Painting The Darkness (71 page)

‘So, alone and, as I thought, deserted, I faced O’Shaughnessy in Richard’s study last Saturday and nerved myself to bear the inevitable. Unaccountably, however, O’Shaughnessy spared me. It was clear from the first that he knew me, yet he lied about a scar I had never had in order to prove to the satisfaction of all that I was not Stephen Lennox.

‘Why he took mercy on me I could not guess and, in the circumstances, could scarcely ask. The effect of his doing so, however, was unmistakable. It cut the ground from beneath my accusers’ feet. What they had thought would prove I was not Sir James Davenall proved the exact opposite beyond further doubt. My new identity was not merely intact, when I had feared it would lie in ruins about me. It had become impregnable.’

‘A friend of yours, was he?’ said Abel, after they had stood beneath the eaves of the pagoda for some while in silence.

Trenchard looked at him as if he had not heard the question, as if his thoughts had been so firmly fixed elsewhere that they had difficulty in adjusting to the present.

‘Your visitor. The one you can’t tell me anything about. I should have thought you could at least say whether he was a friend or not.’

‘I didn’t think he was. Now I’m not so sure.’

‘Why? What’s changed?’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ Trenchard gazed into the distance. ‘But it soon will. Tomorrow, to be exact. Tomorrow, everything will change.’

XI

It was late afternoon when Richard Davenall arrived back in London, but he felt tired enough for it to have been midnight. Every turn in his pursuit of James, from the moment he had begun it more than a year before, had led him down a twisting road to nowhere. Was everybody lying to him? Or were they as helpless as he was himself?

Sure of nothing any more, save that, as ever, James was several steps ahead of him, Richard headed for Highgate. Already, night was threatening, the third night of Sir James Davenall’s disappearance, and Richard felt weary to the very fibre of his being. In the solitude of his home, he might hope at least to find some rest.

But it was not to be. Braddock greeted him with surprising news. ‘Lady Davenall is waiting for you in the drawing-room, sir.’

‘Constance is here?’

‘No, sir. The elder Lady Davenall.’

Catherine had come to see him. She who was famous for her inflexibility had broken her own embargo. Perhaps James had written to her as well, Richard thought, as he hurried down the hall.

‘Where is my son, Richard?’ Nothing had changed. He could tell that by her expression. She had called because she wanted to know what he knew and for no other reason. The segment of the past they had shared would remain as distant as ever.

‘Surely Inspector Gow told you that James—’

‘My real son, Richard, not the man whom some are foolish enough to believe is my son. I am not remotely interested in
his
whereabouts. I am concerned about Hugo.’

‘Hugo?’

‘He has gone abroad. Do you know where – or for how long?’

‘I’ve no idea. I didn’t even know he was going.’ He had,
in
truth, largely forgotten Hugo’s doings since his visit to Carntrassna. The foolish young man was, he had dolefully assumed, drinking his days away in Duke Street.

‘When did you last see him?’

‘It must be several months ago.’

Catherine stepped closer and revealed a little of her hatred of him in her gaze. ‘So much for your concern on his behalf. When his need was greatest, you turned your back on him.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Did you know he’d resigned from his club because that man Norton had been admitted?’

‘No.’

‘Have you visited him since he vacated Bladeney House?’

‘No.’

‘Then, how can you deny it? You deserted him – like everybody else.’

With this jibe, Catherine achieved what few ever had: she angered Richard, and he, too drained by all that he had endured to cling to appeasement, flung back a jibe of his own. ‘You told me to leave him alone. If I
have
deserted him, it’s been at your insistence.’

To that, Catherine had no answer. In the nearest she could come to an acknowledgement of guilt, she stepped back and looked away.

‘Why did you think I would know where he’d gone?’

There was a strain now of weakness in her voice. ‘I hoped you would, that’s all. I’m worried about him, Richard. Worried about what he means to do.’

‘What do you think he means to do?’

‘I don’t know. I came to London to talk to him about Norton’s disappearance and what it might mean, only to find that he, too, had disappeared. Greenwood said he left early this morning, with Freddy Cleveland, bound for the Continent.’

‘A long weekend in Paris: that’s probably what they have in mind.’

‘No. Greenwood told me that Norton visited Hugo late on Wednesday night.’

‘He visited Hugo? On Wednesday?’

