“I have arranged them by date, a tedious job in itself; there must be nearly thirty of them, Jane, running from the month of Mrs. Grey's arrival in Kent — that would be just after her marriage, in February — until the middle of August.”
“Seven months of correspondence from the Comte de Penfleur,” I mused. “Let us call it one letter per week, with an occasional bonus of two. Hardly the ardent work of a lover; more the perfunctory stuff of a business arrangement. Perhaps Mr. Grey is correct in his fears. Have you read any of them?”
“I managed to decipher these” — he waved several sheets of creased paper vaguely — “but the writing is so fine, and what with the crossing of the lines … I shall be weeks perusing the rest.”
I took the letters and leafed through them. Neddie was in earnest; most of the pages had been narrowly inscribed, with the sheet turned to the horizontal, and the original message crossed with a second text. I should not have suspected the Comte of economy in the matter of paper; but perhaps he feared the suspicions of Mr. Grey, did his wife's demand for postage mount too high.[55] All the sheets were signed, I observed, with merely the letter H. So that Mrs. Grey might dismiss her correspondent as an old schoolfriend, still resident in France?
“And what have you discovered?”
“He speaks a great deal of millinery,” Neddie said unexpectedly. “There is a quantity of talk about Spanish lace, and whether Mrs. Grey should be able to find it; some discussion of Dutch woollens, as well, and whether the quality is so reliable as English. It seems Spanish lace and Dutch cloth are devilish hard to come by in France at present; tho' I cannot think why.”
“But it is France herself that embargoes such goods from trade with England!” I exclaimed. “Can you possibly have read it aright?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps my French is more lamentable than I thought.”
“Or perhaps Mr. Grey is mistaken in the identity of his wife's correspondent. Recollect that we have only his assertion these letters were written by the Comte at all.”
“As to that—” Neddie searched among the papers on his desk, and retrieved another sheet of paper, slightly soiled and equally creased. The seal was identical to those already laid before me, and the hand could not be more like. “This is the letter discovered in Mrs. Grey's French novel, which—”
“—Mr. Grey has also chosen to identify as the Comte's.”
“—which matches the writing on this scrap of paper, Jane,” Neddie persisted patiently, “given to me by the Comte. It bears the direction of his inn at Dover, the Royal.”
“Very well. The Comte has chosen to style himself 'H,' and speak only of millinery to his ladylove. I suppose there are histories recorded that are yet more extraordinary. We must assume it is a sort of code.”
“Pray examine the letters yourself, Jane, and attempt to form an opinion. I shall be greatly in your debt.”
“Do not deceive yourself, Neddie. It is I who am under the greatest obligation. I have not been so diverted by a puzzle since the weeks before our father's death; and I make no apology for profiting so grossly by Mrs. Grey's murder. This will be the first disinterested service she has rendered to anyone, in life or death.”
TWO FULL HOURS WERE REQUIRED FOR THE REVIEW OF the correspondence. It was a tedious business; the Comte — our duplicitous “H” — was possessed of a fiendish hand, very nearly indecipherable. The elegance of his phrasing further confounded his despoilers; we were at pains to untangle the ravishing verbs from their dependent clauses, and must own to a head-ache after only a part of our work was done. But it proved, in the main, to be as Neddie had said — repeated discussions of lace and wool, and the most efficacious arrangements for the procuring of each. On rare occasions, the Comte commended his Francoise for her management of this friend or that — I am pleased to observe the progress you have made in securing the affection of Mr. Collingforth, for example; or, more interesting still, Captain Woodford appears unsuited to his task; I would suggest you discourage his visits. And gradually, about the month of June, another name crept into the letters: that of Julian Sothey.
Mr. Sothey's interest in your well-being must always ensure him a warm place in my heart…. Mr. Sothey is possessed of a peculiar aptitude for gossip. I was charmed by your report of his conversation with Lady Forbes…. Mr. Sothey's influence with your husband might do much towards the securing of our lace. Pray exert your charms towards this end, ma chere Francoise, for it appears that your own influence with the gentleman is limited.
Mr. Sothey, it seemed, had been a gratifying tool in Mrs. Grey's hands. How useful the Gentleman Improver should be, to a woman of her inclination! He knew everyone, and was welcome everywhere; he overheard the counsels of the Great at their very dinner tables. Where Mrs. Grey's sex and very foreignness should be a bar to a certain sort of male intimacy, Mr. Sothey was trusted and admired by the men of his acquaintance; before him, they should always be open. Had he understood, at last, that he was being worked upon — and confronted Mrs. Grey at the Canterbury Races? Was this the break that had sparked the lady's fury?
“Neddie,” I said abruptly, “pray consider the phrases I have translated. They are drawn from several of the Comte's letters, despatched during the course of June and July. I do not doubt that we shall discover more such, in the month of August.”
He read them, and a frown gathered on his brow. “Do you suppose Sothey to have been aware of the delicacy of the information he conveyed? Or that Mrs. Grey intended to use him against her own husband?”
“I cannot undertake to say. A man in the grip of infatuation, might do anything to win the favour of his lady; he might offer her the dearest intelligence, without a second thought as to the wisdom of the impulse. And, too, we know so little of Mrs. Grey herself — how subtle her manipulation may have been, and how patiently effected, week by week.”
“But can Grey have been blind to such a passion in his friend, or its consequences? Is it possible he should overlook Sothey's attempts to influence himself?”
“We rarely suspect a friend of the heart — a man whose integrity and opinion we esteem — of employing our affections for particular ends,” I observed. “It requires a doubt of intimacy, to reveal the snake.”
“That should make Sothey's betrayal all the more abhorrent.” Neddie considered a moment in silence. “But perhaps we read too much into these words, Jane. Sothey might be worked upon from any number of causes. He may have cared nothing for Francoise Grey — but possessed as ruinous a taste for gaming as his father. That should easily place him in her power.”
“It should not be surprising,” I agreed. “Such things are said to run in the blood. But what was he intended to procure, Neddie?”
“Gossip?”
“His charm and brilliance — his inclination for discourse — and the ease with which he moved among the houses of the Great, should provide him with a considerable fund of knowledge. But that appears to have been the least of his talents. He is specifically intended by the Comte to secure some Spanish lace, and arguably from Mr. Grey.”
“But what is the lace intended to signify?”
“Money, Neddie,” I replied with decision. “Recall what Henry has suspected, and what the Comte himself has said. Grey has a scheme under consideration, that must encompass the great banking houses of Europe; it is the only way in which Mr. Sothey might be of use to Penfleur.”