A Corpse in Shining Armour (31 page)

I’m going to write it now at last. I feel time is running out. The storm last night was a sign, I think, like the first one.
I am not sure who will read this, or whether anybody will read it, but I’ll write it and fate will have to decide. I’m too
tired to decide things myself any more. I’ve had to make too many decisions that nobody should be asked to make. Here’s what
happened. My husband really was away that night. There was nothing new in that. Time and time again on our tour, he’d spent
nights away from me. At first he’d make excuses about meeting old friends and suchlike and I’d believe them, or at least try
to believe them. He always took the boy Handy with him. After a while, I’d catch the boy looking at me sidelong and grinning,
as if he knew something I didn’t. Then my husband would make sudden changes of plan–staying in some place days longer than
expected or hurrying us on to the next.

I tried to enjoy the travelling and my sketching and not think about him. I succeeded for much of the time, but it was almost
as if it made him angry to see me in anything like contentment. He took to dressing very carefully and ostentatiously before
these nights away, as if to make clear that whatever was happening elsewhere was more important than his life with me. I began
to ask questions. He never answered them. Once, when I became angry and demanded an answer, he slapped my face and said it
was no business of mine. I thought it might be better when we got to Lake Como and established ourselves in the villa, but
it was worse. He was away several nights a week and often did not come back till the afternoon.

That morning after the storm, I was determined to have it out with him. Perhaps the electricity had stirred up my brain. I
woke up early in the morning, just as it was getting light. It seemed as if the storm had drained all the beauty out of things.
The lake was a dull pewter colour, the pine trees without the sun on them were greenish-brown, the colour of moss in winter.
It came to me suddenly that, if I didn’t challenge him, my whole life would be like that, without warmth or colour. That gave
me a kind of desperate courage. He came back earlier than he usually did after those nights away, about ten o’clock in the
morning. I heard the wheels of his coach on the cobbles. Then his voice yelling for the groom to come and take the horses.

He sounded to be in a bad temper. Somehow, that made it easier to keep to my resolution. I didn’t care if he hit me again.
Even pain would be better than nothingness.

That brought us to the bottom of the double page. I looked at the neat lines of writing, with the entry from twenty-three
years ago slashing across the paper like a brand on an animal’s smooth hide. I turned the page, holding my breath in case
there was no more, but the neat writing went on down the page that had been blank when I last read the journal.

I knew he’d come to me straight away in my tower. Although he left me alone so often and paid me little attention when we
were together, he’d always come to see me when he returned, much in the way a man might check that his horse or hound hadn’t
run away. I waited for him in my sitting room, in a chair by the window. As soon as he came through the door I said to him,
quite coolly, I believe: ‘I wonder why you took the trouble to marry me, since you seem to prefer anybody’s company to mine.’
He closed the door and stood there looking at me for a long time, with a strange smile on his face. I think even at that hour
in the morning he had taken drink, and when he spoke at last, his voice was slurred. Clear enough though for me to hear what
he said, although at first I simply couldn’t understand it. ‘Oh, but I haven’t married you, my dear,’ he said. I think I accused
him of being drunk, upbraided him for saying such a wicked and monstrous thing, even in jest. He went on smiling. ‘I assure
you, I’m not jesting,’ he said. He went to the door, opened it and yelled for Handy. The wretched boy was never far away from
him and appeared in seconds. C told him to go to his dressing room and bring his black leather portfolio.

While he was away I sat frozen, unable to move so much as a finger. C straddled the arm of a sofa and lit a cigarillo. Handy
brought back the portfolio. C untied it, sorted through it and gave Handy a piece of paper to bring across the room to me.
It was a record from a church in Northumberland of C’s marriage to one Natalie Stevens, dated nine years before. I write down
this fact calmly now. Even after this gap of time I cannot begin to describe the sensations of anger, bewilderment, incredulity
that made me more like a mad thing than a rational being. Two things, though, I must bring myself to write down. The creature
I had thought of as my husband informed me that he had a son by this woman, then eight years old. Also, in reply I suppose
to some sobbed-out question from me as to how he could do this thing, he said: ‘She is a very beautiful woman, much more so
than you are, my dear.’ The Handy creature had been in the room all the time this was going on.