‘Exactly. After his disappearance from Cleave Court. Greenwood can’t be sure of the time, because he was in bed asleep, but he thinks it must have been in the small hours – two or three o’clock yesterday morning. He was woken by the sound of Hugo letting a visitor out of the front door. When he looked out of his window, he saw the visitor walking away down the street: he feels sure it was Norton. Hugo wasn’t in when Greenwood went to bed, so he can’t say whether they came in together or not. At all events, Hugo told him in the morning to pack a bag for him: sufficient for a few days. He was out for the rest of yesterday, then Freddy Cleveland collected him this morning and off they went.’

Richard put his hand on Catherine’s arm, neither of them remarking or regretting the consoling gesture. ‘With Freddy along, it can only be a holiday.’

‘No. It’s too much of a coincidence. They’ve gone to meet Norton, I know it. Greenwood told me something else. Hugo’s been practising target shooting for the past three months.’

‘What?’

‘Using Gervase’s old duelling pistols. He’s had them restored to working order, Richard. And when Greenwood showed me where he keeps them … they weren’t there. Now do you understand?’

XII

Toby Leighton was seldom at his best before eight o’clock in the evening, especially when woken abruptly from a pre-dinner doze to be informed that a brusque-mannered relative of Hugo Davenall insisted on seeing him.

‘Couldn’t this have waited?’ he plaintively enquired, on
finding
Richard Davenall pacing the carpet in his father’s drawing-room.

‘No, it could not. Where is Freddy Cleveland?’

‘Freddy? Out of the country, I—’

‘They told me at the club that you might know where he’s gone.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Toby scratched his head. ‘He did say something about it when I bumped into him last night.’

‘Well?’

‘Ostend, I think. Or was it Austria? No. Ostend, I’m sure of it.’

‘Did he say when he would be back?’

‘Tomorrow night, as far as I can remember. I suppose that proves it can’t have been Aust—’

‘Did he say why he was going?’

Toby frowned; the effort of recollection was painful. ‘No. But, then, he—’

‘Or who with?’

‘No. Matter of fact, all he said was that he had to go. Duty called. Some such tomfool nonsense. I didn’t pay much attention. But he wasn’t happy about it, that I do remember. I’ve never seen him so damned po-faced about anything.’

Already, Richard Davenall was heading for the door, without so much as a thank-you.

‘What’s the hurry?’ Toby called after him. ‘Anyone would think it was a matter of life and death.’

Chapter Twenty

I

DAWN CAME LATE
to the Belgian coast on Saturday, 29th December 1883 and later still where the sea-mist was at its thickest, on the long, flat, dune-lagged shore that stretches north-east from Ostend to the Dutch border.

On the narrow coast road halfway between Ostend and Blankenberg, only one vehicle was visible at this early hour: a fly, occupied by a driver and two passengers, rattling along at such a pace as to suggest they were already late for an appointment. The passengers were Hugo Davenall and Freddy Cleveland, their only luggage a slender but weighty box presently shrouded beneath Freddy’s cloak.

As the fly topped a minor eminence between the dunes, Hugo pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket and squinted at its face. Then he glanced reproachfully at Freddy and said: ‘We’re going to be late.’

‘It can’t be helped, old man,’ Freddy replied. ‘This fellow’s goin’ hell for leather as it is. Besides, I thought you said Norton would wait until we arrived.’

‘Oh, he’ll wait.’ Hugo’s eyes narrowed. ‘I just don’t want him to think I’ve lost my nerve.’

The wonder, to Freddy’s mind, was that Hugo’s nerve had remained as steady as it had. More than twenty-four hours had passed since Norton’s unexpected acceptance of his challenge, but Hugo’s determination to go through with what Freddy viewed as an act of lunacy had shown no sign of faltering. Freddy had hoped Hugo might take fright
even
if he remained blind to reason, but not so. Throughout the previous day, he had been unnaturally calm in the face of what he proposed to do. Nor had a ferry trip from Dover and a night in an Ostend hotel dented his resolve. He would meet Norton, and there was an end of it.

This dawn journey along the eerily empty, mist-wrapped shore accordingly found Freddy the more nervous of the two. He should never have agreed to act as a second in the first place, never mind accompany Hugo to Belgium. He should have gone to a member of the Davenall family and had them intervene. Failing that, he should have gone to the police. But, at every stage, he had told himself nothing so very terrible could come of a duel. Hugo would call it off. Or Norton would. If the worst came to the worst, they would merely exchange shots at a safe distance with no harm done and call it quits. Their honour, whatever that was, would be satisfied and Freddy’s mind relieved.

