Again and again, however, he stressed that France did not desire war—that he did not desire war. Lenox remained impassive in the face of these declarations, though inwardly he agreed.
All of this information Lenox wrote in a shorthand he had used since school, and which he and his brother had both agreed would be relatively difficult to decipher should it be seen by the wrong pair of eyes.
When he had gone through all of Edmund’s questions and taken a sheaf of notes for himself, Lenox checked his watch. It was past four in the morning. His attention had been focused so firmly on this task—and on its uncertain execution—that he had pushed Billings almost entirely out of his mind. Yet he could still, if he stopped thinking for a moment, feel the knife at his throat. He took a deep breath.
“All is well?” said Sournois, looking genuinely concerned.
“Oh, quite well, thank you. Is there anything else?”
“You have had it all.”
“We will leave, then. Separately I think.”
“Of course.”
“Where do your men think you are, if they know you’re gone?”
Sournois laughed. “Here. I have been making a point of visiting the pleasure boats every evening. I am perhaps later than usual, but not much so.”
“Very well.”
Sournois stood and offered his hand. “We will not see each other again, Mr. Lenox, and yet I will scarcely be able to forget you.”
They shook hands and Sournois left. Lenox spent ten minutes tidying his notes, rewriting them in places, and then felt the boat begin to slow, and finally to stop. There was a voice on deck, and then the boat began to move again.
As he left the room he caught a glimpse of a roomful of six women, garishly painted, sipping mint tea and speaking to each other in bored voices. There were brothels in London, he knew—innumerable ones—and yet he felt shocked, to see these women, and in some measure as if Africa was responsible. Nonsense, and yet he could not persuade himself otherwise. He wanted to be back in Mayfair suddenly, and then laughed at the desire. How much pride the English took in their empire, and how little they understood its alien ways, its strange, disconcerting newness!
On deck the mute Egyptian was smoking a European cigar. He nodded when Lenox appeared and then left him alone, vanishing into one of the boat’s many small rooms.
It was still dark but a pale blue light had begun to rise on the edges of the horizon, pure and deep in color, heralding the day. There was a thin rain beating down, and from the deck Lenox caught a glimpse of Sournois, walking down the small dock where they had left him and toward a beach covered with upturned fishing boats. A great swell of some unnameable feeling—melancholy, perhaps, or homesickness, a longing for Jane—filled Lenox’s breast. He turned and stared at the lightening sky, his gaze there steady until they were back at the docks.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Though it was scarcely half past five, the docks were as busy as midday in Portsmouth. Lenox thought of what Sournois had said about the Suez as a possible broker of peace between France and England.
He hired one of the donkey carts that lingered around the wharf to fetch him back to the consul’s house.
When he arrived there were lights in every window and the noise of loud conversations within. He knocked at the door and the butler admitted him.
“Sir, your presence is requested in—”
“There you are, Lenox!” said a man behind him. It was Carrow, his face anxious. “Where in Christendom can you have been?”
Lenox froze, trying to think of a reasonable explanation. “I … didn’t McEwan tell you?”
“He did, and I asked him how could you possibly have been with friends at this hour. Where were you really?”
“McEwan was quite right. With friends.”
Carrow threw up his hands in frustration. “So a madman tries to murder you in your sleep and after escaping with your neck intact, just, you decide to visit with friends? At midnight? For five hours? One might question your judgment.”
“These friends keep late hours. Egyptians, you see. I was working on behalf of Her Majesty.”
These were the magic words apparently. “Oh.”
“In my note I asked you to send someone at eight o’clock, to fetch Billings.”
Carrow smiled grimly. “Well, you have eighteen of us.”
“Where is he?”
The butler, who looked very much like a man who had been woken at irregular intervals throughout the night, answered. “Mr. Billings is secured in the kitchens, under watch.”
“Is Sir Wincombe awake?”
“Oh, yes,” said Carrow. “He and Lady Megan are interviewing Billings at the moment, along with an Egyptian boy who brought Billings here for a few coins.”
Lenox frowned. “Will the boy be punished?”
“Who can say, in this damned strange country.”
“I understood Sir Wincombe to mean that he only wished to speak with the boy, Mr. Lenox,” said the butler.
“Could you fetch me McEwan?” said Lenox.
“Yes, sir.”
When he was gone, Lenox said to Carrow, “What are you planning to do with Billings?”
“Bring him back to England, where they can hang him from a rope by the neck. Is it true he stole into your chambers?”
“Quite true.”
“And that you were with Egyptians all night?” Carrow asked doubtfully.
“Yes, quite true.”
“Well, I can only thank God you’re safe. Halifax, Martin … there’s been too much bloodshed already.”
“Thank you, Mr. Carrow. With your permission I mean to return to the Lucy this afternoon, and have the Bootle ferry me to the docks when I need to be on land. I would appreciate it if you could spare two men to accompany me on my rounds, as well, strong ones.” Sournois might have been sincere when he said that Lenox wasn’t in danger, but for his own part Lenox wasn’t willing to take the chance.
“But Billings is caught. Do you fear Butterworth?”
“Have you not spoken to Billings?”
“Why?”
“I believe Butterworth is dead. Billings said as much. These precautions are for my personal comfort, Mr. Carrow. The situation here is tense.”
“Say no more. Of course you shall have the men.”
Lenox put his hands into his pockets. The dagger was still there. “Thank you,” he said.
McEwan was coming down the stairs now. “There you are, sir,” he said, and he, too, looked as if his night had been sleepless. “I told them you was with your friends, sir.”
“Ah, thank you, McEwan. Thank you. I think I shall go on saying that for many years to come. Thank you for saving my life. Was Billings troublesome after I left?”
“He ordered me to unbind him, sir, as my captain. Which I told him he warn’t a captain of mine. Then he cursed me, and then he asked for some food, but I didn’t dare leave him alone. He got some in the end, though, when Sir Wincombe took him down to the kitchens.”
A feeling of unease stole over Lenox. “And he is still bound?”
“No, but there are men with him.”
“Let’s hope.”
Lenox went downstairs, Carrow and McEwan on his heels. To his relief Billings was seated by the broad hearth of the kitchen table. Over his head was a row of pots and pans, and beneath them a row of bells corresponding to the various rooms of the house.
“There he is!” Billings bellowed when Lenox came into view. “The man who assaulted me!”
Carrow laughed. Sir Wincombe looked at Billings and said, “My dear man, it won’t do, it won’t do.”
But Billings had evidently decided on this as a stratagem. “Invited me to his room and assaulted me! He must have killed Halifax and Martin, too, the bastard!”