The Advocate's Wife Page 19

  ‘Let me see, where was I? On the fifth, which was a Monday, I spent the day at an exhibition meeting at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I was there all day, lunching with the curator, and then viewing various collections of objects of virtu. In the evening, I dined with Lord and Lady Port Royal at their house in Pont Street. I returned here at eleven.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. And Tuesday, the sixth? What did you do on the sixth?’

  ‘I travelled north, Mr Box, to Sunderland, at the invitation of the mayor. I had a long-standing engagement to open the new art gallery there, to which I had donated a number of paintings. I stayed the night at the home of Sir Owen Morgan, the Sunderland industrialist and returned to London the following morning. I’m aware that you are asking me to establish an alibi for some reason or other, and am only too pleased to oblige. On both those days I must have been seen publicly by literally hundreds of people.’

  ‘You are too kind, Mr Raikes. Most co-operative and reasonable, sir. So if someone said they’d seen you in a train compartment at Bishop’s Longhurst station, in Essex—’

  ‘Someone, Inspector, would be either mistaken, or a fibber. I tell you I have clouds of witnesses to tell you where I was on the fifth and sixth of September.’

  ‘Very well, sir. Let’s forget about September, and travel back a good number of years to the matter in hand. Bear with me while I explain. On the first of November, in the year 1867, Mr Raikes, a young man was garrotted in the street near St James’s church, Garlickhythe. His name was Henry Colbourne.’

  Raikes darted a look of suspicion at the two detectives.

  ‘Colbourne? I remember him well. Now why on earth should you want to see me about Henry Colbourne?’

  Box noted that Raikes’s previous veiled mockery had gone, to be replaced by surprise and curiosity. The connoisseur had clearly no idea that Box had come on that particular errand.

  ‘Well, you see, Mr Raikes, the murder of Henry Colbourne was never solved, and part of my task has been to re-open the case. Not entirely for its own sake, but in connection with other matters. I found a witness who recalled that you knew Colbourne when you were both at Gray’s Inn, twenty-five years ago. This witness also recalled a conversation that you had with Colbourne one autumn evening in the same year.’

  ‘A conversation … Who is this witness? He seems to have a good memory. I don’t recall any particular conversation.’

  Box took a note pad from his pocket, and flicked through the pages.

  ‘These are the words that the witness overheard, Mr Raikes. You said to Mr Colbourne: “I earnestly beg you to reconsider, Colbourne. Much more hinges on this than you can possibly realize”. Mr Colbourne replied: “There can be no question of concealment or compromise, Raikes”. Subsequent to that conversation, sir, Mr Colbourne was murdered. Would you care to tell me what that conversation meant? What was it that Mr Colbourne refused to reconsider?’

  There’s something wrong, thought Box. Raikes is curious, and obviously relieved that we’re not talking about Sir William Porteous, but he’s not really interested in what I’m telling him now …

  Gideon Raikes sighed, and picked up a jewelled pen from the desk.

  ‘This pen was made for Napoleon, and was with him on Ste-Helena.’ He threw the pen down and leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Henry Colbourne, Inspector, was created to be a victim of murder. He was a self-righteous prig, who enjoyed observing the suffering of others. I can imagine an older man becoming like that quite easily, but Colbourne was too young for his probity to be anything more than a vice.’

  ‘I know what you mean, Mr Raikes. That seems to have been most people’s view of Colbourne. But as for your conversation….’

  ‘It is quite simple, Mr Box. You are probably aware of the follies of my early years. I accepted a bribe from a witness. There were two of us in quite desperate situations over gambling debts, and evidently I was the one whom Colbourne found out. Or maybe he went on to torment the other fellow as well. I don’t know. Colbourne came to me, and said that he would report me to the head of chambers.’

  ‘Because you had accepted a bribe? If that is true, sir, then Colbourne was attempting to blackmail you!’

  ‘No! Colbourne would never have thought to do that. But merely by knowing that I had accepted that bribe, and merely by knowing that I, and another fellow had been gambling, which was against the code of our particular legal firm, Henry Colbourne’s righteousness was compromised! He would have considered himself tainted by the mere knowledge of our ill-doing. That he was a sneak and a snooper, of course, didn’t come into it!’

