The Dollar Prince's Wife (23 page)

Apparently not. Dinah idly took another macaroon, and said cheerfully, after disposing of it, ‘No difficulty there, Violet. I've had so much practice in seeing you all keeping watch on your husbands' wandering eyes. And speaking of wandering eyes, when did we start talking like kitchen maids, Violet? Is it the latest thing in the Prince's set? If so, you must coach me. I wouldn't like to sound not completely
à la mode
, Cobie might not approve.'

She didn't believe that rubbish about Susanna Winthrop. On the other hand, she knew that there was a strong bond between them. No, it was merely Violet, mischief-making as usual.

Violet rose and prepared to take her leave. Dinah, looking aethereal in a pale amethyst tea gown—his choice, no doubt—was proving boringly unbaitable. She suddenly wanted to ask the unaskable, jealousy seizing her by the throat. ‘Tell me, is he a tiger in bed with you?' but some shred of caution remained to have her say briefly, ‘I'll see you this evening at Marlborough House, then. The Prince seems very taken with him.'

This was yet another reason for holding her tongue. Tum Tum wouldn't like it if she were to be cool to those whom he favoured, and unaccountably he was favouring not only Cobie Grant, but his delicate young wife.

 

Violet had hardly disappeared in a cloud of scent before Cobie returned from his visit to Scotland Yard.

‘Tea!' he exclaimed gratefully, and sank down into a
large armchair. Dinah thought that he looked tired. ‘Was that Violet I saw leaving?'

Dinah handed him his tea, Fortnum's best Chinese. ‘Yes. She came to scratch, but I think she tired of missing the target and left early.'

He made no answer, simply sat there, drinking his tea, a look of total abstraction on his face. She began to speak to him, but changed her mind at the last minute. Ever since she had seen him hanging between Mr Van Deusen and Bellenger Hodson in the early hours of the morning, she was sure that something was troubling him, and troubling him greatly.

Not that anything showed, other than to the keen observer she was becoming. Outwardly he was still in his usual state of calm control. But his manner that morning, in his bedroom, had been that of a man who had journeyed long and far away from her—and, she suspected, from everyone else.

He must, she thought, possess the sixth sense she had heard discussed by those interested in psychic phenomena, because he suddenly looked across at her, and said, oh so smoothly, ‘What's worrying you, Dinah?'

Now what could she say to that? You are, Cobie. I am sure that you are engaged in something secret, something hidden from the world, and Mr Van Deusen is in the secret with you. I am not sure that I really know you at all, that anyone really knows you—except perhaps Mr Van Deusen…and what does that tell me—about your past and his?

Instead she replied, seamlessly and without delay, so that he could have, she hoped, no idea of her inward questionings of him, ‘I was thinking about the Inspector who called this morning. I know I said that I would not pry into your affairs, but I wondered why he disliked you so much.'

She had surprised him again, and he must go carefully. On no account must she be burdened with the knowledge of what he was doing, of his secret life, of his determination to destroy Sir Ratcliffe Heneage for what he had done to Lizzie.

He gave her his charming smile. ‘I ran across him over a business matter, and I fear that I was not perhaps as tactful with him as I ought to have been. I think that he may also dislike all fine gentlemen, which may probably have reinforced his dislike. For all of which I am sorry.'

Nothing which he had said was truthful, but neither was it entirely untruthful, and if he knew when people were lying to him, he also knew when people were aware that he might be deceiving them, so he knew, immediately, that Dinah was aware that he was equivocating.

Yes, Dinah knew. She felt a bitter regret. She wanted to say, ‘I would like you to tell me the truth, Cobie, however unpalatable it might be. I may be young, but I am not a child. I would like to think that you could trust me.'

Instead she replied thoughtfully, ‘Yes, I suppose that such a person might resent someone like you—who appears to have everything.'

Which, all in all, was as equivocal as anything he had ever said to her, and if she was aware of what she had done—so was he. He wanted to bow to her, to confer on her some accolade—but the habit of many years of secrecy about not only his doings, but his feelings, was strong in him.

After he had gone, having favoured her with an almost absent-minded kiss on the top of her head—the sort of kiss one might reward a child with for being clever, thought Dinah acidly—she sat down and examined her own feelings.

It was time, she thought sadly, to come to terms with how she felt about him. Before she had married him she had hero-worshipped him, until he had been unkind to her—which had had something to do with Violet, she was sure. Cobie had once walked through her dreams like a distant adventurer in some romance she had read. Now that they were married, and she was his passionate partner in the game of love—for that was all it was to him, she was sure—she knew something else, something highly inconvenient.

