Kingstone greeted this casual, almost teasing, confidence with perceptible shock but his voice when he replied was measured. “Joe uses you, Lydia. He had no right to put you into danger. First by bringing me here. Then by telling you all this. Because danger’s what you’re in. Up to your neck. And I’ve brought it down on you.” He glared at the game on the table in front of him. “Forget all this nonsense! No more Morris! This is a distraction. A sideshow.” He folded up the board, scooped all the counters angrily into one large palm and replaced them in their bag.
With the action, his voice lost its gritty directness, its swift allusive expression, and took on a senatorial authority. “It is a pseudo-cultural caprice indulged in by men with much to hide and much to lose. It’s a mask for the activities of a group of powerful men. Men who sip brandy and move their counters with a manicured forefinger in a cynical salute to what they fancy to be an endearing echo from their past. But the game they play has little to do with those sweaty, penniless adventurers who spent long hours confined aboard a little ship—men trying to preserve their sanity in a hostile and uncertain world. The players hide their purpose within the body of a charitable and hallowed institution as the parasitic wasp buries its eggs, unresisted, in an unsuspecting fat caterpillar. A cover—quirky but apparently harmless—for meetings which are anything but innocent. These constitute an intensive exchange of views and formulation of plans by the members of a highly selected élite. Things are said face to face that may not be spoken over wires or even put in diplomatic bags. Decisions made at their meetings are carried unanimously, are final and binding. And always expedited.”
His voice was chill, his face as expressionless as that of a hanging judge as he concluded, “As a result of these meetings, Lydia, fortunes are made. Governments fall. Ships are sunk. Wars are started. And, on the way to achieving these ends, men—and women—are assassinated, swept from the board like counters.”
Lydia was pale and wide-eyed, absorbing every stark word. At last she spoke. “Well! I’ve heard some pretty inventive excuses for wriggling out of a game but that takes the biscuit! I won’t dare to suggest chess! I’ll leave you to make your own plans with Joe and Marcus. Here, Cornelius, have a look at the papers … do the crossword … you didn’t have time this morning. I’ll go and search out my needlepoint. Much less distressing. It’s a bit early but I think I could do with a cup of tea. I’ll go and make us one.”
She got to her feet, once again the brisk hostess.
Rising with her, he caught her hand. “I’ve startled you and I meant to. I’m a straightforward operator, Lydia. It was always my way to keep my troops informed. Tell them the worst. How can you keep your head on your shoulders if you don’t know where the fire’s coming from and when it’s coming?”
“Don’t worry, Cornelius. I know now. From every direction. All the time. Tin hats on, I think. Earl Grey or Darjeeling?”
PEARSON GREETED JOE on his return with a calm account of domestic activities since his departure. “We had not looked for you so soon, sir. All’s well,” he thought to add. “Mister Marcus is on patrol in the grounds and Miss Lydia has withdrawn to the morning room with her embroidery. You’ll find the senator in the drawing room, asleep. Shall I have more tea sent in?”
“We’ll let him snooze on for a bit,” Joe said, “and I’ll have a word with my sister.”
“No, Joe, she’s going to have a word with you!” Lydia had heard him arrive and came out to greet him, size three crewel needle held at the tilt. “In fact she’s planning to puncture your composure.” She ushered him into the morning room. “You set me up to play a perfectly ordinary Sunday afternoon game with Cornelius, never bothering to tell me I risked blowing the lid off the jam jar. Now he thinks I’m some sort of Mata Hari and he’s clammed up. Did you have any idea you were bringing down death and destruction, not just on the innocent Surrey stockbroker belt but apparently—the world? The Nine Men of Mystery you told me to pump him about turn out to be a sinister blend of Knights Templar and the Mafia and all run, we’ll no doubt find, by Professor Moriarty, drawing on the technical expertise of Alphonse Capone.”
“Yes, yes,” Joe interrupted her. “I know all that. And your indignant squeaking speaks volumes. Not something to be taken too seriously perhaps? You didn’t manage to discover what Cornelius’s role is in this coven? Moving force? Recent recruit? Sacrificial victim? That’s the sort of thing I’d really like to know.”
“Well, you’ll have to ask him yourself. He didn’t confide that much. His warnings were more all-enveloping, open-to-interpretation, Cassandra-like utterances than personal confession. All I can say is that he didn’t strike me at all as a willing conspirator; in fact the whole thing seems to scare him rigid. He got very hot under the collar when I spoke out and revealed that you knew what he was up to.”
“I must go and talk to him.”
“Can’t you leave it for a bit? He’s been asleep for the last hour. Badly needed sleep, I think. Catching up on days, perhaps weeks, of deprivation. Speaking as his self-appointed medical nurse, I’d say—leave him for as long as you can. He’s in the drawing room, curled up all of a heap in the armchair with the cat. One’s snoring, the other’s purring.”
“Oh, no! You didn’t let that slobbering old brute get at him? He’s got bad breath and a worse temper.”
“No, no! The old thing knew just what was required. Cats are very healing creatures, you know. He marched in, jumped up onto his knee without a by-your-leave, licked the senatorial ear and settled down in his lap, purring.”
“Hardly a course of therapy his hostess could administer.” Joe smiled. “I can see that. Well—if it’s working …”
“He’s on the mend, I’d say. Just don’t offer to play him at Nine Men’s Morris or you’ll undo everything,” she called after him.
JOE STOOD IN the doorway for a moment, amused by the scene. The drawing room, the heart of the house, reflected the comforts of an earlier, more upholstered age. William Morris fabrics strained around well-stuffed sofas, velvets gleamed on rounded cushions. The walnut surfaces of tables and dressers glowed with beeswax, their amber highlights echoed by soft Persian rugs. The more rigorous glint of hand-crafted pewter-framed mirrors, the cooler notes of modern French glassware and the restrained arrangements of white flowers rescued the room from any suggestion that Victoria still reigned. Everything in this room had earned its place because it was loved and in some cases had given years of good service.
Tall windows were standing open to green lawns rolling away down into the valley and somewhere in that dense foliage a late cuckoo who should have been winging his way to Africa by now called a mocking farewell. And, in the middle of all this, another discordant note.
Cornelius had changed for lunch, digging deeper into Marcus’s wardrobe. No shirt was up to the task of encircling his muscled neck and the collar was standing open, the tie discarded. The tick of a stately grandfather clock beat out in syncopation with a harmonious strand of snoring and purring coming from the armchair. Straight out of a Punch cartoon, Joe thought. Gentleman at his unbuttoned ease in his douce English drawing room. An ease he was going to have to shatter.
“I say—I do apologise, Cornelius, for the uninvited guest! Bugger off, Brutus!”
At the sound of Joe’s voice, the black cat leapt up and fled under a sideboard.
“Don’t scare him! I was flattered!” Kingstone said, struggling awake and suppressing a yawn. “We’re getting along just fine. He’s a beast I’m proud to know. In fact he’s rather like me. He sees us as brothers, I think. Moth-eaten, battle-scarred but still feisty. Though my teeth are in better condition.”