A Corpse in Shining Armour (38 page)

‘Leg armour, but no legs.’

I said it aloud, wild with relief. Stephen was right. All this funeral pomp for a suit of empty armour. The person who thought
he had a right to wear it wasn’t dead at all, but alive and enjoying his bitter joke. Anger as well as relief made me shove
the whole coffin lid aside. The thump it made as it fell off jarred through my body. I looked from the greaves, up to the
swell of the corselet, and a scream jagged through my head, through the interior of the hearse, so that the whole world was
ringing with it.

I screwed up my eyes and put my hands over my ears, but it was no use because it was my own scream. A hand had risen slowly
from the coffin. It was a bony, liver-spotted hand, appropriate to a corpse. My first horrified thought was that my theory
was wrong after all. There really was a body in the coffin under the armour. The jolting of the journey, and my own desecration,
had provoked it into this last parody of life. But as the scream died away I managed to grab another scrap of thought:
corpses do not hold pistols
.

When I opened my eyes, sure enough, the hand was holding a pistol. At first sight, it had been holding it awkwardly, as if
grabbed in a hurry. Now the pistol was level and there was a face behind it–an elderly face surrounded by sparse white hair,
with eyes that were all pupil from the darkness inside the coffin so that they looked hard as obsidian.

‘Lord Brinkburn,’ I said. ‘You killed your wife.’

Not a wise thing to say, if there’d been any hope of pacifying him, but the look on that face was beyond reach of argument
and I knew he intended to kill me or anyone else who was in his way. I tried to get off my knees, with a faint hope of throwing
myself out of the hearse. The eyes and the pistol followed me, the bony hand tightening on the butt. Then the air broke into
a spray of diamonds and something hard and black hammered into my chest, hurling me backwards into darkness. As I went, I
was aware of somebody saying something. Even in the circumstances, it struck me as odd that the Angel Gabriel should speak
with a cockney accent. It took several repetitions for me to grasp that what the voice was saying was
Enerund
s?

I opened my eyes. Still darkness. There was something over my eyes. I pulled it away and found it was the page’s tricorne
hat. The first thing I saw was Tabby’s face inches away from mine, mouth open in a gape that was either horror or laughter.
She was lying on her stomach on top of me. The broken glass all round us on the hearse floor and air coming from a different
quarter showed that she’d come diving in through the back window.

‘Out,’ I gasped.

Lord Brinkburn and his pistol must still be there in the coffin, though I couldn’t see him and there on the floor together
we were an easy target. I grabbed Tabby by her page’s coat and rolled us over towards the shattered side panel, just aware
that the hearse was now going slowly and jerkily. Stephen’s voice was shouting from the box. Glass jabbed at me through my
clothes as we rolled over the broken rim of the panel and thumped down on the road, Tabby uppermost. The back wheel of the
hearse ground slowly past us, then the vehicle juddered to a halt, just beyond where we were lying. Tabby rolled away from
me and helped me up.

‘He said it was a joke. He said it was only to have a laugh on all of them.’

She spoke pleadingly, as if expecting rebuke from me. Trickles of blood ran down her forehead and cheek.

Stephen had jumped off the driver’s box and come running towards us, but before he got to us the mourning coach arrived at
a canter. Amos pulled the mares back on their haunches, knotted the reins round the rail at the front of the box, then made
an almighty vault to land on his feet beside Tabby and me.

‘What’s happening, girl?’

‘Lord Brinkburn, in the coffin. He’s got a pistol.’

I gasped the words out as he was helping both of us to our feet. Even Amos’s quick mind couldn’t have understood what was
happening, but on the word ‘pistol’ he started walking towards the hearse.

‘Stop,’ I said. ‘He’s dangerous.’

The door of the mourning coach opened. Robert Carmichael and Miles bundled out, falling over each other, and came running
up to us.

‘Lord Brinkburn isn’t dead,’ I said. ‘He’s in the coffin, but he’s alive. He’s got a pistol. Make Amos stop before he shoots
him.’

They stood stock still.

‘Your father’s still alive,’ I shouted. ‘But for heaven’s sake…’

The look of stupefaction on both their faces showed that they hadn’t known. I rushed after Amos and grabbed the back of his
coat, just out of pistol range of the hearse.

‘No need to rush in and tackle him,’ I pleaded. ‘He can’t get away.’

