The Murder of Mary Russell (36 page)

Jonny made a sound deep in his throat and rapidly drained his glass. She, however, winked at him in the mirror, and then her face underwent a change.

“Oh, who am I fooling?” she said with a sigh. “I'm an old woman; I'll never be attractive again.” She reached into her handbag for a dark pencil and applied it to the grey in her eyebrows, only making matters worse.

Jonny shuddered and turned away, muttering grimly about her bringing it back with her, so he could take it into the yard and burn it.

She paid him, for both dresses, present and future. She added an apology to his friend, and kissed his cheek good-bye. When she let herself out onto the street, it would have been difficult to say which of the two seemed more downtrodden.

It was late, but it was a Saturday. The day's long warmth and the after-theatre traffic filled the streets and pavements. Those strolling along seemed unusually blind when it came to avoiding Mrs Hudson's person, with a continuous string of exclamations and apologies as she walked. Eventually, she moved towards the street, raising a tentative hand at the passing taxicabs. Half a dozen passed, unseeing, before a grey-haired driver swerved to the kerb—but as Mrs Hudson made her way towards the door, a brusque young man with a girl on his arm brushed past her to yank the door open and hand his young lady inside.

The taxi darted away, and Mrs Hudson smiled, very quietly, before turning again towards the flow of cars and putting up a somewhat more assertive glove.

This time, a cab pulled up immediately.

She gave him the address, and sat back, hands together, as the driver followed his head-lamps through the streets to the house of the man who had fathered her son.

H
olmes' feet slowly retracted, coming to the carpet in a sort of slow-motion counterpart to the furious working of his brain. “The Honours list?” he said. “
Mycroft
is the key to this? What is the—”

As if he had summoned his brother from the club across the road, the key sounded again in the door, and the big man himself entered.

Mycroft Holmes had shed a great deal of weight since his heart attack a year and a half earlier, but he would never be slim, and he would forever move like a man wrapped in bulk. He stopped dead as he saw our faces turned in his direction; one could see the summoning of energies.

“Hugh Edmunds.” Holmes, on his feet now, threw the name across the room like a weapon.

Mycroft's fingers came up to work the buttons on his overcoat. He removed it, hung it up, closed the wardrobe door—and when he turned back, all traces of alcohol were gone from his eyes. “The Earl of Steadworth, yes. A man with sins, but most of those committed outside of England. And he has proved himself a…useful man in several difficult situations. So I let his name go through. Should I not have done so?”

Instead of replying to the question, Holmes asked one of his own. “Mycroft, what do you know about Mrs Hudson?”

To my astonishment, Mycroft looked discomfited. “Ah. Sherlock, it is my job to know things. Even—one might say particularly—those things that you do not care to talk about.”

Holmes dropped back into his chair, snatching up his pipe. “I suppose Watson knows all the details of my past as well, and wants only to protect me!”

Mycroft came to sit down in the largest chair before the fire, waiting until Holmes raised his eyes before he spoke. “I have never made use of this knowledge, Sherlock. I merely could not risk secrets.”

“Well, you missed one. Hugh Edmunds is the father of Mrs Hudson's son.”

Mycroft's face underwent a series of rapid changes: an instant of surprise gave way to reflection, then his expression grew dark as his brain analysed the significance of the fact. “You think Steadworth was using Samuel Hudson as a means of manipulating me? But, I'd already approved him.”

“Did he know that?”

Mycroft folded his hands over his waistcoat, his eyes losing focus as his mind reviewed the information it had been given. “He may have had doubts. I called the Earl in for a personal interview, which I seldom do. His name had been proposed for the New Year's list, but as I said, several…misdeeds had been noted, requiring me to spend a degree more attention than I might have. One or two men regard him with distaste. I, myself, was not entirely pleased at how nakedly the man lusts after his Honour. However, neither did I think he would make any unseemly use of his position, not in public. In the end, it was decided that his sins were no more than the misdemeanours of his age and his class, and it was less important to please the fastidious than it was to acknowledge the services he had done the nation. And, frankly, His Royal Highness likes the man.”

“Could Edmunds have believed you were going to refuse him?” Holmes demanded. “You personally, that is?”

“The process is only secret in theory,” Mycroft admitted. “In practice, a man with the Earl's experience, and his acquaintances, generally has some idea of where he stands. Although it is not until the list goes to the
Gazette
that one may be certain.”

