Her other senses, she noticed, seemed to have improved. She could smell the tobacco smoke in her companion’s clothes even though he wasn’t smoking. She heard the rumble of the wheels on the rails in a way she had never heard it before. Occasionally she heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside, crisp and precise. She wished those feet would stop and talk outside her door, then she might catch a clue about where they were going.
But in spite of the bandages over her eyes and the mask which made her feel like a circus performer or a harlequin in a parade, Imogen was happy. She might have been in the darkness. But she was travelling towards Orlando.
Johnny Fitzgerald, never an early riser, was having a late breakfast in Markham Square the day after the Powerscourts’ return and the Powerscourt interview with Edmund de Courcy Johnny devoured a couple of eggs, embellished with bacon and a squadron of mushrooms, while he listened to the Powerscourts’ Corsican adventure.
‘Did you believe that story, about the Traitor’s Run?’ he asked Lady Lucy.
‘I don’t know if I believe it or not,’ said Lady Lucy, consuming a small piece of buttered toast, ‘I just don’t know.’
‘Suppose it’s not true,’ said Johnny, between mouthfuls, ‘that can only mean one thing.’
‘What’s that?’ said Powerscourt looking gloomily at more bad news from South Africa in his newspaper.
‘It must mean that Edmund de Courcy, or persons working for him, are the killers. They have this forger, hidden away somewhere, producing fake Titians or Giorgiones for that exhibition in Old Bond Street. They hear a whisper on the street that Christopher Montague is about to produce an article denouncing the things as fakes. They get rid of Montague. Then they hear that his friend up in Oxford may have known what was in the article. He is sent off to meet his Maker too. Then, out of the blue, the two of you turn up in Corsica, asking questions about forgers of all things. The one place they could kill you both off with no questions asked is on that bloody island. So out come the guns. It’s a miracle you survived. Maybe they’re so used to taking pot shots at the wild boar they aren’t so good with humans. But it’s obvious, surely. De Courcy must have had a wire from that man Lady Lucy liked so much, the policeman in Calvi. Wire goes back from Old Bond Street. Exterminate Powerscourts. Coast now clear for further forgeries and further fleecing of American millionaires.’
Johnny leaned back in his chair with a triumphant smile. ‘I think I could manage a little more bacon,’ he said, reaching forward to refill his plate. ‘Hungry work solving mysteries at breakfast time.’
Powerscourt glanced up from a dramatic account of the siege of Kimberley, Cecil Rhodes and his diamonds locked up together by the Boers. He wondered what the Boers would do if they captured Rhodes. Ransom him? For diamonds?
‘I wish I could agree with you, Johnny,’ he said. ‘I just don’t know if that story about the Traitor’s Run is true or not. But the whole thing looks too bloody obvious to me. We go and see Mrs de Courcy and the pining daughters. The coachman disappears. Happens all the time, they say. Scarcely are we out of the front door than the bullets start pinging off the rocks. Whoever killed Montague was pretty smart about it. We’re still not sure who did it. Same thing with Thomas Jenkins. The murderer is almost an invisible man. If we’d have been killed on the Aregno road, it would have been too obvious for words.’
‘You don’t think you’re being too clever, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Just because it looks obvious doesn’t mean it’s not right.’
Powerscourt laughed. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘There is one thing we must do,’ he went on, folding the newspaper into a neat square, ‘we must find this young woman, Alice Bridge, who accompanied Christopher Montague to the Venetian exhibition. Do you have any ideas about her, Lucy?’
Lady Lucy smiled an enormous smile. ‘I shall ask around my relations, Francis. All of them, if necessary. They do have their uses, you see.’
Powerscourt laughed. ‘A hit, Lucy, a very palpable hit.’ He stopped suddenly. There was something at the back of his mind. He felt it might be important. His eyes drifted off to rest on the curtains where he had found Olivia in hiding. Hiding, that had something to do with it. Johnny Fitzgerald and Lady Lucy stared at him, wondering where his mind had gone to now. Perhaps he had travelled to South Africa or gone back to Corsica.
‘That’s it,’ said Powerscourt suddenly, returning from his reverie. He hadn’t been abroad at all, merely half a mile or so away in the offices of de Courcy and Piper in Old Bond Street. ‘It’s something de Courcy said to me yesterday,’ he went on, pausing while he remembered the exact words.
‘Out with it, man,’ said Fitzgerald, well used to these leaves of absence. Sometimes it took an irritatingly long time for his friend to return.
‘It was when I asked him about his house in Norfolk,’ Powerscourt went on, ignoring the interruption. ‘I said I understood it was abandoned at present. This, I think, is what he said. ‘Oh yes, it is, abandoned, I mean. There’s nobody there at all. The place is completely empty. There’s nobody there.’
‘What of it?’ asked Lady Lucy.
‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, surprised that it wasn’t totally obvious to his listeners, ‘he says the same thing four times. Abandoned. Nobody there. Place completely empty. Nobody there. Why should he say it four times? As if he was trying to convince me.’
‘I see,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘You think that the place may not be empty?’
‘And that inside,’ Lady Lucy carried on, ‘there might be somebody with a lot of old canvases sent from Corsica, forging away in the middle of nowhere in North Norfolk. That’s where the forger is.’
‘Well, he might be,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I think you ought to take a trip to de Courcy Hall, Johnny. Discreetly, of course, very discreetly. Have a look around. I shall be too busy here, analysing the replies of Lucy’s relations about the whereabouts of Alice Bridge. I expect there will be hundreds of them. But if you find anything of interest let me know at once and I will come and join you.’
‘Please check in the local guidebooks before you go, Johnny,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Make sure there aren’t strange local customs up there at this time of year. Shooting strangers, for instance. I’d hate to think of an East Anglian version of the Traitor’s Run.’
The Committal Hearing for Horace Aloysius Buckley at Bow Street Magistrates Court was very brief. The magistrate was an elderly man, completely bald, with a disconcerting habit of taking his spectacles off and replacing them almost instantaneously. Sir Rufus Fitch was in ponderous mood, presenting his witnesses and taking them through the evidence very slowly and very carefully. Chief Inspector Wilson provided much of it, principally an account of his various interviews with the defendant in which Horace Buckley confessed to being in Montague’s room on the night of the murder. Edmund de Courcy and Roderick Johnston testified to seeing Montague on the day of his death. Mrs Buckley gave her deadly evidence about the tie. There was a witness who had seen him in Brompton Square round about the time of death. Other witnesses, a college porter and a delivery man, attested to Buckley’s presence in Oxford on the day of Jenkins’ death.
Charles Augustus Pugh had decided to present no witnesses at all at the hearing. He read through all he knew about the case for the third time the night before. He had no idea what sort of defence to offer. Rather than show any of his hand, he had resolved to keep quiet until the real trial. But as he listened to the evidence, he knew how poor his hand really was. I certainly don’t have any aces at this stage, he said to himself. I don’t have any Kings or Queens. I don’t even have a jack. The best I can do, for now, is something like the three of clubs. He resolved to call on Lord Francis Powerscourt at the earliest possible opportunity.