Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [30]
‘Miss Lane, do you recognise this?’
He was holding something small in the palm of his hand. I walked over to him and picked it up. When I saw it close, I felt as if somebody had caught me a blow.
‘It’s his ring.’
A signet with a curious design of an eye and a pyramid. The one that should have been on his hand in the morgue.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘You robbed it from his body.’
‘It was taken from his body. Not by me.’
‘Who, then?’
‘By persons at the morgue in Calais.’
‘The fat drunken woman and her husband?’
The slightest of nods from him.
‘I thought so,’ I said. ‘But what concern was it of yours?’
He must have been at the morgue before me, touched my father’s hands as I’d done, and he had no right.
‘I bought it from them,’ he said. ‘It should have stayed on his hand and been buried with him, but they’d only have stolen it again.’
‘So you’ve come to return it to me?’
I was trying to bring myself to thank him, but could have saved myself the effort.
‘No. I show it to you only to convince you that I knew your father. That in some measure I speak with your father’s authority.’
He pulled off his right glove and stretched out his hand to me. On his middle finger was a ring identical to my father’s, only the design was worn flat by time. Then he turned the hand over, palm up.
‘If you please.’
He expected me to give him my father’s ring back. Instead I dropped it down the front of my stays. It was cold against my hot and angry skin. The shock in his eyes was the first human reaction I’d had from him. We stared at each other and he drew another long sigh.
‘I had heard that you possess an excellent understanding, Miss Lane. I fear you are not using it rationally.’
‘The only understanding I care about is how my father died. Who is this woman he was trying to bring back to England?’
For a second, he couldn’t hide the surprise in his eyes.
‘Who told you about a woman?’
‘The man who kidnapped me in the graveyard and a fat man in the carriage. You know who they are, don’t you?’
‘You did well to escape from them.’
‘The fat man said my father had abducted a woman from Paris. They thought I’d know where she was. I don’t. I know nothing about her.’
‘That’s good. You must continue to know nothing.’
‘No! She’s the reason my father was killed, isn’t she? Don’t I at least have the right to know who she is?’
‘I’m not sure myself who she is.’
‘But there is a woman, you admit that?’
‘I have reason to believe that your father left Paris in company with a woman, yes.’
‘He wouldn’t have taken her away against her will.’
‘Very well. I accept that.’
‘So, whoever she is, she went with him of her own accord. But Trumper and the fat man found out about that and wanted her back.’
A reluctant nod from him.
‘So they chased him from Paris to Calais?’
‘Not chased, exactly. I understand that it took them some days to connect your father with the woman’s disappearance.’
‘Were you in Paris at the time?’
‘No.’
‘So how do you know about this?’
‘I have no obligation to tell you how I know about anything. You must accept that I have been doing my best to observe these people for several months.’
There was a hint of weariness in his voice.
‘The day they tried to kidnap me, they were still looking for this woman,’ I said. ‘Did they find her?’
‘I don’t know. As you may remember, I was indisposed for a while.’
‘You mean knocked senseless by the fat man’s coachman. Who are these people? Why are they doing this?’
He didn’t answer for some time. We stared at each other. There were chalky rings round his grey pupils, a sign of bad health. He sighed.
‘Miss Lane, your father became involved in something that was nothing to do with him. You are probably right in thinking that it cost him his life. When I met you in Calais, my wish was to protect you.’
‘By ordering me to go back to England and forget about it?’
‘I never said “forget”. But it’s true that I wanted to keep you away from them.’
‘And now?’