Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [287]
‘Is that all?’ said Jerott, standing up uncomfortably. Guthrie was to take him to where Lymond lay.
‘And that George Paris landed at Dumbarton today, I’m told,’ said Sybilla. ‘And means to leave shortly for a lodging in Edinburgh.’
‘So!’ said Nicolas de Nicolay, suddenly vastly interested. ‘The sensible one downstairs and her story fall into place after all. Is this, would you think, one of Gabriel’s final moves?’
‘I hope so,’ said Sybilla coolly, and there was no ambiguity in her meaning at all.
*
This day, in his provident itinerary, Francis Crawford was spending in a daub and wattle shepherd’s hut, deep in the Tweedsmuir hills.
Archie Abernethy, his sun-dried face impassive, was on guard. Passing him, with Alec Guthrie leading the way, Jerott was seized with a desire to be anywhere but here.
The evidence against Graham Malett, his lifelong hero, was overwhelming. He was prepared to believe it with his head, if not yet with his heart. His feeling for Lymond, on the other hand, echoed a little what his own men had felt last night. An illogical resentment that he, with ail his failings, should be the deus ex machina to destroy Gabriel’s great name.
To Lymond’s cool brain it was inevitable. He must have set out deliberately to expose Graham Malett a long time ago. He had spared nothing. He had had the hardihood to play the third, vulnerable hand in the last knife-edge game between Joleta, Sir Graham and himself, in the hope that Joleta would be frightened into confession; he had even, with the same mechanical single-mindedness, offered himself as whipping-boy to induce Gabriel to give full rein to his passions.
So he had come to the place where Graham Malett, finding both Lymond and Joleta his sister troublesome, had found a witty solution at the top of the steps to St Mary’s.
Again, it was logical. It was logical that Lymond had sensibly saved his own life at the expense of the girl’s. By Joleta’s orders, the old woman Trotty had been killed. He knew, from Sybilla’s quiet account, of what else Gabriel’s sister had done. She was wild and cruel and corrupt. By taking that murderous thrust in his own body, Lymond would have done only what Gabriel coolly hoped he would do. Jerott could admire his good sense, but he did not particularly want to meet him now or indeed ever again.
He had not been announced. So, hesitating on the threshold and peering into the murky interior, Jerott heard Lymond say in his ordinary voice, ‘Come in, Alec. I regret the redolent gloom; the sheep-stank had a little more style about it. But Archie stamps on my fingers if I venture outside … Jerott!’
He stopped speaking for a moment. Moving forward, angrily aware that Guthrie had found something unexpected to do outside, Jerott distinguished a candle guttering in the near corner of the windowless cabin. Papers covered the makeshift table on which it stood, with Lymond’s hands spread upon them, full in the light of the blown flame. His face, in the reflected glow, was to Jerott’s dazzled eyes merely a pale mask of inquiry, its framework and cavities engraved in depth by the light. Then he said, unexpectedly, ‘I am deeply sorry.’
Jerott Blyth let the hide door fall to behind him, and moved farther in. ‘Madame Donati has told us everything she knows about Sir Graham,’ he said, ‘But the groom who killed Trotty Luckup is dead. Your brother thinks he can find out who did it.’
Lymond looked down, and picking up the pen he had been using, balanced it thoughtfully between his two forefingers. He said, without looking up, ‘And you believe Evangelista Donati? She was devoted to Joleta, remember.’
‘She couldn’t have invented …’ Jerott’s voice failed him. ‘I believed her,’ he said shortly. ‘I have heard also about the Hot Trodd. And there are other … discrepancies.’ He paused. ‘He has set mastiffs after you.’