‘He will, if somebody doesn’t get hold of those horses,’ Amos said.

The six black geldings were a churning, whinnying mass. In stopping the vehicle so suddenly, Stephen had slewed it sideways.
The front pair were in a ditch at the side of the road, though still on their feet, a shaft splintered, traces twisted like
seaweed.

‘You keep back,’ Amos told me.

He ran to the horses, drawing the knife he always kept in a sheath at his waist, and slashed through the front traces, freeing
the pair in the ditch. They clambered out and bolted away down the road. Amos managed to grab what was left of the traces
and pulled the others round before they could follow. This slewed the hearse so that the open side was towards us. The coffin
was still there, with no sign of anybody inside it.

‘He can’t have got away,’ I said. ‘We’d have seen him.’

Stephen faced Carmichael and Miles.

‘Perhaps you’ll believe me now. Go and look. That coffin’s empty,’ he said.

‘It’s not empty,’ I yelled. ‘He’s in it. Don’t go in there.’

I was desperate, wondering what I could say or do to make them understand the danger. Then the problem solved itself. The
face with the obsidian eyes reared itself up over the edge of the coffin and the hand pointed the pistol at the group of us.

Somebody screamed. Not I this time; it was Miles. After that, silence. Stephen took a step towards the hearse. The pistol
moved so that it was pointing at him. He stopped.

‘He’s done you no harm.’

That was Robert Carmichael’s voice, remarkably steady, speaking to the man in the coffin. He walked forward, past Stephen.
The pistol aim shifted to him. Stephen, voice hoarse, told Carmichael to stop, but he went on walking towards the hearse.

‘It will only make things worse,’ Carmichael said, as if reasoning with a difficult child. ‘Give it to me.’

And he added two syllables that none of us had expected to hear. Beside me, Miles gasped and Stephen jerked his head round
and stared at Carmichael. Carmichael took another step forward. The pistol cracked. He fell to one knee and the hearse lurched
forward. I ran to Carmichael. His head was down, fists clenched against his chest with blood seeping between them.

Amos came running up too, shouting to somebody I couldn’t see to keep hold of the horses. Carmichael raised his head and looked
at me.

‘Not dead.’

He sounded surprised. Gently, Amos took Carmichael’s hands and moved them away from his chest, then drew the jacket aside.
Carmichael winced.

‘Yes, you’ll live,’ Amos told him, as casually as if they were discussing a hurt hound. ‘Glanced off the collar bone. We’ll
get you lying down in the coach there.’

He helped Carmichael to his feet.

‘The pistol,’ Carmichael said. ‘Get it before he reloads.’

Amos nodded.

‘You all right with him?’ he asked, transferring Robert’s weight to me.

Like a man on a routine errand he strolled across and into the hearse. Lord Brinkburn hadn’t moved since firing the shot.

‘I’ll take that, sir,’ Amos said, quite politely, and removed the pistol from his unresisting hand.

Stephen walked over and helped me support Robert.

‘Did he say…?’

‘Later,’ I said. ‘Get him to the coach before he loses any more blood.’

Between us, we walked Carmichael towards the mourning coach. Lomax had just climbed out of it, looking as if the events of
the morning had aged him ten years. He glanced from the disabled hearse to Robert and back again, opening his mouth to ask
what was happening. Lord Brinkburn chose that moment to crawl out of the coffin, stiffly as a clockwork toy, face expressionless.

‘Cornelius,’ Lomax said.

The horror on his face and in his voice left no doubt that he hadn’t been included in the plot. Lord Brinkburn glanced once
in his direction, then concentrated on manoeuvring himself out of the hearse, shuffling over the floor on his buttocks, setting
his feet unsteadily on the ground. He was wearing a shirt and old-fashioned black breeches, dragging the velvet pall cloth
after him. Stephen looked at me over Carmichael’s head and made a move as if he wanted to go to his father.

‘Cornelius?’

Lomax’s voice quavered, begging for reassurance. Lord Brinkburn glanced at his old college friend as if he didn’t recognise
him, then straightened himself up as best he could, leaning on the side of the hearse, and tried to drape the pall round himself
like a toga.

‘
Hadrianus imperator sum.
’

‘No more of that,’ Stephen said sharply. ‘You’re not the emperor Hadrian. You were never mad, not in that way. You deceived
everybody, except the keeper of the asylum. I suppose you made it worth his while.’

