Chapter 33: : Chapter 32

‘What is it?’ Andrew said as Charles lifted a worn brown leather volume from Kenneth Fraser’s dispatch box.

‘It seems to be a ledger.’ Charles set the volume on the desk and opened the front cover. ‘Recording payments of some sort.’ He scanned the dates, entered in a bold script that was clearly his father’s. Like a blow to the gut, it hit him again that the man with that decisive hand was gone. Dead. Reduced to a wreckage of blood and bone.

‘April of 1780 to—’ Charles flipped through the entries. The writing stopped well before the last page of the ledger. ‘October 1785.’

Andrew leaned down to read the entries. ‘A thousand pounds. Two thousand pounds. A thousand again. Three thousand. Good God, there’s a small fortune here, even by your father’s standards.’

Charles turned the pages of the ledger again, more slowly. A few a year, but not at regular intervals. All varied between one and three thousand pounds. Except for the last.

‘What the devil was Kenneth Fraser paying twenty-five thousand pounds for?’ Andrew said.

‘He may not have been paying it out. He may have been taking it in. These dates are before he came into his inheritance. Before he bought Dunmykel.’

Andrew frowned down at the ledger. ‘Your father always insisted I record the details of any transactions. He was meticulous about it, for all he was often an absentee landlord. Yet there’s nothing here to indicate what these amounts mean, not even if they’re incoming or outgoing. He must have thought whatever it was too dangerous or damaging to record.’

Charles nodded. ‘And he kept the ledger locked away, which implies—’

His words were drowned out by the creak of the door being thrown open. ‘Charles.’ Mélanie hurried into the room. ‘Someone put laudanum in David’s whisky.’

‘David’s?’

‘I know, it doesn’t make any sense, but there’s no doubt. I tasted it. Though I might have missed it if we hadn’t tasted the laudanum in Miss Talbot’s brandy so recently.’

‘My God,’ Andrew said, ‘is some lunatic drugging all the drinks in the house?’

‘We checked,’ Mélanie said. ‘We checked all the whisky, brandy, sherry, water, anything liquid any of us had in our rooms. David’s is the only one that’s been doctored. And before you ask, David says the last time he had a drink from the bottle was the night before last. Before Miss Talbot was killed.’

‘Where are the others?’ Charles asked.

‘In the old drawing room. I didn’t think there was enough room for all of us in here.’

‘Right. Andrew, bring the dispatch box.’

Gray predawn light leached round the white-painted shutters in the old drawing room. The candle sconces by the fireplace and the lamp on the rosewood table created islands of warmth in the cool shadows of the room. Tommy and Gisèle sat on one of the cream silk sofas. David was pacing up and down at the far end of the room. Simon stood beside the pianoforte, staring at a musical score as though it held answers to why someone might be making an attempt on his lover’s life.

‘I don’t understand,’ Gisèle was saying when Charles opened the door. ‘Why on earth would anyone want to kill David? I mean, he’s—’

‘Completely irrelevant.’ David halted his pacing. ‘At least as far as everything we’ve learned about Honoria’s death and the Elsinore League.’

‘Except that you’re standing in for one of Honoria’s guardians.’ Charles closed the door and moved into the room.

‘We are assuming the same person who drugged and strangled Honoria drugged David’s whisky, aren’t we?’ Gisèle said.

Charles pulled one of the canvaswork chairs away from the rosewood table and held it out for Mélanie. ‘We can’t be sure of anything, but I’d say the odds are extraordinarily high that the same person drugged Honoria’s brandy and David’s whisky. On the other hand, it’s not at all clear that the person who drugged Honoria is the same person who strangled her.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Fraser,’ Tommy said, ‘How many villains do you think are running about this estate?’

‘An obscenely high number by any count.’

‘But why would someone have drugged Honoria if it wasn’t part of the murder?’ Gisèle asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Charles dropped into a chair beside Mélanie and then wondered if it had been a good idea. If he stopped moving for too long, he feared he might not be able to get started again. ‘I still can’t work out how the killer could have planned the murder without having known Honoria would be alone in Father’s bedchamber. Or else having known Father’s bedchamber would be empty so the killer could move her there after she was dead.’

Mélanie rested her arm on the table and leaned her chin on her hand. The bruise on her jaw had turned a dark purple. ‘I can’t figure out how the killer could have counted on Miss Talbot or David drinking the brandy or whisky on any given night. I suppose Miss Talbot might have always been in the habit of taking a drink at bedtime, but we know David isn’t. The whole thing seems incredibly chancy.’

