"I've been doubtful about them from the first. They were so unlike Alexander. The style was wrong, to begin with. His real style showed clearly in a letter he wrote to David Adams: light and amusing, like his conversation. The substance of the letters was even more incongruous. Alexander wasn't a Radical—probably had no politics at all. He had taste, not convictions. If he really did mean to stand for Parliament, I'm persuaded it was only because he wanted a new world to conquer—a fresh sphere in which to shine.
"At first I could only conclude he had a scholarly, philosophical side no one knew about. The idea that he didn't write the letters at all never occurred to me—till I met you.
"Do you remember when I asked you yesterday if you had a theory about who killed Alexander? You were eloquent in your refusal to accuse anyone without firm proof. What I heard then was the authentic tone of the letters—particularly the one where Alexander defended the right of a prisoner to have a lawyer in court.
"That set me thinking. Last night I went to his house and hunted about for the books discussed in the letters. He had most of them; his library is impressively large and handsome. But nearly all the books are in virgin condition, with uncut pages and unbroken spines. The only books in that house that aren't purely decorative are the ones on art and architecture and the horror novels. You, on the other hand, have a good many of the books mentioned in the letters, and to judge by their condition, they've been thoroughly, ardently read and reread. Am I correct so far?"
Clare looked away. "Yes. You're quite correct, Mr. Kestrel."
"When I got home, I went through the correspondence between Sir Malcolm and Alexander and compared the dates. None of Alexander's letters was written less than a week after the one from his father that preceded it. That stands to reason: he needed time to give you Sir Malcolm's letter, obtain your answer, and copy it over in his own hand. He copied it verbatim, without censoring your political views—without even troubling to add a few words about what he'd been doing lately or how Mrs. Falkland was. No wonder we thought the letters impersonal. Well, Mr. Clare? Do you deny it?"
"No. No, I wish I could."
"So I ask you again: why did you do it?"
"He asked me to."
"Forgive me, but you must see, that's a very inadequate response."
"It's the only response I can give. He asked it as a favour, and I agreed."
"What reason did he give for wanting you to impersonate him on paper?"
"He was very busy. He was refurbishing his house, he went out very often and gave a great many parties. He hadn't time to study as much as I did or to write long letters. At first he merely asked me to note down some things he could write to his father, but soon it became simpler to have me write the letters myself."
"Why did you agree?"
"I've told you, we were friends."
"I have friends, too, Mr. Clare, and there's a great deal I would do for them, but not at the expense of my honour."
A flush spread slowly over Clare's face. "You're right to despise me. I despise myself."
"Very pretty, Mr. Clare. But even as a despicable character, you don't make much sense. If Falkland were paying you or doing you some service, I could understand your falling in with his scheme. But the only thing he ever did for you was to invite you to his parties, which you disliked, and introduce you to important people, whom you made no effort to cultivate. You've told me social graces aren't your forte, but no one could deny that you have formidable intellectual gifts. You might have cut a dash among your fellow students and impressed barristers and solicitors whose patronage could advance you in your career. Instead, you chose to stand in Alexander Falkland's shadow. Why? How did he threaten you, to extort such a sacrifice?"
Clare's eyes dilated. "He—he never threatened me. I—I—"
"Your hesitancy does you credit. You hate to lie, don't you, Mr. Clare? I wonder why you do it."
"I can't tell you anything more." Clare went to the window, gripping the frame as a prisoner might rattle the bars of his cell. "I ought not to have taken part in a fraud. I'm ashamed of having done so. But it has nothing to do with Falkland's murder."
"Then why have you kept it a secret?"
"Just for the reason I said—because it was a private matter, nothing Bow Street need be concerned about."
"That isn't for you to say. Bow Street needs every scrap of information about irregularities in Falkland's life. And I should say that a tortuous deception of his father, lasting some eighteen months and serving no apparent purpose except to gratify his vanity, was a significant irregularity."
"There's something else." Clare lowered his gaze, his colour mounting. "I didn't want Sir Malcolm to find out Alexander didn't write the letters. He seemed to take such pleasure in them—or at least I had that impression from his letters to me—I mean, to Alexander. I thought he might set some value on them as a remembrance of his son. How could I reveal that Alexander didn't write them, that he never cared enough—" Clare brought himself up short. "Anyway, I thought that, cruel as it had been to deceive Sir Malcolm, undeceiving him would be worse, now his son was dead and could never explain or atone for what he'd done."
