A Corpse in Shining Armour (35 page)

Then I thought that a madman’s will would have no legal force, so Lord Brinkburn must have laid down all these arrangements
while he still passed for sane. Had he chosen his final resting place because his first wife had died there? If so, it was
the first and last sign of softness I’d heard of in the monstrous man. I supposed there’d be no such pomp for Lady Brinkburn.
As soon as the coroner allowed, she’d probably be buried in the village churchyard as quietly as she’d lived, with the hated
Handy just the other side of the wall. It was odd that three of the people who’d set out from Newcastle on that not exactly
honeymoon tour twenty-three years ago had died within two weeks of each other.

‘When’s this cortège setting out?’ I said.

‘Midday tomorrow. Soon as he dries off, I’m taking this one and the mare over to Kingston, to be ready.’

‘I suppose the Brinkburn sons will have to be there tomorrow?’

‘Bound to be.’

Amos strolled up a few doors to another loosebox. A broad black face looked over the door and accepted a piece of carrot from
him.

‘Quiet as a cushion, this one,’ he said. ‘Didn’t give us no trouble. Useful mare, schooled to side saddle as well as driving.’

He looked at me.

‘Nice ride to Kingston, across Richmond Park. I was going to ride the other one and lead the mare, but I could just as easy
have a saddle put on her.’

I was about to say I couldn’t go jaunting out to the country. I’d lost Tabby, my case had collapsed round me so I could expect
no fee, and I had no idea what to do next. Then I thought,
Why not?

‘So I’d better go home and change into my riding costume,’ I said.

He grinned.

‘I’ll have her ready by the time you get back.’

As I walked to Abel Yard, I realised that the attraction of a long ride in the country was not the only reason for my decision.
The absurd funeral cortège was the nearest I’d ever get to the man who’d been the cause of so much trouble. I wanted to see
him on the road behind his six black horses, with his sons paying their last respects to a man who’d done nothing to deserve
respect. Since I’d followed him, through the journal, on one decisive journey of his life, it was fitting in its way that
I’d see him set out on his last one.

A man was waiting outside my locked door at Abel Yard. He had the look of a superior domestic servant who’d been unfairly
put upon, standing with bent head and drooping shoulders as a protest about being kept waiting. He’d have been more comfortable
sitting on the mounting block in the shade, but that would have deprived him of his sense of grievance.

‘Miss Lane? I was instructed to deliver this directly into your hands.’

He handed me a folded and sealed paper, with an air that said he wasn’t accustomed to being used as a messenger boy, and left
without asking whether there was a reply. I recognised the handwriting as Disraeli’s. The message was short.

Dear Miss Lane,

There has been an unexpected development in the case which concerns us. If a certain report which has come to me is true,
matters are not as we have been led to believe. I should be grateful for a chance to discuss the situation with you. I am
escorting Mary Anne to a recital this evening. I enclose a ticket in the hope that we may meet there.

I unlocked the door and went upstairs, not knowing whether to be annoyed or amused. It was typical of my association with
Disraeli that he should have suggested a public place for our meeting, including, in this case, his bride-to-be as chaperone.
I could never decide whether this was from concern for my reputation or his own. From experience, he would contrive a few
minutes for us to be alone among the fashionable crowd and have our conference. It was typical, too, that he should assume
I had nothing better to do with my time and not tell his servant to wait for a reply. He’d count on my curiosity, if not my
obedience, to ensure that I did as he wanted. Well, this time he was wrong. I was looking forward too much to my long ride
with Amos and my curiosity wasn’t in the least piqued because I was sure I already knew what Disraeli wanted to tell me. He
prided himself on knowing what was happening everywhere and would have heard by now that Lady Brinkburn had signed a paper
naming her younger son as legal heir. Old news, as far as I was concerned. I looked forward to telling him so when we met,
but that could wait now until after the funeral.