‘Not to mention that David might have shared the whisky with—oh goodness.’ Gisèle sat up very straight ‘Could the killer really have been trying to drug Simon?’

Charles cast a quick glance at his sister. ‘Clever girl, Gelly.’ He turned to David. ‘If you’d had a glass of whisky, the odds are Simon would have as well, aren’t they?’

‘Yes.’ David’s gaze moved to Simon, dark with concern.

‘Whichever one of you was the target, the killer would have wanted to drug you both,’ Mélanie said. ‘To ensure that you both slept through the attack.’

Simon flipped the musical score closed. The flutter of the pages echoed in the still room. ‘I can think of several actors and at least one manager who would quite like to see me dead. But none of them happens to be at Dunmykel.’

Tommy lifted his gaze from a contemplation of the scrolls in the carpet. ‘You’re French, aren’t you?’

‘My mother was French. I spent the first ten years of my life in Paris. How did you know?’

‘Your voice. One gets used to reading accents in my line of work.’ Tommy scanned Simon’s face. ‘You look to be about my age. You must have been born just before the Revolution.’

‘My father went abroad to study painting and married an artist’s model. My mother.’

Tommy leaned back on the sofa and crossed his legs at the ankles. ‘Could your father have had anything to do with the Elsinore League and Le Faucon?’

‘Good God, no. My father certainly wouldn’t have been in Glenister and Kenneth Fraser’s set. As for the Le Faucon—my father was a painter with mildly revolutionary views, but he never went much beyond speaking his mind in cafe’s. He’s the last man to be involved in something like—’ Simon drew in his breath and looked across the room at Charles. ‘I suppose you’d have said the same about your father and Lord Glenister a fortnight ago.’

‘But even if Simon’s father had been involved with the league, why attack Simon?’ David said. ‘How could Simon pose a threat now?’

‘Perhaps because of something from his childhood.’ Mélanie looked at Simon. ‘Something the murderer’s afraid you’ll remember.’

Simon aligned the edges of a loose sheaf of music on the piano. ‘Are you asking if one of the men I handed cups of coffee to in my parents’ salon or met walking with my mother in the Bois de Boulogne or having ices with my father in the boulevards could have been Le Faucon de Maulévrier? As I said, I suppose anything’s possible. But I don’t see how the devil I could work it out now. And no, I don’t remember anyone in particular with cold blue eyes.’

Gisèle scowled at the torn flounce on her skirt. ‘Besides, we still aren’t sure that Honoria’s death had anything to do with this falcon person. If the man who attacked Charles is Le Faucon and he killed Father tonight, then someone else killed Honoria.’

Charles rubbed his hand over his eyes. His gaze seemed to have stopped focusing properly several hours before. Perhaps with his first glimpse of his father’s body. ‘A lot of ifs,’ he said. ‘But yes.’

David strode forward and rested his hands on the sofa table. ‘What now? The one thing that seems clear is that the killer may be planning further mischief.’

‘At least there’s not much chance of either of us sleeping through anything now,’ Simon said.

David glanced at him over his shoulder. ‘That’s not exactly enough to reassure me.’

‘We’ll take it in turns to watch the upstairs corridors outside the bedrooms tonight,’ Charles said. ‘In teams of two.’

‘It shouldn’t take two,’ Tommy said, ‘it’s not much of a—oh, I see. Insurance in case one of us is the killer.’

‘We can’t afford to overlook the possibility.’

Uneasy silence filled the room, like the gathering light that seeped round the shutters and pooled on the oak floorboards.

‘We ought to go dress,’ Gisèle said in a voice that echoed off the carved ceiling.

David stared at her as though to ask how she could think about clothes at a time like this.

Gisèle got to her feet. For a moment, in the half-light, she might have been Lady Frances. ‘It’s only a few hours until Honoria’s funeral.’

Mélanie didn’t go upstairs with the others. She could change from her breeches and coat to suitable mourning attire in ten minutes if necessary. Through the years she’d mastered a number of tricks for making a quick toilette. Instead she accompanied Charles and Andrew back to the study. Though she knew there was little she could do to comfort her husband, she felt better when she could keep an eye on him.

She surveyed the two men as they followed her into the study. Charles’s face seemed to have been scoured to nothing but sharp bones and gray hollows. When she inadvertently brushed against his hand, his skin felt like ice, as though he had shut down inside and encased himself in numbness. Yet she had the sense that if she tried to break through the frozen fortifications, it would be like putting a match to gunpowder.

