Gilded cage, p.8
Gilded Cage, page 8
His throat and chest were constricted. “I want to make it better.”
“I know you do.”
“I would marry you, Sukey. I wouldn’t regret it, ever.”
“I don’t know that.” She must have realised he was on the verge of tears, because she added, “I might risk it, mind you. Maybe. If it wasn’t for the rest.”
He ignored the last part, grasping her hand. It felt cold. “Really? Sukey, would you marry me?”
She let out a long sigh. “I would. Which is to say, I won’t but it’s not because I don’t want to, and that’s the best I can do so stop asking.”
“If my father agrees,” James said, intent. “If he gives his permission—”
“James—”
“—will you marry me?”
She snarled in her throat. “Do not ask your father. Do not tell your father. Do not go within fifty miles of your family with this. I don’t want the Vanes involved. Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, but—”
“No but. I don’t think you know what big rich aristocratic families do to inconvenient girls who want to marry their sons.”
“My family aren’t villains from the melodrama, for heaven’s sake. They’ll—” He couldn’t voice be reasonable. “I’ll make them see reason.”
“No you will not, because you’re not going to tell them,” Sukey said. “I want you to promise me. You’ve made the offer and I know you mean it and that’s all that matters.”
“Not for our child. Not for a baby who’ll be born illegitimate.”
“Justin was a workhouse foundling and I never had a father. This one will have a family. Sounds like a step up to me.”
His knuckles hurt. He relaxed the fist he’d made without realising it. “It’s not enough. It’s not right.”
“But it’s how it is, so don’t make things worse. Don’t tell your father. Promise me you won’t.”
He shut his eyes. “I promise. I won’t make it worse.”
And that was where he’d gone wrong, with the first promise to her he ever broke.
HIS HANDS WERE COLD. He’d leaned against the window for God knew how long, staring out into the damp misery of grey London. Sukey—Susan was out in that, shouldering the consequences of his actions while he stood around doing nothing. It was all of a piece.
At least he wasn’t standing around in the warm. He didn’t dare light a fire, and it was damned cold. He stripped to his undershirt, and set about some exercises: Hindu push-ups, side bridges, squats, arm holds, whatever he could think of as long as it could be done without thumps on the floor, and as long as two hundred repetitions hurt enough to occupy his thoughts to the exclusion of all else.
He kept that up for an hour or more, working until his arms and legs felt like jelly, and then moved to hand exercises, lifting a heavy book with one finger after another, at a speed that demanded full concentration. It passed the time as much as anything could.
She ought to have married. Or she ought to have half a dozen photographs of the woman with the eyes, and some clothes that clearly weren’t hers. She ought to be happy, so that he could demand her help and then slink out of her life again without a kick in the balls from a conscience that he hadn’t let bother him in years. I don’t know why you’ve turned up now, he thought resentfully at it. Feel free to leave.
He made himself luncheon and considered the task he’d been given. It would be nice not to fail at something, but sadly, no generous loyal friends leapt to mind. He drank with people often enough, but he wouldn’t call them friends, not of the kind that would stand up for a man accused of murder, keep his secrets, not sell him for the reward. Those friends were Jerry and Stan, or had been. They’d have helped him without question if he hadn’t entirely failed to think about helping them.
“Christ, you prick,” he said aloud, then cursed himself. No male voices in Susan’s room. He wondered how long he’d need to stay here, silent and passive.
He was a prick, though. Stan had done time once, and he’d always made it clear he didn’t want to do it again. Miss Chris, his girl, was frighteningly vulnerable to a legal system that would cut her hair and throw her in a man’s gaol. And Jerry, that hard-eyed reliably ruthless son of a bitch, had found something in Alec, or himself, or the combination of the two, that was remaking him from the inside out. Of course he’d thought first of Alec, just as Templeton hadn’t given a damn for any other obligation when he’d loved Susan. He’d have burned the world for her without hesitation, and had said as much to his father.
“I love her. I want to marry her,” he’d said. “It doesn’t matter where she comes from, only who she is.”
“Do you have no regard for your name?” his father had demanded, knuckles white on the chair. “Have you entirely forgotten who you are? Who we are?”
“I don’t care about the Vanes!” he’d shouted back. “Cut me off, you never wanted me anyway! I’ll change my name if you like, I’ll never be a Vane again, just let me marry her!”
He’d been too angry, too flown with high emotion and thoughts of Susan, to pay any attention to his father’s face. And yet he’d thought afterwards that he’d seen shock, perhaps hurt. Even if you’d long ago decided your son was worthless, it probably stung to learn he didn’t care about you either. Maybe that had played a part in his father’s vengeance.
Because it had hurt when Templeton had brought matters to a choice between himself and Alec, and Jerry had picked his new lover over his old friend. It had hurt like hell, and the reason that hurtful thing had happened was that Templeton had forced Jerry to an entirely unnecessary decision, and the reason he’d done that...
He sat heavily in Susan’s armchair, leaned back, and put his hands over his face.
It was contemptible, stupid and, worst of all, avoidable. An unforced error, as so many of his mistakes were. He knew exactly why he’d pushed Jerry so unreasonably, and demanded a single loyalty from a man who had a complicated existence to manage. It was bloody Susan again.