He had begun to turn Dinah Freville from a raw girl, gauche and unsure, into a beautiful and assured woman, but he had also accomplished something else. In the doing he had caused her to fall passionately in love with him, so much so that when he was away from her she could hardly wait for him to return, could only envy and dislike all the other women to whom he had made love; worst of all, beside him every other man paled into insignificance.

For the first time she could understand Violet's jealousy of her for having won him, and the envious looks of virtually every other woman in society.

She tried telling herself that she was being foolish. He was only a man, after all, flawed and fallible as all men were, even the gods of legend whom he so much resembled. It was useless, particularly as she was becoming increasingly aware that she was beginning to share some strange bond with him.

That morning, when she had seen him on the bed, she had known that he had travelled far away from her. The other evening, after they had made love, and she was in a state which she had never achieved before, where her body had disappeared, and her mind as well, and only sensation
was left, she had touched him, and for a second he, the bed, and the room had disappeared.

She had arrived again in the strange land which she had only visited in her dreams. There was a great sky overhead, coloured with all the hues of the rainbow. It was hot, and the moon was casting strange shapes on to a desert floor.

Suddenly, the desert vanished, and she was running down a narrow alley, away from someone—she had no idea who…then that vanished and she was in a room, about to look down on something, and something inside her screamed
no
…

And she was back on the bed with him, and he was saying, a little anxiously, ‘Dinah, are you feeling ill? For a moment there you seemed to have lost consciousness. I have been too rough with you, tonight,' and his voice was full of remorse.

She had sat up, and said vigorously, although her head was swimming a little, ‘Oh, no, Cobie. It was wonderful. So wonderful that I lost myself for a moment, that was all.'

For some reason she didn't want to tell him of her visions. Now, remembering, she thought, But were they
my
visions? Or were they his?

He had kissed her, she remembered, gently this time, laughing a little at her artless delight in their lovemaking. But the visions stayed with her, and they served to tie her even more completely to him. For whatever he felt for her, for Dinah, her husband was her whole world.

‘I
only came to warn you to be discreet.'

The grey man who stood in the bow window of Sir Ratcliffe Heneage's study spoke with his face averted, looking down into the street below. ‘My masters would not care for an open scandal, you understand. They will protect you—within limits—for a reason of which you are well aware.'

Sir Ratcliffe tried to pretend ignorance. He said as coldly as he could, ‘I can't say that I understand of what you speak.'

‘No? I am quite sure that you do. You have been neither discreet nor careful lately. The last bolt-hole which you chose for your pleasure was an unwise one. Unlike Madame Louise's, it was not protected.'

‘Madame Louise's protected!' There was suppressed anger in Sir Ratcliffe's voice. ‘How protected was that? It was only by great good fortune that I was not present when she was raided.'

‘Not good fortune,' returned the anonymous grey man. ‘You were sent a specific warning to stay away that week, a warning of which
I
am well aware—for I sent it. Had we known then that it was your careless folly in allowing a
child to escape which brought about the raid, you would not have been warned.'

‘Not my folly,' replied Sir Ratcliffe through gritted teeth. ‘Hoskyns's folly.'

‘For which he has paid with his life. It was he who procured the child for you in the first place, and he who kidnapped her for your pleasure a week ago. My God, man, it was your vile habits and Hoskyns's desire for revenge which resulted in the child being taken, dead, from the Thames.'

He saw Sir Ratcliffe's face change, ‘You were not aware that the child's body was found almost immediately? That Hoskyns is dead, and that his brothel was burned about him—arson, undoubtedly?'

Fear gnawed at Sir Ratcliffe. ‘You are sure of this?'

‘Do you take me for as big a fool as you are? Of course I'm sure, and sure, too, of who rescued the girl child in the first place, and put her in a home run by the Salvation Army. He set the fire, and almost certainly killed Hoskyns when he discovered that her death had come about in Hoskyns's house. You'll be his next target, be sure of that.'

‘The police,' said Sir Ratcliffe hoarsely. ‘They will surely not condone murder and attempted murder. If you know who killed Hoskyns and might kill me, why is he still at large?'

‘Because although they are sure who the man is, the police can prove nothing. My information is that he was tricky enough to arrange matters so that there is no clear evidence against him. He was seen elsewhere again and again that night. I am here to warn you to go warily…' He paused. ‘Such evidence as exists is unofficial, and was gained by devious and unauthorised means.'

Sir Ratcliffe said roughly, ‘Be plain, man. Tell me his name.'

The man in grey shrugged. ‘That I cannot do. I can only tell you to be cautious. I would advise you to live a pure life, but I doubt that that is possible for you. In any case, it might not be enough to save you.'

‘Anything. I will promise anything.' He was frantic, the more so because he knew, deep down, that once the desire to please himself was on him there was little he could do to check himself. He added desperately, to try to pacify the man before him. ‘I know that I have been careless, but not again, I promise you.'

