Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [253]
Adam Blacklock, seated, inescapably, on Lymond’s right, took down his sheltering hand and watched it shake. ‘Is this a public degradation?’ he said.
There was a pause. ‘Of course,’ said Lymond’s passionless voice. ‘It is the very fabric of degradation. For all of us. For myself most of all. It is a count of small nastinesses; a long, sordid, petty-minded tale aimed only at destructiveness. I regret,’ said Lymond, his voice sharpened for a second beyond his level, deliberate key, ‘that I cannot offer you, this time, the noble anguish of some magnificent hell. Only the embarrassment of mentioning now, in the privacy of this room, that Graham Malett made you drunk and kept you drunk, whenever he could.’
Adam, his betraying hands trapped between his knees, did not reply.
‘Is that true?’ said Lymond, and turned to look him full in the face.
Adam Blacklock lifted his head. ‘Yes. Yes, it’s true. But only because Abernethy’s treatment was so slow, and the pain was.… Oh, God. I’m not going to make excuses. Make what you can of it,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t his fault, anyway. He tried to stop me.’
‘But being addicted to spirits, as he must have known, once you started you couldn’t stop. So in the kindness of his heart, he switched you to drugs.’
Adam said nothing. The silence stretched on. ‘Provided by whom, Adam?’ said Lymond quietly. And as Blacklock didn’t answer, he went on himself. ‘Randy Bell, wasn’t it? Who is, Archie Abernethy tells me, an obvious addict himself, and possesses imported drugs in quantities usually unobtainable except in Mediterranean countries. Whatever you may say, Gabriel’s part in that was not kindness. It was not even intelligent. If he had appealed to your brain instead of to your emotions, he would have had you off it in a month. As you now are. And as you are going to stay, whatever the outcome of this. There is also Plummer.’
Alec Guthrie said, ‘The theft at Liddel Keep?’
‘Yes. How, as a matter of interest I wonder, did you hear of that?’ said Lymond.
‘It was ail round yon March meeting. The tale was that you had let it be known in order to keep him in his place.’
‘I have other, more direct methods of keeping Lancelot Plummer in his place,’ said Lymond. ‘There is nothing wrong with either Plummer or Tait, except that they have rather esoteric tastes for an obscure country retreat in Scotland. Instead of putting this into perspective, Malett chose to sharpen their cultural exile by creating a craving for things material and immaterial which he knew could not be satisfied at present with me. Hence the theft of the Staurotheque from Liddel Keep. Every chance he had, Tait was in some little hole or corner hunting for a bargain, and that’s only one step from contraband. Plummer came down, eventually, on the side of the angels, and in a month or two wouldn’t have stirred off his kneecaps, if it were the time to be on his kneecaps, if Ghengis Khan and his horde had appeared at the gates. What were you offered, Alec, that you have withstood so admirably?’
‘The opportunity to analyse Francis Crawford,’ said Guthrie’s level voice. ‘You guessed that, surely.’
‘Yes.’ Abruptly, Lymond pushed back his chair and, rising, walked to the windows. He turned, the heavy tassel from one of the tapestries in his hand. ‘You had better say, then, why you are here?’
Alec Guthrie raised his eyebrows. One stocky booted leg cocked on the other; his thumbs tucked into his belt, his spine curved at the bottom of his chair, he was the most relaxed man there. ‘You’re the cleverest drunken lecher I know; and the only one who’d stand there and give me the chance to say it,’ he said.
‘Wrong,’ said a thick voice mildly.
Guthrie grinned.
Thompson the corsair, lifting his matted beard out of his jerkin, stared back. ‘Wrong,’ he said again. ‘Dead cold sober to the point of ociosity.’
‘At Dumbarton?