He’d lost her when he’d broken his promise, then lost his chance at making amends along with everything else when his father had exiled him to Australia. He’d had nobody at all for years after that. He’d taught himself not to trust, never to rely on anyone, never ever to set himself up for a fall like he’d taken for love of Sukey Lazarus, who hadn’t even written back.
It was the loneliness that had done it. He had been lonely for much of his childhood in a family that seemingly disliked him from birth; the opal mines of Lightning Ridge were far lonelier than that because by then he’d found out what it was not to be alone. He had realised that loneliness could kill you, so he had set out to stop feeling it.
And he’d succeeded. He’d escaped the mines and made a new life that was a deliberate fuck-you to loneliness and longing and everything James Vane ought to have been. He’d met Jerry, recognised his resentful defiance as though he’d looked in a mirror, and formed a bond based solely on getting as rich as possible at the expense of people like his father. He hadn’t wanted the partnership to become a friendship; he wasn’t even sure when it had. It didn’t do to think about such things too closely, in case Fate noticed and took a hand.
He’d focused on enjoyment of the present rather than hope for the future or regret of the past. He had made himself Templeton Lane, half of the Lilywhite Boys, and that did very nicely indeed.
Then Susan and her blasted agency had begun to dog his steps, and he hadn’t let himself think about that either because it only mattered what he was now, not what he’d been. She’d tried to shoot him and told him she’d burned his letters, and that was entirely in keeping with everything else.
And then, with Alec’s help, she had entrapped the Lilywhite Boys into her scheme to nail the Duke and Duchess of Ilvar for a pair of twenty-year-old murders. She’d used him and fooled him, but most of all, she’d looked him in the eyes and told him they weren’t even close to quits.
You owe a debt, James. Your payment is, in fact, very seriously overdue. Consider this a visit from the bailiffs.
She’d also punched him in the stomach and locked him in a cellar to await the police, but those were trivialities. How could he still owe her? Had he not paid enough in the mines? What did he not know? It had been near-incapacitating, to the point that he’d happily let Jerry finish the job, cracking the Duchess’s safe as a gesture to Alec much as a normal man would offer flowers.
Months had passed. Susan’s words had dug into his flesh and festered, a splinter too deep to remove. And meanwhile Jerry had visibly changed, as though a part of him that had been dead for years was coming back to life. As though years as a care-for-nobody had withered his soul, and love of Alec was working on it like spring rain.
Templeton had not wanted that to be true. It was easy to be the Lilywhite Boys. It was profitable and dangerous and fun, and it kept Susan and his past as far away as if he were still in Australia. Templeton Lane had no need to think about such things.
Every evidence of Jerry’s growing attachment had felt like another blow to the life he’d constructed. Had forced him to think of other things, and wonder again what he owed Susan, and feel a deep, painful envy that he knew was contemptible but couldn’t get rid of, which only made him angrier.
Stan had tried to broach the subject after an unusually heated row. Temp, mate, anyone can see you’re pissed off about Alec. Is there anything you want to talk about? Not with me, obviously, but Christiana’s good at this.
Ah, the irony. Stan thought he was jealous of Alec because he wanted Jerry. Templeton had let him go on thinking that because it was so much less embarrassing than the truth, which was that he wanted what Jerry had.
Of course he’d been a prick about it. If he’d told Jerry, Alec comes first, and Some things are more important than jewels, he’d have had to apply those principles to himself, and that would not do. Loneliness had nearly done for him in the opal mines; he’d refused to be lonely in the middle of London just because his partner in crime had found something that Templeton had spent years assuring himself he didn’t need or want. Naturally he’d hit out. Anyone would have, probably.
And in that process he’d rendered himself as alone as before, except that now he had a price on his head and every man’s hand against him. Which brought him neatly back to the conclusion that he was a prick.
He was sitting in the dark with his face in his hands when the door opened.
CHAPTER SIX
Susan had considered a number of possible outcomes as she returned to her rooms. James had been discovered, and her landlady would be waiting, arms folded and foot tapping. James had been discovered and identified, and her rooms would be full of policemen ditto. James had vanished as unexpectedly as he’d arrived and she’d never see him or her valuables again. The whole thing had been a hallucination. She was rather hopeful of that last; it would have solved all her problems.
She didn’t expect to find him hunched in the dark. He looked utterly despairing. He didn’t even raise his head as she entered, and she had the sudden, sharp thought that he was dead, that an assassin, or a heart attack—
For crying out loud, Lazarus.
“Are you all right?” she enquired, as she shook out her wet coat.
There was a long silence, then he inhaled deeply, shoulders visibly rising and falling. “Yes. Of course.”
“You don’t look all right.”
“Let’s pretend I do,” James said. “I doubt you want to take on any more of my troubles.”
“Or even any of them, but here we are.” The fire was laid, she realised. “Did the maid come in?”
“No. Nobody so much as knocked.”
“In that case, thank you for—” She indicated with her head. “Light it?”
