Think of England (3 page)

This wasn’t his style of thing. He wasn’t a spy, for God’s sake, he was a soldier.

Or rather, he had been a soldier, till the guns blew up at Jacobsdal.

He walked to the desk, and almost gave up there and then as he saw what was on it: a silver-framed photograph of a smiling young man in the uniform of a British lieutenant. He recognised the features from the full-length oil that hung in the drawing room, next to a stunning John Singer Sargent portrait of the current Lady Armstrong. Sir Hubert’s elder son, Martin, dead on the dry earth of the Sudan.

Surely a man who had lost his son to war could not have betrayed British soldiers. Surely.

Another painting of the dead man hung opposite Sir Hubert’s desk, staring down on Curtis with a thoughtful smile. It was displayed between a simple watercolour of a woman that Curtis guessed to be Armstrong’s first wife, and a pastel sketch of Sophie, Lady Armstrong. There didn’t seem to be a picture of James.

He made himself move on. The desk drawers were all locked but the filing cabinet was not, so he flicked through files and folders with the fingers of his left hand, wondering what he was playing at as he did so.

Sir Hubert had been vastly enriched by the collapse of Lafayette’s armament business after Jacobsdal, but that meant nothing. He was an arms manufacturer, after all, and there had been a war on; the business had to go somewhere. And of course Mr. Lafayette had wanted to shift the blame from his own factory, and the weight of the Jacobsdal deaths from his own shoulders. He had stood in Sir Henry Curtis’s drawing room, unshaven, thin and desperate, and he had raved about sabotage and plots, betrayal and murder, and his body had been dredged from the Thames not two weeks afterwards. He had said nothing that could not have sprung from guilt and madness.

But if there was the slightest chance that Lafayette had told the truth, Curtis could not ignore it. He had to do this, even if he had no real idea what he was doing or what he was looking for, so he flicked through his host’s private papers, his face hot with shame.

He spent as long as he dared in there, listening out for noises in the hallway or approaching servants, and it was with immense relief that he reached the bottom of the cabinet. There had been no evidence of anything untoward, simply bills and letters, the routine business of a wealthy man.

He searched around the office for keys to the desk, but came up blank. Sir Hubert doubtless kept them on his keychain. He wondered how he could get at them.

Well, there was nothing more doing here, unless he proposed to force the drawers like a common thief. He checked as best he could that he had left no trace of his interference, and went to the door, where he listened for footfalls outside. There was only silence. He unlocked the study door, slipped out, peering over his shoulder as he did it, and walked straight into somebody.

“Jesus!” he yelped.

“I fear not,” said a silky voice, and Curtis realised that he had collided with da Silva. “Both Jewish, of course, but the resemblance ends there.”

Curtis stepped back, away from him, and bumped into the doorframe. Da Silva, making very little effort to hide his amusement, moved out of his way with a show of elaborate courtesy. “Doing a spot of work, were you?” he enquired, glancing into their host’s study.

“How’s your muse?” Curtis retorted and stalked off, face flaming.

God, how embarrassing, and what miserable bloody luck. At least he’d only been spotted by that blasted Levantine. For all he knew, da Silva would see nothing unusual in exploring one’s host’s private rooms.

That was an appealing thought, but unlikely; even the most ill-bred commoner would wonder what he was playing at. The question was whether the fellow would mention it to anyone. Curtis would have to think up some explanation, in case.

He went up to his room, cursing da Silva, unsure what to do next. He supposed a real spy might pry into the Armstrongs’ bedrooms, but the thought revolted him. He would have to look elsewhere.

After a few minutes to recover his composure, he went into the library, having first poked his head round the door to confirm it was empty. It was a spacious room, wood-panelled in the style of much older homes and rather dark. The upper bookshelves were lined with marshalled rows of leather-bound volumes with matching spines, the sets of reference works and unreadable academic studies that new money might buy to fill up the shelf space. The lower shelves, within reach, held complete sets of Dickens and Trollope, along with all the latest clever novels and a lot of sensational yellow-back fiction. There was only one painting here, a portrait of a boy aged about nine, holding a baby. Curtis supposed that would be Martin and James. If so, that was the first picture of James Curtis had seen; he wondered if the man hated sitting for portraits as much as he did himself.

As well as the bookshelves and some comfortable reading chairs, there were a couple of occasional tables topped with heavy-based electric lamps, and a desk. He checked its drawers and found nothing but blank stationery and writing materials.

He looked around, and noticed an unobtrusive door at the far end of the room, close-fitted into the panelling. It was in the middle of the wall, and a quick mental survey of the house’s layout made him think it was likely to be an anteroom, rather than a passage leading anywhere. Might it be a private study? He tried the door handle. It was locked.

“My, you are curious,” murmured a voice in his ear, and Curtis almost jumped out of his skin.

“Good God.” He turned to face da Silva, who stood right behind him. The man must move like a cat. “Do you mind not sneaking up on a chap?”

“Oh, is it
me
who’s sneaking? I had no idea.”

That was a shrewd blow. Curtis set his jaw. “It’s a fascinating house,” he said, and watched the amused twitch of da Silva’s mouth with impotent fury.