  Gideon Raikes, Box thought, was curiously detached in his narration of Colbourne’s virtuous treachery, but the smouldering anger, he sensed, was still there. He suddenly realized that it was rooted in shame – the shame of being sought out and interviewed by police officers. That affronted his dignity as someone who moved easily in the higher echelons of Society. Evidently, he had never learned that filling his house full of florid and costly second-hand goods was no compensation for his deep-dyed villainy.

  ‘That evening – yes, I recall it now, it was in the court of Gray’s Inn, after a reunion dinner – I asked Henry Colbourne to reconsider. I had, in fact, scraped the money together to pay my gambling debts, and renounce the bribe. No one would have been the wiser. Colbourne, however, was not able to compromise his righteousness. I was ruined.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Box’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet.

  ‘Do? I left a note for my seniors, and fled abroad. I realized at once that I had no future left in England, and that I would have to seek other ways of making my name. I did so.’

  ‘And you did not murder Henry Colbourne to ensure his silence?’

  Gideon Raikes’s look of surprise was almost comic, but there was anger behind it.

  ‘Murder him? Do you have the impertinence, Mr Box, to ask me such a question openly? Surely you are not trying to—Murder him? What a ludicrous thing to say! I read of his death in the Antwerp papers. I remember feeling rather sorry for him! At that age, life seems quite precious. We were both about twenty-six or seven, I suppose. No, I didn’t murder him. Look!’

  Gideon Raikes grasped his left wrist, and swung his hand up on the desk. Fingers and thumb seemed fused together and bent inward towards the palm. The hand was clearly paralysed and useless.

  ‘I don’t normally wave this hand about, Mr Box, but I can tell you that it has been withered since birth. Henry Colbourne was garrotted. However willing I may have been to help him from the world, I could not have done so by that particular method.’

  As he finished speaking, the connoisseur unobtrusively slipped the withered hand back on to his lap.

  ‘You’ll be able to check up on my actions in that year, Mr Box, and you’ll find that I was living in Antwerp at the time of Colbourne’s death. A lot of folk were killed in that way in the sixties by nameless thugs. I’m certain that Henry Colbourne was the victim of such an attack.’

  Inspector Box stood up. He looked dazed and shaken. Mackharness had warned him about becoming obsessed with Raikes. He’d been right.

  ‘I will, of course, check the details of your story, Mr Raikes,’ said Box, contriving to keep his voice steady. ‘But I may say at once that I believe you.’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant Knollys, I believe him. I can tell when someone’s spinning me a yarn and when he isn’t. He’d no idea what I was talking about …’

  Box, who had all but bowed himself out of his enemy’s house, looked shaken to the core. First, the débâcle in Prince Frederick Mews, and now this second crushing blow to his self-esteem. Fool! He was hunting the wrong man.

  ‘Sir,’ said Sergeant Knollys, ‘Gideon Raikes wasn’t at Bishop’s Longhurst station when Sir William Porteous said he was. We believe that, too, I take it?’

  ‘We do, Sergeant. So maybe Sir William Porteous was mistaken.’

  ‘Maybe Sir William Porteous was lying, sir. Perhaps it’s t
ime to think seriously about that.’

  As soon as Box and Knollys had gone, Gideon Raikes sprang up from his desk, and flung up the window. Air! It was needful to let the fresh air blow through the profaned room. Curse that snooping little man, and his clod-hopper of a sergeant! They’d polluted the house with their innuendo. Had Box tried to lay Colbourne’s murder at his door? Was he to become the victim of a legal conspiracy?

  He pulled the bell for Brucchiani, and sat down again at his desk. The fresh breeze blew the fine white nets of Brussels lace high above the window sills. He picked up the jewelled pen that had belonged to Napoleon, and for which he had paid a hundred guineas. He had owed that sum to Victor Carex in 1867. Carex had run the glittering gaming-hell in Paulet Street, and had employed slack-mouthed thugs to enforce payment of ‘debts of honour’. A hundred guineas …

  Brucchiani appeared at the door, and asked Raikes his pleasure.

  ‘Is Mr Kyriakides in the house? Tell him to come here at once.’

