The Silent Boy (48 page)

‘And Mr Malbourne?’ Savill said, thinking of Lizzie. ‘Was he privy to this?’

‘I believe not. He was in Paris to arrange courier routes and ciphers for the British Embassy. His role in this has been entirely innocent. Mr Rampton kept his connection with Mrs Savill to himself. Understandably.’

By this time, the political situation had altered, and it was clear to everyone that the liberal monarchists had had their day. The Count’s party had contrived not only to lose the confidence of the King and the royalist party but also to gain the enmity of the Republicans who now held sway in Paris. Mr Rampton was no longer willing to spend his government’s gold for information about them.

Fournier wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. ‘That was when Mrs Savill made her fatal mistake. She had letters in her possession, letters from Mr Rampton dating back to her years in Rome. According to her, they revealed her uncle’s passion for her, and the fact that it had been consummated.’

So Augusta, Savill thought, had been greedy. He said: ‘What did she want?’

‘A lifetime interest in a lease on a house in Dublin or York, because too many people might remember her here in London.’ Fournier spoke with a marked lack of expression, as if reading from a list. ‘An annuity of five hundred pounds; Charles to be educated as a gentleman; and, when he came to maturity, to be set up in a position befitting his rank in life.’

‘She always knew what she desired.’

‘But not what she could have.’

‘Did she make her demands in person?’

‘Yes,’ Fournier said. ‘On the night they stormed the Tuileries. Rampton met her by arrangement. She was living in hiding in a little cottage near the Rue de Richelieu. He refused her demands. She threatened to expose him. He tried to seize the letters. There was a struggle.’ Fournier stopped and swallowed. ‘Forgive me. This must be inexpressibly painful for you. There was a struggle, in the course of which he threw oil of vitriol in her face.’

Savill grappled with the detail, a distraction: ‘How did he come by it?’

‘In Paris, several gentlemen of my acquaintance have taken to carrying phials of it in their waistcoat pockets. The streets are not safe. Nowhere is. In this case, the vitriol, though agonizing, was not dangerous to life. But immediately afterwards, Mr Rampton stabbed her in three places, puncturing a lung. Then he took the letters and left her bleeding to death, as he thought, with the mob baying at the door.’

‘Were you there? You are very well informed.’

‘I knew of the meeting, though not about what she intended to discuss with her uncle.’ For the first time, Fournier showed a trace of awkwardness. ‘There was a possibility that she might have acted as an intermediary between me and the Black Letter Office. In, as it were, a private capacity.’

He waved away this delicate, stillborn idea.

Savill stared at the crucifix and wondered who had put it there. ‘Who found her?’

‘It was I. She was unconscious. After that, there’s little more to say. The Count insisted that we bring her to England. His sense of
noblesse
is so very strong. We could not make arrangements to get her out of Paris until late September – and in any case she wasn’t well enough to travel until then.’

‘Was she at Charnwood? While I was there?’

Fournier shook his head. ‘We could hardly have concealed her in Norbury. We brought her here. Not that it has answered, I’m afraid – she grew worse, not better; and then, like so many people in this warm winter, she fell ill with a fever of a putrid tendency. It proved fatal in her weakened state.’

‘And Charles? Where was he when Rampton attacked his mother?’

‘Augusta told Rampton that the boy was with his old nurse in the country. In fact he was sleeping in a cupboard nearby. She’d told the boy that if he chanced to wake, he must not disturb her, that there was important business she had to transact, a matter of life and death. She said he must promise never to speak of it to anyone, that it would endanger both their lives if he did.’

‘But he saw,’ Savill said.

‘Certainly he heard. And probably he saw something too. At all events, he fled. Poor child.’

‘And he has kept his word.’

Fournier’s crooked eyebrows rose. ‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Charles has said nothing,’ Savill said. ‘To anyone. Nothing at all.’

Savill drew out his purse and removed two ha’pence. He stooped and kissed his wife’s forehead. It felt like cold leather.

Her eyes looked up at nothing. He closed the lids, one by one, with his forefinger, and weighted each with a ha’penny. He turned the copper discs so Britannia was uppermost, not the King’s head. He drew the sheet over his wife’s face.

He straightened and looked down at her. He wondered if he should pray. But he felt nothing whatsoever, and to pray for nothing seemed in itself a form of blasphemy.

‘You almost saw her, you know,’ Fournier said.

He turned to him. ‘My wife? When?’

‘On Sunday. Mrs West lent me her carriage. I knew you projected an expedition to Bedford Square if the weather was tolerably fine – Miss Horton told me. Mrs Savill was very ill, but she made herself worse by demanding to be taken to see you. In the end, Dr Gohlis said it might well kill her if she did not go, and it could not make matters much worse if she did.’

Savill thought about the carriage they had seen driving slowly along the railings. ‘Yes. You waved.’

‘Indeed. That was the third time we had been around the square. She wore a veil and sat well back. There was no danger of her being recognized.’

‘She wanted to see Charles for one last time,’ Savill said. ‘That was natural. And perhaps Lizzie, too.’

‘Oh yes, both of them. She said they were fine children. But she wanted to see you as well.’

Savill shrugged and turned away.

But Fournier would not let him go so easily. ‘She said that she wished she could make time run backwards. So when she came back to you, she might change its course.’

Fournier accompanied him downstairs and, at the street door, offered Savill his hand.

