Painting The Darkness (65 page)

‘You do not seem surprised to see me, madame,’ Plon-Plon said, determined to break the silence. ‘I might almost believe you had been expecting me to call.’

‘After all this time, Prince? I hardly think so. Indeed, I cannot imagine a single good reason why you should wish to seek me out. But, then, your reasons were seldom good.’

Plon-Plon permitted himself the faintest of smiles, then said: ‘I think you know why I am here.’

‘I have told you. I cannot imagine.’

‘You covered your tracks well, I must say. Even your sisters know nothing of you.’

‘You have seen
them
?’ A note of incredulity had crept into her otherwise guarded voice.

‘There was no other trail to follow, madame.’

‘How did you know where to find them?’

‘Catherine – Lady Davenall, that is—’

‘
Her!
’ Vivien’s eyes narrowed. ‘So. You are here at
her
bidding, are you?’

But Plon-Plon did not care to be taken for any woman’s errand-boy. ‘Largely, madame, on my own account.’ It struck him then how alike Catherine and Vivien had grown, how sourly elegant, how icily untouchable. Just as Catherine declined to grieve for a dead son, so Vivien wasted no curiosity on the sisters who had disowned her.
‘You
will not pretend, I trust, to be unaware of recent events affecting the Davenall family?’

‘Of course not.’ Her lips flirted with a smile, then dismissed it from their presence. ‘It has afforded me considerable satisfaction.’

‘You admit that?’

‘Why should I not? You of all people, Prince, should know what I suffered at their hands.’

‘Quite so, madame. Quite so.’

She stared at him for several moments, then said: ‘What are you implying?’

‘As I said, I believe you know why I am here.’

‘No. I do not.’

Yet she
had
expected him: he was sure of it. The ease of his admission, the gravity of his reception, the calmness of her manner: they all smacked of prepared defences. ‘Where is your son, madame?’

‘My son?’

‘Let us prevaricate no longer. The man calling himself Sir James Davenall is an impostor. You know that. I believe him to be your son by Sir Gervase Davenall. I believe him to be your revenge for all the wrongs inflicted upon you by Sir Gervase and his wife.’

She was laughing. He had never heard her laugh before, but now the sound of it rose mockingly to his ears. Yet there was no joy in it. When her face relaxed back into its sombre lines, no pleasure was to be seen in her eyes or remembered in her gaze. ‘Is this what Catherine believes, too?’ she asked, with sudden flashing venom.

‘Yes.’

Her scrutiny of him intensified. ‘Truly?’

‘Why else do you think I am here?’

‘To offer me your overdue repentance, Prince. I thought old age might have elevated your soul. I see that I was wrong. Well, no matter. I have no need of revenge, but, if I had, this delusion of yours would supply as good a form of it as any.’

‘Does this amount to a denial, madame?’

‘What you allege, Prince, is too absurd to warrant a denial.’

‘Then, tell me: where is your son? Where is the son you bore Gervase? Or do you propose to deny bearing his child?’

Vivien walked slowly across to the window where Plon-Plon stood and stared at him with frank hostility. ‘I once threw blood in your face for daring to remind me of that. I was once so dazzled by you that I went to meet you, by night, when I knew I should not. What was my reward, Prince? Do tell me. Was it just? Was it fitting? Was it fair?’

‘No, madame. It was none of those things. For the follies of my youth, I can offer no reparation, to you or to myself. Your reward for being Gervase’s victim was to be turned out by Catherine, turned away by your family—’

‘And forgotten by you?’

It was as well, he thought in some separate dispassionate part of his mind, that he had waited this long, waited till he was old enough to bear the shame of what he was about to admit. ‘Yes, forgotten. Until I was forced to remember.’

‘Forced by whom?’

‘By your son, madame. When Monsieur Norton, as he was then called, revealed that he knew what had occurred at Cleave Court, what crime had been committed in the maze that night, thirty-seven years ago, I knew who he must be, though I tried to close my mind to the possibility. For how could he know what happened, unless he had heard it from his mother’s lips?’

Vivien looked away, out through the window, into the garden and beyond, to where heaving surf crashed across the crumbling rocks of Torbay. In her wistful gaze Plon-Plon thought he saw the first sign of the weakness he had hoped to exploit.