‘Why?’ Miles said plaintively. ‘What was he doing?’

For probably the first time since childhood he was appealing to Stephen like a perplexed younger brother. Stephen didn’t answer.
Lord Brinkburn said nothing, hunched under the pall more like a soft-shelled turtle than an emperor.

‘He killed your mother,’ I said to Miles. ‘I think he probably killed Simon Handy too.’

After what had happened, there was no gentle way of saying it. Besides, the urgent thing now was to get Robert to medical
help. Amos had seen that. He’d managed to find a couple of bystanders to hold the hearse team and was already on the box of
the mourning coach, turning it round towards the town. He shouted to Miles and Stephen to look after the other horses then
brought the coach to a halt and signed to me to bring Robert on board. Tabby helped.

‘Am I coming with you?’ she said, sounding remarkably unconcerned.

She’d even managed to retrieve her tricorne hat and jam it on her head at an inappropriately jaunty angle.

‘Yes, you are,’ I said. ‘You have some explaining to do.’

I made Robert lie back on the seat and wouldn’t let him talk on the short and fast journey back to Kingston. As soon as we
came to a halt in the yard of the inn, Amos jumped off the box and told one of the stable lads to run for a doctor. The yard
was crowded as usual. Various curious people came to gawp as Amos helped Robert inside. Intent on the two of them, I took
no notice until a familiar voice sounded behind me.

‘Good morning, Miss Lane. In the middle of the excitement as usual, I see.’

I spun round, and there was Mr Disraeli, elegant as ever, with the faintly amused air he cultivated. But there was just a
shade more anxiety in his expression than was appropriate for a cynical man of the world. I tried to match his calm.

‘Have you come down for Lord Brinkburn’s funeral? If so, you’ve wasted your journey. It’s been cancelled.’

‘For lack of a body, I presume.’

I stared at him.

‘How in the world did you know that?’

‘I didn’t know. There were rumours. Didn’t you receive the note I sent you?’

‘I thought…’

I started to explain and gave up.

‘I believe we need to talk,’ he said.

We walked side by side towards the door of the inn.

‘Am I still coming with you?’ said a cockney voice from behind us.

Disraeli looked over his shoulder. When he saw the funeral page, with blood-streaked face and hair coming down under the piratical
hat, his jaw dropped. I’d never seen that happen before and didn’t expect to again.

‘Is that yours?’ he said.

I nodded. Tabby followed us in.

‘So how did you know?’ I said to Disraeli.

He and I were sitting on either side of an empty fireplace in the inn’s back parlour. I’d told him what had happened as briefly
as I could, trying not to shudder when it came to the hand rising out of the coffin. Tabby stood by the door, dabbing at her
face with a damp cloth, which was all she’d accept in the way of medical attention. Luckily, the scratches weren’t deep. Disraeli
answered my question in a low voice, obviously uneasy about her presence, but I wasn’t letting Tabby out of my sight.

‘I didn’t know anything for certain, but there were rumours around legal circles,’ he said. ‘There’d been an argument between
Stephen and Oliver Lomax, and one of the clerks must have been listening. Stephen was claiming that the madness was a pose
and his father wasn’t really dead. Lomax thought Stephen was talking nonsense, trying to muddy the waters about this inheritance
business. I thought you should know what was being said, but it seems you were ahead of me.’

I didn’t disillusion him, having my professional pride.

‘I think all the time Stephen was away from London, he was keeping watch on that so-called asylum,’ I said. ‘He had a much
clearer idea of what his father was capable of than any of us realised.’

‘Brinkburn must have been planning it for a long time,’ Disraeli said.

‘Yes. Probably ever since Robert Carmichael knocked him downstairs.’

Disraeli’s eyebrows rose.

‘The tutor?’

‘Yes. Brinkburn thought he and Lady Brinkburn were lovers.’

‘Were they?’

‘No.’

He gave me a look as if asking how I could be so sure.

‘So Brinkburn had decided to kill his wife?’ he said.

‘Yes, but he had no intention of hanging for it. He pretended he was mad to have a chance to do his plotting without interference
and set up an alibi, then announced his own death and confirmed it in people’s minds with this very elaborate funeral. If
there were any doubts cast on it or questions asked later about how Lady Brinkburn died, he’d have been safely out of the
way in Italy. I dare say he’d conveyed a fair amount of the family money over there to live comfortably for the rest of his
life.’