Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [82]
‘What a miracle,’ I said, when I got my breath back. ‘What a coincidence.’
‘Miraculous I may be, child, but I disdain mere coincidence. Kennedy gave me your message two days ago. I’d been in France until then.’
‘But how did you manage to be here with the orchestra?’
‘An acquaintance of mine had accepted, but was more than happy to pass on the honour when I helped him to three days of more congenial work.’ Then his smile faded. ‘Forgive me child, running on like this. Your father …’
‘I want so much to talk to you.’
‘And I to you, child. But what are you doing here?’
I knelt down and began gathering the scattered parts.
‘I’m the governess.’
‘Why in the world?’
‘I can’t tell you now. May we meet later?’
‘Later, when I’ve come all this way to find you? Not at all.’
‘But your rehearsal …’
I handed him the score. He looked through the first few pages, eyebrows raised. They were fine, expressive eyebrows. Some people joked that he could direct an orchestra with them alone. They came together as his forehead pinched in artistic pain, rose again in amusement as he flipped to the last few pages.
‘Ah, child, the sacrifice I have made for you.’ He called out a name and tossed the score across the room to one of the other musicians, who caught it neatly. ‘Take them through it,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll encounter anything you haven’t met a hundred times before. Sir Herbert informs me that he has no liking for pianissimo – or indeed any other fancy foreign issimo – so kindly keep that in mind.’
The other musician smiled, clearly used to Daniel. He took the rest of the parts from me and dumped them on the pianoforte.
‘Now, my dear lady, let us wander in the garden.’
‘People might see us.’
‘Am I such a disgrace?’
‘Guests, I mean. Governesses do not mix with them.’
‘Judging from what I’ve seen and heard of Sir Herbert, you may be wise in scorning his guests.’
‘Please be serious. I should be dismissed if I were seen walking with you.’
‘Where is the spirit of Figaro? But very well, we shall hide ourselves among the vegetables.’
‘Vegetables?’
‘There must surely be an honest vegetable garden where guests don’t go.’
Half a dozen gardeners were at work behind the warm brick walls when we got there, but they hardly looked up from their hoeing. We walked along gravel paths between borders of parsley, oregano and marjoram, alive with butterflies. Daniel Suter offered me his arm in a kind of courtly parody of a lady and gentleman strolling, but it was a good firm arm, and I was glad to keep hold of it.
‘My dear, why did you run away? All of your father’s friends will help you. There was no need for this servitude.’
‘I want to know who killed my father.’
‘What have they told you?’
‘They? Nobody’s told me anything, except one man, and I don’t know how far to believe him.’
‘Who?’
‘A man who calls himself Mr Blackstone.’
I felt his arm go tense under mine. We’d come to the end of our path, facing the wall, and had to choose right or left. There were beans growing on strings up the wall, their red and white flowers just opening and fat furry bees blundering round them. Daniel stood, apparently staring at the bees, but I guessed he was not seeing them.
‘So what do you know?’ I asked him.
‘Child, please leave it be. I’d give my own life, if I could, to bring your father back to you. But since I can’t …’
‘Since you can’t, at least do this for him. You know very well he wasn’t killed in a duel, don’t you?’
He gave the faintest of nods, slight as the movement of a bean leaf under the weight of a bee.
‘What else do you know?’ I said.
‘Very little. I’m sorry to say he’d been dead two weeks before I even heard about it. A few days after he left Paris, I went to Lyon. Somebody wrote