By evening, Amos and I were cantering together across Richmond Park, with the sun going down behind the old oak trees and
red deer running beside us. Amos had to hold the big gelding back so that my mare could keep up, and I missed Rancie’s speed
and lightness of foot. Still, she was a kindly animal and obviously enjoyed a day out of her usual routine. When we slowed
to a walk on the Kingston side of the park, I told Amos all I’d discovered about the Brinkburns. He’d been considerate as
ever on the journey, not pressing me, but I wanted his opinion because he sometimes seized on things I’d missed. He listened
and shook his head.

‘So the lady killed herself, after all?’

‘What else can I think? It was Tabby buying the laudanum, I’m afraid there’s no doubt of that. I’m convinced she wasn’t buying
it for herself, so who else would have asked her to do it but Lady Brinkburn?’

‘Meaning to kill herself with it?’

‘That’s what I can’t decide. She might just have been desperate for sleep and taken too much. But there’s the question of
the boat. I doubt if it would have come untied accidentally. If she’d decided to die, it would be just like her to untie it,
lie down and float away.’

He turned his big gelding out of the park gates, on to the road.

‘And you reckon she might have done away with herself because she killed Handy and regretted it?’ he said.

‘I don’t think she did regret it, if she did it. As far as she was concerned, it was retribution on Handy for helping Brinkburn
kill his first wife.’

‘Do you reckon the first wife was killed, then?’

‘I don’t know, but she’d convinced herself they’d killed her, and that’s what matters.’

‘So if she did it and wasn’t ashamed of it, why kill herself?’

‘I doubt if she was being so rational. The problem for her was that it all seemed to be part of a pattern: Handy suddenly
appearing again, this notion of hers that her husband intended to take her with him when he died. Or perhaps she was just
tired of it all.’

‘You said she had a stubborn streak. Would she have killed herself, leaving things as they are between the sons? Wouldn’t
she want to see it settled before she went?’

‘So perhaps it was accidental,’ I said.

He whistled a few bars of ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’
.

‘You don’t think so, then?’

‘I’m not saying anything.’

‘You have a way of not saying anything. Out with it.’

‘You said yourself, either brother had a reason. I’ve gotten to know the pair of them quite well over the jousting, and as
far as I can tell they’re both calves from the same barn.’

‘Meaning?’

‘According to you, their mother was stubborn and their father was crazy. Breeding’s the same with people as with animals–
what goes in comes out.’

‘But their father wasn’t always mad.’

I said no more. Amos would have heard, as I had, that it was syphilis that had eaten away the old lord’s brain, but even in
our free and easy conversation there were things not to be discussed.

‘Two wives at a time doesn’t sound too sensible to me,’ he said.

‘In any case,’ I said, ‘there’s one big objection to either Stephen or Miles killing their mother. Tabby bought the laudanum.
It’s far more likely that she’d do that for Lady Brinkburn than for either Stephen or Miles. She knew who Lady Brinkburn was.
If Lady Brinkburn had met her wandering round the estate it would have seemed quite natural to Tabby to be asked to run an
errand for her.’

‘Where’s she gone, then? That was Saturday, this is Monday. A girl like that would have got herself back to London in that
time.’

‘But suppose she heard somehow that Lady Brinkburn had died? She might make the connection with the laudanum and think she’d
be blamed.’

That ended the conversation for a while, because we were coming near Kingston and the road was busy. I noticed several more
large horses whose total blackness looked suspicious, though we didn’t get near enough to smell them until we turned into
the yard of the coaching inn at Kingston, when distinct whiffs of barber’s shop and bootroom scented the air.

A harassed-looking ostler with a list and a measuring stick pounced on us as soon as we rode through the gateway.

‘Geldings to the left, mares to the right.’

