Bedford Square (20 page)

Vespasia said nothing. He did not need her to repeat that for him to betray his trust, sell his honor, would also devastate Marguerite. He must see it all in her eyes. He could not bear to look beyond the first danger and deal with them one at a time, pay the cost and think about tomorrow’s evil afterwards, hope then for some escape. Perhaps someone else would defeat the blackmailer before that?

The French doors opened, and Charlotte and Marguerite came in in a gust of bright wind and billowing skirts. There
was color in Marguerite’s cheeks, and she looked excited and happy.

Dunraithe made a mighty effort to master the pain and the fear that had been so naked in him a few moments before. His whole expression changed. He straightened his body. He smiled at both the women, extending his warmth towards Charlotte as well.

“Your garden is quite lovely,” Charlotte said with very real admiration. “What marvelous things can be achieved when you have both the art to see what should be done and the skill to do it. In the nicest way, I am perfectly envious.”

“I am so glad you enjoyed it,” he said. “She is very clever, isn’t she?” The pride in him was enormous, a thing of unalloyed pleasure.

Marguerite beamed with happiness.

The tea was brought, and it was now almost four o’clock anyway. They sat making another half hour’s trivial conversation, then said their farewells and the carriage was called.

Vespasia told Charlotte what she had learned as they traveled back to Keppel Street.

“I am very afraid that this is far bigger than we had at first supposed” she said grimly. “I am sorry, my dear, but you can no longer keep your knowledge of Brandon Balantyne’s involvement from Thomas. I realize it will not be easy for you to tell him how you have become aware of it, but you have no alternative now.”

Charlotte looked at her steadily. “Do you really think this is some kind of conspiracy, Aunt Vespasia?”

“Do you not think it looks like it?” Vespasia replied. “Cornwallis, Balantyne, and now Dunraithe White.”

“Yes … I suppose so. If only he had asked for money!”

“He would still have to be stopped,” Vespasia pointed out. “Money is only the beginning.”

“I suppose so.”

It was not an easy conversation, as Vespasia had predicted, but Charlotte broached the subject as soon as Pitt returned home. For once he was quite early, coming into the kitchen
in his stocking feet and finding her busy putting away clean crockery. She did it immediately because once she had determined to do it, she could not settle to any kind of peace of mind until it was accomplished. She had rehearsed it several times, never entirely satisfactorily.

“Thomas,
I
have something I must tell you about the Bedford Square case. I don’t know whether it is relevant or not … I hope not, but I feel you should know.”

It was not her usual pattern of speech, and he caught the difference, turning from the sink, where he was washing his hands, and looking at her with surprise.

She stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, half a dozen plates in her hand. She took a deep breath and then spoke, without waiting for him to ask or allowing him to interrupt.

“I spent the afternoon with Aunt Vespasia. One of her friends, Judge Dunraithe White, is also a victim of this blackmailer who is threatening Mr. Cornwallis.”

He stiffened. “How do you know? Did he tell Vespasia?” His voice was high and sharp with incredulity.

“Not easily, of course,” she answered, putting the plates back on the table and passing him a clean towel. “But they are old friends. I occupied his wife, who is a most excellent gardener. I must tell you more about that—I know! Later,” she interrupted herself quickly.

“Vespasia spoke alone with Mr. White, and he confessed to her his situation. He is absolutely distracted with worry and fear, but the accusation is that he fathered the eldest son and heir of one of their closest friends. And now that the friend is dead and cannot deny it, the blackmailer is saying that he was actually going to sue Mr. White ….”

Pitt winced, his expression conveying plainly how he appreciated the hurt. He dropped the towel over the back of the chair nearest to him.

“And Mr. White said such a thing would devastate his wife. She is very frail and so they have no children of their own. He adores her, and will pay any price asked of him rather than allow that.”

Pitt hunched his shoulders and pushed his hands hard down
into his pockets. “That’s Cornwallis, White, and, I heard today, also a man named Tannifer, a merchant banker in the City. He’s accused of fraud with his clients’ funds.”

