Mr. Stewart, however, recognised these occasions as being excellent ones for discussing sleuthing,
something his dear lady wife had frowned upon since the Woodville Ward case, an investigation which she alleged had increased her grey hairs threefold. “Now Jonty, Orlando, are you sure you have the right man?”
“Papa, your perspicacity never ceases to amaze me. We’ve told you half of nothing about the ins and
outs of this case yet you hit the nail right on the head.” Jonty stopped, eyed his father with suspicion. “Or have you got a spy?”
Mr. Stewart grinned. “I don’t bribe Mrs. Ward to tell tales, if that’s what you’re thinking. You’re not the only one in the family with brains, my lad—I see the rationale of Rhodes killing Jardine, but like you, the whole business with Taylor puzzles me.”
“Indeed.” Orlando valued his “father-in law’s” sensible opinions. “If he did do it, then why? And if he didn’t, why say that he did?”
“I don’t think that he can be like my pal.” Rex swirled his tawny port in its elegant little glass. “From what you told us, Rhodes seemed to be too quick offloading his own sins to pick up everyone else’s.”
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“The only person it would seem he would want to protect is Andrew Nicholls.” Mr. Stewart had
gained a deep understanding of the case from the snippets he’d picked up, pasting them together to create a clear estimate of the whole. “He seems to be the focus of the man’s life.”
“Jonty.” The name came out slowly and languorously, as it always did when Orlando was either
feeling amorous or deep in thought. “When you saw that picture of Nicholls, what did you think?”
“That he looked like a Stewart by-blow—the sort of chap who might have been produced if one of my
uncles had gone astray.”
“And Kermode? You’re the only one of us who’s seen him. Was he the same?”
“Along the same lines, although you knew that already. It was part of the rationale of why we were
targeted.”
Both Rex and Matthew must have registered the word “we” and understood its significance. While it
pained Orlando to witness such frankness, it heartened him to hear his beloved be able to so casually refer to such events. The looks exchanged in the garden hadn’t lied—Jonty was starting to heal.
“We understand that.” Mr. Stewart poured his son a cup of coffee, creamy and sweet, just as he liked
it, then passed the cup across. “Although I think I know what Orlando is getting at here. It’s very important for us to understand how deep that resemblance went.”
“The cat,” Rex murmured.
Jonty’s eyes reflected the glow of possible enlightenment. He shut them and sipped his drink, as if he were trying to transport himself back to Norfolk. “Simon Kermode looked like a Stewart as well, less like me than he did Andrew Nicholls, though. Sorry, that’s not clear. He resembled me, but he resembled
Nicholls much more. They might have passed for brothers.” He opened his eyes. “Does that help?”
“I think so.” Orlando felt like a boy at Christmas, with delights all around. “When I first met Rhodes, we were taking tea with his aunt and she started to talk about having seen a ghost. Her nephew reacted very strangely, immediately terminating the conversation. I assumed it was his unease at the old lady beginning to ramble. People don’t feel comfortable in the presence of mental frailty, do they?”
“Indeed not.” Matthew seemed to have grasped Orlando’s reasoning as well. “You’ve changed your
mind about your interpretation?”
“I have. In fact, afterwards, I did wonder whether he was thinking of his own ghosts, the victims he’d hurt, then I quite forgot the thing, until we met that moggy this afternoon.” Orlando couldn’t miss the four frowns suddenly on display. “Sorry, that noble cat in the garden. Then I recalled the conversation and it’s been nagging at me since then. Now I think I understand.”
“Well, I don’t.” Matthew looked puzzled. “Would you enlighten me?”
“I think we should make him work it out himself.” Rex slapped his good leg. “There’s enough clues,
Matthew. Rhodes’s obsession with this poor lad, doppelgangers all round and a cat who might be a ghost or just a plain kitchen mouser.”
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“We’ve all suffered enough for this case.” Matthew tipped his head to Jonty, who replied with a nod
and a smile. “Take pity on me and tell me what everyone’s worked out and I haven’t.” A sly grin crossed his face. “Or else I might have to tell Mrs. Stewart I suspect you’ve been eating chocolate after you’ve cleaned your teeth at night. All of you.” No male member of the Stewart household or any of their guests was going to risk that sort of threat.
