Aurora Page 12

“Still, he might have it. If it broke in India, he might have put it away, kept it, to be repaired here in England.”

  Clare looked a little nervous at this, she thought, and she determined to ask Raiker about his watch. “The man who is buried seems to be a little taller than Kenelm was. Some two inches difference.”

  “There wasn’t an inch difference between the two of them, and with the state that corpse was in, no very accurate measurement could have been made. Not that accurate. I came to Kenelm’s chin, and not more than an inch lower on Rutley.”

  ­“I didn’t realize you had had the opportunity of measur­ing yourself so closely on Rutley,” Rorie took it up at once.

  “He was here several times. My husband gave him money—a regular allowance—and usually the fellow came begging for more between quarters. It is why I am so sure that man is Rutley. The others knew Kenelm, but they didn’t know Rutley; I did, and I recognize him in that man. But Lady Alice has decided to marry him, and Marnie wants the Gypperfield mansion, and the Gowerses hate me, so little Charles is to be done out of his inheritance.”

  “Why didn’t you say you knew Rutley? I never heard you say so before, Clare.”

  “My, you are becoming a regular little inquistor! What wouldn’t they have made of my knowing Rutley? Say he was my lover, or any other slanderous thing they could think of. But I have a favour to ask of you, Rorie. I didn’t ask you here to discuss Horace Rutley. I have to go up to London for a few days, on business connected with this case. I don’t like to leave little Charles alone with only the servants. There are the gypsies hanging about for one thing, and Rutley—I wouldn’t put it a bit past him to do the boy a mischief. Then too, Rutley might break into the hall and do some snooping around. I wouldn’t put it past him to secrete the emeralds, and make it look as though I had them the whole time. I can’t even trust my own servants. Your sister’s accepting Rutley has turned them against me. Wilkins, my butler, looks at me as though he’d like to spit in my eye. I’ll turn that man off as soon as this case is over. So the favour is this: will you stay here for two days while I am gone?”

  “Oh dear!” Rorie was appalled at the idea. It would be dull and lonely, and it would publicly put her in Clare’s camp, where she had not the least desire to be. But then, what if she was telling the truth? Everyone was convinced she was a scheming liar. She had lied about some things, but not necessarily about the man’s identity. What if Clare was right after all, and the man Horace Rutley was making a May game of them all?

  “Of course I’ll pay you,” Clare said, sensing the girl’s indecision.

  “I don’t want pay! I’ll stay,” Rorie said, but was very unhappy to feel obliged to do it.

  “You won’t be sorry,” Clare told her. “Rutley isn’t the only one who can buy allegiance. There will be money to spare once I get the whole of the Raiker income—for Charles, I mean. Naturally I will only administer it for him till he grows up. I’ll remember you did this for me, Rorie.”

  “No, you’re not buying me, Clare, I will come because I feel it the proper thing to do. Until the matter is settled one way or the other, I don’t feel it fair to assume you are wrong, but I am not at all sure you are right either. It is close to eleven years since those two men left. They would both have changed a good deal. Marnie and the others might be wrong, or you might be. Time will tell.”

  “Fair enough. An open mind is all I ask. That’s more than the others have granted me. I wonder Kenelm hasn’t favoured you with a flirtation, to turn your head like the others.”

  “I’ll leave now, if there’s nothing else. What time would you like me to come tomorrow?”

  “Early. Stay here tonight if you wish. I hope to get away by half past eight.”

  “So early? London is only half a day with your team.”

  “I don’t want to waste any time. Even my beauty sleep must go by the boards at such a time. Why don’t you come tonight?”

  “No, I’ll be here at half past eight tomorrow. Goodbye, Clare.”

  As Rorie rode home, she considered what she had got herself in for. Marnie would be furious. The Gowerses and Malone would think she had run mad, and she began to think so herself, too. As to what Kenelm would think, she had no idea. Clare was not to be trusted. To try to buy her support! “I’ll pay you.” That was an unforgivable insult. That she was so familiar with Rutley that she knew exactly how high she reached against him—that sounded like a closer intimacy than watching her husband give him money. How could her husband have permitted her to be present when he gave his illegitimate son money? Clare could say anything now that Charles was dead, and who was there to contradict her?

