided he was
mocking me and replied accordingly.

‘I believe I’ve seen it already, Mr Brinkburn. Brought low in the sawdust.’

He kept his good temper.

‘That was only hired stuff. I’m having my own ancestor’s armour sent from home. It’s arriving at Pratt’s in Bond Street tomorrow.
There’s any amount of interesting armour and things at Pratt’s. Perhaps we’ll even find another lance for you to break.’

From his smile, he seemed to think that he was irresistible. It suited me to let him think he was.

‘What time at Pratt’s?’

‘Would twelve o’clock suit m’lady?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

He nodded as if the thing were settled and at last moved aside to let us through the gate.

‘So is it in the line of business, then?’ Amos said, as we rode along the west side of Regent’s Park.

He knew me well enough to guess that I hadn’t been bowled over by Miles Brinkburn’s charm to the extent of losing all discretion.
A lot of my friends were embarrassed by the singular way I made a living, but Amos was unsurprisable.

‘Probably, yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve been asked to investigate something connected with his family. I can’t decide whether to agree
or not.’

‘I don’t think there’s much harm in him,’ Amos said. ‘But he’s a touch impudent, like. He wants watching.’

Was that meant as a warning to me to watch my reputation? Mr Brinkburn had indeed been impudent in trying to make an assignation
with me when we’d only just been introduced. There were two possible reasons for that. The obvious one was that he’d taken
me, from my unmarried state and apparent readiness to attract attention, as a woman whose business it was to make assignations
with gentleman. The other was more worrying. Was it possible that he knew already, by some means, that I’d been approached
to investigate his family’s extraordinary problem? If so, Amos was right and the younger Mr Brinkburn certainly did want watching.

The approach had come, as was often the case in my investigations, from that rising young Conservative MP, Mr Benjamin Disraeli.
He’d told me about it two days before, at a private viewing at an art gallery in Pall Mall that I was attending with the family
of one of my singing pupils. He’d come up to me in the refreshment room.

‘What a pleasant surprise to find you here, Miss Lane.’

I was sure he would have had sight of the guest list in advance and knew very well that I’d be there. He was a man who preferred
surprising other people to being surprised. But I played him at his own game, making social chat.

‘I understand I am to congratulate you on your forthcoming marriage, Mr Disraeli.’

To a plump chatterbox of a widow, with a more than comfortable income, a dozen or so years older than he was. At least that
should take care of his debts.

‘Yes indeed. Mary Anne has consented to make me a happy man very soon. I only wish all unions could be as well starred.’

While we were talking, he was deftly steering us towards two empty places on a sofa at the far end of the room, under a landscape
in oils so gloomy that nobody was likely to come for a closer look. When we were settled he inquired politely how business
was going.

‘Reasonably well, thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m doing more private intelligencing than music teaching these days.’

‘Yes. I understand the Staffords were more than grateful about that regrettable business with the statue.’

He was entitled to know something about my work. It had been Mr Disraeli who’d invented my metier for me, pointing out that
I seemed to have a talent for investigation and might make a living by using it on behalf of people whose problems were too
delicate to go to the police. His network of acquaintances was wide, growing all the time, and he cheerfully admitted that
favours to friends were useful currency for a politician. We were useful to each other. Far more than that–and in spite
of our political differences and my knowledge of his failings–I liked the man. He took his risks gallantly and was never
dull. Even now, sipping lukewarm tea under one of the most dismal paintings in London, I felt my pulse quickening.

‘So you want to talk to me about somebody’s ill-starred marriage,’ I said. ‘It’s no good asking me to collect evidence for
a divorce. I’ve tried that once and it was my only failure.’

‘Yes, but that was because you decided to take the wife’s part. If you’d stayed on the husband’s side…’

‘He was a liar, an adulterer and a bully. I’d rather teach music to tone-deaf five-year-olds all my life than work for people
like that.’

‘Then we must hope that my unfortunate friend’s morals come up to your high standards. It really is a most unusual case–quite possibly a unique one.’

He had me there, of course. I could no more have refused to listen to him than a child could walk away from a sweet-shop window.
The need to earn money was strong, but curiosity stronger. So that was how I first came to hear about the Brinkburn brothers,
although Disraeli didn’t mention their names until at last I’d agreed to consider taking on the case.

‘It’s an old family,’ he said. ‘They’ve been living on their estates in Northumberland since the Conqueror. Until quite recently
they had no money to speak of; they’ve made good marriages in the last couple of generations so they own considerable property
near Newcastle, including four or five coal mines. With the railways coming up so fast, that’s almost as good as gold. Then
there’s a smaller estate on the Thames in Buckinghamshire. The heir will be more than comfortably placed.’

‘But the family are unhappy?’

‘By most accounts, the father, the old lord, is happy enough in his way. He’s sixty or so, hale and hearty until recently,
but the word is that he’s been out of his mind for some months. He spent quite a lot of his life travelling and had a villa
in Rome. Apparently he now believes he’s the Emperor Hadrian. They’ve stored him in a private asylum near Kingston upon Thames
and I’m told he’s perfectly easy to manage, provided the attendants drape themselves in bed sheets and remember to say good
morning in Latin.’

‘Is he likely to recover?’

‘No. I understand he’s paying the penalty for being too ardent a worshipper of Venus in his youth and is not expected to live
long.’