Cornelius asked him, asked a malevolent child: ‘Is not your other mistress much more beautiful?’ And Handy looked into my
face, laughed, and said, ‘Yes.’

There the writing ended, halfway down the page. It had been a warm day when I came into the library, but I was shivering as
if it had become midwinter. Like Sophia, I couldn’t take in what I was being told.

‘Is she telling the truth now?’

I must have said it aloud because a voice from behind me said, ‘The truth about what?’

Just as when I first read the journal, Robert Carmichael had come quietly into the library while I was too absorbed to notice
and was standing a few steps behind my chair.

After that first glance behind me, I didn’t look at him. When I turned back the page to show him the start of what she’d written,
I had to force my hand to stop trembling. He must have read quickly, because within seconds his arm came over my shoulder
and turned the page onwards. The sleeve of his jacket brushed my cheek. I gave him enough time to read to the end.

‘Did you know she’d written this?’ I said.

I still didn’t turn and look at him, not trusting my face to hide the horror I felt.

‘No.’

‘Had she talked about it to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So is it true?’

‘Yes, it’s true.’

The reply came without hesitation, his voice heavy.

‘Why didn’t she denounce him? He’d committed bigamy. She could have had him sent to prison.’

I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he was moving round the desk to face me.

‘Is that what you’d have done, Miss Lane?’

‘Yes. Isn’t it what any woman would have done?’

He shook his head.

‘Imagine her circumstances. She’d been living with him since the wedding as his wife, with all that implies. Yes, if she could
have proved the earlier marriage, he’d have spent a long time in prison, but would that have helped her?’

‘She’d have had her freedom.’

‘
Freedom
. It’s a grand word, isn’t it, Miss Lane? A dog dying in the gutter has all the freedom in the world to get up and walk away,
if only he could.’

‘She was an intelligent woman. Surely she had friends and family?’

‘Her father was dead and she’d never been close to her mother. Besides, what could they have done? She was neither wife nor
maid, and nothing could change that.’

I met his look, willing myself not to blush.

‘Are you telling me her reputation was gone, through no fault of her own?’

‘As the world sees it, yes.’

‘Then the world’s a donkey. Surely, when the truth was known, anybody whose opinion mattered would pity her.’

‘Pity, yes. If you’ll permit me, you are probably about the same age now as Sophia was then. Would you want to spend the rest
of your life being pitied?’

His way of bringing the conversation back to me was disconcerting. I didn’t want to put myself in her place, but there was
an intensity about his voice and his look that was forcing me to do it.

‘There’s something else,’ he said. ‘Forgive me if I’m being indelicate, but for her sake you should know it. By the morning
he told her about the marriage, Sophia had good reason to know that she was in a certain condition.’

‘She was expecting his baby?’

‘Yes.’

‘Stephen?’

‘Yes.’

I dropped my eyes again, not so much from delicacy as from pain for her.

‘You see, when he put his terms to her, she really had no alternative,’ he said.

‘Terms?’

‘The terms on which she lived for the rest of her life. She should have this house, a comfortable income, freedom to travel
if she wanted. He and she would remain married in the eyes of the world but live separate lives.’

‘As long as she didn’t denounce him as a bigamist?’

‘Yes.’

‘So she accepted?’

‘As I explained, she really had no choice,’ he said.

I wanted to scream out that, yes, of course she had a choice–child or no child; that she’d have been better begging for
their bread, singing in the street for their supper, than living with the bargain she’d made. If he was waiting for me to
agree with him, he’d be waiting a long time. Perhaps he realised that.

‘In a sense, she won in the end,’ he said.

‘In what sense? Living with her books and her auriculas?’

I felt like adding…
and with you
, but stopped myself in time.