James hauled himself out of the armchair with a visible effort and knelt by the fireplace. Susan reclaimed her chair and watched him as she unfastened her boot buttons. He looked defeated, as though he’d already lost the battle she’d sallied forth to fight on his behalf, which was a cheek considering she’d been on her feet all day while he sat around.
“If there’s a problem, I need to know,” she said, once he had the fire started.
“I had a great deal of time to think today and didn’t much like the conclusions I reached.” She raised a brow. He shrugged. “I can’t imagine you approve of any of the decisions I’ve made over the past seventeen years or so?”
“Not really.”
“Then we find ourselves in agreement. How was your day?”
Susan added that to the growing pile labelled Let go for now. “Extremely useful. I went for a word with the CID. I’m reasonably popular there after the Ilvar case.”
“Really? I thought you embarrassed the police considerably.”
“The county police. The Met loved that.”
“Good point.” He was making an obvious effort to sound lighter. “So, what did you find out?”
“Oh, not much. I just had a quick chat with Detective Inspector Wilby.”
“Who?”
Susan rolled her eyes. “The man in charge of your case. Do you not read the newspapers?”
“I felt self-conscious about buying them, in the circumstances. You spoke to the Detective Inspector.” An actual smile dawned. “Well, that’s useful. Or was it?”
“Depends how you look at it,” Susan said. “First things first— All right, how much of the situation in the Montmorency house on the night do you know?”
“He had his long-lost nephew staying with him, and his lawyer.”
“The nephew, Harrison Stroud, was his sole relative and heir, so he would normally be the obvious suspect. I told Wilby I had a client who had been approached by an intermediary offering to sell some of Montmorency’s jewels, even though probate hasn’t been granted. I said I wanted to know if it was a fraud, if it might be a lead to you, or if Stroud was dipping into Uncle’s estate, and asked what he could tell me about the man.”
James’s mouth was open. “You said that?”
“Why not?”
“It sounds very like interfering with a police investigation.”
“Obviously it does,” Susan said. “I am. Do you want to know what he told me?”
The spark had returned to James’s eyes, she was sure. It was lurking deep, but it was there as he said, “By God I do.”
Susan leaned back. “Put the kettle on, will you? Right. Montmorency had a sister who went off to India with her husband, a Captain Stroud, thirty years ago. She died there, leaving one child, and Montmorency lost touch with her widower. This didn’t seem to concern him until two years ago when he suffered a serious illness and noticed that he was alone in the world. He sent out enquiries to India via his lawyer, whose agents duly turned up Mr. Harrison Stroud. Stroud came to England on Montmorency’s invitation, and the old man made him his heir. That makes Stroud a strong candidate for murderer. However, Montmorency was an elderly man who had already arranged to give him a generous allowance. Nobody heard any disagreement between the two. And Stroud isn’t in particular need of money—no business to support, no pressing debt. So it is isn’t obvious why he would have killed his uncle when he was certain to inherit in the not-so-distant future.”
“Unless, of course, he isn’t Harrison Stroud at all,” James said. “It’s easy enough to become someone else at that distance. Is his identity proven?”
“I asked that. And so did Montmorency’s lawyer and old friend Cecil Brayton. Apparently the two fell out over the matter, since Montmorency was happy with the results of the initial queries, but Brayton wanted to investigate further for certainty’s sake.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Just lawyerly caution, it seems. Montmorency wanted to embrace his nephew and didn’t feel inclined to delay for years to have the i’s dotted and t’s crossed. So he steamed ahead, and Brayton took it upon himself to continue his own investigation without Montmorency’s knowledge.”
“And what did he find?” James hung the kettle over the fire.
“Nothing. All the evidence Brayton turned up confirms Stroud is who he says he is, the legitimate heir, with no need or reason to kill his uncle. And as if that’s not enough, he has an alibi.”
“Damn.” James sat down.
“Yes, well, wait till you hear it,” Susan said. “The thing is, Brayton remained stubbornly cautious about Stroud’s identity. He wanted Montmorency to wait for more and more proof. It reached the point where Stroud lost his patience, and Montmorency demanded Brayton apologise to him. This was the night of the murder. Stroud went to bed so irritated he couldn’t sleep, and, knowing that Brayton was an insomniac, went to speak to him in his rooms. There he offered to answer every question and recount his entire life over again if Brayton would only give him a fair hearing. They were together when they heard the housekeeper scream.”
She gave him an expectant look. James stared at her. “In the first floor guest rooms?”
“That’s right. But they didn’t hear anyone in the house because they were both engrossed in conversation.”
“The God-given fuck they were,” James said. “By which I mean, I find that unlikely. I would have heard them, and seen a light under a door. I was listening, damn it, and I will swear the house was asleep.”
“Yes, I thought you would.” Susan grinned at him. “It may be the doors are heavy and very well-fitted, of course, but it sounds like horseshit to me. And if it’s horseshit, it’s being produced by Brayton and Stroud as a matched pair.”
James was sitting up straight now, all trace of the slump gone. “The lawyer and the nephew are in it together?”
“Looks that way to me, because I’ve got your account. Wilby has not, so as far as he’s concerned they can give each other an unassailable alibi.”
James rose and went over to get out the tea things. “But what about this lawyer? Is he suspected?”