The grey man stared at him, dislike written on his anonymous face. ‘I hope you mean that,' he said, ‘I really do. You have been so grossly careless in your behaviour that I, personally, find it hard to believe that you will behave yourself in future. Be warned. Your masters and mine will tolerate much from you, but they will not tolerate conduct which puts the good name of this country, and its government, at risk.'

There was nothing for it but to swallow the bitter pill of a reprimand delivered by a man of lower station than himself, and privately decide that he would do his damnedest to find out his pursuer and dispose of him whatever the faceless ones behind his interlocutor might say or do.

 

Unaware that Walker had passed his suspicions to the Commissioner, who had complainingly passed them on to a higher authority who had at last taken Walker's report seriously, Cobie continued to behave as apparently innocently as possible.

He
was
aware, however, that he had greatly underestimated his young wife. Oh, she was learning fast, was she
not! He had expected her to grow and mature after marriage, but not at the rate which she was currently displaying.

What he had not expected was that she would immediately guess that he and Hendrick had been up to some mischief on the night of Hoskyns's death. For her own sake—and his—she must never know what he had done. The thought that she might become a target for Sir Ratcliffe, if he discovered who was after him, set him shuddering—and deciding that the sooner the man was dealt with, the better.

He had not taken Hendrick into his confidence, either, nor had Hendrick demanded to know why he had burned the brothel down, and—possibly—disposed of Hoskyns.

‘No, don't tell me, Jake, what you're up to now,' he had said when they left Scotland Yard. ‘The less I know, the less I can inadvertently give away. All I can say is, be careful, and if you need your back guarded again, you know where to find me.'

What Walker did not know, and what the Commissioner did not see fit to tell him, was that although higher authority had taken his report seriously enough for it to end up with the grey man, that same authority had told him to tell Walker quite otherwise, and that his surveillance of the man he suspected was to cease.

‘Gawd,' said Bates to Alcott, after Walker had broken the news to them, ‘he's in a right old temper about being told to lay off Grant. Bit my head off, he did, about that there book you lent me. He found me reading it when I was suppose to be writing up my report on that fence we nicked. Would have thrown it away if I hadn't told him it was yours.'

It was after being informed by the Commissioner that he was to forget Grant and all his works that Walker had dis
covered Bates surreptitiously reading a paperback book which had been imported from America.

‘What the devil are you up to now, you lazy dog?' he had roared, snatching the book from Bates's knee. ‘Get on with what you're paid for, and I'll dispose of this.'

‘It's not mine,' said Bates fearfully. ‘Alcott lent it to me.'

‘So he's reading this rubbish, too, and in work time, I suppose. What have I done to be gifted with such rare idiots?'

He flung the book down on his own desk after reading the title on a cover illustrated by a lurid drawing of one man shooting down another in a desert setting behind a title which read
The Wild, Wild West
.

No sooner had he done so than he remembered something which Captain Legge had told him: that Cobie Grant had spent part of his youth in outlaw territory in New Mexico. It was information which he had kept to himself, for it didn't seem to assist his current investigation of the villain he knew Grant to be.

He picked the book up again and began leafing through it. Most of it was old stuff about Davy Crockett and the Alamo, Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill, of whose Western show even Walker had heard.

The last chapter was entitled ‘Boy gunmen of the West: Billy the Kid and others, plus the mystery of Jumpin' Jake Coburn and his taking of San Miguel'.

San Miguel! Wasn't that the township in New Mexico which Legge had told him that Cobie Grant might have visited? Intrigued, he turned to the end of the chapter, to learn that Coburn had been a young man of about twenty who had turned up one day in New Mexico from God knows where. He had become the chief henchman and shootist of one of the outlaw bands which took refuge in a
valley there appropriately named Hell's End. The band had been led by the infamous Blake Underwood. There Coburn had robbed banks, blown up a train, and gone on to kill Big Ben Hawke, the outlaw who ran San Miguel, the town nearest to Hell's End. He had taken it over and run it himself before riding away one morning, never to return, and never to be heard of again anywhere.

His origins and his destination were alike mysterious. He had disappeared as effectively as though he had never lived. It was thought that he might have died in the desert. Oddly enough, the writer ended, like Billy the Kid, he was supposed to be a left-handed gun.

Left-handed! Grant was left-handed—or perhaps a better word would be ambidextrous. His Christian name was Jacobus. Was he ever known as Jake? Half of Coburn was half of Cobie, and Jumpin' Jake would be a highly suitable nickname for the way Grant carried on when he wasn't being a good imitation of a languid English aristocrat and was running around being Mr Dilley instead!

And twenty—this had all happened ten years ago when Grant would have been twenty—and was known to be in New Mexico. It all fit—or did it?