Andrew looked as though he was locked in some internal battle he was determined to win. He’d scarcely spoken during the scene in the old drawing room, and though he’d smiled at Gisèle when she left the room he hadn’t attempted to go near her. Now he crossed the study, set the dispatch box back on the desk, and stood to one side.

‘We found a ledger,’ Charles told her, lifting a worn brown volume out of the box. ‘Records of large sums of money, but nothing to indicate what they’re for or if they’re incoming or outgoing, so—wait a bit.’ He ran his fingers along the inside cover of the ledger. ‘Hand me the penknife, will you, Andrew?’

Charles took the ivory-handled knife and cut away the inside binding of the ledger. A corner of something paler showed against the dark binding. He peeled the binding back to reveal a slim sheaf of papers.

‘Good Lord,’ Andrew said.

‘It seems I had a few more things in common with Kenneth Fraser than I’d like to admit.’ Charles laid the papers out in the light of the lamp. Mélanie and Andrew stood on either side of him. Spread before them were a series of notes written on heavy cream laid paper stamped with a crest.

April 1780 Fraser, As agreed.

G.

June 1781 Fraser, This settles matters between us.

G.

October 1782 Fraser, Pursuant to the matter discussed.

G.

February 1784 Fraser, Once again, in regard to our last meeting.

G.

‘G?’ Andrew said. ‘Glenister? That’s his crest, isn’t it?’

‘That’s the Marquis of Glenister’s crest, yes,’ Charles said.

Mélanie flipped through the yellowed pages of the ledger. ‘The dates on the notes all correspond to entries in the ledger.’

‘So Glenister was giving Mr. Fraser money?’ Andrew said.

‘Not the current Lord Glenister.’ Charles ran his finger down the ledger entries. ‘Look at the dates. Frederick Talbot didn’t become marquis until 1796. These notes are from his father.’

Andrew turned a bewildered gaze from the ledger to Charles. ‘Why the devil would Glenister’s father have been giving money to Mr. Fraser? Did they even know each other well?’

‘Father and Glenister became friends at Harrow. Father wasn’t much given to telling me tales of his boyhood, but presumably he spent some of his school holidays with Glenister’s family. I do know that as an orphan he was constantly being shuffled about among relatives. Visits to a titled family must have been appealing.’ Charles stared down at the notes as though trying to absorb hidden clues from the brief wording. ‘I can think of two explanations that would account for the secrecy and the wording of the notes. Father was an intelligent young man with no fortune of his own at this time. Either old Lord Glenister had some secretive and probably underhanded business that needed to be attended to and he engaged Father to handle it for him. Or Father was blackmailing him.’

‘Or both,’ Mélanie said. ‘If Mr. Fraser undertook some underhanded business for old Lord Glenister, that could have provided Mr. Fraser with the means to blackmail him.’

‘But even if Cyril Talbot was working with Le Faucon or was Le Faucon himself, the dates are too early for this to have anything to do with that.’ Charles flipped to the last entry in the ledger. ‘All the entries are about the same amount. Then there’s this one for twenty-five thousand pounds. In October of 1785. It was in late 1785 that Father received the legacy from his uncle in Jamaica.’

‘And the legacy was twenty-five thousand pounds?’ Mélanie said.

‘Near enough.’

Andrew’s eyes widened. ‘But—surely this uncle in Jamaica wasn’t a fiction?’

‘No, but ‘uncle’ was a courtesy title. He was a second cousin of Father’s mother. Packed off to Jamaica in disgrace forty-some years before and estranged from the family. I always thought it odd that the man chose to leave a second cousin he’d never met such a large legacy.’

‘If he’d been in Jamaica for forty years and was estranged from his family here, there’d be no one to question where the money had really come from,’ Mélanie said.

‘Convenient, isn’t it? The other thing I’ve always thought odd is that Father didn’t come into the money until two years after his cousin died. I think there was some story about a misplaced will resulting in a delay of the legacy.’ Charles looked down at the final entry in the ledger. ‘Without this money, Father could never have bought Dunmykel and stood for Parliament. Without Dunmykel and his parliamentary career, Mother would never have looked twice at him.’ His gaze moved from the Laurano marble and the Fragonard oil to the oak paneling and leaded glass windows of the house itself. His father’s legacy that was now his, even though in the end that wasn’t what Kenneth Fraser had wanted. ‘So the question,’ Charles said, in a voice as falsely bright as the gilt paint on scenery at the Tavistock, ‘is what unsavory act did Father commit in exchange for this money? And what does it have to do with why he was killed.’