‘She married him after all,’ he said. ‘A year later, Natalie Stevens died. She and Lord Brinkburn had been living in Rome.
He came back here and showed Sophia the death certificate. It said she’d died of a fever. Then he took Sophia off to Germany
and married her. It was a perfectly legal marriage this time. Unlike his elder brother, Miles is his father’s legitimate son.’

‘He was protecting himself when he married Sophia,’ I said. ‘Once he’d made her his legal wife, she couldn’t be asked to give
evidence against him in court, so he was safe from a bigamy charge.’

‘Yes, and of course he had her money. That was probably what weighed most with him. I think that occurred to Sophia later.
At the time, she even hoped he’d had a change of heart and regretted what he’d done to her.’

‘Why did Lord Brinkburn take such a risk in the first place? He must have known he was risking prison. Or was the man always
mad?’

‘No, not as the world sees it. But almost insanely arrogant. Believe me, I’ve thought about the man’s character a lot. I wanted
to understand how he could cause such harm. I decided that he believed anything he wanted must happen, more or less as a natural
law. He wanted Natalie Stevens, so he married her. He might even have acknowledged the marriage sooner or later. I’m sure
society would have said he’d married beneath him, but he never cared much for public opinion. That changed when he learned
of his father’s debts. The almost worthless state of the inheritance must have come as a shock to him. A reasonable man might
have sold off the estate and lived economically with the woman he’d married. But that wasn’t in Brinkburn’s nature. He hadn’t
told his friends about the marriage, so when they pointed him in the direction of a rich bride to solve his problems, he seized
on that, as he’d always seized on anything else he wanted. Perhaps that long honeymoon tour gave him an opportunity to see
what a tangle he’d made for himself.’

He spoke without a pause, not looking at me for understanding or approval, as if Lord Brinkburn’s character had been a life
study with him.

‘Did you discuss this with Sophia?’

‘Yes.’

His reply was simple and dignified. Perhaps I was being unfair to him, almost blaming him for the wrong another man had done.
And yet there’d been too many evasions for me to trust him.

‘So is that where this wretched business started?’ I said. ‘She knows Miles is legitimate, as the world sees it, but Stephen
isn’t. So she thought Miles should inherit, but couldn’t bear to tell the real story.’

‘Yes.’

‘In any case, according to her account, neither of them’s the heir. If his son by the other woman has survived, then he must
inherit. Didn’t she see that?’

‘Condemn her for not thinking clearly, if you must. God knows, I tried to talk her out of doing anything about it.’

‘You thought she should keep quiet and let Stephen inherit,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘Of course she loves Miles but doesn’t love Stephen.’

‘She told you that?’

He seemed surprised.

‘Yes. She said he’d accused her of driving his father away. It seems hard that she should go on blaming him for something
he said when he was not much more than a child.’

‘It was. Believe me, I tried to tell her so. But you’ve seen how stubborn she could be when she thought she was in the right.

‘She thinks Stephen takes after his father.’

‘No more so than Miles does. Believe me, I know the pair of them very well. But there was no convincing her.’

‘Because of what he said when he was fourteen?’

‘There was something else. She didn’t tell you that Stephen went to visit his father in Italy during his first long vacation
from university?’

‘No.’

‘It was natural enough. He was a young man with money and freedom to travel for the first time. He hadn’t seen much of his
father through his childhood, and I believe Brinkburn had thrown out some casual invitation. But, as Sophia saw it, he was
enlisting on his father’s side, and that was that. Ironic, in its way.’

‘Why?’

‘From hints thrown out by Stephen, I gathered that the visit had not gone as well as he’d hoped. He seemed depressed in spirits
when he returned. I think he’d seen the sort of life his father led in Italy and didn’t like it. Sophia didn’t see that. She
chose to think Brinkburn had let Stephen in on some terrible secret.’

‘The first marriage? Did he?’

‘No, I’m quite certain of that.’

‘Something else?’

He said nothing for a while, as if making up his mind. Then he put his hand on the back of the chair at the other side of
the desk, glanced at me to ask permission and sat down.