Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [232]
‘Then go and find him,’ said Marthe briefly. ‘It was a man called Leonard Bailey.’
There was, for various different reasons, an abrupt silence. A woman’s voice, remote and clear, said, ‘Fool.’ Danny looked about him. Then Sybilla said flatly, ‘How do you know?’
Marthe raised her fair brows. ‘It was in a letter from Francis to Philippa. She showed it to me. You know, of course, about Philippa’s attempts to discover the three witnesses?’
It was too much for Danny. ‘Witnesses to what?’ he said.
‘That is what Jerott asked,’ Marthe said. ‘But neither Francis nor Philippa, I’m afraid, felt inclined to tell us. That must have been before he learned to trust everybody.’
Sybilla ignored it. ‘And did she find her witnesses?’ she asked.
‘Don’t you know?’ Marthe said. ‘I suppose she did. One of them, a priest, was dead. I presume Renée Jourda was another. And perhaps she found the third by means of the key.’
Leaning back, her golden head gleaming, her eyes half closed like a cat’s, she looked at Sybilla, and Sybilla said peacefully, ‘Well? You are either going to tell me or not going to tell me. What key?’
‘The key we found with the death certificate, in my grandmother’s chair,’ Marthe said. ‘If I lack finesse, you must make allowances. I was brought up by the Dame de Doubtance and her minion, not at Midculter Castle. I cannot bring myself to love and tolerate my drunken husband. I am living testimony to the fact that men resemble their age more than they do their fathers. You must not expect me to respond quite in the same way as my brother. What have we in common with each other?’
Danny jerked.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Sybilla kindly.
‘I said, The face of a hoore and the tongue of a serpent,’ said Mr Hislop mutinously. ‘Ask her why, if she resents Mr Crawford so much, she’s dead set on his staying married to Mistress Philippa.’
‘Do you know,’ said Sybilla thoughtfully, ‘I don’t think I shall? Or is it unfair to spare Francis and Philippa and place poor Jerott on the bill of fare for View and Search Day? I thought Austin Grey and Philippa were fond of one another and Francis was satisfactorily betrothed to the Maréchal de St André’s daughter? C’est tout de même que de manger la poule et puis son poulet?’
‘You know about that?’ said Danny, fascinated.
‘And approves, I am sure,’ Marthe said. ‘His wife, who adores him, cannot compete with the St André wealth and the St André prospects.’
‘Nonsense,’ the Dowager said calmly and Danny, intoxicated with horrified pleasure, wriggled back in his seat. She continued, with equal austerity, ‘Philippa, as you well know, is worth two of Catherine d’Albon with her mother thrown in for good measure, but Catherine will do Francis very well. They know the world, and they will conduct their own lives with perfect discretion, and no one will get hurt. I am not having anyone tied to Francis who is as vulnerable as Philippa is.’
‘You mean,’ Marthe said, ‘that she might take to the bottle or the bordello, as Jerott does? And yet you suggest Jerott and I should remain tied together?’
‘I mean,’ Sybilla said, ‘that a marriage between Francis and Philippa was highly unsuitable in the first place, and they are both intelligent enough to know it. Whereas your marriage to Jerott, so far as I can see, has been based mainly on undisciplined emotion and prejudice, and has had no kind of proper test at all. I am willing, on your behalf, to give Jerott a talking-to. He has had a severe fright, and is ready to be taught a lesson.’
‘And what,’ Marthe said, ‘do you suppose you can do about my prejudices?’
‘I can answer a question you have not asked me,’ Sybilla said.
Marthe laughed. ‘You are going to tell me about Gavin,’ she said. ‘The bold, brown, loud-mouthed Scotsman who made himself so disliked about la Guiche, and yet persuaded the Dame de Doubtance’s daughter to go to bed with him?’
Sybilla rose. Thoughtfully, she moved over the indifferent parquet of Master Nostradamus’s hired house and seated herself gently at the other