“I wonder where Macgregor has put us tonight?” It had become a running joke—the footman had
been at his subtle, sensitive best the last few days, taking it into his head to decide at random which bed would be graced with the academic backsides on any given night. He didn’t alternate, the only clues would be that the fire in one room had been made up, the hot water bottles (if needed) would be ensconced
between the sheets and the pyjamas would be carefully folded, in waiting.
They’d first encountered Macgregor—a man with a Scottish name, Welsh ancestry, and cockney
accent—when he’d been a footman and the men had stayed at the Stewarts’ London home for the Derby.
He’d been assigned to them by Mrs. Stewart, who knew that sensitive matters might be involved. While she said she trusted Jonty not to be in bed with his lover when the morning tea arrived, she couldn’t be sure that the untidy little rascal wouldn’t leave his shirt on Orlando’s floor. He
had
done the latter, of course, and Macgregor hadn’t batted an eyelid.
Jonty found that this man of great discretion had, tonight, put them in Orlando’s room. He’d also
found somewhere a wonderful selection of tulips, which he’d placed in a cut crystal glass on the table and which showed no sign of bending or drooping. This was another thing which Jonty found quite puzzling, as no one else he knew could achieve this. The fire was banked up, as the night was promising to be a bit chilly, and the first feelings of cold were starting to penetrate as he began to strip off.
“Putting your pyjamas on then, Jonty?”
“No, I’m changing into my gumboots and a fur coat. What a ridiculous question.”
“Twit.” Orlando rolled his eyes and looked pained. “I meant are you putting your nightclothes on or
wandering around
au naturel
as per your occasional scandalous practice?”
“Which would you prefer?”
“Doesn’t bother me. Never seems to bother you either.” Orlando tried hard to hide his excitement.
This was more like his old Jonty, but no chickens were to be counted just yet.
“And what do we mean by that, monsieur?”
“That you seem as happy prancing around in your birthday suit as in a three-piece one. Not an inch—
if, in the immortal words of Mr. Cartwright, ‘you’ll excuse the pun’—of bashfulness about you.”
“Well, why should I hide my body? There’s only you to see it, Orlando, and none of it is unfamiliar.”
Jonty removed the last of his clothes then leaned against the mantelpiece. Starkers.
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“All of it is wonderfully well-known, indeed. And some of it’s going to get scorched if you stand
there too long. Macgregor has got that fire really blazing—it’s going to start spitting cinders in a moment and one of them will end up on your hmphmphm…”
“I never thought I’d ever live to have to shut
you
up with a kiss.” Jonty grinned when the sudden embrace ended. “I shall take your very sensible advice. Not an easy place to put a poultice on should
it
get singed and however would I explain the injury to Mama? Come on, get this stuff off.” He pulled at
Orlando’s shirt. “Then we can get over to that bed, out of the danger zone.”
“Strikes me,” murmured Orlando, as he tried to undo his buttons and be dragged to the four-poster at
the same time, “that you might be moving out of danger but I’m moving right into it.”
“No danger with me. Make you happy, make you squirm, make you squeal although I’d never hurt
you.”
“Nor I you.” Orlando drew his fingers along his lover’s shoulders. “Something’s happened, today.
Something wonderful, yet I don’t know what prompted it.”
“If Dr. Coppersmith requires a logical answer I’m afraid he’s going to be disappointed. It was an
amalgamation of things; Mary Magdalene thinks she’s only talking to the gardener, we see the cat which might just be a ghost, and all of a sudden I’ve got hold of those last two pieces of the puzzle.” Jonty doodled on Orlando’s chest. “A buzzing in my brain has been nagging me ever since Rhodes confessed.
Job’s not done, Jonty. See it to the end.
Had me half scared, not knowing what might be coming next.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’d have rolled your eyes at me, like you always do.
Messages from upstairs, again?
Well, perhaps it was—justice needing to be served and all that. And it will be.”
