Painting The Darkness (66 page)

An hour later, the coffee had gone cold in its pot and the bacon fat had congealed on its plate. Constance still sat on the window-seat, gazing out into the park, her pleasurable anticipation become an anxious vigil. Sir James Davenall had not returned.

II

Religious festivals generally plunged Plon-Plon into fits of curmudgeonly atheism. It may therefore have been a kindness to all those who knew him that he was obliged to spend Christmas 1883 in saturnine solitude at the Imperial Hotel, Torquay, barking at waiters, leering at chambermaids and scowling from his window at the scudding clouds and slanting rain of the Devon seaside in winter.

Not that Christmas was the sole contributor to his mood. He was also weighed down by the memory of his humiliation at the hands of Vivien Ratcliffe and the prospect of even greater humiliation at the hands of Catherine Davenall. The proud and foolish sense of duty which had brought him to gale-lashed Torquay also impelled him to proceed next to Bath and report the failure of his enquiries to their merciless investigator. The very thought of doing so reduced him to quivering despair.

By Boxing Day, however, he had decided that his pride
should
be spared further suffering. Concluding that misogyny was the better part of valour, he penned the briefest of notes to Catherine and posted it at the railway station before catching the nine o’clock train to London, proposing to spend the journey in pleasing contemplation of expelling the marquise de Canisy from Prangins by the New Year.

Three hours later, when the train drew into Westbury station, with another three still to go before it reached London, Plon-Plon had succeeded in putting the bravest, if not the smuggest, of faces on his lamentable part in
l’affaire Davenall
. His perfunctory letter to Catherine had acquired, in his own esteem, the status of a valedictory address. He had washed his hands of the whole disagreeable business. If he had owed them anything on account of the errors of his youth, the debt had been discharged. Glancing out of the window of his compartment at the drearily clad passengers on the platform, he felt buoyed up by an awareness of his own superiority. It was good to be alive and it was splendid to be himself.

Suddenly, in the midst of a euphoria which the dwindling contents of his hip-flask did much to explain, a woman caught his eye amongst those stepping forward to join the train. At first, he could not believe what he saw, but a swift adjustment of his monocle confirmed that he was not mistaken.

It was the woman he had seen at St Paul’s six months ago in urgent conversation with James Norton: Sir James Davenall, as he was now reluctantly compelled to think of him. She wore a long grey caped coat, with the hem and ruffed neck of a black dress visible beneath; her gloves and veiled hat were also black. Such a plain and modest outfit would not normally have attracted Plon-Plon’s attention, but her face, now as before, drew his gaze magnetically. In all his vast and varied experience of womankind, he could not recall a more haunting, hopelessly tempting beauty. What she was, or had been, to Sir James, Plon-Plon neither knew nor cared. It seemed to him, in that
moment
of rencounter, that she was a woman who, had he been but a few years younger, he could happily have followed to the ends of the earth.

A moment later, she was out of sight aboard the train, several carriages along. Another moment, and the train had begun to pull out of the station. Plon-Plon pressed his head back against the seat and chewed pensively at the monocle cord. Who was she? Where was she going? If he did not try to find out before they reached London, the chance would be gone for ever. Yet, if he took the chance, he might live to regret it.

Yielding to impulse, he plucked a sovereign from his waistcoat pocket and spun it in the air, catching it as it fell and pressing it flat on the back of his hand. ‘Luck is all,’ he murmured to himself, uncovering the coin. Then he sighed with disappointment, for there was Queen Victoria’s severe averted face to tell him what he must do. And that, as he might have expected of so staid and proper a source, was nothing at all.

Plon-Plon grimaced. Well, so be it. Perhaps, after all, it was for the best. He slipped the coin back into his waistcoat pocket and reached for the hip-flask.

III

A second dawn found the owner of Cleave Court still absent, his whereabouts unknown. Emily Sumner, who had slept scarcely at all during the night, sat by the window of her guest room, watching she hardly knew for what, but watching anyway, for some sign that the dreadful suspense of waiting might be about to end.