Walker stared at the woodcut of a hairy, young, pony-tailed tearaway with a Colt in his hand which adorned this unlikely tale. Was he going mad, to see Grant in every nook and cranny into which he looked? Bates and Alcott plainly thought he was, and now the Commissioner obviously considered him to have lost his common sense where Grant was concerned.

Nevertheless…Walker shook his head. It wouldn't do any harm for him to treat Grant as warily as he might have treated the young hooligan, Coburn, if he had ever had the misfortune to meet him. In the meantime, damn the Com
missioner, and damn everyone else—he, Walker, would continue to investigate Grant, in his own time, if not the Yard's.

 

Sir Alan Dilhorne had invited the Grants to his splendid palace in Piccadilly for a little dinner. Sir Alan, Cobie's unacknowledged uncle, was enjoying what he had told them was his last London Season. His beautiful wife had died two years ago, and it was time, he said, that he retired to Yorkshire for good.

What amused Dinah more than anything else, remembering the condition they had been in the other night, was how sober Cobie and Mr Van Deusen looked, how delightfully respectable. She smiled to herself a little while recalling how she and her husband had spent the afternoon…

Once again Mr and Mrs Grant had not been At Home. Instead they had repaired to the bedroom where Cobie, somewhat recovered from his depression after Lizzie's death, had entertained her with music after the more earthy delights they had enjoyed were over.

As well as Cobie and Dinah, Sir Alan had invited Hendrick Van Deusen, and Bellenger Hodson and his wife. Mr Van Deusen, always avid for knowledge, had discovered that Sir Alan's father had been transported to Australia where he had won for himself a massive fortune and created a dynasty.

In the drawing room where they all sat, waiting for dinner to be served, he stared curiously at a painting of someone called Sir Beauchamp Hatton, done in the 1780s, which hung in a place of honour over the hearth. The remarkable thing about it, from Mr Van Deusen's point of view, was that it might have been a painting of his friend, the erstwhile Western gunman and outlaw, Mr Jacobus Grant, so
like was he to the handsome and arrogant man who had lived over a hundred years ago.

Sir Alan had registered Mr Van Deusen's curiosity. Mr Van Deusen, for his part, had already noticed that, despite his years, Sir Alan missed little of what went on about him. In that, his friend Jake resembled him greatly.

‘I see that you are admiring my Gainsborough,' Sir Alan said. ‘It is one of two which he painted of my wife's ancestor, Sir Beauchamp Hatton. The other, larger one hangs in my place in Yorkshire. Do not be deceived by his beauty. There was nothing effeminate about him: he was a hard man, who could be cruel on occasion.' Was it a coincidence that he had looked across at his unacknowledged nephew while he was speaking?

And what was the connection, Mr Van Deusen wondered, between Sir Beauchamp, Sir Alan and Cobie Grant—who was so amazingly like both of them? He thought that it might not be wise to ask, given the erratic behaviour of the aristocracy at that period—and now, too, for that matter.

Instead he began quizzing Sir Alan gently about his father, the transported convict: a man of whom he was obviously proud and of whom he was quite willing to speak.

‘We used to call him the Patriarch,' Sir Alan said. ‘It was only half a joke. He was a most remarkable man.'

He saw that he had his audience's attention, and added, ‘Not long before she died, my mother told me the truth of her marriage. It seems that, being gently born, but desperately poor, he rescued her from penury by marrying her. But given the disparity in their years and their station, she being a gentlewoman and he a transported thief, something he never hid, he delayed making her his true wife until some time after they were married. Indeed, I gathered from
my mother, although she gave me no details, that he had tricked her into marriage. Despite his trickery it became a true love match, rare then—and even rarer now.'

He paused, lost in thought: his mind had retreated nearly sixty years into the past.

‘She had an air of your wife about her, Jacobus,' he said slowly, and wondered why his nephew should have given him a look, an oddly subtle look, which he recognised—a look he associated with the Patriarch.

The old man had been devious, devilish devious, as was this young one, who resembled him so greatly in both looks and character. He remembered something which his brother Jack had said a little bitterly of his unacknowledged son, ‘When I am with Cobie it is as though the Patriarch was back on earth again. If anything he's even trickier and more ruthless than the Patriarch ever was.'

So the line held true. None of Sir Alan's sons or grandsons bore the look of, or resembled in character, the Patriarch, but his bastard grandson did. What was more, something which he had just said had amused that grandson.

‘My father made his own law,' Sir Alan said reflectively, ‘which I believe to be much more difficult in these over-civilised days. It was easier for him because, in a frontier society like Australia nearly eighty years ago, the law was a more fragile thing. As I understand it was, until recently, in the American Southwest.'