“I’ve no idea. Lafayette suspected foul play, but he didn’t know for sure. They might just as well have taken a bribe and left the country. If any of this happened at all.”
“If I suborned men to commit an act of high treason, I should probably silence them afterwards,” said da Silva thoughtfully. “But then, if I committed high treason, I should leave the country sharpish, so who can say. What happened to Lafayette? Did someone say he died?”
“About a fortnight after I spoke to him. A couple of weeks ago now. He was found in the Thames. It seems he hit his head and fell into the river.”
“Hit his head,” da Silva repeated.
“Yes.”
“Did anyone wonder if someone hit his head for him?”
Curtis had wondered that since reading the inquest report. He felt a rush of warmth for da Silva, sheer relief at sharing his thoughts. “Impossible to tell. The body was in the river for a couple of days before it was found. The coroner called it an accident.”
“He’d started to talk and then he was found in the river with a smashed head.” Da Silva made a face. “So you are here to establish if there’s any truth in what may have been the ranting of a disturbed man, or the discoveries of a wronged and perhaps murdered one. Well, now we know where we stand. Do we make common cause?”
That wasn’t, on the face of it, an attractive prospect. But Curtis stood no chance at all of finding anything out alone, whereas da Silva seemed to have a fair idea what he was about, and could at least pick locks. And Curtis needed those doors opened, needed to know if he had lost his friends, his career, his purpose in life to treason rather than malignant fate. Come to that, he needed to know if da Silva was right about mirrors in the rooms and men driven to their deaths, because if that was the case, whatever else he was or was not guilty of, Armstrong deserved horsewhipping and Curtis would damned well make sure he got it.
Subterfuge did not come easily to Curtis. Just now, he could use a man like da Silva. And, while he’d already realised that da Silva’s effeminate mannerisms concealed sharp eyes and a sharper mind, it seemed that he had courage, too, and even a sense of decency. Curtis had an uncomfortable feeling that he might have judged him rather ungenerously.
“Very well. Common cause.”
He held out his right hand without thinking. Da Silva took it, with no obvious repugnance at the mutilation. His grip was light on Curtis’s scars, but decidedly less flaccid than when they’d first shaken.
“Well, then, let us move on,” da Silva said. “What do you need to deal with that alarm in the library?”
“Clips and wires. There are supplies in the house, Armstrong showed me the workroom yesterday. I’ll see to it.”
“Then I shall meet you at, shall we say, one a.m. in the library? I look forward to our assignation.”
Chapter Four
It felt bizarre to return to the party after that. At luncheon, Mrs. Lambdon and Mrs. Grayling wanted to know all about his uncle; as ever, the legend of the tall, handsome explorer cast a glamour over his family. Curtis fielded the familiar questions, mind elsewhere.
The conversation in the folly seemed unreal now, especially with da Silva every sinuous inch the effete aesthete once more, making dramatic, fluttery remarks that set the women giggling and the men rolling their eyes in disdain. Had he really shaken hands with him on a deal to burgle their host?
And could da Silva be right? Who the devil was being blackmailed here? Surely not the Lambdons, they were Lady Armstrong’s family. The Graylings? They were wealthy, and he had thought Mrs. Grayling had a wandering eye. Miss Carruth? It couldn’t be. Had Armstrong hoped to blackmail him? With what?
After luncheon, he took refuge in the unoccupied library to avoid James Armstrong’s offers of sporting activity and Mrs. Grayling’s sly over-friendliness. The selection of yellow-back novels included a wide range of mysteries and romps by Edgar Wallace and E. Phillips Oppenheim, all packed with gentleman spies, mysterious foreigners and sultry seductresses. Curtis enjoyed that sort of thing, but he couldn’t make himself fancy the idea today. The actual life of a gentleman spy, it seemed to him, consisted of sneaking about, breaking the rules of hospitality and generally being anything but a gentleman, and the only mysterious foreigner around was da Silva. He was probably the closest thing Peakholme had to offer to a sultry seductress, come to that.
Da Silva would be the villain if this were an Oppenheim story. Curtis wished he was the villain now. He did not want to find out that Sir Hubert was a blackmailer, still less a traitor, that his host had cost Curtis his hand and George Fisher his life…
He stopped that thought in its tracks before the anger came back, and made himself look at the library shelf. As he examined the books, a name on a narrow spine snagged his attention.
He pulled out a slim volume, plainly bound in grey, and there it was. The Fish-pond. Poems by Daniel da Silva.