Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [201]
‘With or without help from Catherine d’Albon,’ said Philippa reflectively. She paused, and as Archie said nothing, she finished what she had to say. ‘If you need him, Nostradamus is in Paris.’
‘You’ve seen him?’ said Archie. His voice had sharpened.
‘In passing,’ said Philippa smoothly. ‘Which reminds me. Archie, what happened on your last night in Lyon? Master Nostradamus said I should ask Mr Crawford.’
‘Did he indeed?’ said Archie Abernethy. He paused. ‘Well, I wouldna ask him the now or you’ll get a right nippit answer.… Ye ken Master Blyth’s lady’s banged out the house and left him for good? Leastways, she hasna come back again.’
‘No, but I’m not surprised,’ Philippa said. ‘I don’t need to ask what Master Blyth is doing. Is anyone looking for her?’
‘Mr Hislop. He likes a problem,’ said Archie. ‘I’m told Lady Culter wants to speak with her.’
‘Oh,’ said Philippa. She felt her nose growing red. After a moment she said, ‘Do you think that’s a good idea? Marthe won’t let Lymond down publicly, I’d swear, however much she attacks him in private.’
Archie didn’t say anything. She wondered how much he knew, or suspected. Enough, certainly, to know that it was a question of Lymond’s birth and Sybilla’s honesty. He had no means of discovering anything else. Her face must have reflected her thoughts for Archie’s voice, striking through them, said suddenly, ‘I take it you have no good news to give him then?’
And recognizing the question for what it was, Philippa said, ‘He knows all there is to know, and none of it is good. Archie, he isn’t lacking in character. In the end, he has to learn to support it. I am sure he will.’
The wise eyes, unflinching, stared into hers. ‘There is a man in him that could support it,’ Archie said. ‘True enough. But it is maybe a man the world could do without. I don’t know. I wasna in Russia.’
Chapter 9
Sera connu d’adultere l’offence
Qui parviendra a son grand deshonneur.
It had been tempting on a scale positively Biblical to confide in Archie, and it was with some wistfulness that Philippa watched him leave after that interview. But for all practical purposes, he and Francis Crawford must be considered a single person, and on one matter she had made up her mind on the day she left the rue de la Cerisaye.
While there was hope of settling the matter in any other way, Lymond should not be told of Bailey’s threat to his family. The misconduct he had uncovered was far more serious than any Archie could have envisaged. Misconduct of such a kind that, whatever strength of character Francis Crawford might possess, he was at this moment barely keeping his balance in face of it.
If affairs went according to plan, she would not need his help in any case. If they did not, she at least would not be blinded by passion into taking some action which would throw secrecy to the winds and Sybilla into the hands of her persecutors.
It made no difference why Sybilla, of all civilized women, had so abominably betrayed her marriage. Or why she had chosen to set down in black and white the name of the man who had begotten her two younger children. It was done, and it was for those who loved her to protect her and her family from the consequences.
But not—whatever happened, not by trusting Leonard Bailey. He might sell Sybilla’s papers to her. He might sell to the Lennoxes. Most likely of all, he would cheat, to wring from the situation the maximum money and the maximum injury to the Crawfords.
The obvious course was to move quickly, and cheat before he did.
So Philippa, from the moment she left the Hôtel des Sphères, put her intelligence, her imagination, her considerable energy to work with one end in view: the tracking down of the two sets of papers containing Sybilla’s confession.
There were copies in France, and in London. In whose hands? Someone empowered to reveal the contents if Bailey met an unnatural end. Someone, then, with authority.
What sort of agent would Leonard Bailey trust, sufficiently moral or sufficiently wealthy to be immune from bribery?