3-Book Victorian Crime Collection: Death at Dawn, Death of a Dancer, A Corpse in Shining Armour. Caro Peacock
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as I’d done, and he had no right.
‘I bought it from them,’ he said. ‘It should have stayed on his hand and been buried with him, but they’d only have stolen it again.’
‘So you’ve come to return it to me?’
I was trying to bring myself to thank him, but could have saved myself the effort.
‘No. I show it to you only to convince you that I knew your father. That in some measure I speak with your father’s authority.’
He pulled off his right glove and stretched out his hand to me. On his middle finger was a ring identical to my father’s, only the design was worn flat by time. Then he turned the hand over, palm up.
‘If you please.’
He expected me to give him my father’s ring back. Instead I dropped it down the front of my stays. It was cold against my hot and angry skin. The shock in his eyes was the first human reaction I’d had from him. We stared at each other and he drew another long sigh.
‘I had heard that you possess an excellent understanding, Miss Lane. I fear you are not using it rationally.’
‘The only understanding I care about is how my father died. Who is this woman he was trying to bring back to England?’
For a second, he couldn’t hide the surprise in his eyes.
‘Who told you about a woman?’
‘The man who kidnapped me in the graveyard and a fat man in the carriage. You know who they are, don’t you?’
‘You did well to escape from them.’
‘The fat man said my father had abducted a woman from Paris. They thought I’d know where she was. I don’t. I know nothing about her.’
‘That’s good. You must continue to know nothing.’
‘No! She’s the reason my father was killed, isn’t she? Don’t I at least have the right to know who she is?’
‘I’m not sure myself who she is.’
‘But there is a woman, you admit that?’
‘I have reason to believe that your father left Paris in company with a woman, yes.’
‘He wouldn’t have taken her away against her will.’
‘Very well. I accept that.’
‘So, whoever she is, she went with him of her own accord. But Trumper and the fat man found out about that and wanted her back.’
A reluctant nod from him.
‘So they chased him from Paris to Calais?’
‘Not chased, exactly. I understand that it took them some days to connect your father with the woman’s disappearance.’
‘Were you in Paris at the time?’
‘No.’
‘So how do you know about this?’
‘I have no obligation to tell you how I know about anything. You must accept that I have been doing my best to observe these people for several months.’
There was a hint of weariness in his voice.
‘The day they tried to kidnap me, they were still looking for this woman,’ I said. ‘Did they find her?’
‘I don’t know. As you may remember, I was indisposed for a while.’
‘You mean knocked senseless by the fat man’s coachman. Who are these people? Why are they doing this?’
He didn’t answer for some time. We stared at each other. There were chalky rings round his grey pupils, a sign of bad health. He sighed.
‘Miss Lane, your father became involved in something that was nothing to do with him. You are probably right in thinking that it cost him his life. When I met you in Calais, my wish was to protect you.’
‘By ordering me to go back to England and forget about it?’
‘I never said “forget”. But it’s true that I wanted to keep you away from them.’
‘And now?’
‘Since then, I have discovered two things about you. One is that you are, unfortunately, not on good terms with those whose natural duty it should be to shelter you. In fact, you are alone in the world and without means of income.’
Yes, I thought. You watched me counting every last penny.
‘The other is that you are a young lady of some resource. Those two men in the carriage did not wish you well. I have heard some of the story of how you contrived to escape from them …’
How? From the toad-like man, the peasant with the pigs …?
‘… and it suggests resolution and quick-wittedness. If it were not for these two discoveries, I should have had no hesitation in restoring you to some relative and counselling you to mourn your father and ask no more questions.’
‘You have no rights over me. All I want from you is to know what happened to him.’
‘In due course, you shall know everything. Only you must have –’
‘Patience? What’s to stop me opening this window and shouting to people to fetch a magistrate, that my father’s murderer is in this room with me?’
He didn’t move a muscle.
‘Two reasons: one, that it would be untrue; the other, that it would be ineffective.’
I had my hand on the window latch. If he had moved to stop me I should have opened it. He stayed where he was and went on talking in that same level voice.
‘I did not kill your father. If I could have prevented his death by any means, I should have done so. As for the magistrates, I should be able within a few minutes to convince them that your accusation was untrue. And you, Miss Lane, would appear a young lady driven out of her senses by grief. Is that a desirable outcome?’
I let go of the latch. If he’d knocked me to the floor he couldn’t have defeated me more thoroughly, because what he said was true. I could imagine the cold, official looks and what would follow: my aunt sent for and my return to Chalke Bissett as a captive. Or, worse than that, strait-jacketed to a common asylum, fighting and screaming, spending the rest of my life among squalid gibberers. In this new world I’d fallen into, it could happen. He must have seen from my face that he’d won the round, because his voice became just a shade more soft.
‘Miss Lane, I did not come here to threaten you. I came, as far as I may, to assist.’
I kept my back turned to him, looking out of the window. A drab in a doorway was beckoning to two sailors. They were taunting her, pretending to push each other in her direction.
‘I give you my promise that, when it is possible, I shall tell you more about what happened to your father. But the time is not yet right, and there are more things bound up in this than the fate of any single man or woman. Your father was a good man on the whole …’
‘On the whole!’
‘… but of an impulsive temperament, as you clearly are. That, above all, was what led to his death.’
The two sailors were walking away, the drab shouting something after them. When she came out of her doorway you could see she was no more than a girl, perhaps fourteen or so. I turned back into the room.
‘You said you had a proposition to put to me.’
He made it, standing there with his hand on the edge of the wash-stand. I sat down after all, because my legs were trembling from shock and anger, and I did not wish him to know it. I let him talk without a word of interruption and tried not to show what I thought.
‘There is a small part which you may