  She had been a fool to say she would go, but at least her conscience was clear that she did it out of pique because Kenelm had not honoured her with a flirtation. She was driving out with him that very afternoon, and the antici­pation of it took the edge off her gloomy thoughts to no little extent. If he had made up to Marnie and Lady Alice because their support was helpful to him, the same was not true of herself. She could add no proof that he was Lord Raiker. She was as close to an objective party as existed. She hadn’t known him before, had nothing to gain, but still Kenelm was favouring her with his attentions. She suddenly sat up straighter in her saddle. “I wonder Kenelm hasn’t favoured you with a flirtation.” Clare had called him Kenelm! She made it a point always to say Rutley when she spoke of him, but that once the Kenelm had slipped out. If Clare thought of him in her secret heart as Rutley, she would not have made the slip. Did she know perfectly well he was Kenelm then, or was she only uncertain? She must at least be unsure, or the name would not have been used.

  The Dougalls had left when Rorie got home, and had taken the Gowerses with them for a few days. The house was crowded with the extra guests, and this arrangement would allow them a better visit with Kenelm.

  “What did the she-devil want with you?” Malone asked, having apprised herself from the butler where Rorie’s errand had taken her.

  The visit was explained, and Rorie confessed that she had agreed to the request, not without fear of a scolding.

  “Perfect!” Malone surprised her by saying. “It will give you a grand chance to poke around to see what you can find.”

  “That’s not why I agreed to it.”

  “Rorie, it is your duty to help Kenelm in any way you can,” Marnie charged her. “Not that Clare would be slow enough to leave any clues sitting around. I’ll give you the combination of the safe and you look to see if the emeralds are there.”

  “Rutley sold the emeralds,” Malone pointed out, this opinion having been established as a fact in Malone’s theory regarding the body in the coffin. “No, you won’t find the emeralds, but you may find a receipt or a fat deposit in her bankbook at the right time.”

  “I have no intention of going through her private papers.”

  “We’ll never have another such chance. It is your duty,” Marnie repeated.

  “It’s not my duty to help you to the Gypperfield place, Marnie,” Rorie was goaded into saying, after which Marnie maintained a rigid silence.

  “The she-devil chose well,” Malone said, eying Miss Falkner askance. “She knows a flat when she sees one. It’s an enema to me how you are so taken in by the woman. If you were wide-awake as young Lady Alice you’d be mak­ing up a bit to Kennie, instead of letting that chit waltz off with him while you sit with your face as stiff as set plaster every time he comes around. You never were half as sly as your sister.”

  Malone as well as Rorie was now in Marnie’s black books, and she left them to each other’s company. “It happens I am driving out with Kenelm this afternoon,” Rorie said.

  “Fine. No doubt he’ll leave you sitting on the doorstep when he finds out what you’re up to, supporting the she-devil. If you’re wise you won’t tell him.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Be sure to tell him you have a particular inversion to tall, handsome, edible lords as well. We don’t want to leav
e any stone unturned in setting him against you.” Malone strode off, in high dudgeon.

  It was Miss Falkner’s intention to tell Kenelm at the first opportunity that she was to go to Raiker Hall. Before they left the house, she asked him the time, and he pulled out his watch, a bizarre affair from India, with enamelled work on the outer case. She commented on it, in order to discover if he still had the one he had worn when he left.

  “It’s only a cheap thing really. Rather garish, but it chimes the hour at six and twelve. It appealed to me when I was a green youth, and has continued working well, so I never bothered to replace it. I bet Charlie would love to have it.” Then he stuck it back in his pocket and held the door for her.

  “Did you not have a watch when you got to India?” she asked.

  “Yes, but I pawned it the day I arrived to raise the wind. The trip left me pretty short. I didn’t really beat a thou­sand pounds out of Papa, you see. I had only my allowance, which was barely enough to get me there.”

  “You never redeemed it from the pawn shop?”

  “No, it had no particular value, either sentimental or monetary. Just an ordinary watch Bernie gave me when I was fourteen. Why the interest in my timepieces?”