“Another one!” She was startled. It was looking increasingly as if Vespasia was right and the problem was far larger and more serious than any individual blackmail for greed.

He looked at her gravely. “Have you considered that perhaps General Balantyne is also being blackmailed? I know you would rather not think so, in view of the murdered man on his doorstep, but I can’t dismiss it just because I would prefer to.”

Now was the time. “He is.” She watched his face to see how angry he might be. He stood absolutely still, all kinds of emotions conflicting in his eyes, anger and amazement, pity, understanding, and something which for an instant she thought was a sense of betrayal. She went on talking, quickly, trying to cover the moment. “I went to convey my sympathy for his new tragedy … really that the wretched newspapers had raised the Christina business all over again, as if living it once were not enough.” Now what was in his face was unmistakably pity, memory of indescribable pain, not for himself but for Balantyne, and understanding of what she had done. “I knew something else was extremely wrong,” she went on, smiling at him now. “And I offered my friendship, for whatever comfort that was. He told me, with great embarrassment, that he is being blackmailed over an incident in the Abyssinian Campaign twenty-five years ago which never happened, but he cannot prove it. Most of the other people concerned are either dead or abroad, or senile.”

She took a breath and hurried on again. “No one has asked him for money either, or anything else, but he has had a second letter, and it is very threatening. Such a charge would ruin him and Lady Augusta, whom I don’t care about, but Brandy too. He is trying to find anyone from the campaign who can help, but he hasn’t succeeded so far. What can we do, Thomas? This is dreadful!”

He remained silent for several moments.

“Thomas …”

“What?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about General Balantyne earlier. I wanted to see if I could find something and prove his innocence of the accusation.”

“You also didn’t want me to know because it would make me suspect him of killing Albert Cole, because the snuffbox was his,” he said levelly. “Did he give it to Cole?”

“No … he gave it to the blackmailer. He was asked for it, as a pledge, and it was collected by a boy on a bicycle.” She waited for what he would say next. How angry would he be about that? She really should have told him.

He regarded her steadily.

She felt the color hot in her face. But if she were in the same position over again, she would do the same thing. She had no doubt whatever that Balantyne was innocent. He needed defending. And Augusta would certainly not do it.

Pitt smiled with a curious little twist. He knew her rather too well for comfort at times.

“Your apology is accepted, even if it is not entirely believed,” he said gently. “I suggest for your leisure-time reading you try
Don Quixote?’

She winced now, and lowered her eyes. “Are you ready for supper?”

“Yes.” He sat down at the table and waited for her to lay plates for them, put away the rest of the plates, finish preparing the meal and then serve it.

Vespasia did not know about Sigmund Tannifer, but what she did know was enough to cause her such grave concern that she used the telephone, an instrument which she found quite marvelous, to ask her friend Theloneus Quade if she might call upon him that evening.

He responded by offering to call upon her instead. She was tired enough to accept with gratitude. Had the offer come from anyone else she might have declined, even with asperity. She refused to concede any more to age than was forced upon her, and most certainly not in front of others. But Theloneus was different. She had come to realize that his love
for her had transcended his initial fascination with the beauty she had possessed even into her sixties, and the core of which was still with her. Now it was a love for the person she was and the experiences they had shared over a lifetime through a tumultuous century. It had begun, for her at least, when the Emperor Napoleon had threatened the very existence of Britain. She remembered Waterloo. Queen Victoria had been a child then, and relatively unknown.

Now she, too, was an old woman, who wore black and was empress of a quarter of the world. Steamships sailed the seas, and the Thames Embankment was illuminated by electric lights.

Theloneus arrived a little before eight. He kissed her on the cheek, and for a moment she smelled the faint perfume of clean skin, laundered cotton, and felt the warmth of him.

Then he stood back. “What is it?” he asked with a frown. “You look extremely worried.”

They were in her sitting room. There was still bright sunlight outside. It would not be dark for nearly two hours, but there was a coolness already in the air, in spite of its golden brilliance.