"You're very eloquent, Mr. Clare. Remarkably so, in pleading the cause of the man you've wronged. Might his being a bencher of Lincoln's Inn have anything to do with your wanting to conceal how you'd made a fool of him? He could have you cast out and dish your legal career before it begins."
Clare waved his hand, as if to say that was the least of his worries. "You'll have to tell him now, I suppose?"
"Of course. There can't be any question of keeping this dark."
"Not even for Sir Malcolm's own sake?"
"Sir Malcolm is desperate to understand what happened to his son. He's told me he's prepared to face any knowledge, no matter how bitter, rather than remain in ignorance. I think he has too high a regard for truth to wish to perpetuate a lie, however comforting or convenient."
Clare turned his face away. The unruly lock of hair fell across his brow, shading his eyes.
Julian regarded him wryly. "You make it very difficult to help you, Mr. Clare. You've been less than candid about why you wrote the letters, and why you concealed the fact after Falkland's murder. You must realize, this duplicity casts doubt on everything else you've said. If I've offended you, you may send a friend to call on me. But I don't believe you will. You have too much conscience to risk your life, or mine, to defend a lie."
Clare leaned his arm against the window. He looked exhausted. Julian decided to let his conscience rack him for a while. He took up his hat and stick and departed.
*
As long as he was at Lincoln's Inn, Julian thought he might as well look in on Sir Malcolm. He had a good deal to tell him. He crossed Serle's Court and asked a pug-faced laundress to direct him to No. 21, Old Square. A sooty rain was beginning to fall; he turned up his coat-collar to protect his cream silk cravat.
Old Square was aptly named: its cluster of red-brick buildings with pointed gables must date back to Charles I. Julian mounted the narrow, curving stair of No. 21 and found a door neatly painted with Sir Malcolm's name. Inside was an elderly clerk bent over a writing table, his grey head islanded amid bundles of papers tied up with red tape. On seeing Julian, he thrust his quill behind his ear, a habit that would account for the blue stain on his side-whiskers. "Good morning, sir."
"Good morning. I should like to see Sir Malcolm."
"I'm afraid he isn't in, sir."
Julian knew that eminent barristers were never in. One of their clerks' principal tasks was to keep them in magnificent isolation, turning away anyone who presumed to come without an appointment. "If you'll be so good as to present this card, I think you'll find him miraculously returned."
The clerk looked at the card, and his stern face relaxed. "Mr. Kestrel! Bless my soul, he's been hoping to see you." He opened a door behind him and called, "Mr. Julian Kestrel, sir."
"Mr. Kestrel!" Sir Malcolm appeared in the doorway. "Come in, come in! Sit down, and tell me everything you've been finding out. I feel starved for news."
Julian waited till the door had closed behind them, then warned, "I'm afraid some of what I have to say will be painful."
"Then tell it quickly." Sir Malcolm sat down at his desk, sweeping aside a litter of opened letters and blue bags bulging with papers. A cloud of powder flew from his wig, which hung on a wooden block beside him.
Julian got through the cruelest part of his story first. When he had finished, Sir Malcolm stared at him, dazed and incredulous. "All of them? Clare wrote
all
the letters?"
"All the ones you gave me to read, yes."
"But how could Alexander—why—" He pressed his fingertips to his brow, thinking feverishly. "He—he was trying to please me, of course—trying to make me proud of him. He went about it badly, but he meant well. It's just as Clare told you: Alexander hadn't time to study, and Clare did, so Alexander—well, he took credit for Clare's industry."
"Not only for his industry," Julian reminded him gently. "For his thoughts, his understanding, his ideals."
"He ought not to have done it. I know that. But it was an error born of love—a schoolboy's effort to impress his father."
But Alexander wasn't a schoolboy, Julian thought. What may be a prank in a child is deceit in a man.
