Honor's Kingdom (27 page)

His lip wrinkled ever so slightly as he remembered. “The house was cold and miserable—I can’t imagine what it’s like in winter. I counted the minutes until it seemed a decent hour to take my leave yesterday afternoon, but just as I was about to have my bag brought down, His Lordship took me by the arm and insisted—‘insisted’ is the only suitable word—that I stay over for breakfast this morning. He claimed he had something he wished to show me. Well, I didn’t want to offend the man—given his position—so I took my place at dinner between a fellow intent on explaining the merits of a dozen kinds of hounds and a lady who believes the Church of England must reconcile with Rome. Then, in the morning, when I went down for breakfast, the butler told me Lord Parch had already gone back to town on the early train. And who should appear—purely by accident, of course—but Earl Russell and Lord Lyons, who should have been in town themselves. They made rather too much of their disappointment at finding His Lordship missing, but insisted our meeting was more than a solace—that it was, indeed, fortuitous that they had ridden over to visit.”

Mr. Adams sighed at the convolutions of the world. Or perhaps at the sight of a little boy thrashing his sister while their governess flirted. “You see, Major Jones, nothing can be done straightforwardly here. I might as well be at the court of the Emperor of China. Frankly, I expected a blistering about corpses and coded messages, but there was nothing of the kind. After our coffee, Lord John suggested the three of us stroll the grounds for a ‘friendly chat.’ Of course, I was glad to listen. Especially after I heard what they had to say—or what they implied between the two of them.”

He nodded in satisfaction at the memory. “It appears we have turned a corner. They made it quite clear that England does not want a war with the United States, not now and not tomorrow. In fact, they hinted that the Prime Minister has other concerns entirely.” He gave me a brief, sideward glance. “Of course, with Lord Palmerston you never quite know. But, far from chastising me, they seemed determined to enlist my backing, although they couldn’t quite bring themselves to say precisely what might require my support. Nothing but mumbling about Old Pam at the tiller of state and a stable course amid the winds of crisis. They even offered a near-apology for the Prime Minister’s remarks over General Butler, insisting that not a word of it was ill-meant toward me. It all seemed terribly slap-dash and not very English.”

He poked his walking stick into the gravel. “At the same time, they seemed anxious to prepare me for a degree of turbulence in the future. They made a mystery of that, too, assuring me of their personal good intentions, but suggesting that not everyone, even in their own party, was fully subject to their control. On the whole, though, the conversation seemed all I could have asked. Lyons has even come around on Seward. Instead of the ogre all England thought him during the Trent affair, our Secretary of State now appears to be a reasonable gentleman who is not without a certain wisdom. I can’t begin to convey what a change that is. They even told me Lindsay won’t find any serious backers when next he offers a motion in support of Richmond in Parliament. Really, it was an extraordinary morning. By the end of it, I felt I might have asked for the moon and gotten, at the very least, a wheel of Stilton.”

“Well, there is good, sir,” I told him. “For a war with Britain would go hard.”

“I should hate to see it,” Mr. Adams said. “Enough blood has been shed between our two countries. After all, we’re brethren, whether or not we enjoy the family resemblance.” He not only turned his head toward me, but tilted his shoulders in my direction,
which was a gesture of extravagant physicality from our minister. “And what have
you
learned, Major Jones? While I’ve been off watching the unintelligible shooting the inedible?”

I told him everything I could remember, about murdered eel-men and dead pawn-mothers, boys butchered like pigs in a slaughterhouse and phantoms in red silk masks, and a brass watch recovered with its secrets stolen away. When I handed him the timepiece, he said not a word, but slipped it into a pocket without examining it. Then I spoke of slums and penny gaffs, omitting only the lewdest utterances of Miss Perkins. He hardly interrupted, saying only, “Dear God,” when I told him of the severed hand and the dead boy. But when I spoke of my visit to the Pomeroy house, he felt obliged to assist me.