So the mind of the old lord had been eaten away by syphilis. Even though Disraeli and I talked pretty freely, he couldn’t
say that outright.

‘And the wife?’

‘She lives mostly on the Buckinghamshire estate. She’s twenty years younger than he is. It was never a love match. The present
lord’s father had gambled away quite a lot of the money he’d married, so the son had to do his duty and marry some of it back
again. I gather he was reasonably good looking in his day and there was the title, of course. He married a woman from his
own part of the world. She was considered a beauty by local standards; amiable, although inclined to be bookish. She inherited
fifty thousand a year and the four or five coal mines, so it seemed suitable enough.’

He pretended not to see the grimace I was making. When it came to old families and new money, the usually irreverent Disraeli
came too close to being serious for my liking.

‘So were there children of this perfectly suitable union?’ I said.

‘Two sons. One of the sons is twenty-two now and the other’s twenty. That’s where the problem lies.’

‘Sowing wild oats?’

If so, I couldn’t see how I was expected to trail a young man, or two of them, through the gambling clubs and brothels of
London.

‘Nothing like that, no. The elder one’s sober as a judge. The other’s probably had his moments, but nothing out of the way.’

A thin woman in ill-advised purple wandered our way, peering short-sightedly at the picture through a lorgnette. Disraeli
greeted her politely and they held a meandering conversation about apparently mutual acquaintances before she drifted away.

‘Who was that?’ I said.

‘I haven’t an idea in the world. Nobody important, or I’d have known her. So, may I tell him you’ll take it on?’

‘Tell whom I’ll take on what?’

He was deliberately teasing me, trying to provoke my curiosity.

‘Oh, haven’t I explained?’

‘A twenty-two-year-old man who’s as sober as a judge is about to inherit a title and a fortune. I can’t see how that poses
a unique problem,’ I said.

‘It might be if his claim to the title were in question.’

‘How is it in question?’

‘The usual way–that he might not be his father’s son.’

‘This sounds even worse than the divorce case. Am I meant to be going through rumpled sheets from twenty-three years ago?’

‘If only it were that easy. It’s a matter of hints, gossip–nothing tangible.’

‘So people have been hinting and gossiping for twenty-three years?’

‘No, that’s the strange part. The hints and gossip have only begun quite recently.’

‘Since people knew the old lord was going to die soon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do we know who started the gossip?’

‘We have a very good idea.’

‘Who?’

‘The young men’s mother.’

I nearly dropped my teacup.

‘The elder boy’s own mother is saying he’s not her husband’s son?’

Disraeli nodded.

‘But why should she admit it after all these years? And what about the younger one?’

‘She’s quite adamant that the younger son’s legitimate.’

‘But that doesn’t make sense. If a woman’s going to be unfaithful, it’s usually the later children who…’

I didn’t finish the sentence because it was straying into things that should not be said.

‘Indeed.’

‘Does she say who the father was, if he’s not her husband?’

‘As far as I’m told, she takes a somewhat legendary line,’ Disraeli said. ‘There was a storm one night on their honeymoon
tour. She was alone in her room in a tower by a lake in Italy, waiting for her husband to return from a visit. A man entered,
at the height of the storm, without lighting a candle. She naturally assumed it was her lord and master come home and…well,
you can guess the rest. In the morning, his place in the bed is empty and she thinks he’s gone out early to admire the view.
Imagine her horror when her husband arrives some hours later, mud-splattered on horseback, explaining that he decided to stay
the night with friends because of the storm.’

‘It’s like something from a bad Gothick novel.’

‘I gather the lady in question is fond of novels. She also paints and writes poetry.’

I stared at him, still disbelieving.

‘Of course, there is precedent for it,’ Disraeli said.

‘Precedent?’

‘You may remember that something very similar happened to the lady in the Greek myth of Amphitryon. And our own King Arthur
was born of just such a visit by Uther Pendragon.’

‘May we please keep to the nineteenth century. Are you suggesting that this woman’s head has been so turned by novels and
myths that she’s denying the legitimacy of her own son? Is she insane too?’

‘That’s probably the question the case will turn on.’

‘Case?’

‘Miss Lane, you can surely see what will happen if the old lord dies before this question is resolved. It will end up in court,
and not just any court, either. A question like this would have to be submitted to the House of Lords.’

He sounded serious again, so I had to put out of my mind the entertaining picture of their lordships in coronets and ermine
debating the story I’d just been told.

‘What about the younger son? He surely wouldn’t want to see his mother and his brother put through this.’

‘I understand that there’s no great brotherly love between them. The younger boy has always been his mother’s favourite. He
takes after her, while the elder brother bears some resemblance to the father and took his father’s side when husband and
wife fell out.’

‘But that would make no sense at all, if he’s supposed not to be the father’s son,’ I said. ‘And if he looks like his father,
surely that settles the matter?’

‘Not conclusively. There’s a fairly general family resemblance within the English aristocracy, wouldn’t you say?’

He smiled at me and flicked one of his very un-English raven ringlets back from his face with a hand that glinted with gold
rings.

‘So it’s quite possible that the mother is making all this up to try to ensure that the younger one inherits,’ I said.

‘Yes, that’s the other possibility.’ Disraeli sighed. ‘It almost makes one wish that there were some way of testing the blood
for paternity, the way that scientists test for acid or alkali.’