He said, "For my purpose, why Alexander wanted Clare to write the letters isn't so important as why Clare agreed. Both he and Adams did Alexander extraordinary favours: Clare supplied him with legal insights at the expense of his own career, and Adams forgave him a vast amount of debt. Even Alexander couldn't have won all that by charm alone. Either he had something valuable to offer those two men, or he threatened them somehow. And since it doesn't appear he was helping Clare in any way, we have to ask whether he had it in his power to harm him."
"You forget, my son is the victim of this crime!" Sir Malcolm flushed angrily. "He was viciously, brutally murdered! Now you seem more concerned to uncover his crimes than the murderer's!"
"The two are inextricably bound. If we don't find out who Alexander angered or wronged, how will we know who had a motive to kill him?"
Sir Malcolm jumped up and walked back and forth, clenching and unclenching his fists. At last he halted and drew a long breath. "You're right, as usual. Forgive me. But you didn't see him lying there that night, with his beautiful head all broken—the work of four-and-twenty years dashed away in a moment! A pile of bones and bleeding flesh that used to talk and laugh and—" He covered his face.
"My dear sir." Julian went to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Won't you sit down? Shall I ask your clerk to fetch us a drink?"
"No, you're very good, but I'll be all right." He let Julian lead him back to his chair and finished more quietly, "Now you tell me the young man I knew and loved wasn't real—that he deceived me, perhaps blackmailed his friends—that I'm not even entitled to a memory. This is hard—harder than I dreamed it could be."
"I'm sorry."
"I know." Sir Malcolm patted his shoulder. "You haven't done anything I haven't asked you to do. Let's proceed. I'll show you how calm and business-like I can be. You say my son may have had some power to harm Mr. Clare. In what way, do you think?"
"My guess is it had something to do with Clare's sister. Clare gets into a funk whenever I speak of her, and though he denies she ever knew Alexander, I hardly think he's proved himself a pattern of truthfulness."
"What do you know about her?"
"Only that she lives with her great-uncle in Somerset, and that she's an ardent disciple of Mary Wollstonecraft."
"Rights of women, eh? I know the book—it's a bit hysterical, but much of it is right. Plato, you know, saw no reason women shouldn't be Guardians in his ideal republic. He said it made no more sense to exclude them than it would to have only male watchdogs to protect your house. There's no reason a woman shouldn't learn and study and reason, just like a man. Except of course that they don't," he added regretfully. "Which is why I never know what to say to them."
Julian was glad to let him talk, since it helped him get his equanimity back. When he seemed ready to absorb more information, Julian gave him a brief account of his conversations with Lady Anthea Fitzjohn, Felix Poynter, Sir Henry Effingham, and David Adams. He went on to explain that the maidservant who had accosted Mrs. Falkland in the Strand was really a woman of uncertain reputation named Mrs. Desmond, who for reasons unknown had disguised herself in her maid's clothes. He described how she and her maid had fled on the night of the Brickfield Murder, and how he and Vance had found traces of brickearth in her house. "So you see," he finished, "I need to question Mrs. Falkland about her again."
"I can't imagine what Belinda could know about a woman of that character, much less about the poor creature who was killed in the brickfield."
"Nor can I, but I can't blink away that Mrs. Falkland is keeping something back about her encounter with Mrs. Desmond. It may not have anything to do with either of these murders, but I won't know that for certain till I know what it is."
"Well, of course you're welcome to come to Hampstead and question her again. But can it wait till tomorrow? She had a stormy leave-taking with Eugene this morning, and it's left her shaken."
"So she made good her resolve to pack him off to school?"
"Yes. We were all afraid he'd do some freakish thing at the last minute, like staying out all night in the rain. But we got him off safe and sound. He must be well on his way to Yorkshire by now."
"I'll call tomorrow morning, then."
"Belinda rides every morning at ten, unless it pours."
"Perhaps she'll allow me to ride with her." That would suit his purpose, Julian thought. Mrs. Falkland loved to ride and might well be at her most relaxed and unguarded on horseback. Of course, he might find it hard to keep his mind on the investigation. Belinda Falkland on horseback was one of the sights of Rotten Row—a joy to any admirer of fine horsemanship or feminine grace. "One more thing, Sir Malcolm: I should rather you didn't repeat to her anything I've told you about Mrs. Desmond."