Amos told him he should take it easy because it was a funeral and not starter’s orders for the Derby. He made a point of helping
me down from the mare and treating me like a fine lady, which was his habit when in company, no matter how companionably we’d
ridden. Within minutes I was being escorted inside the inn by a lad who carried my saddle bags. I’d supposed that rooms might
be hard to come by because Lord Brinkburn’s friends and associates would have come down from London to see off the cortège,
but the landlord seemed glad of my custom. He had a list on his desk of rooms occupied and it looked no more than half full.
One name, though, leaped out at me even though I was reading upside down: O. Lomax Esq. So at least Lord Brinkburn’s old family
friend and lawyer was among those present. Come to think of it, he was probably Lord Brinkburn’s executor, thus responsible
for overseeing all the pomp and complexity of the funeral cortège. Neither Stephen nor Miles was on the list, so they must
be staying overnight elsewhere.

I took possession of my room, washed hands and face in water from the pitcher and replaced my top hat with a bonnet that had
suffered from being cramped into a saddle bag. Supper of cutlets and a glass of claret was served to me in a private parlour,
alongside a mother and daughter who were on a coach journey from Godalming to London. They said little and ate quickly. I’d
have much preferred to share my meal with Amos, but when he was about his professional business there was no chance of that.
After I’d eaten, I looked out to the yard and saw him chatting happily with a group of grooms and ostlers in the evening sunshine,
beer mugs in their hands, surrounded by rows of black equine faces looking out over loosebox doors.

It was still too early to retire for the night, so I decided to stroll. On a whim, I asked the landlord for directions to
the private asylum where Lord Brinkburn had died. He looked surprised but gave me clear directions–down the main road southward
for half a mile, then first right. The place was called Newlands, and it was set back from the road. A walk of less than half
an hour brought me to the top of its drive. From appearance, it might have been any country house, admittedly rather a gloomy
one, in red brick, standing in lawns and shrubberies that produced dark green leaves rather than flowers, even in late June.
But the gates that closed off the drive were perfectly ordinary gates, with no chain or padlock, and as far as I could see
there were no bars at any of the windows. Obviously losing one’s reason, like so many other things in life, was much more
discreetly managed with plenty of money.

As I stood looking down the drive, a man came hurrying up it. I stepped back against the hedge, not wanting to be noticed.
He was a working man, a gardener possibly, with powerful broad shoulders and a discontented expression. He opened both gates
wide, and waited. Hooves and wheels sounded on the road, from the direction I’d come, and a dark carriage drawn by two heavy
horses came swaying into sight. I stayed where I was, thinking that this was how things were done. Lord Brinkburn’s place
was being filled immediately by another paying guest, similarly afflicted. To avoid embarrassment or unpleasantness to his
relations, he was being brought at the end of the day, to be stowed out of sight. It was not something I wanted to see and
I regretted the curiosity that had brought me there, until I realised it wasn’t a carriage for the living. It was the hearse.
It rolled along slowly and heavily and turned in at the gates. Tomorrow it would be driven by a coachman all in black, with
a black scarf round his hat and a black ribbon on his driving whip. Tonight it was in the hands of a delivery driver in plain
brown jacket and gaiters. A straight-sided mourning coach, as black as the hearse, followed at the same slow pace behind two
mismatched brown cobs. As they went down the drive, the broad-shouldered man closed the gates behind them and followed. Hearse
and mourning coach drew up one behind the other at the front of the house and the drivers jumped down.

By now, the light was starting to go. I stepped out from the hedge to walk back to town, then caught my breath and prepared
to run. A man was standing a few yards away. He must have come along the road from the other direction while I was watching
the hearse. For a moment, surprise at finding him there kept me from recognising him, though I sensed at once that his presence
wasn’t friendly.

‘You again,’ he said.

Stephen Brinkburn. I said nothing, partly because my heart was beating so hard. I was embarrassed too at being found there,
with no proper reason.

‘What are you doing here? Or can I guess?’

His first question was reasonable at any rate. He’d last seen me in London and couldn’t have known about my impulsive decision
to ride out on the black mare. I couldn’t even turn his question back on him, since it was only to be expected that a son
should take an interest in his father’s funeral arrangements, though it was odd he’d chosen to do it from the road rather
than up at the house.

‘I suppose my brother sent you,’ he said.

To that at least I had a response.

‘I’m not working for your brother.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

Although he made no move towards me, his hostility filled the air round us.