He sat down, because he knew how it irritated her to have to stare upwards.

“I spent much of the day with Charlotte,” she began. “We called upon Dunraithe White. I am afraid you were correct in your fears for him. He confided in me the source of his anxiety. It is worse than you thought.”

He leaned forward, his thin, gentle face creased with worry.

“You feared premature senility, or even madness, didn’t you?” she asked.

He nodded. “At worst, yes, I did. What could he have told you that you find even more serious?”

“That he is being blackmailed ….”

“Dunraithe White!” He was aghast. “I find that almost impossible to believe. I never knew a more predictably righteous man in my life. Or a more transparently honest one. What on earth can he have done for which anyone could
blackmail him, let alone which he would pay to keep secret?” His face was creased in lines of pity and concern, but underlying it all was still incredulity.

Vespasia understood. Only his love for Marguerite made Dunraithe White vulnerable, and that was what was so frightening. The blackmailer must be close enough to him to have known that, otherwise he would not have wasted his time with the attempt.

Theloneus was waiting for her to explain, watching her.

“He is not guilty of anything,” she said softly, “except the desire to protect Marguerite from the whisper of unkindness, true or untrue.” Then she told him of the accusation and Dunraithe’s response.

Theloneus sat for some time without answering.

The black-and-white dog lay asleep in the sun, snoring gently and occasionally giving a little whimper as she dreamed.

“I see,” Theloneus said at last. “You are right; it is far worse than I thought.”

“He will not refuse the man, whatever he demands,” she said gravely. “I tried the arguments of reason. I told him that he has nothing whatever of which to be ashamed now, and Marguerite will understand that. But if he does something because this man forces him to, something he would not do of his own will, then he will have, and she will know that too.”

“Did he not perceive it for himself?” He leaned forward a little.

“T think he is too frightened for her to look beyond tomorrow,” she answered. “Sometimes fear can be like that … paralyzing the will or the ability to see what is too horrible.”

“Is she really so delicate, Vespasia?” He looked uncomfortable, unwilling to appear harsh, and yet he needed to ask.

She considered hard before she answered him, thinking of all she knew of Marguerite White over the years, piecing together memories, wondering how she had interpreted them then, and how with hindsight they might be different now.

“Perhaps not,” she said at length, speaking slowly. “Certainly she does not have good health, that has always been true. How ill she is would be difficult to say. She is in her
mid-forties at least, perhaps a trifle more, so the delicacy that was feared in her youth must have been overestimated. She was told that she could not bear children, that to do so would certainly jeopardize her life.”

He was watching her closely, listening.

She wished to be fair, but memory crowded in, and doubt. She was glad she was speaking to Theloneus, whom she loved, and would not have him think ill of her, but also whom she trusted well enough that she dared allow him to see in her what was vulnerable, and perhaps frightened, or weak, or less than beautiful. He would judge with the eyes of a friend.

“Yes?” he prompted.

“She is also used to thinking of herself as the one to be protected,” she went on. “The one who must never be distressed or asked too much of. Dunraithe has spoiled her … with the very best intention. Perhaps he was sometimes too careful to be wise. She might have become stronger, at least in spirit, had she faced reality more often. Most of us will run away if there is someone who will protect us, face all the unpleasantness for us, and count it a privilege to do so.”

“Could she face this?” he asked, his eyes wide and intent, unwavering from hers.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I have been asking myself that, considering all the avenues one might take, even to precipitating some crisis to draw out this blackguard. I can hardly bear to think what will happen if he asks Dunraithe to do something which would be an abuse of his office ….”

Theloneus put his hand over hers, very gently, touching rather than holding. She noticed with surprise how thin it was, how visible the veins. His face had changed so much less; the curve of the nose was the same, the steady eyes, the sensitive mouth. It was so natural to protect someone you loved, someone you saw as vulnerable and to whom you felt a burning loyalty, someone without whom you would have no happiness, no laughter, no sharing, perhaps above all someone who loved you.