As she gazed out across the mist-cloaked parkland, Emily reflected on how all the fears she had entertained when setting out from Salisbury the day before, and which had seemed then all-important, had been banished utterly by the turn events had taken. Would she be restored to her sister’s confidence following the O’Shaughnessy episode?
Could
James overlook the doubts she had harboured about him? Should she confess her errors and ask forgiveness, or pretend, for all their sakes, that such errors had never been made? These concerns seemed trivial and self-indulgent now, compared with the vital issue of what had become of Sir James Davenall.

Emily had reached Cleave Court with Canon Sumner, Patience and Patience’s nanny the previous afternoon, to find Constance distraught and the household in confusion. The grounds had been searched, neighbours questioned, villagers alerted – all to no avail. Sir James Davenall was missing. He had quit the house some time around dawn, before any of the servants was up, wearing (so far as could be established) an Inverness cape and carrying a walking-stick. He had left no note or message of any kind. Constance had assumed he would be back within the hour. Since then, she had expected him with every minute that had passed. But he had not come.

The village policeman had been sympathetic but unable to offer much help. He had suggested waiting until morning before raising the alarm. Now, as Emily saw by the slow grey advance of it across the still and frozen park, morning had indeed come, but with it, no sign of James.

It was a comfort to her that Constance, at least, would have passed a restful night. The previous evening, Dr Fiveash had been summoned from Bath to administer a sleeping draught. He had not departed without implying to Emily that Sir James’s disappearance in some way confirmed his opinion that the man was an impostor. Emily had rejected the implication as both unfounded and unworthy, but later, in the lonely reaches of the night, she had begun to wonder what else could possibly explain his conduct. If some accident had befallen him, surely they would have heard. If not, where was he – and with whom?

Suddenly, a sound reached her ears: rapid hoof-falls on the drive. She rose from the window-seat and craned
forward
for a better view, but nothing was visible. Then she caught sight of a closed carriage, drawn by a pair of horses, flitting between the elms. The horses were being driven hard on what could only be, given such speed at such an hour, an urgent errand. She thought at once of James.

As she watched, the carriage turned off the drive and pulled up sharply in front of the house. At once, the nearside door was flung open and a tall thin man in flapping coat, straggling scarf and pulled-down hat emerged. He headed straight for the front steps. From the other side of the carriage, the burly figure of a policeman appeared, hurrying to catch up. The sight of his uniform was final confirmation for Emily that they had news of James. She rushed at once from the room.

By the time she had reached the stairs, a regular hammering had started at the front door and Escort, the butler, had made his way along the hall and commenced sliding back the bolts. As soon as he opened the door, the tall thin man stepped over the threshold, flapped some form of identification in his hand and said: ‘I am Inspector Gow; this is Sergeant Harris. We wish to see Sir James Davenall at once.’

‘He’s not at home, sir,’ Escott replied.

‘Then, where is he?’ At that point, Gow noticed Emily coming down the stairs.

‘Lady Davenall?’ he asked, glancing at her sharply.

‘No, Inspector. I am Lady Davenall’s sister. You have news of Sir James?’

‘Far from it, ma’am. It’s news of him I seek.’

‘But … have you not spoken to the constable in Freshford?’

‘We’ve had no time for that, ma’am.’

‘He would have told you Sir James has been missing from home since early yesterday morning. When I saw you arrive, I thought—’

‘Early yesterday morning, you say?’

‘Yes. We have no idea where he may be.’

‘Is that so?’ He raised one eyebrow and glanced meaningfully at the sergeant.

‘May I ask what you want with him?’

Gow looked back at her. ‘I wish to speak to Sir James on a matter of extreme urgency, ma’am: the murder last night of Mr Alfred Quinn of Maxton Grange, Newmarket.’

IV

Eight hours had passed and now, with identical words, grave-faced Inspector Gow of the Suffolk Constabulary stated his business to Richard Davenall in his Holborn office as advancing dusk beyond its windows announced the close of the second day of Sir James Davenall’s disappearance.

‘I wish to speak to Sir James on a matter of extreme urgency, sir: the murder last night of Mr Alfred Quinn of Maxton Grange, Newmarket.’

‘Quinn murdered?’ said Richard in amazement. ‘How?’

‘All in good time, sir. First, do you know where Sir James is? I gather you
are
his solicitor.’