  “I was just thinking that no watch was found on the corpse that is supposed to be you. If you had your watch it might be some sort of substantiation that you are Kenelm.”

  “Or on the other hand, it might prove that Horace Rutley had stolen it from me, somewhere along the way. Clare would say she had given the watch to Rutley, and it would be additional proof that I am he.”

  “I never thought of that.”

  “You don’t have the criminal mind Clare has.”

  “And you.” He flicked a disapproving glance at her.

  He said as soon as they were out the door that he would like to forget the whole messy business for a few hours and enjoy himself, so it was difficult to tell him about her visit with Clare. He handed her up to the seat of his curricle while the team chomped eagerly to be off, and once they were given their heads, conversation was not easy. The team was as fast as its owner had boasted, and maintain­ing a seat as difficult as Lady Alice had predicted. Till they reached the village, they kept up a hot pace, but slowed to go through it, of course, which allowed a little conversation.

  “I see the Blodgett store is shut down,” he said. “Bernie and I used to stop in there and fill our pockets with sweets when we came to town with Papa. He was always awfully good to us.”

  Rorie tried to remember whether Bernard had ever mentioned this, but though he had harboured a sweet tooth till the day he died, she could not honestly say he had ever told her about buying sweets at Blodgett’s.

  “Old Ernie is still shaving and cutting hair,” he re­marked as they went past the barber’s. “The Beckstead speciality—sugar-bowl style. We never went to him. Kravitz, the senior footman at the Hall, used to do it when we were young. Is Kravitz still there?”

  “No, he was retired a few years before Bernard died. He was getting on.”

  “Yes, he had snow-white hair already when I was a boy.”

  Rorie did remember that little Charles had been sent up from the Dower House to have his locks shorn by Kravitz once when she had been visiting Marnie and Bernard over a Christmas holiday. Would outsiders know Kravitz did the family hair? It seemed unlikely, but then the doings at the Hall were common gossip, and it might have been discovered by a curious questioner. She racked her brain for some bit of family esoterica Horace Rutley would not know. The others had all tested the man, but she had not. She hadn’t known him, but she did know things about the family, things Rutley would presumably not know. A few items came to mind, only to be rejected for one reason or another. At last she hit on something she could consider good evidence; it was so trivial it would never have got talked about the countryside.

  It had only been drawn to her own attention because of Mimi. She had sneaked once into her father’s room and played with his razor when she was young, cutting her finger in the process. In an effort to hide it, she had come downstairs holding her finger so tightly that attention was drawn to it at once. She could remember Bernard scolding and saying, “Just like Kennie when he burnt his fingers learning to strike a light from the tinderbox. He raised a huge blister and never let on till it became infected. Knew he deserved a good hiding for playing with fire. Lucky he didn’t burn the house down.” But at what age had it happened, and was it significant enough that Kenelm might justifiably be expected to remember it? Most of all, how was such an irrelevant subject to be introduced, when her partner was busily pointing out the shops?

  To ease the conversation around to pains and bruises, she said, “My fingers are cramped with holding on so tightly.”

  “Better get used to it. I like a brisk pace,” he answered. In her quandary, she missed reading any importance into this telling speech. “The thing is, I hurt my hand recently—cut it on Bernard’s razor when Marnie and I were putting away his things.” This was an outright lie, but, she assuaged her conscience, a white lie. “Like Mimi,” she went on. “She, did the same thing, but knew she shouldn’t have been playing with it, and never let on to us she was cut. Children are so foolish.”

  “Did you cut yourself badly?” he asked. “I didn’t notice any plaster on your hands.”

  “No, only a scratch. It was a few weeks ago.”

  “Odd it still bothers you,” he said, with a questioning look, and indeed it was a strange enough thing to have said.

  “It doesn’t bother me. Not much. It was so cute the way Mimi tried to hide her cut. Afraid of a spanking for playing with the razor, of course. She had been told never to play, with it, or knives or fire.”

