When the Devil Drives (18 page)

We wished her goodbye. I had my hand on the door when she spoke again.

‘Another thing I could have told them at the inquest: she'd never have gone all the way to the top of the Monument of her own free will. She hated heights. If anything had to go up on the top shelf, I had to do it because she couldn't even stand on those steps.'

She pointed to portable wooden steps, the topmost of them no more than waist high.

‘She was taken up there by force, just as she was taken away from here by force,' she said. ‘If you or anybody can tell me why or who by, perhaps I'll be able to sleep at nights because I can't. Not now.'

‘So she didn't throw herself off,' Tabby said as we walked back westwards.

‘No, not unless her sister was telling us lies. Was she?'

‘No.'

Tabby's flat certainty matched mine. Miss Priest hadn't known we were coming. Why should she have lies ready? But more than that, my instinct too was that she was no liar.

‘So was it the foreign gentleman took her away?' Tabby said.

‘We can't know. He might have had nothing to do with it.'

‘Seems a lot of fuss to make about pen nibs.'

‘Some people are very fussy about pen nibs.'

She accepted that, although grudgingly.

‘At any rate, somebody had been keeping that shop under observation,' I said. ‘You heard what she said about giving her father his tea at six o'clock?'

‘She said she always did.'

‘Exactly. So somebody who'd been watching them would know Janet was always alone in the shop at six o'clock, probably without customers.'

‘If somebody took her away, why didn't she kick up a row? I would have.'

‘Perhaps she was tricked. Suppose somebody said there was a child or even a dog hurt and she went out to help.'

‘Yes, then they might have pulled her inside the carriage and knocked her on the head,' Tabby said. ‘After that, they carted her up the Monument and threw her off, like the old man Gaffer told me.'

‘Only that happened a week later. Where did they keep her all that week, and why?'

Which brought us back to the central question. For somebody, it hadn't been enough that the two women should die: it must appear to happen in the most public manner possible and at some particular time. Why? We were no further with that by the time we arrived home.

ELEVEN

F
or once, there was a pleasant surprise waiting – a note from one of my best friends, Beatrice Talbot.

Beatrice Talbot's husband was a wealthy businessman from Yorkshire and they kept a hospitable house in Belgrave Square. We'd met because I taught music to their large family and even though my investigative work had taken over from most of my teaching, I kept up my visits to them for the pleasure of it. My first thought was that I could not go jaunting off to the opera when so much sadness was happening round me. Then I thought how good it would be to forget about it for a few hours. The delivery later of the green velvet dress convinced me. It deserved a carriage to Drury Lane for its first outing. Before I changed I went to let Tabby know that I was going out and found her in the mews with some of her stable lad friends, back in street-urchin mode. They were decent lads essentially and as good as a bodyguard for her, so I felt secure about leaving her.

A fourth member of our party arrived in the box just a few minutes before the overture started. He was a man of about my own age with dark curls and a smile of such open enjoyment that my spirits rose just to look at him. George Talbot introduced him as Michael Calloway, who worked at the Foreign Office.

‘For my sins,' he said. ‘That's the excuse for my atrocious unpunctuality. They kept their poor galley slaves working so late, I scarcely had time to go home and change.'

From his manner, I guessed he was by no means a galley slave but a young diplomat learning his trade before being sent to some foreign embassy. A man appeared in front of the curtains to explain that Mr Collins would be singing, bravely, in spite of a bad cold. It was a pleasant enough piece, but not first rate, with a rather depressed chorus of fairies who sounded as if they too were suffering from Mr Collins' cold.

At the interval, the Talbots had arranged for supper to be served to us in our box. From the way Beattie glanced at Mr Calloway and me as we were forking up our chicken in aspic, I suspected her of matchmaking. With the instant understanding of two people who like each other on sight, but without romantic complications, Mr Calloway and I exchanged our own looks, which said we were not playing that game. Once that was decided, I was free to enjoy his gossip about life at the Foreign Office.

‘There we all were, a nice quiet Saturday morning with only a few messages coming in from the cipher clerks, feet up on our desks, looking forward to being out of harness by lunchtime. Then, a hawk in the dovecote. A panting messenger arrives with the news that our esteemed chief, whom we'd all assumed to be safely occupied at Windsor being bored to distraction by the happy couple, has been sighted in Whitehall. Feet off desks, novels into filing cabinets, immediate Pam alert.'

He mimed wide-eyed civil servants, straightening collars and smoothing hair. Pam was the irreverent name for our formidable Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston. Even heads of state would not lightly annoy him, let alone young civil servants.

‘So we all sit there, shining with alertness, waiting for Pam to burst in and tell us what international crisis has brought him rushing back from Windsor to London on a weekend. Is there another revolution in Paris? Have the Ottomans insulted us? Where should we send the gunboat? So we sit and we shine and we wait and at the end of it – nothing happens.'

‘So the crisis must have gone away of its own accord,' Beattie suggested.

‘If so, it managed it without the help of the Foreign Office. At half past five word gets round that Pam has gone straight back to Windsor without even setting foot in the building.'

I hoped I didn't look guilty. Were the contessa and I responsible for the strange behaviour of our most senior statesmen? The letter I'd delivered to His Highness might have made the Foreign Office uneasy about a threat to the dignity of their royal visitor. George Talbot said there must surely be some reason for the Foreign Secretary's return to the capital. Calloway shrugged.