“Are names ever withdrawn between that publication and the actual granting of the Honours?”

The older man's prodigious mental facilities worked for a time, before: “Rarely. Unless someone has died in the interim, I recall only two occasions in which the Honours list was not completed. In one of those, the man came home early from a shooting party, gun in hand, and discovered his wife with the estate manager; in the other, a newspaper reporter uncovered a series of letters suggesting a bishop had certain political sympathies with what might be called the wrong side.”

“Resulting in scandals?” I asked.

“Quite.”

“So if something came to light on a lesser order, such as fathering an illegitimate child, the name might be permitted to stand?”

“Once published in the
Gazette,
public forgiveness would be better than the admission of error.”

“And once the Honours were actually given?”

“Retracting an Honour is a serious embarrassment. Heads would roll on the Palace staff.”

“So we could say that a means of keeping information from your hands, or one that provided leverage on your decision, might be valuable?”

“Why don't you tell me what you know,” Mycroft suggested gloomily.

So we did.

Reiterating it to him, however, brought the fragility of the argument to light. By the end, I found myself growing more interested in Holmes' mythic £250,000. A mutineer's bounty was appealing in so many ways—and it sounded as if the
Gloria Scott
had possessed a rich assortment of financial villains to choose from, as Prendergast's partner in fraud. However, now doubts had been raised, Mycroft could not overlook Hugh Edmunds.

Mycroft glanced at the mantelpiece clock with regret: after midnight. “I might wish you had brought this to me earlier in the day.”

“We did not have it earlier in the day,” Holmes informed him.

Not much earlier, at any rate. “Have we any idea where the Earl is?” I asked. “Berkshire?”

“Mayfair,” Mycroft replied. “He would want to be in his London house when the announcement is made.”

“With the champagne already on ice,” I added. “Shall we go speak with him?”

“In the morning, certainly.”

“You really think we should wait until then?”

Mycroft raised one eyebrow, a look even more supercilious on him than it was on his younger brother. “Scotland Yard may be happy to break down a gentleman's door in the middle of the night, but this is a conversation, my dear, not an accusation of murder.”

I heard Holmes mutter something that sounded remarkably like
Thank God,
but did not let it distract me. “If you find out that—”

Mycroft raised one hand. “If some new fact comes to light, I have until Monday noon to inform the
Gazette
of changes, without causing undue awkwardness.”

“Without the newspapers catching wind of a scandal, you mean.”

The big man was adamant. “I am not going to raise that sort of mid-night turmoil without good cause.”

Clearly, as far as Mycroft Holmes was concerned, re-setting a few lines in the upcoming
London Gazette
was, suspicions or no, inadequate cause for storming the Earl of Steadworth's gates in the dead of night.

W
hether she was Clarissa or Clara, Mrs Hudson had never entirely lost sight of Hugh Edmunds. She had seen the photographs of his wedding to the Hon Virginia Walthorpe-Vane, a petite Shropshire girl with a disturbingly innocent face. She saw the announcement of his father's death, in 1886, and kept an eye on the Earl of Steadworth's progress, from the back benches to positions of growing authority, becoming a man on the inside of power—a man who, reading between the lines, was brought in for the sorts of negotiations the more squeamish shied away from.

She had studied every photograph, and wondered. In the early years, his handsome features had proclaimed honest goodwill and competence. Later, however, the lines had spoken of something else, some faint edge of cruelty and greed—although she knew it might be her own prejudice, showing her qualities that she had never suspected when the man himself stood before her.

From her first Cheat on the streets of Sydney, when the man with the gold watch-chain gave her a half sovereign coin, she had known what men were thinking. Women might escape her eyes, but few men—remarkably few. Since the attack in Ballarat, she had known that any man she was unable to read could be very dangerous indeed.

Something to remember, tonight.

The clocks were striking midnight when her cab stopped in front of Steadworth House. The ground-floor curtains of the noble building were dark, and most of the upper rooms as well. The driver peered up and said uncertainly, “You sure you want me to drop you here?”

Mrs Hudson was pleased as she counted out her coins. How much could be said with nine brief words and a tone of voice: this man knew that she did not live here as family, and knew just as positively that she was not a servant to enter at the back.

“No, it'll be fine, thank you.” She waited until he had pulled away before making her way up the steps to plant her gloved finger on the button for the electrical door-bell.