“A difficult family, if reputation is to be believed,” Mr. Adams told me. “This wouldn’t be their first scandal. Although one shouldn’t gossip, I did hear that a maternal cousin of the elder Mr. Pomeroy had difficulties in the West Indies in his youth—the family money comes from sugar, you see, and there were suggestions that slavery did not end on their plantations as promptly as the law declared it should. Anyway, this young fellow went out to the islands and married a Creole girl, after which there were hints of every sort of horror, from miscegenation to madness. There was a child, too, at least one. The scandal became so much a public matter that the authorities ordered him back to England—quietly, of course—with his madwoman wife and the child. He seems to have retired to the countryside, somewhere in the northern counties, where he locked his wife in the garret and contented himself with seducing governesses. I believe there was a deadly fire, as well.” Mr. Adams gave a faint shudder at the indecency of it all, then set his face in ice again. “Nonetheless, the Pomeroys count among England’s wealthiest families. They lack only the title so desired by the elder.” He looked at me. “Now, what had you begun to say about Mr. Disraeli?”

I told him of my visit the night before and of the letters gained then promptly lost. Not least, I told him of Mr. Disraeli’s
threat to embarrass us over my past, and of his mention of the Earl of Thretford and his half-brother. Mr. Adams listened quietly, until I had gotten through a tidied-up version of the White Lily’s appearance in my room and the subsequent confrontation with the masked fellow.

Mr. Adams had been thinking all the while. And then he thought some more.

“I don’t believe we need worry about Disraeli,” he said quite suddenly. “That’s not the way he behaves. If he intended to compromise you, he would never have warned you. He would simply have done it, surprising you when you least expected it.” He leaned forward, just a bit, shifting the slightest fraction of his weight onto the walking stick implanted before him. “As a matter of fact, it sounds as if he’s frightened himself. He must have wanted to get rid of those letters very badly—you didn’t have time to review them, I take it?”

“No, sir. And, as a gentleman, I—”

“Disraeli doesn’t think that way. If he gave them to you, he expected me to learn what was in them. I believe that’s clear enough.”

“Unless,” I said, for I had been thinking, too, “it was merely a trick to appear to be free of the letters. Think you, Mr. Adams. How would the fellow in the red mask have known I was to have the letters? Unless Mr. Disraeli sent him word? Which also suggests Mr. Disraeli knew how to contact the masked fellow whenever he wished, whether he is this Lieutenant Culpeper risen from the dead or another person entirely. Might it not be, sir, that it was a nasty ruse put up to place the letters into the masked fellow’s hands, by a roundabout route that seemed to be secure? Shifting any blame for future doings from Mr. Disraeli—and tying you to the letters, if such should prove to advantage?”

When next he spoke, Mr. Adams sounded chastened, although I had intended no such effect. “I’m afraid I have allowed my vanity to show,” he said. “I find your supposition the more convincing of the two. Although I can’t fathom the Earl
of Thretford’s involvement—unless the letters do lead us back to a Confederate conspiracy. From what little I know of the Earl, young Pomeroy would be too small a fox for Lord Arthur to hunt.” He canted his head one tenth of a degree. “So . . . the man in the mask was to take the letters from you all along, but this Perkins girl interfered?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now she has possession of the letters. But the conspirators, whoever they may be, don’t know that?”

“I hope not, sir. For her sake. But they have figured out a great many other things, so I fear they will come to that, as well.”

Mr. Adams nodded. “Indeed. They seem to know a great deal. Particularly about you, Major Jones.”

“I cannot figure it,” I said. “Even if the Earl of Thretford knows everything this Kildare fellow back in New York had learned about me, it would not come to the half. And, dead or alive, Lieutenant Culpeper could know only bits and pieces.”

“But the records, the files . . .”

“A military record tells certain things,” I said, “but to understand it properly a body must know much more. And how did they know I would be the one to come? How could they have had time to prepare so much, all tailored to my benefit?”

“I’m afraid,” Mr. Adams said, “that I may know at least part of the answer to that. You see, I had a telegraphic message—two, in fact—prior to your arrival. The first mentioned that a special agent would be despatched.” He thought for a moment. “I don’t believe it included your name. But the second one did.”

“I thought the Atlantic cable had broken apart?”

“It did. Before the war even started. But Washington cables New York, a fast packet carries the message to the Irish coast, and the telegraphics are relayed from there. The cable between Ireland and England remains in order.” He almost smiled, though it was a bitter sight. “I had the second message a full
week before your arrival. Still . . . it hardly seems enough time, does it?”

“Unless,” I said carefully, “there is a spy in Washington. Who learned my name early on and sent the intelligence by an earlier ship.”