Now, gazing past Hugo at the grey sand beach beyond the dunes, lapped in slow and silent rhythm by the windless tide, Freddy felt nothing but a growing dread of the meeting which would shortly occur. When he looked back at Hugo, he scarcely felt he recognized his friend. Hugo’s expression reminded him of the words which had dogged his thoughts during a sleepless night in Ostend, a fragment of Tennyson’s
Idylls of the King
, forgotten since his days at Oxford but brought now irresistibly to mind.

‘… there, that day when the great light of heaven

Burn’d at his lowest in the rolling year,

On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed.’

‘What’s that?’ snapped Hugo.

Freddy started in his seat. He must have spoken the last words aloud. ‘Nothin’,’ he replied. ‘Nothin’ at all, old man.’

Suddenly, Hugo’s attention was diverted to a milestone at the side of the road. As they sped past it, he leaned out of the fly to read what it said. When he looked back at
Freddy
, he was smiling. ‘Seven kilometres to Blankenberg,’ he announced. ‘So only five to the meeting-place.’

Freddy shuddered. In the flushed and twisted eagerness on his friend’s face, he recognized at last what it truly was that he dreaded. Yesterday, in London, it had seemed the most absurd of fleeting suspicions. Now, as their fly jolted on towards its destination through the shifting salttanged fog, it had become a certainty he could no longer resist. There would be no compromise, no withdrawal of the challenge, no patching-up of the dispute, no token firing in the air. Hugo would ensure that this duel was fought to a finish.

II

A solitary cab sped past the shuttered houses lining Ostend’s Kapellestraat, the hoof-falls of its horse and the rattling of its wheels on the cobbles magnified in the grey twilight by the vestigial silence of night.

Inside the swaying, jolting cab sat Richard and Catherine Davenall, their pale drawn faces revealing the anxious hours they had both endured since discovering the reckless course their son had embarked upon. Less than an hour ago, the ferry that had brought them from Dover had docked. They had at once commenced an urgent tour of Ostend’s hotels in search of the one where Hugo and Freddy were staying. At the third attempt, they had been successful, only for a bleary-eyed night porter to tell them that they were too late: the two young men had set off an hour since by hired fly towards Blankenberg.

‘The porter said Freddy was carrying a small case,’ Catherine murmured, in her first remark since leaving the hotel.

‘I know,’ Richard replied, ‘and Blankenberg is a quiet spot among the sand dunes. But the journey will take them a good hour by fly. We can be there in half the time.’ He had calculated that, if they could catch the train due
to
leave for Bruges in five minutes and connect there with a service to Blankenberg, they might yet forestall whatever madness Hugo was contemplating. He did not need to add that they had no way of knowing Hugo’s precise destination, nor that dawn, the traditional hour for duels, was already upon them. He and Catherine were both well aware of how unlikely it really was that they would arrive in time.

‘Poor Hugo,’ Catherine said, as much, it seemed, to herself as to Richard. ‘I had no idea he would feel driven to do such a thing as this.’

‘Nor I,’ came Richard’s doleful reply. ‘From what I was told at the club, he issued the challenge more than a month ago.’

‘Why did Norton accept? What has he to gain by it? Surely he doesn’t want to kill Hugo.’

‘He may see it as a way of finally proving that he
is
James.’

‘Nothing can prove that.’

‘Not even risking his life for the sake of his brother’s recognition?’

An expression flitted then across Catherine’s face which suggested that, for the very first time, her certainty that Sir James Davenall was not her son had ceased to be absolute. But, as quickly as it had come, it was gone. ‘No,’ she said sternly. ‘Not even that.’

‘Then, we must hope and pray neither of them comes to any harm.’

‘I am concerned only for Hugo.’

‘You should not be. Consider what would happen … if either of them …’ Richard’s voice petered into silence, as if he did not dare to tempt providence by saying what was in his mind. Ever since leaving London, he had been unable to dismiss from his thoughts the question of what the world would say if blood were shed in a fratricidal duel. And he had realized what had clearly not occurred to Catherine. To fight such a duel at all was to invite scorn. But to win was to court ruin.