Death at Dawn: A Liberty Lane Thriller. Caro Peacock

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СКАЧАТЬ the two of them, we had to bring her into the bargain.’

      I ran a hand along the cat’s velvet back.

      ‘What’s she called?’

      ‘Lucy, I calls her.’

      We watched horse and cat for a while, then went out into the sunshine. A man with white hair and a red face was standing outside the tack room, pretending to saddle-soap a pair of long reins on a hook, but looking our way.

      ‘The owner,’ Amos said, with a jerk of the head and a grimace.

      I’d been thinking hard.

      ‘That money my father gave you to bring her over – I suppose it’s spent by now?’

      He looked unhappy.

      ‘I can account for every farthing of it, if it hadn’t been most of it foreign, that is. But it was all spent on her.’

      ‘I’m sure it was. But it’s gone?’

      He nodded.

      ‘And the owner’s watching us in case we flit with the mare?’

      Another unhappy nod, along with a look of surprise. Amos didn’t know it, but it wasn’t the first time in my life I’d seen that look – halfway between obsequious and hostile – of a man doubting whether he’ll be paid. My father always did pay, though, as soon as the cards came right.

      ‘So we owe him for her keep. How much?’

      ‘Two pounds three shillings, he says. He reckons it would have been more, only I’ve been helping him out a bit.’

      I slid the cameo ring from my finger and put it into Amos’s large palm.

      ‘Would you please sell that in the town for me and pay him what’s owed. If there’s any over, keep it for your trouble.’

      He looked at me doubtfully.

      ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I should be most greatly obliged if you would.’

      His reluctant fingers closed over it.

      ‘What do you want me to do with Rancie, then?’

      I said I’d let him know as soon as I’d decided, as if there were a world of possibilities open to me. He insisted on seeing me back to the door of the Heart of Oak, touched his hat and walked away.

      I went straight up to my room, took off shoes, dress and stays, and lay down on the bed. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘so what are you going to do with her?’

      Instead of answering that very reasonable question I fell into a day-dream, thinking of the way she’d looked at me and soft-lipped my sleeve, murmuring the syllables of her lovely French name, Esperance. I thought of what Amos had said about my father wanting me to see her. He hadn’t mentioned her in his letter, so as not to spoil the surprise. Then she’d turned out to be the last of his many presents to me. Esperance, meaning Hope. And then a hard little bit of my mind, not daydreaming at all, said, ‘At least a thousand guineas at Tattersalls.’ There was no ignoring it. I was quite sure that my father – having nothing in the way of property – would have left no will. Therefore all his possessions would go to his only son, Thomas Fraternity Lane. Only Tom was many thousands of miles away, not yet twenty-one, so I was, in effect, his agent. (A lawyer would probably have told me otherwise, but I did not intend to consult one.) Therefore I could solve some of my problems at a stroke by instructing Amos to take the mare for sale at Tattersalls, along with her papers and the note transferring ownership. Once sold, I could give Amos something handsome for his trouble and he could return to his county of red cattle, hops and apples. Most of the money would go into the bank. (Would it be enough for Tom to come home? No, don’t even think about that, yet.) But some of it – fifty pounds, say – I’d keep to find out the truth about my father.

      Having decided that, my mind felt clearer. The thing to do was talk to Daniel Suter, the last friend I knew of to see him alive. I’d return to Paris and, if necessary, inquire at every opera house or theatre until I found him. I took my father’s letter out of my bag to re-read.

      My dearest Daughter,

      I am glad to report that I have just said farewell to my two noble but tedious charges … I had business here in Paris …

      That was not surprising. One of the ways in which my father earned enough money to keep us was by acting as a go-between for objects of art. His excellent taste, wide travels and many friends meant that he was often in a position to know who needed to sell and who was aching to buy. Some classical statue or portrait of a Versailles beauty was probably his additional business in Paris

      … also friends to meet. To be candid, I value the chance of some intelligent conversation with like-minded fellows after these months of asses braying.

      He’d been long enough in Paris to pick up some gossip:

      … I have heard one most capital story which I promise will set you roaring with laughter and even perhaps a little indignation. You know ‘the dregs of their dull race …’

      It had puzzled me when I first read it, and still did. Why indignation as well as laughter? As for the quotation from Shelley, I knew it, of course. It came from the poet’s tirade of justified indignation against His Majesty George III and his unpopular brood of royal duke sons: Old, mad, blind despis’d and dying King, Princes, the dregs of their dull race … mud from a muddy spring. A fine insult, but King George was seventeen years dead. I might never hear the story, unless Daniel knew it. Still, I was making some progress. The mare to Tattersalls and I to Paris. I should have to set about it carefully though, sail from somewhere other than Dover and avoid Calais. I had no wish to see ever again the gentleman in black, or the toad-like monster, or the person who called himself Trumper. (Unless, I thought, side by side on the gallows for killing my father.)

      Soon after that, I fell asleep. The decision had been made and I was mortally tired. For the first time since hearing that my father was dead I slept deeply and dreamlessly. When I opened my eyes, the jug and ewer were making a long shadow up a wall that had turned copper-coloured in the light from the setting sun. The buzz and clinking of people at dinner and drinking came up from the floor below. The strange thing was that – although I woke unhappy – there was a little island of warmth in my mind, where before there had only been cold greyness. I saw, as vividly as if they had been in the room with me, the generous eye of Esperance, Amos Legge’s kind but puzzled look, even the golden stare of Lucy the cat. I had family of a kind after all, three beings who in some fashion depended on me.

      And I was going to sell them. I’d decided that quite clearly before going to sleep. Now, quite as clearly, the thing was impossible. Sell my father’s last gift to me, for a hatful of greasy guineas? Use as my agent in this betrayal the good giant who’d brought her to me so faithfully (and so far at no profit to himself)? Even the cat had shown more loyalty than that.

      I jumped out of bed and opened my purse. My small store was now seven shillings and four pence, not even enough to pay the rest of my score at the Heart of Oak. And yet here was I, proposing to make a trip to Paris and pay board and lodging indefinitely for an equine aristocrat. I heard myself laughing out loud.

      Somebody else heard too. I froze, aware of a board creaking СКАЧАТЬ