  The door closed silently and Raikes returned to his thoughts. They could never trace the attempt on Porteous’s life to him. The links were too tenuous. Nevertheless, the constant pressure, the feeling of being spied upon, photographed surreptitiously, followed by agents, was becoming unbearable. Something would have to be done. Was this, then, a finely-sprung trap to hang him for a murder he had not committed? And was Porteous the instigator? Had he connived with Box? Curse him! Why could he not leave well alone? There was room in London for both of them, but this constant, never-ending persecution by Porteous would unhinge him if it continued.

  The door opened to admit a stooping, olive-complexioned man of sixty or so, clad in a crumpled white suit. His greasy head was innocent of hair, but he still used a sickly dressing, the odour of which vied with the perfumes of Mr Raikes. He smiled and sagged sideways in a deferential greeting.

  ‘Mr Kyriakides, I’d be obliged if you’d remind me about Victor Carex.’ Once more the serpent gleamed behind the connoisseur’s eyes for a moment and then withdrew.

  ‘Mr Carex? Why, sir, that was long ago! We have a property company, sir, run for us by a person called Mr McCrew. The company was able to acquire the lease of Mr Carex’s gambling-den in Paulet Street, and Mr McCrew was able to gain control of the premises. Mr McCrew did not approve of gambling, and evicted Mr Carex. Mr Carex became violent, and Mr Percy Liversedge was sent to persuade him to see reason. This was all some years ago. Do you wish to hear more, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr Victor Carex fell to his death from the attic storey of the house in Paulet Street. His neck was broken. His premises were acquired by our property company. Indeed, we still own them. And a good deal more, sir.’

  ‘Your memory does you credit, Mr Kyriakides. Have you ever met Mr McCrew?’

  ‘No, sir. He’s a remarkably astute and devious character. I hear from him, through third parties, but I have never seen him.’

  ‘Yes you have, Mr Kyriakides. You’re looking at him now!’

  ‘You, sir?’

  ‘Yes, me. There, that’s a further confidence for you to share. Maybe one day we’ll share the same gallows!’

  Gideon Raikes sprang up from his desk again. His face suddenly turned red with rage. Mr Kyriakides retreated fearfully towards the door. He knew the quality of these rages. Raikes’s voice rose to a shriek.

  ‘I consign them to hell, Kyriakides! If I could make the earth open and swallow them up, I would! That fool Box, and his ape of a sergeant – perhaps they’ll go the way of Carex! And as for Porteous – I failed there, and dare not make a second attempt—’

  ‘Careful, sir!’

  ‘Careful? The time has come for me to end this persecution! I have hinted at my powers by breaching the security of his bank accounts, but evidently it’s not enough to make them back off. One can be over-cautious, and that’s when the enemy strikes—’

  Raikes’s voice suddenly failed him, and he all but collapsed into his chair at the great baroque desk. Mr Kyriakides dashed some brandy into a glass, which Raikes drank in one gulp. His voice now came in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘I thought they’d have been warned off by what happened to Sam Palin. Sam, who sold his comrades for two sovereigns – well, I offered him as a sacrifice on the altar of our safety!’

  He looked around the room at the serried ranks of shelves containing his collection of rare books, at the paintings displayed on easels, at the rich and recent gilding of the coffered ceiling. He smiled, and when he spoke again to his fawning confidant, his voice had resumed its usual mellifluous tones.

  ‘There, there, I have frightened you with my raging, Mr Kyriakides. A man should never frighten his confidential agent. I apologize. But this persecution by Porteous and his minions must cease forthwith; and I have here, in this very room, the ultimate means of stopping Porteous’s mouth.’

  Gideon Raikes slid aside the panel covering the door of his safe.

  ‘I wonder who this can be, Lardner?’ asked Lady Porteous. ‘A very elegant equipage, though I should have thought two men up on the box was a little vulgar. Well, we shall see who it is, presently.’

  The noise of a carriage drawing up at the kerb had attracted her attention, and she had glanced out of the drawing-room window.

  They could both hear a peremptory knock on the front door, followed by a murmuring of voices as the visitor was admitted to the house. In a moment a liveried footman came in, bearing a calling-card on a silver tray.

