3-Book Victorian Crime Collection: Death at Dawn, Death of a Dancer, A Corpse in Shining Armour. Caro Peacock
few pages, eyebrows raised. They were fine, expressive eyebrows. Some people joked that he could direct an orchestra with them alone. They came together as his forehead pinched in artistic pain, rose again in amusement as he flipped to the last few pages.
‘Ah, child, the sacrifice I have made for you.’ He called out a name and tossed the score across the room to one of the other musicians, who caught it neatly. ‘Take them through it,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll encounter anything you haven’t met a hundred times before. Sir Herbert informs me that he has no liking for pianissimo – or indeed any other fancy foreign issimo – so kindly keep that in mind.’
The other musician smiled, clearly used to Daniel. He took the rest of the parts from me and dumped them on the pianoforte.
‘Now, my dear lady, let us wander in the garden.’
‘People might see us.’
‘Am I such a disgrace?’
‘Guests, I mean. Governesses do not mix with them.’
‘Judging from what I’ve seen and heard of Sir Herbert, you may be wise in scorning his guests.’
‘Please be serious. I should be dismissed if I were seen walking with you.’
‘Where is the spirit of Figaro? But very well, we shall hide ourselves among the vegetables.’
‘Vegetables?’
‘There must surely be an honest vegetable garden where guests don’t go.’
Half a dozen gardeners were at work behind the warm brick walls when we got there, but they hardly looked up from their hoeing. We walked along gravel paths between borders of parsley, oregano and marjoram, alive with butterflies. Daniel Suter offered me his arm in a kind of courtly parody of a lady and gentleman strolling, but it was a good firm arm, and I was glad to keep hold of it.
‘My dear, why did you run away? All of your father’s friends will help you. There was no need for this servitude.’
‘I want to know who killed my father.’
‘What have they told you?’
‘They? Nobody’s told me anything, except one man, and I don’t know how far to believe him.’
‘Who?’
‘A man who calls himself Mr Blackstone.’
I felt his arm go tense under mine. We’d come to the end of our path, facing the wall, and had to choose right or left. There were beans growing on strings up the wall, their red and white flowers just opening and fat furry bees blundering round them. Daniel stood, apparently staring at the bees, but I guessed he was not seeing them.
‘So what do you know?’ I asked him.
‘Child, please leave it be. I’d give my own life, if I could, to bring your father back to you. But since I can’t …’
‘Since you can’t, at least do this for him. You know very well he wasn’t killed in a duel, don’t you?’
He gave the faintest of nods, slight as the movement of a bean leaf under the weight of a bee.
‘What else do you know?’ I said.
‘Very little. I’m sorry to say he’d been dead two weeks before I even heard about it. A few days after he left Paris, I went to Lyon. Somebody wrote to me there …’
‘Who?’
‘A friend.’ He mentioned a name that meant nothing to me. ‘He said he’d been shot, no more.’
We started walking again, turning left between beds of lettuces and chicory. I told him everything that had happened to me, from the time I left my aunt’s house. When I came to how I was almost carried off by Lord Kilkeel and Mr Trumper, he said, ‘Damn them!’ so loudly that a couple of gardeners raised their heads from weeding.
‘You know them?’
‘The man Trumper, I think, yes. But go on.’
It took us three complete tours of the garden. Several times he stopped and looked at me as if he couldn’t believe what I was saying, then shook his head and walked on. I stopped before I came to Mr Brighton’s arrival and the incident in the loosebox. I couldn’t quite bring myself to talk about that.
‘So Blackstone sent you here?’ he said at the end.
‘Yes.’
‘He had no right.’
‘He had my father’s ring.’
I brought it out, untied the ribbon and put it into his hand. He held it for a while, then gave it back to me.
‘Blackstone gave you this? How did he get it?’
‘He said he bought it from the people in the morgue. He wanted to keep it, but I took it from him. He wears a ring like it. Who is he? Did he have some kind of power over my father?’
‘No.’ He sounded angry, then, more gently, ‘He had no kind of power over your father. But Blackstone is a man involved in many wild schemes, always has been. I think your father may unwittingly have been caught up in one of them.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘What you’ve told me is so new to me, I can’t make sense of it.’
‘What about this woman who needed help? How does she come into it? Blackstone says he doesn’t know who she is, but I think he has some idea.’
‘She’s as mysterious to me as she is to you. Your father and I were in Paris together and he said nothing about a …’
He stopped suddenly.
‘You’ve remembered something?’
‘No. Nothing to the purpose.’
We were near a stone water trough. He let go of my arm, sat down on the edge of it, and put his head in his hands.
‘Child, if I had the slightest idea, I’d have dragged your father back to England, bound hand and foot if necessary. But how could any of us tell? It seemed no more than a joke.’
‘He talked about a joke in his letter, then the quote from Shelley about princes. I couldn’t understand it, for a long time. Only I think I do now. There was somebody in Paris, wasn’t there? Somebody you were laughing at?’
‘Yes.’ He said it reluctantly, head bowed.
‘That person, I think he’s here now, in this house.’
‘What?’ His head came up.
‘He’s the reason Mr Blackstone wants me to spy. I think I know now why my father was killed. I knew yesterday.’
When I’d seen Mr Brighton in the orchard, the look on his face, his whole posture, had gathered so many threads together. Daniel’s large dark eyes were fixed on mine. There was so much sadness in them that it scared me. He took my right hand between both of his.
‘Child, you are coming with me now.’
‘Where?’
‘Back to London. Don’t even go in to collect your bonnet. We shall go to the stables and steal a horse if necessary.’
‘I already have a horse and I am not going anywhere.’
‘Then I shall carry you.’
He shifted as if he intended to make good his threat. The thought of neat, ironic Daniel carrying a struggling woman over his shoulder was too much for me and I laughed out loud.
‘Oh my dear, I have already been carried off by my father’s enemies. Spare me the same treatment from his friends.’
He didn’t laugh. ‘So I failed to protect your father and I’m to fail again with