Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [15]
I named the first hotel that came into my head.
‘Are they now? Well, let’s escort you back to them.’
He let go of my arm and bowed politely for me to go first. The coachman picked up his whip.
‘What about him?’ I said, looking down at the man in black. His eyes were still closed but the white shirt over his narrow chest was stirred by shallow breaths.
‘He’ll live. Or if he doesn’t, at least he’s in the right place.’
We walked along the path to the carriage at the gates, the hearty man almost treading on my heels, the coachman’s heavy steps close behind him. It was an expensive travelling carriage, newly lacquered, the kind of thing that a gentleman might order for a long journey on the Continent. Perhaps they’d left in a hurry because there was an oval frame with gold leaves round it painted on the door, ready for a coat of arms to go inside, but it had been left blank. The team were four powerful dark bays, finely matched. There was a boy standing at the horses’ heads dressed in gaiters and corduroy jacket, not livery. The coachman climbed up on the box at the front and the boy pulled down the steps to let us in. The hearty man gave an over-elaborate bow, suggesting I should go first.
‘You might at least introduce yourself,’ I said. In truth, I was still reluctant and wanted to gain time.
‘I apologise. Harry Trumper, at your service.’
I didn’t quite believe him. It was said like a man in a play.
‘My name is Liberty Lane.’
‘We knew that, didn’t we?’
He was talking to somebody inside the coach.
‘How?’
‘We knew your father.’
It seemed unlikely that my clever, unconventional father would have wasted time with this young squire. As for the man inside, I could only make him out in profile. It was curiosity that took me up the three steps to the inside of the coach. The man who called himself Harry Trumper followed. The boy folded up the steps, closed the door and – judging by the jolt – took up his place outside on the back. The harness clinked, the coachman said ‘hoy hoy’ to the horses, and we were away.
CHAPTER FIVE
There was a smell about the man inside the carriage. An elderly smell of stale port wine, snuff and candlewax. My nose took exception to it even as my eyes were still trying to adapt themselves to the half-darkness. The man who called himself Harry Trumper had arranged things so that he and I were sitting side by side with our backs to the horses, the other man facing us with a whole seat to himself. As my sight cleared, I could see that he needed it. It was not so much that he was corpulent – though indeed he was that – more that his unwieldy body spread out like a great toad’s, with not enough in the way of bone or sinew to control its bulk. His face was like a suet pudding, pale and shiny, with two mean raisins for eyes, topped with a knitted grey travelling cap. The eyes were staring at me over a tight little mouth. He seemed not to like what he saw.
‘Miss Lane, may I introduce …’
Before Trumper could finish, the fat man held up a hand to stop him. The hand bulged in its white silk glove like a small pudding in a cloth.
‘Were you not told to stay at Dover?’
He rumbled the words at me as if they’d been hauled from the depths of his stomach.
‘The note,’ I said. ‘Did you write it, then?’
‘I wrote you no note.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
By my side, Trumper burbled something about not accusing a gentleman of lying. I turned on him.
‘You said you knew my father. What happened to him?’
‘He took something that didn’t belong to him,’ Trumper said.
I think I’d have hit him, only another rumble from the fat man distracted me.
‘I said I wrote you no note. That is true, but if it matters to you, the note was written on my instructions. As soon as I knew of your father’s misfortune, I sent a man back to England with the sole purpose of finding you and saving you unnecessary distress.’
But there was no concern for anybody’s distress in the eyes that watched my face unblinkingly.
‘He hated duels,’ I said. ‘He’d never in his life have fought a duel.’
‘Sometimes a man has