Her finger was growing tired when a light came on in the depths of the house. She stood away, clasping her hands together on her cheap, shiny handbag.

By the scent that wafted out with the door's opening, she had caught the butler at a late-night glass of his master's Armagnac; his collar betrayed a rapid attempt at restoring decorum. With one glance, his butlerian attitude towards a caller at this hour—stiff disapproval mingled with polite curiosity—dismissed her person and slid into something close to outrage.

“Madam, the hour is very late.”

“And getting later all the while,” she retorted. “I suspect the Earl will be displeased at having to listen to that long peal on the bell.”

Her confidence, so at odds with her appearance, gave him pause, though not actual retreat. “The Earl has gone to bed, Madam. Surely this can wait until morning.”

“If it could wait, I would have come in the morning. Kindly tell your master that Clarissa will see him now.”

His mouth worked a few times before it found words. “Madam, I cannot wake him unless it is an emergency.”

“You tell him my name. Let him judge how urgent it is.”

“I…very well, Madam. Would you please wait in here?”

She let the man usher her into a cold drawing room, switch on the electric lights, and close the door firmly behind her. If there had been a lock, she thought, he'd have turned the key.

The portraits on the walls had heavy gilt frames; the fireplace was marble; a trio of settees looked as comfortable as the table they stood around; the chandelier would take a maid an hour a week to polish. The zebra skin splayed in front of the hearth looked like a creature slow to move when a steam-roller came down the lane.

One thing to say for Mr Holmes: the man had never liked fussy decorations or dead animals.

It took eleven minutes before Hugh Edmunds came in, plenty of time to peruse the faces of previous generations, to test the hard surfaces of the seats, to peer through the diamond-shaped panes of the doors that would open on a fine evening to the narrow terrace. Through the wavy glass, colourless flowers and ghostly statues gleamed in the light from nearby streetlamps. Beyond them, the streets were silent. Then the door behind her came open, and those pale eyes of the paintings were given life. The utterly guileless gaze, the confident set of the head, yet somewhere about him—the shoulders?—there was a certain wariness, as if suspecting that the room contained a threat. The Earl had slippers on his feet, but otherwise had taken the time to get dressed, wearing suit trousers and a fresh white shirt beneath his smoking jacket: armour against importuning women.

“Good evening, Hugh.”

“Clarissa Hudson, by all that's holy—I thought you must be dead long ago!”

“Not quite.”

“Bit of a surprise, hearing your name. Oh, Daniels, that'll be all,” he said to the butler. “I shall see Miss Hudson out.”

Disapproving, and disappointed, the butler took his reluctant leave. The door closed; footsteps retreated down the corridor outside. When he was satisfied that they were alone, Hugh began to circle the room, his eyes on her all the time. He came to a set of decorative doors and reached back to slide one side open, revealing a well-stocked drinks cabinet.

“Glass of something, old thing?”

“Thank you.”

“You liked champagne, I remember, but there's no ice. Seems to be everything else.”

She had no wish to follow Jonny's good bubbly with bad. “I'll have whatever you're having, Hugh.”

He splashed amber liquid from a decanter into a pair of glasses, and set the decanter down. He then paused to survey the unprepossessing figure before the unlit fire. Mismatched costume, unsuitable hair, makeup that tried too hard. His guarded stance relaxed, the cock-crow aspect of his personality reasserting itself as he turned to pick up the glasses.

And to think she'd once found that charming.

He placed one drink on the low marble table in front of the fireplace, and dropped onto the scarlet settee on the table's other side. She settled obediently onto her assigned patch of brocade, and saluted him with her crystal tumbler.

Only when he had lowered his own drink and his face was in the light from the lamp at her shoulder, did she ask him, “Hugh, when did Samuel come to see you?”

His surprise looked remarkably like guilt. He drew up his leg to prop it across the knee—then caught himself. Instead, he stretched out both legs in a show of nonchalance, resting the glass on his belly. “Yes, about that. Why did I never know we had a son?”

“We didn't have a son, Hugh. I had a son.”

“Come now, Clarissa—the boy's the spitting image of me at his age.”

“Interesting. I've always thought he resembled my father. When did you meet Samuel?”

“He showed up here, out of the blue, a couple weeks back. The most ungodly Australian accent and a suit like something you'd bury a bank clerk in. Flourishing a handful of old letters and a photo of me from
The Times,
along with a story I'd have thought highly unlikely if it hadn't been like looking in a mirror.”