‘He should not have confronted me with it, although it served his purpose at the time. Ultimately, it has proved a fatal mistake.’

‘Fatal?’ she said in an undertone, her eyes still fixed on the distant foaming sea.

‘To your cause, madame. To your conspiracy.’

‘There is no conspiracy.’

‘Why deny it? In one sense, you have merely given him what is rightfully his: his birthright. Do not think I blame you. I see the justice of it. Truly, I do. But I cannot allow it to continue.’

Then, at last, she looked back at him. ‘
You
cannot allow it?’

‘For all our sakes, madame, the pretence must be ended.’

‘Very well.’ She nodded gravely. ‘I must ask you to wait here for a few minutes, Prince, whilst I fetch something. Something which will indeed end the pretence.’ And, with that, she walked slowly from the room.

X

Absolute silence reigned. Denzil O’Shaughnessy walked steadily forward, until he was standing but a foot or so from Sir James. They were about the same height, and their eyes, meeting naturally, held one another in a timeless interval of piercing scrutiny. Only when O’Shaughnessy stepped to one side, as if to examine Sir James’s profile, did their gazes part, and then only for a moment, because O’Shaughnessy swiftly resumed his place in front of Sir James and, as soon as he did so, their unblinking stares were rejoined.

‘Well?’ said Richard impatiently.

But neither man seemed to pay him any heed. They were remote from those looking on, alone in a realm where their confrontation was all that mattered, where nothing could be heard but their own unspoken exchanges.

O’Shaughnessy cleared his throat and, reaching out, took Sir James’s right hand in his. Both men remained expressionless as O’Shaughnessy held the hand out flat,
looked
down at it, then released it once more. He took a deep breath and, turning back to Richard, said: ‘I am satisfied.’

‘You recognize him as Stephen Lennox?’

O’Shaughnessy shook his head. ‘No.’

‘What?’

‘I am satisfied that this man is
not
Stephen Lennox. The absence of a scar on his right hand confirms it. He is not my former pupil.’

A note of desperation entered Richard’s voice. ‘But he must be. For God’s sake, man, think again.’

‘When he first came into the room, I thought he might be Stephen, but I see now that he is not. I am more certain of that than of anything in this world.’

‘But, if he isn’t Lennox, then who …?’ Richard’s voice faded into silence as his gaze moved from the stubborn insistence of O’Shaughnessy’s face to the slowly emerging smile on the face of Sir James Davenall.

XI

Plon-Plon had been alone for no more than a few minutes when Vivien returned. If she had been to fetch something, it was small enough to be slipped into a pocket, for she carried nothing in her hands.

‘I expected you to call, Prince, it is true,’ she said, rejoining him by the window. ‘But not for the reason you suspect.’

‘Then, why?’

‘Because Cora warned me you would.’

‘
La traîtresse!
’

‘Do not be too hard on her. It made no difference. Nothing could.’

‘What do you mean, madame?’

‘Read this.’ She slid a single sheet of paper from a pocket of her dress and handed it to him. Plon-Plon held it up to the light and clamped a monocle in his eye. It
took
him no more than a few seconds to see what the document was and to scan its contents. ‘It is true I bore a son to Sir Gervase Davenall,’ Vivien said. ‘That is his death certificate.’

Plon-Plon had been as certain as he had been mistaken. There, before him, in crabbed thirty-year-old clerical handwriting, was the proof of his error. ‘Oliver Strang, died 2nd August 1854, aged seven years. Cause of death: cholera.’

‘You cannot imagine the poverty and degradation I endured for Oliver’s sake. And it was all for nothing. Even after his death, I went on believing that it was not only right, but possible, to lead a noble life. Not until the saintly Miss Nightingale sent me home in disgrace from Scutari, and every hospital in the land closed its doors against me, did I understand the depth of my folly. From that moment on, I did whatever was necessary to obtain the wealth and privileges my son had been denied. As you see, I succeeded. I am no longer a good woman, but I am a happy one. That, Prince, is the only kind of revenge I desire.’

Plon-Plon looked at her in blank astonishment. ‘But, if he is not your son, madame, then who … ?’ His words trailed into silence. He knew the answer to his unfinished question. But he did not dare to voice it.