  If he was to make the comment unaided, he would do so now. “Yes, it’s pretty dangerous,” he said, then looked to the other side of the street. “Good Lord, I believe that’s Mrs. Evans with her hair turned gray. How it makes me feel old, to see everyone wrinkled and stooped that I remember as so much younger. No wonder some of them have trouble remembering me.”

  It had not come unaided, but perhaps she could joggle his memory into it. “Did you ever do that sort of thing, Kenelm?” she asked. “Play with sharp things, or fire.”

  He looked at her and shook his head, then smiled ruefully. “You still don’t believe me! I thought I had got you convinced days ago. Yes, Aurora, I recall very well striking a fire with the tinderbox I borrowed from the study. And Bernard, whom I assume told you the story, didn’t know the whole of it, either. I not only burned the flesh off my fingers, I also very nearly burned down the barn. I was making my experiment in the cow barn, up in the hay loft, sitting on a stack of nice dry hay. Clever rascal, don’t you think? I always had the knack of causing trouble. I little thought at the time how useful the episode would be. I hope it has served to convince you at last that I am not my half brother, Horace. He could not know the story, I trust.”

  She felt foolish in the extreme to be found out in her trick, but still she was happy. He was Kenelm. He had to be.

  “What has happened to cast you into doubt again?” he asked, as they drove out the far side of the village into the country.

  “Nothing. Well, perhaps Clare gave me a little cause.”

  “Clare? Have you been seeing her? I thought she held herself aloof from the family.”

  “No, she sees me,” she confessed a little sheepishly.

  “She is up to anything. She wants to know what I’m doing. What did she say to reawaken your suspicions?”

  “She thought Lady Alice had been discovering the se­crets of Eton from her brother, Hanley, and coaching you. Hennie and Alfred are prejudiced, she feels, and the foot­man as well.”

  “Biased, not prejudiced. They know her pretty well. I see she has done a splendid job of undermining your judge­ment. But Hanley didn’t know what schoolmates were to be chosen. For that matter, he wasn’t in my class at Eton. I had very little to do with him. He’s only twenty-four, you kno
w, whereas I am an old man of twenty-seven. And feel closer to fifty-seven as a result of my Indian adventures. God, what a place it is. It is like stepping into an icehouse to be back in England, to be able to walk along the street with your jacket buttoned, and not have your shirt glued to your back.”

  “Is it so hot in India?” she asked, relieved to have cleared her chest, and also curious to hear about his travels.

  “Hot, humid, bug-ridden, filthy. I don’t know why I stayed so long.”

  “Why did you?”

  “I had to make my fortune. That’s why I went. It is the haven of the disinherited—the misfits, younger sons, the disgraced, the adventurers and outright rotters. The most raffish collection of men to be found anywhere outside of Newgate, or in it for all I know. They say it was worse in the old days, before Warren Hastings cleaned things up, but there is still plenty of crime there, and plenty of gold to go around too.”

  “What did you do there? What sort of work were you involved in?”

  “I was first a mere box-wallah—junior clerk for the East India Company. Well, green as grass, you know, when I arrived, still wet behind the ears. But I soon made friends, and in a few years got myself made British resident at the court of one of the Indian princes—the nawab of Bengal it was.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Sort of liaison officer between the public and the prince. I was the prestigious gent who decided who my nawab would condescend to see. Also liaison man between the prince and the British. A good part of my time was spent in buying up European things for him, too. All the crack for the princes to surround themselves with the trappings of the British, in much the same way as we returned nabobs surround ourselves with Indian finery. In the true nabob’s fashion I have toted home some cartons of ugly ivory carvings and brass pots and silken scarves. I don’t know what I’ll do with them—set up an Indian Room at the Hall I suppose, to amuse posterity. I had sundry other duties as well—polishing up his English and manners. He didn’t realize how poorly he had chosen for that latter job. The blind leading the blind, but at least I knew more than he did. There is a fortune to be made in these posts. Even without bribery a man can do very well for himself. One fellow, the resident of a nawab of Carnatic, is said to have made well over a million during his term of office. I must confess I wasn’t quite bent enough to gross a million, but I am not complaining. I would be wealthy independent of my lawful inheritance.”