‘Thank you,’ Savill said, raising his voice to be heard over the din of the street. ‘If I can serve you in any way, pray let me know.’ He released Fournier’s hand and was about to go when a thought struck him. ‘I had quite forgot. What about the burial?’

‘It’s in hand, sir. The doctor and I have already made the arrangements. She was received into the Catholic Church as Madame von Streicher, and it would be simpler if she were buried under that name and according to those rites.’

Savill drew closer and lowered his voice. ‘And the documents I have?’

‘Concerning her death in Paris under the name of Augusta Savill? They are perfectly valid.’ Fournier nodded, as if he followed the current of Savill’s thoughts as well as Savill did himself. ‘You will have no difficulty in establishing her death in a court of law, should you wish to, particularly in the absence of anyone to challenge you. We found another body, you see, Gohlis and I. There was no shortage of them at the time, and the city could not cope with their disposal.’

‘I shall pay for the interment, of course, and any other costs,’ Savill said. ‘Pray have them direct their bills to me at Nightingale Lane.’

‘That will not be necessary. Monsieur de Quillon will defray the expenses.’

‘No, sir. I shall. It is my right.’

‘The Count insists.’

‘There is no need for him to play Don Quixote any more. Convey my compliments to him, sir, thank him for his generosity, and say that it is no longer required.’

‘It occurs to me, sir,’ Fournier said, ‘that you and he are two of a kind.’ He paused, and then added softly: ‘Let him pay for the burial, my dear sir, I beg of you. After all, you have the boy.’

They are playing a game in the parlour, Charles and Lizzie. It is a very childish game.

There is a fire in the grate but they have moved away from it, away from the firelight to the darkest corner of the room. They have a solitary candle on the table and they are taking it in turns to make shadow shapes with their hands on the wall behind it. The game is that you have to guess what the shape is.

Charles does an elephant first, and that is easy for Lizzie to guess because of the trunk. She does a bird with a big beak that opens and shuts. It is perfectly recognizable as a bird but Charles cannot say what it is. So – just this once, and because it is only Lizzie – he forms the letter B with his finger on the wall by the shadow.

‘B,’ she cries.

He makes an I and then an R, after which she says ‘bird’ aloud, saying it cannot be anything other.

Now it is his turn to make the shadow, and he does a boar’s head with tusks. It is a remarkably lifelike creation, he thinks, but for all that Lizzie cannot work out what it is. She tries dog, cat, cow, and even rhinoceros.

Each time, he shakes his head. It is only Lizzie, after all, his sister, and shaking one’s head is not like speaking.

‘Oh – it’s so provoking,’ she cries. ‘Can you not give me a hint?’

A devil of mischief possesses him. He snuffles and snorts.

‘A pig!’ she cries, and he nods, though in point of fact it is a wild boar, and then she starts to laugh because the snuffling and snorting is so unspeakably droll.

So does he. Together they snuffle and snort and laugh as if they were children still in leading strings.

The parlour door opens.

The laughter dies, his and Lizzie’s.

There is Mr Savill on the threshold. He must have come in by the yard, or they would have heard him knock, and heard the servant sliding the bars and bolts. He is late home, much later than expected.

Mr Savill holds on to the jamb of the door. Even in this light, his face looks flushed. He is in liquor, Charles suspects, for it is a fact that many gentlemen sometimes are.

Lizzie runs to him, and he kisses her cheek.

He looks over her head at Charles. ‘Come here,’ he says.

Charles obeys. He smells the wine on Mr Savill’s breath.

Mr Savill drapes his arm across Charles’s shoulder.

‘Come,’ he says. ‘I find I’m a trifle unsteady on my feet this evening, and you must support me into the dining room. Your aunt says you may stay up late tonight and join us for supper.’

August, 1778. British-controlled Manhattan is a melting pot of soldiers, traitors and refugees, surrounded by rebel forces as the American War of I independence rages on.

Into this simmering tension sails Edward Savill, a London clerk tasked with assessing the claims of loyalists who have lost out during the war.

Savill lodges with the ageing Judge Wintour, his ailing wife, and their enigmatic daughter-in-law Arabella. However, as Savill soon learns, what the Wintours have lost in wealth, they have gained in secrets.

The murder of a gentleman in the slums pulls Savill into the city's underbelly. But when life is so cheap, why does one death matter? Because making a nation is a lucrative business, and some people cannot afford to miss out, whatever the price …

Click
here
to buy
The Scent of Death

Andrew Taylor is the author of a number of novels, including the Dougal and Lydmouth crime series, the historical thrillers
The Scent of Death
,
Bleeding Heart Square
and
The Anatomy Of Ghosts
, the ground-breaking Roth Trilogy, which was adapted into the acclaimed drama
Fallen Angel
, and
The American Boy
, his No. 1 bestselling historical novel which was a 2005 Richard & Judy Book Club choice.

He has won many awards, including the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger, an Edgar Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America, the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award (the only author to win it three times) and the CWA’s prestigious Diamond Dagger, awarded for sustained excellence in crime writing. He also writes for the
Spectator
.

He lives with his wife Caroline in the Forest of Dean.

www.andrew-taylor.co.uk

@AndrewJRTaylor

The Scent of Death

The Anatomy Of Ghosts

Bleeding Heart Square

The American Boy

A Stain On The Silence

The Barred Window

The Raven On The Water

The Roth Trilogy: Fallen Angel

The Four Last Things

The Judgement Of Strangers

The Office Of The Dead

The Lydmouth Series

The Blaines Novels

The Dougal Series

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.