“That’s just one piece, though, making sure we get the right man for Taylor’s murder.” Orlando
kissed his friend’s hair, savoured the lavender odour which, rather than being from a bottle, came from the idiot sticking sprigs of it behind his ears. “What’s the other?”
“I’ve spent years wondering if I contributed to what happened. If there was something I said or did
which brought them down on me. Whether if I’d done differently none of it would have happened. As of
today, I’ve realised it was just a chance of my face and features, none of my doing at all. You can’t imagine how free that makes me feel.” Jonty stretched like the grey cat waiting for his tummy to be tickled.
Orlando obliged, trying to find something, anything, to say which would keep his tears at bay. “Do
you remember those books? The ones which Dr. Peters wanted me to destroy, the ones we found in Lord
Morcar’s rooms?”
“I do, although I never saw them, thank the Lord. Why mention them now?”
“Because they scared the pants off me, or well and truly onto me, I might say. All the time they
seemed to equate
this
…”
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Charlie Cochrane
“Do you mean making love, Orlando?” Jonty gently ran his hand down his lover’s neck, onto his
chest, found his heart.
“Hmm. Yes. Equated
this
with violence and degradation. I was a right twit, wasn’t I?” Orlando smiled, placing his hand over his lover’s.
“That’s the problem with ignorance, my dear, it isn’t necessarily blissful. It breeds fear—you just
have to look at my poor sister Lavinia to realise that. I do wonder if Angela Stafford will go the same way.”
“Not wishing those ladies any offence, Jonty, but I’m so pleased I didn’t end up like that. Glad I
found how wonderful things could really be.”
“And I’m pleased for it too. Now will you ever doff those trousers or am I to lie here desperate while you talk my head off?”
Perhaps they were more rambling than the average pair of lovers—who knew what went on in another
man’s bedroom?—but when it was time for bodies to make final communication, they wasted few words.
There was no requirement for long-winded protestations of love, vows of eternal fidelity. They knew how much in love they were, all of their life together proclaimed the fact.
After a while, an exquisite, adagio period of slow, sensual kisses and lazy movements of fingers on
flesh, Jonty broke free from the knot their bodies had made. The agreeable tangle of arms and legs was picked apart, Jonty marvelling yet again how the familiar could be so exciting. There wasn’t an inch of his lover’s body he didn’t know inside out, and yet every time they became intimate there were new delights to discover. He wondered whether his parents felt the same, if their marital bed still had undiscovered
possibilities, and whether that was one of the keys to their long, happy relationship. Richard Stewart swore that keeping a mistress was sinful, yet why would any man even need one if he could be as happy at his own hearth as Jonty was at his?
The music began again, played on the instruments of skin, flesh, mouth and fingers. The fire had
grown low, its pale orange light illuminating a pair of bodies rising and falling, the slow rhythm of their amorous duet at first diminuendo, allowing every moment to be savoured at leisure. Mezzo-piano caresses, pianissimo moans, delicate touches and kisses, until the mood changed with,
poco a poco
crescendo, the cadence increasing. A sweet bolero for two dancers together, united as one in time and motion, the
escalating tempo matched by mounting exhilaration and anticipation. A handful more drumbeats, strong
tympanic strokes and the music was over, duettists spent, tired, blissful. A horizontal symphony, the music of true love.
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Chapter Twelve
Dr. Stewart and Sergeant Cohen sat at the table in the prison visitors’ room, waiting for Rhodes to be brought. Jonty felt he’d never seen a more depressing place. The Chief Constable of Surrey had been so appalled by the incompetence his officers had shown in the Lord Christopher Jardine investigation, he’d asked Scotland Yard to be brought in and had then insisted
they
draft in the men from Cambridge to see the case to its conclusion.
Or so the sergeant gleefully informed Jonty,
sotto voce
. “And I got the impression the Chief Constable secretly wishes that Mr. Wilson would grow disillusioned with life in Cambridge and move to somewhere like Guildford. It’s all highly irregular, of course, but if it means that the right man gets brought to justice…” Cohen shrugged. “This case has been a bit close to home, hasn’t it, sir?” An avuncular smile lit up his large, plain face. “Glad to see you looking a lot better now.”