The girl fled out a rear door, two washtubs visible in the grass beyond it. I waited until the door creaked shut behind her before speaking again.
“Mrs. Philmore, I know that your husband is detained in Alton gaol at this moment. He may be guilty of entering my home — he may even have taken something of great value that belongs to me — but I do not believe he murdered Shafto French.”
“He was home at midnight Saturday,” she said stoutly, “like he said. I’ll swear to that, to my dying day.”
“I am sure you will. But Mr. Prowting thinks otherwise, and Mr. Prowting is magistrate for Alton, and determined to hang somebody for French’s murder. I do not think it will concern him much if he hangs the wrong man.”
In this, I may have done my neighbour an injustice; but my words had the effect I desired. Rosie Philmore closed her eyes, as if surrendering to a sudden shaft of pain, and drew a shuddering breath.
“It’s all on account of those jewels,” she said. I frowned. Had Thrace’s tale of the rubies of Chandernagar reached so far as Alton?
“—That chest of yours, what the great man from London brought special in his carriage. People will talk of anything, ma’am. You’re a stranger in these parts, so you’re not to know. Scandalous it was, how they talked — about the fortune you’d received from a dead lord, and what the man might have been paying for. I didn’t listen no more than others — but Bert’s ears grew so long with hanging on every word, I thought they’d scrape the floor by week’s end. And then he told me, two nights past, the truth of the tale.”
“The truth?”
She opened her eyes, still rocking the infant, and stared straight at me. “That ’tweren’t jewels a’tall, nor gold neither, but a chest full of papers. Papers as somebody’d pay a good bit to see.”
A thrill of apprehension coursed through me. “Your husband knew what the chest contained?”
“Of course. Heard it of his uncle, Old Philmore, he did.”
“Old Philmore? But I am not even acquainted with the man.”
“Old Philmore knew, all the same.”
As had Lady Imogen. Was it she who set the joiner’s family on to stealing Lord Harold’s papers?
“Your husband was engaged by Mr. Dyer to work at my cottage. He was also employed, I understand, at Stonings in Sherborne St. John — the Earl of Holbrook’s estate. Was Old Philmore ever working there?”
“Of course. It was from Old Philmore my Bert learned his trade. He’s a rare joiner, Old Philmore.”
“Has your husband’s uncle been to see you? Has he called upon Bertie, in Alton gaol?”
She appeared to stiffen, like a woods animal grown suddenly wary of a trap.
“He’ll be along, soon enough.”
“You do not know where he is at present?”
“In Chawton. He lives there, same as yerself.”
“Old Philmore has not been seen since your husband was taken up last night, Mrs. Philmore.”
She leaned forward in her chair, the babe thrust into her lap. “What do you mean?” she demanded.
“Old Philmore appears to have fled. Is not that a singular coincidence? — That your husband should be sitting in gaol for a theft that cannot profit him, while his uncle is nowhere to be found?”
For an instant, I watched Rosie Philmore comprehend the import of my words. Then she laughed with a bitter harshness.
“Not if you know Bert’s family, ma’am. If there’s a way to turn a penny from hardship, Old Philmore’ll find it.”
From Normandy Street I made my way towards Austen, Gray & Vincent, feeling exposed to every eye and the subject of every chance conversation. Far more of my business was known than I had understood before, and the knowledge could not help but make me uneasy. Lady Imogen had spoken of the existence of Lord Harold’s papers with easy familiarity; but this I had dismissed as the knowledge of a family friend. I must now assume the contents of the chest were also known to Major Spence and Mr. Thrace, with whom her ladyship was intimate; as clearly they were known to the Philmores and their circle. I could no longer suppose the information to be privileged. Last night I had presumed the chest was stolen because of the rumour of fabulous wealth attached to it. I apprehended now that Lord Harold’s legacy had been seized for exactly the reason it has always been so sedulously guarded by the solicitor Mr. Chizzlewit and his confederates — because of the danger inherent in its communications. The theft had not been made at random: deep in the chest lay a truth that one person at least could not allow to be known. Was he content in having stolen the trunk and the dangerous memories it held? Or did the threat still walk abroad, with an intelligence that lived and breathed?
Was I even now in peril, by virtue of what I had already read?
I revolved what little of Lord Harold’s history I had perused. There were anecdotes of Warren Hastings; an old scandal of early love and a hasty duel; the animus between Lord Harold and one man — the Viscount St. Eustace — and his friendship for another, the Earl of Holbrook. A vague suggestion of activity on behalf of noble French émigrés during the Reign of Terror, and Lord Harold’s dedication to the salvation of a few; and the mention of Geoffrey Sidmouth, whom I had known myself in Lyme Regis some years before, and remembered with poignant affection. And then there was the Frenchwoman named Hélène, whom the Rogue first met while en route from India to England in 1785. But I had found no firm indication as to the father of Hélène’s child, to whom he later referred. It was possible, I supposed, that Julian Thrace might claim to be the woman’s son. But as to his paternity? Had Thrace been sired by her affianced husband, the Viscount St. Eustace? Or by wild Freddy Vansittart, smitten on the Punjab?
Or Lord Harold himself?
At that thought, I stopped dead in the middle of the High. And saw again in my mind’s eye the lazy beauty of Thrace’s face. It bore not the slightest resemblance to Lord Harold’s sharp features; but neither did it resemble Lady Imogen Vansittart’s. And the Rogue, I felt sure, was the sort of man who should always know his sons. The truth was somewhere in Lord Harold’s papers. That the chest was seized on the very night I had dined with the intimates of Stonings, must cause me to believe that one of them — Lady Imogen, or Thrace himself — had long been aware of the danger Lord Harold’s writings posed. One of them had hired Old Philmore and his nephew.
“Jane,” my brother Henry said with a frown as I entered his rooms at No. 10, “it has been as I predicted. Julian Thrace has had the poor taste to stop here on his way to Sherborne St. John, and require of me a loan. ”
“Lady Imogen’s Devil in the cards?” I enquired. “How much is demanded for the preservation of the Beau’s honour?”
“All of five hundred pounds! — To be issued in notes backed by gold in my London branch! The effrontery of the fellow, Jane, to presume on such a slight social acquaintance! But what else, after all, has Thrace ever done?”
“You are a banker, Henry — and I must suppose a gaming debt contracted in a gentleman’s household is a pressing affair, that must be paid with despatch. Particularly when one is living cheek by jowl with the lady demanding payment.”
“He might have offered her his vowels,” Henry retorted crossly, “and applied to friends in London for the whole.[19] I cannot be easy in my mind regarding Thrace’s security for any sum advanced to him, despite the Earl’s apparent regard, and all the frenzy of activity in rebuilding Stonings.”
“Perhaps you shall be easier once you have visited the place.”
My brother merely stared.
“We are all invited to picnic there tomorrow — yourself expressly desired by Major Spence, who should like to interrogate you regarding the Vyne hunt, Henry.”
19
A person’s “vowels” were his or her I.O.U. — a signed note promising repayment of a debt of honor that could not be immediately settled.