XII

Sir James Davenall and Constance Sumner were married that afternoon. After what had happened, neither had any wish to wait another two days; Constance could hardly remain in Richard’s house under such circumstances, and James, now he had been vindicated, was eager that they should at once commence their life together.

Richard did not attend the wedding, shocked by his own misjudgement into believing that a further reconciliation was impossible. Emily, however, amid floods of
tears
, was forgiven by her sister and her new brother-inlaw, though not, it seemed, by herself. She it was who saw them off after the ceremony at Paddington station at the start of their journey to Cleave Court, where they were to begin a new life, at last unfettered, as Sir James and Lady Davenall. For all the anguish that day’s work had caused, it had at least sealed their future happiness as man and wife. They who had believed themselves lost to each other were joined now for all time.

Chapter Nineteen

I

CONSTANCE WOKE SLOWLY
, the contentment of slumber giving place gradually to the pleasure of awareness. The touch of the starched sheets against her chin, the sight of the corniced ceiling above her head, the flickering of the fire in the corner, the dull grey light of a winter’s dawn seeping between half-parted curtains: these were her first, drowsily reassuring perceptions of Boxing Day 1883, the fourth morning of her marriage to Sir James Davenall and of their life together at Cleave Court, a home she was coming to love nearly as much as she loved her husband.

Turning on to her side, she reached out instinctively for James’s hand, only to find that his half of the bed was unoccupied. Propping herself up on one elbow, she peered round the room. He was not there. But the sight of the fire at once put her mind at rest. He must have stoked it up to ensure she did not wake to a cold room, then taken himself off to the bath. It was strange, though, that no sounds of running water or singing pipes reached her ears. Perhaps he had gone downstairs to summon breakfast. She lay back on the pillow, wondering if he were planning some surprise for her; then, deciding she could wait no longer, rose, slipped on the silk
peignoir
that had been one of his wedding gifts to her and walked across to the window. She pulled back the curtains, smiled at the prettiness of the frost on the lawn, then retreated to the dressing-table and began combing her hair.

A gilt-framed photograph by the mirror caught her eye. It was her favourite picture of Patience, taken on her fourth birthday eighteen months before. For an instant, the enormity of all the changes that had occurred since then rushed into Constance’s mind, but, as quickly as the thought had come, it wilted before the joy that the recent past had brought her. Emily and her father were due to arrive with Patience later that day. It would not only be delightful to see them again and to be reunited with her daughter. It would also be the final confirmation that Constance’s family approved of what she had done, that Emily had forgotten the doubts Richard Davenall had planted in her mind.

Suddenly, there was a tap at the door. Constance started, so absorbed had she been in her thoughts that she had not heard anyone approaching. Before she could say anything, the door opened and Dorothy, the maid, came in, cradling a breakfast-tray in her arms and smiling nervously.

‘Good mornin’, ma’am.’

Constance frowned. ‘Good morning, Dorothy. I had assumed we were breakfasting downstairs. Has Sir James given you no instructions?’

Dorothy looked nonplussed. ‘No, ma’am, for ’e ain’t … That is …’ She gazed perplexedly around the room. ‘I dain’t think ’e were up yet.’

‘Never mind. Perhaps he’s taking the morning air. Put the tray over there.’

After Dorothy had gone, Constance looked into her husband’s adjoining dressing-room. Sure enough, his cigarette-case was missing from its normal place and the Norfolk jacket was absent from its hook on the back of the door. It must have been as she had said: he had gone for an early stroll, probably believing he would be back before she woke; he had donned boots and overcoat downstairs and taken a swift circuit of the grounds; he would be back any moment.

Constance returned to the bedroom and to the window, where she could have a clear view of the drive and the deer
park
. He would probably come back that way and, if he did, she would be there to wave down at him. She would not start breakfast yet. It could only be a short while before he rejoined her: better to breakfast together than alone. She felt faintly disappointed that he was not already in sight, but consoled herself with the thought that, this way, she could be sure of seeing him before he saw her. Soon, she did not doubt, he would emerge from the woodland path beside the house or come into view along the drive. Very soon, her husband would be restored to her side.