“What kind of letters?”

“From your father—who, it seems, wasn't quite as dead as you told me, all those years ago.”

“Probably not. Who were the letters to?”

“Your mother and your sister. Alice?”

“Alicia. I doubt the letters said all that much. My father couldn't have mentioned your name, since he never knew it.”

“No, but he knew you were having a child, and he referred to the father as a ‘Lord.' Samuel seems to have grown up believing that Alice—sorry, Alicia—was his real mother, until he came across those letters. She also had a photo of me from some years back—she must've spotted it and had the same thought I did: Samuel Hudson looks a hell of a lot like Lord Steadworth.

“Oh, and he had a necklace, a half sovereign strung through a chain. Now
, that
I have a very clear memory of.”

At his leer, Clara Hudson's fingers tightened on the crystal: a telegram, crumpled into his pocket before she could see it; bereft tears at the fictional loss of a mother; his face, nuzzling the front of her uncorseted gown in search of comfort. And afterwards, his fingers playing with the gold coin between her breasts.

He grinned at her blush. “Oh, Clarissa, if only my dear wife had proved as hearty as you, I might have had a more productive marriage. Instead, all I have left are two sickly girls and a son whose accent puts my teeth on edge.”

“What did Samuel want from you?”

“Do you know, I think he wanted recognition, more than money—although he seems happy enough to be offered money. And I suppose revenge—on you. He went all dark and broody when he talked about you pawning him off on your sister. He seems to have found it troubling to discover as a grown man that his parents hadn't been his parents. But more immediately, he's looking for his grandfather.”

“My
father
? Did he tell you Papa was still alive?” Even without a bullet, James Hudson would have been fast approaching his century mark.

“No, he claimed his grandfather had disappeared around the time he was born, and thought I might know where he'd gone. One of the letters indicated that your father had money hidden away somewhere. I believe the phrase was, ‘a fortune dropping out of the sky.' Since nothing of the sort came to light after your sister died, he came here hoping that the old man might have told me about it.”

“Why on earth would he think that?”

“Your father's letter said he had recently figured out something that had been puzzling him for a long time, and expected to come into a lot of money because of it—although he didn't obligingly go on to say what that might be. Were there pirates in your family, Clarissa? A map to buried treasure? Samuel thinks it might have to do with the rights to a gold mine. Your father was on his way back to Australia to retrieve whatever it was—after which, he told your sister, they would all live in comfort for ever after. I assured Samuel that not only did I have no idea about any Hudson family monies or gold mines, but the closest I'd come to your father was one night on opposite sides of an hotel door. That was he, I take it, who tried to pound down the door that night?

“I did, frankly, wonder if this was not a rather clumsy attempt to introduce the topic of money. Just in case I felt like clasping him to me and declaring him my one true heir.” Edmunds shook his head, and got up to fill his empty glass. “However, it was another part of that same letter that caught my eye. Have you seen them? The letters?”

“No.”

“I tried to get him to leave them here with me, but he wouldn't. Suspicious little bugger, your son—watched over me while I read them. Anyway, in one, your father says that he is on his way to see a man by name of Beddoes, down in Hampshire. Now, this was a man I met briefly, back in the late 'seventies—he was in a deal with the bank when he simply up and scarpered. Created untold confusion. And, by a fascinating coincidence, that very name was in the papers not long before Samuel showed up here. Bones found on the fellow's estate. ‘The Skeleton in the Gamekeeper's Garden,' I believe they called it.”

Fortunately, Hugh had got up to lay a match under the laid fire, so he missed her reaction. “I remember reading about that,” she said when she'd got her voice under control. “Although I'm not sure what connexion you imagined there.”

He straightened, wincing like an old man. “Clarissa, I always knew you walked the line of being shady. Good girls don't spend the Christmas holidays in Monte Carlo, or keep thick packets of £20 notes at the bottom of their sponge-bag. Yes, yes, I went through your rooms when you were away. Wouldn't you? And if you're that way, it's a sure bet your father wasn't sea-green incorruptible. So when I see a letter written back in 'seventy-nine saying your father—remarkably lively for a dead man—is on his way to see this fellow Beddoes…well, put one criminal together with another, and come up with a man buried in the woods.”