‘Indeed I am, but … well, I assume you will find him at his country residence, Cleave Court, in Somerset.’

Gow smiled grimly. ‘No, sir. I was there this morning. Sir James has been missing from home since dawn yesterday.’

‘Missing?’

‘Apparently so. Nobody has any idea where he is.’

‘You spoke to his wife?’

‘Briefly. Lady Davenall is very upset, as you might expect. I gather she and Sir James are only five days married.’

‘That is so, but—’

‘Where do you think he might be, sir?’

‘I …’ Richard reflected for a moment on the irony that, only a week before, Roffey had been monitoring James’s movements and finding little enough in them to
substantiate
Richard’s suspicions. Now Roffey had been called off, James had vanished and Quinn was dead, ‘I cannot imagine, Inspector. I have neither seen nor heard from Sir James since he left London last Saturday.’

Gow’s mouth twitched inscrutably beneath his walrus moustache. ‘Do you recognize this, sir?’ He took a cigarette-case from his pocket and laid it on the desk between them. It was silver, engraved with the initials ‘JD’. Richard recognized it at once.

‘It belongs to Sir James.’

‘So his wife said.’

‘How did you come by it?’

Gow held him with a cold-eyed stare as he replied. ‘Clutched in Alfred Quinn’s hand, sir, when he was found. It was the devil of a job to prise it loose.’

Richard took a deep breath. ‘How did Quinn meet his death, Inspector?’

‘It seems he was in the habit of walking round his property each night before retiring, though whether to take the air or to check that all was secure I’m not clear. At all events, he was waylaid in the stable-yard and done to death in pretty horrible fashion. His head was held underwater in a horse-trough until he’d drowned – or suffocated, however you care to look at it. There was a hell of a struggle, as you might expect, but, by the time the servants had been roused by the commotion and come to investigate, Quinn was dead, with Sir James Davenall’s cigarette-case clasped in his hand. I assume the murderer hadn’t time to remove it before beating a retreat. The alarm was raised, of course, but it would have been easy enough for him to make good his escape across the fields.’

Richard said nothing, his mind racing to keep pace with the consequences of what Gow had told him. Roffey had followed James to Newmarket the previous Friday and seen him argue with Quinn. But murder? It tallied with none of the possible explanations of their relationship. And James, if he was nothing else, was a careful intelligent man. He would surely not leave such glaring evidence at
the
scene of a crime, however pressing the need of haste. Yet, if he had not left Cleave Court and gone to Newmarket, where had he gone and what had he done?

‘I gather Sir James visited Maxton Grange on the twenty-first of this month,’ Gow continued, ‘and that he and Quinn fell out about something. We don’t know what. Do you?’

‘No,’ said Richard emphatically. It had suddenly occurred to him that Gow might jump to all manner of outlandish conclusions if he knew Richard had employed Roffey to follow James.

‘Aren’t you going to leap to your cousin’s defence, sir?’ Gow asked, with what appeared to be a grin. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me it’s inconceivable he could have murdered his former valet?’

‘It is inconceivable, Inspector. But you don’t need me to tell you that this cigarette-case proves nothing.’

‘As to that, sir, I must disagree. We know Quinn was acquainted with his attacker. There was ash from his cigar near the trough, suggesting he’d stood there smoking for some time. There were also two cigarette ends from the same brand as those in the case: one of Sullivan’s most expensive – Sir James’s favourite, by his wife’s admission. So we know Quinn and his attacker must have stood talking before their differences took a violent turn. We also know Quinn can’t have anticipated what would happen. He carried a knife in his jacket, but never had a chance to use it. I make that a pretty strong case against Sir James. Don’t you?’

‘I … I’m not sure.’ Of anything, he might accurately have gone on to say. O’Shaughnessy’s failure to identify James had hit Richard hard. He had passed a depressed and lonely Christmas counting the probable cost of his grotesque misjudgement. Now he sensed, with the coming of this latest news, that vindication was at hand. But it was vindication in a form he did not recognize and at a price he did not care to pay.

‘Tell me, sir,’ Gow said, leaning across the desk, ‘how
did
Quinn come by the money to set himself up as a country gent?’