Mr. Adams shook his head and tapped with his stick. “I would hate to think that. Good Lord. It would have to mean a spy close to Seward himself.”

“Or,” I said, “close to Mr. Lincoln. And Mr. Nicolay.”

“I can’t . . . well, that would explain much, were it true. The code, for instance. In order to intercept the messages, they would need to have broken our code.” He took a deep breath and let it out again. “I wonder what message was in Campbell’s watch? They must have read that, too. What on earth might it have said? What could have been worth his death?”

“The secret ship in Glasgow, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. That may be. But, given all you’ve told me, I’m unable to feel certain of anything, at the moment.” He turned toward me, almost sympathetically. “You made a remark—when you spoke of the use of the train between here and Glasgow—you said that we were faced with modern crime. Now it’s a business of steamships and telegraphs.” He shook his head almost as resignedly as a regular fellow might do. “I feel as if this age is passing me by. It all goes so fast, so terribly fast.” He looked at me earnestly. “Where will it all end, do you think?”

Yet, he recovered himself in another moment and bore down upon our business once again. “What I suspect you’ve gotten exactly right is that there are two trains on separate tracks, if I may be allowed the description. They may converge, or they may simply be travelling in parallel. On one track, we have the affair of the letters, this blackmail business, in which Mr. Disraeli has mixed himself up and about which he now seems alarmed. Then there are the murders and a seeming conspiracy to build naval vessels for the South. One must be our paramount concern, while the other—intentionally or not—only
diverts us. But which is which? Is it possible that the letters might be even more important than warships?”

I did not know how to answer. For my mind told me one thing, while my instincts whispered another.

“But you had more to tell me,” Mr. Adams said. “About this Jewess hidden away in Lambeth.”

And so I brought him up to the present hour, with my report of the elder Mr. Pomeroy’s visit to his daughter-in-law. If daughter-in-law she was, and not Betty Green.

“Extraordinary,” Mr. Adams said.

“Yes, sir.”

He sat back. “And here I was eating boiled beef among boiled shirts all the weekend. You’ve been a busy man. Tell me, Major Jones, if you had to draw a conclusion this minute, what you would make of the letters? Why do they have such value? If they’re nothing but a boy’s intimate scribblings?”

“I have made mistakes before,” I said, “because of hasty conclusions. I do not know whether—”

“No, Major. Treat this as a requirement. As a command, if you will. You must make a decision this instant. What do you say about the letters and the Pomeroys and Disraeli?”

“Well, sir . . . it seems to me that Mr. Disraeli’s banking affairs are not in perfect order.”

“Indeed, they are not. The man’s notorious for it. Always lives above his means. Go on.”

“And Mr. Pomeroy—the elder—has a great deal of money.”

“You believe the affair is exactly what it seems? Disraeli intends to blackmail old Pomeroy to settle his bills?”

“There is more, see.”

“Go on.”

“The elder Mr. Pomeroy wants a peerage. Before he passes on. And Mr. Disraeli has influence.”

Mr. Adams snorted, almost like a tapster. “He’d like one for himself. Disraeli wants nothing more than he does a good title. Lord This or That.”

“Perhaps Mr. Pomeroy advanced money to Mr. Disraeli. For his good offices in seeking a title. But there is no title gotten on the one side. And no money to repay the debt on the other. Perhaps Mr. Disraeli will present the recovery of the letters as a service to Mr. Pomeroy. Relieving him of a scandalous embarrassment—and canceling the debt.”

“And the son? With his wife? Or his lies?”

“I cannot say. Not yet. But the boy is weak and would do as he was told by a stronger man. And he and his father do not seem to live in harmony.”

“Do you think this woman’s really young Pomeroy’s wife?”

“No.”

“Nor do I,” Mr. Adams said. “And the woman herself? Is she a Hungarian Jewess? Or this Betty Green?” “I would say Betty Green.”

“Then why on earth make her out to be a Jewess?”

“It is a role, see. Making her a Jewess explains why she must be hidden away. By father or son. For a Jewish mistress would block an English title, while an English girl used thus might be overlooked.” I looked down at the gravel path, as if it might hold answers. “Still, I do not rightly understand the business. For they would seem to be wishing harm upon themselves, with these tales of a Jewish wife.”