  Lardner saw the colour drain from Lady Porteous’s face as she read the card. She mastered herself with considerable control, and said calmly to the footman, ‘Ask his gentleman to sit in the hall for five minutes, Roberts. Then show him in here.’

  ‘Lardner,’ she said, when the page had left the room, ‘it is Gideon Raikes.’

  The secretary started in surprise. What could this devil want in the very house of his adversary?

  ‘Do you wish me to stay, madam? I will not leave your side, if that is your wish.’

  She threw him a grateful look. This man deserved to be treated as a confidant. Scholarly and retiring he might be, but his heart was proving to be true as steel.

  ‘There will be no need, thank you, Lardner. But it would be well if you were to leave through the writing-room. This man … He would have murdered my husband, and yet he has the effrontery to call at his house! I don’t know what this fellow wants, but it cannot be anything that need involve you personally.’

  Lardner bowed to Lady Porteous and crossed the room to the door of the adjoining writing-room, which he entered. He did not, however, close the door. Instead, he left it open a crack, and prepared to listen. This man had tried to kill Sir William; he was attempting to ruin him through his assets. Lardner had no scruples about eavesdropping where the safety of Lady Porteous was in question.

  Presently the door of the drawing-room opened, and the footman announced Mr Gideon Raikes.

  The perfume of Gideon Raikes preceded him, and the man himself, pomaded and curled, soon followed. Handsome and well-tailored, his astrakhan coat fitted him like a glove. He caught Lady Porteous’s disdainful look.

  He said to himself: hello, proud beauty, who made me always feel coarse and mean.

  She in her turn thought: we meet again at last, seducer and betrayer, whose words were of passion and whose heart was of stone.

  Aloud she said haughtily, ‘Please sit there in that chair, Mr Raikes, and state your business. I can spare you only a few minutes of my time.’

  Gideon Raikes had entered the room carrying his silk hat and walking cane, which he had declined to surrender to the footman. He placed them now on a side table and sat down in the proffered chair.

  He smoothed his tinted hair with his hand, looked around the room, and smiled.

  ‘It is good of you to receive me, Lady Porteous. What a ring there is to that title! It gains lustre not only from your own most beauteous person but also, if I may say this, from the celebrated personality of y
our husband.’

  Lady Porteous’s hand flew to the bell-rope beside the fireplace. Her eyes flashed dangerous fire at her smiling visitor.

  ‘I will set aside your impertinence for the moment with respect to myself, but if you refer to Sir William Porteous once again simply as “my husband”, as though he were nothing but an appendage to someone else, then I ring this bell, and my footman throws you out into the street.’

  The parchment-pale face suffused with an ugly blush. The languid eyelids of the connoisseur widened in blazing anger to reveal the deadly stare of the serpent. Then blush and stare were banished by a dangerous calm. Gideon Raikes smiled again.

  ‘Age has most certainly not banished your fiery and passionate nature, Lady Porteous. Have you read King Lear? Henry Irving’s portrayal was one of the best I have ever seen. I told him so the other night. “My dear Raikes”, he said, “there are greater things to come!”’

  ‘And what has all this theatrical chat to do with me?’

  ‘Well, you remind me of Cordelia in King Lear, or rather of those words that her sister Goneril addressed to her:

  Let your study

  Be to content your lord, who hath receiv’d you

  At fortune’s alms.’

  It was Adelaide Porteous’s turn to blush. A terrible, cringing shame enveloped her, erasing her habitual rather haughty dignity. She hid her face in her hands, and remained like that for what seemed an age while the cultured tones of her visitor continued remorselessly.

  ‘Vulgarity, I know, is distasteful to both of us. Nevertheless, I have to mention that William Porteous must have been aware, once he had married you, that you had not come as a maiden to the altar.’

  An incoherent sound escaped Lady Porteous’s lips, but her face remained buried in her hands.

  ‘Throughout our foolish liaison I made it clear to you that I would not allow any mistake on your part to stand in the way of my career. When you told me that you were to have a child I let you terminate our engagement, leaving you free to give what reasons you wished. And almost immediately you married Sir William Porteous, or Mr Porteous, as he was then. I assume that I am permitted to refer to him as he was in the days before his knighthood without incurring the wrath of your footman?’