Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [192]
He was the sort of person one could with justice kill if only—if only one had had the sense to bring a weapon. He was the sort of person who, if one offended him, was quite capable of destroying the whole house of Culter. Philippa withdrew her hand and said, ‘If I did, I should never obtain my divorce. Am I to give him some message?’
‘No,’ said Bailey. He picked up the cuff of her long sleeve and admired it. ‘I told you, I think, that I was no longer on the edge of pauperdom. I did not mention that it was because I have received a congenial—a most congenial commission. I wonder if you can guess what it is?’
‘I have no idea,’ Philippa said. ‘Except that it will probably be damaging to the Culters. Is that it?’
‘You understand me,’ said Lymond’s great-uncle. ‘It is going to be, if I may so term it, a labour of love. And lucrative. The only disappointment is that in the end, I shall have to forgo your husband’s pension.… He has, you must know, many powerful enemies.’
‘And what then,’ said Philippa, ‘are they paying you to do that they can’t manage themselves? Challenge him face to face?’ The floorboards outside the doorway creaked. Bailey’s men were still standing there.
‘I fancy,’ said Leonard Bailey, ‘any man of birth might be excused from challenging M. le comte de Sevigny face to face in a very short time. No. I have been asked to investigate the circumstances of your husband’s progeniture and collect all possible evidence which will reflect against himself and his mother with the object, in the end, of making it public.’
‘By whom?’ Philippa said. ‘Or could I guess?’ Coming from Bailey’s house in England, once, she had been followed. She remembered the livery the soldiers wore, and the look on Lymond’s face when she had told him. Of all the powerful enemies Francis had made, one family had the most cause to hate him, and herself. Long ago in Scotland, Lymond had exposed the renegade Earl of Lennox to ridicule and later, in France, had discredited both him and his expatriate brother. And over and over, through the years, had stood between Margaret Lennox, the Earl’s half-royal wife, and the lands, the power, the kingdoms she coveted. Margaret Lennox who, rumour said, had once appeared on the long list of Lymond’s mistresses.
There was money there, enough to give even this shocking old man satisfaction.
But he was not going to answer, or to give away anything at the moment. He smiled, his pores sweating a little from the warmth of the fire and said, ‘Perhaps you could. The Crawfords always picked clever girls.’
‘And they know the truth, your employers?’
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘They undertook to pay me for the duration of my researches, and so far, I have not been in a hurry. They do not, for example, know where this house is. But of course, I know the truth and I have all the evidence. It remains only to choose a time to hand it over. The arrival in France of Richard Crawford and Sybilla herself makes the present moment seem singularly appropriate.’
‘Then your payment from all quarters would cease, and Mr Crawford would kill you,’ said Philippa.
‘Oh, he would try to kill me before that,’ Bailey said. ‘As soon as you leave here and tell him of this conversation, he would never rest, would he, until I was done for? That is why I have written some very special instructions to go with those papers I showed you. If your husband or anyone else touches me—if I suffer injury, or die by violence, or even if Madame Roset is concealed from me—Sybilla’s confessions will be opened and published in London and Paris.’
Philippa stared at the flushed face. ‘But, Mr Bailey … if you sell to the Lennoxes, Mr Crawford has nothing to lose. Do you think you could possibly escape him?’
‘They have paid for my bodyguards,’ he said. ‘And promised protection in England. He can’t go to England.