‘Who knows. Perhaps he'd forgotten his dress studs. Perhaps he was attempting to escape from the Windsor treadmill and our sovereign lady had him rounded up and brought back.'

Over the dessert of raspberry ices, Beattie asked Calloway if court life at Windsor were really so boring. He admitted that he had no direct experience of it, but the head of his department had to make frequent trips to Windsor Castle when Pam was in attendance there.

‘From what he says, it's the combination of Love's Young Dream and all that formality which makes it such a burden for everybody else. Can you imagine, the pair of them riding together in Windsor Great Park and about thirty assorted courtiers and statesmen of various nationalities riding at a respectful distance behind them, pretending not to be there?'

It was clear that the engagement of Victoria and Albert, although still not officially announced, was already a fact of life in Whitehall.

‘They really love each other then?' Beattie said.

‘Evidently. At least it's not one of those diplomatic marriages where the two parties can hardly bear to be in the same room. I'm told she looks at him as if the sun rises in his eyes.'

‘What about him?' I said.

‘Almost equally devoted, it's said. Though he's a young man of such impeccable breeding and virtue, it's hard to tell what he really thinks.'

‘Is any man's virtue impeccable?' I asked, teasing him.

‘Albert's is, I'm sure. He's unbelievably serious minded. A friend of mine met him, and within two minutes Albert was quizzing him about workers' housing in Birmingham. His Highness had more facts and figures at his fingertips than an entire committee.'

‘It's no bad thing for a young man to be serious, with such burdens ahead of him,' George Talbot said.

Calloway arranged his features into diplomatic agreement. ‘And perhaps we should all give thanks to Cupid that it was young Albert who won her affections and not his elder brother.'

‘Is Prince Ernest not so virtuous then?' I asked.

‘Not quite,' Calloway said.

He and George exchanged a look that said some things were not to be discussed in front of ladies, which annoyed me. George turned the conversation to diplomacy. ‘I suppose there are some countries which won't be entirely pleased with the arrangement.'

‘Quite true,' Calloway said. ‘I know the prime minister had reservations on that score. The Coburgs aren't popular abroad and the Russians hate them. Some people think Albert's Uncle Leopold won't rest until there's a Saxe Coburg on every throne in Europe.'

‘I thought she was going to marry the Czar's son,' Beattie said.

‘That was a distinct possibility back in the spring. I'm sure there'll be some disappointment in St Petersburg. I dare say Austria will have reservations too, which is amusing since Kolowrath is actually a guest at Windsor at present.'

‘Kolowrath?' I asked.

I suspected that the Talbots didn't recognize the name either but didn't want to show their ignorance by asking. I had no shame on that score.

‘Count Anton Graf von Kolowrath, the Austrian minister of the interior and Prince Metternich's right-hand man, though he'd probably be quite happy to see Metternich go under the wheels of a coach.'

‘Like quite a lot of other people,' Talbot commented.

In European politics, Metternich was generally regarded as the prince of darkness, capable of any kind of diplomatic double dealing.

‘Yes,' Calloway said. ‘I'd give quite a few guineas to be there when Count Kolowrath has to give formal congratulations to the happy couple.'

I felt sorry for little Vicky. She was only twenty years old after all, and the whole world was taking an interest in what should be the private matter of choosing a husband. If I became annoyed sometimes at my friends' matchmaking attempts, how much worse it must have been for her.

We finished our raspberry ices as the orchestra began to file back into the pit and settled to more fairies and a ballet about Mars and Venus that had probably been grafted in from some other opera. In the foyer after the performance, Mr Calloway helped me deftly into my cloak. We were halfway to the door when George Talbot spotted a friend of his who was a member of parliament with a particular interest in foreign affairs. One of the many amiable things about George was that he never missed an opportunity to advance a protégé's career, so Calloway and I had to be introduced to the MP and serious chat followed, with the crowd surging round us like the outgoing tide round a rock. I was only half listening to exchanges about some trade agreement when something in the sea of people caught my eye. It was the briefest of looks, a dark head of hair and a light-footed way of walking even in a crowd. Oddly, I had the impression that, at the moment I'd glimpsed him, he'd only just started walking and until then had been standing still, as we were. A person may stop walking for many reasons and London is full of dark-haired men, but I was immediately sure that he was the man I knew as Mr Clyde and he'd been staring at me. He went on, out of the door. You can't go running after men in public places. Then, as usually happens, I was not so sure after all. If it had been Mr Clyde, might he have paused, hoping to speak to me, then decided against it? By the time my party had got outside, there was no sign of him or anybody like him on the pavement.

We all went together to find the Talbots' carriage. Calloway handed me in, hoped we'd meet again then wished us goodnight, because his rooms weren't far away.

‘Did you like him?' Beattie asked, as soon as our wheels were rolling.

‘Yes. He's very entertaining.'

Beattie looked at me, trying to make out my expression from the headlamps of an oncoming carriage.

‘No more than entertaining?'

‘Heaven knows, that's rare enough.'

Until that possible sighting of Mr Clyde reminded me of business, I'd enjoyed the few hours' respite and friendship and was grateful. I craved warmth and kindness, like a cat hungry for cream.

‘Is there somebody else?' Beattie said.

‘I think so, yes. But he's away in Ireland.'

‘Only think so?'

George told her to stop plaguing the poor girl with questions and turned the conversation to what I thought of the evening's performance. They dropped me off at the gateway to Abel Yard, promising that we'd meet again soon for a musical evening at their home.