Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [31]
Yes, I thought. You watched me counting every last penny.
‘The other is that you are a young lady of some resource. Those two men in the carriage did not wish you well. I have heard some of the story of how you contrived to escape from them …’
How? From the toad-like man, the peasant with the pigs …?
‘… and it suggests resolution and quick-wittedness. If it were not for these two discoveries, I should have had no hesitation in restoring you to some relative and counselling you to mourn your father and ask no more questions.’
‘You have no rights over me. All I want from you is to know what happened to him.’
‘In due course, you shall know everything. Only you must have –’
‘Patience? What’s to stop me opening this window and shouting to people to fetch a magistrate, that my father’s murderer is in this room with me?’
He didn’t move a muscle.
‘Two reasons: one, that it would be untrue; the other, that it would be ineffective.’
I had my hand on the window latch. If he had moved to stop me I should have opened it. He stayed where he was and went on talking in that same level voice.
‘I did not kill your father. If I could have prevented his death by any means, I should have done so. As for the magistrates, I should be able within a few minutes to convince them that your accusation was untrue. And you, Miss Lane, would appear a young lady driven out of her senses by grief. Is that a desirable outcome?’
I let go of the latch. If he’d knocked me to the floor he couldn’t have defeated me more thoroughly, because what he said was true. I could imagine the cold, official looks and what would follow: my aunt sent for and my return to Chalke Bissett as a captive. Or, worse than that, strait-jacketed to a common asylum, fighting and screaming, spending the rest of my life among squalid gibberers. In this new world I’d fallen into, it could happen. He must have seen from my face that he’d won the round, because his voice became just a shade more soft.
‘Miss Lane, I did not come here to threaten you. I came, as far as I may, to assist.’
I kept my back turned to him, looking out of the window. A drab in a doorway was beckoning to two sailors. They were taunting her, pretending to push each other in her direction.
‘I give you my promise that, when it is possible, I shall tell you more about what happened to your father. But the time is not yet right, and there are more things bound up in this than the fate of any single man or woman. Your father was a good man on the whole …’
‘On the whole!’
‘… but of an impulsive temperament, as you clearly are. That, above all, was what led to his death.’
The two sailors were walking away, the drab shouting something after them. When she came out of her doorway you could see she was no more than a girl, perhaps fourteen or so. I turned back into the room.
‘You said you had a proposition to put to me.’
He made it, standing there with his hand on the edge of the wash-stand. I sat down after all, because my legs were trembling from shock and anger, and I did not wish him to know it. I let him talk without a word of interruption and tried not to show what I thought.
‘There is a small part which you may play in a great cause which I believe your father would approve. It may even in some measure help to put right the harm to that cause which your father unintentionally has done.’
How can I defend him, when I don’t even understand what you’re accusing him of? I hate you, as much as I’ve hated anybody in my life, but you possess something I want, so I must listen.
‘So here is the proposal which I ask you to consider. It has the merit that it would meet, for a short time, your need for sustenance, a roof over your head, while permitting you to be of some service to a greater cause.’
Am I intended to assassinate somebody, like Charlotte Corday and Marat? I suppose