“That’s document storage.” Da Silva nodded helpfully at the door. “Sir Hubert keeps most of his private papers there, under lock and key.”

“Very sensible,” muttered Curtis, and heard the luncheon gong with relief.

Relief turned to dismay when he realised that da Silva would be eating with him. It appeared the fellow would be crawling round him all day at this rate.

“I hope your work went well,” he managed, attempting to maintain a veneer of civility as they sat opposite one another, across a lavish spread.

“Moderately successful, thank you.” Da Silva buttered a roll with great care. “How about yours?”

Curtis’s breath hitched at that little dig. “I’ve merely been wandering round. Having a look at the place. Remarkable house.”

“Isn’t it.” Da Silva was watching him as he spoke, his face impossible to read, and Curtis had to stop himself from shifting under his gaze.

He grabbed for the nearest serving dish and proffered it, in the hope of changing the subject. “Ham?”

“No, thank you.”

“It’s a jolly good one.”

Da Silva blinked, slowly, like a lizard. “I dare say, but I fear I haven’t converted since we last spoke.”

“Con— Oh. Oh, I beg your pardon. I quite forgot you were a Jew.”

“How refreshing. So few people do.”

Curtis wasn’t quite sure how he was meant to take that remark, but it scarcely mattered. His uncle Sir Henry was a devout Christian but a well-travelled man, and one of the strictest tenets of Curtis’s upbringing had been that one never expressed disrespect for another man’s faith. It was not a view shared by many of his peers, and Curtis didn’t feel inclined to be conciliatory to the bloody man, but a principle was a principle.

“I beg your pardon,” he repeated. “I didn’t mean to offend you. Er, how about beef?” He lifted the plate apologetically and saw what looked like a glimmer of laughter in the dark eyes.

“Beef is quite acceptable, thank you.” Da Silva accepted the offering with great gravity. “I’m not offended by ham, you understand, I simply don’t eat it. The only meat that
offends
me is kidney, and that’s for aesthetic reasons.”

That was exactly the sort of pansyish remark Curtis would have expected of him. Much more so than that intense scrutiny earlier, or the series of well-targeted jabs. He was damned if he knew quite what to make of this.

“So, er, are you a religious man?” he tried.

“No, I couldn’t claim to be that. I’m not terribly observant.” Da Silva gave a sudden, feline smile. “Of my faith, that is. I’m quite observant in general.”

Curtis was sure that was another dig, but da Silva didn’t follow it up, returning his attention to his plate. Curtis took the opportunity to look him over. He was a handsome enough fellow, he supposed, if you could tolerate the type, with those deep, dark eyes, a full, well-shaped mouth, high cheekbones, and black brows that were almost too elegantly curved. Curtis wondered if he did something to shape them and decided that he did. He had seen that sort in London, passing certain clubs: plucked eyebrows, powdered faces, rouged cheeks, chattering to one another in that affected way. Was that what da Silva did in his private hours, with other men?

Da Silva gave a slight cough and Curtis realised he had said something. “I beg your pardon, what was that?”

“I enquired as to your plans for the afternoon. Or shall we simply keep, ah, bumping into one another?”

“I shall go for a short walk in the grounds, I expect,” Curtis snapped.

Da Silva’s lips curved in a secret smile, as if relishing a joke that Curtis did not share. “I’ll be in the library. Don’t let me stand in your way.”

That night, Curtis waited for the clock to strike one before he slipped out of his bedroom. The corridors were very dark, but he had checked his way and felt sure he could avoid knocking over any stuffed birds, occasional tables or other clutter.

He felt very heavy on his feet as he went down the stairs. There was no sign of life in the house. The servants would all be asleep, the guests who weren’t asleep would be otherwise occupied.

He made it to the library without incident, though his blood was pounding in his ears, and shut the door with great care behind him. The room was shuttered for the night and it was pitch dark. He opened the slide of his dark lantern, letting out a beam of yellow light that made the silence and the dark close even more heavily around him.

He tried the door of the storage room to be sure it was still locked, and began to work through the ring of skeleton keys that he had bought, with appalling self-consciousness, in the East End.

One after another failed to fit, until he had tried them all. He cursed under his breath, then stiffened as he heard a sound. Very slight but—

It was a creak. Someone was opening the door.

Curtis moved without having to think, shutting the lantern slide to cut off the light and stepping as silently as he could to one side of the door. He closed his fingers round the skeleton keys, knowing he had to get them into his pockets before they were seen, and without the slightest clink—

Whoever had opened the door had not switched on the light.

He could see the faintest glimmer of less than absolute dark from the hall around the doorframe. It was cut off as the door was closed without sound, and then a narrow beam of faint, whitish light cut through the middle of the room as the intruder, the
other
intruder, lit some device.

Someone was sneaking around with a torch.

It had to be a burglar. Of all the rotten luck. He would have to confront the fellow; he could hardly stand by and see his host robbed. There would be noise, it would raise the house, and he had skeleton keys in his pocket and a dark lantern by his side. Could he blame the burglar for those when help came?

The burglar moved forward in total silence, progress only indicated by the movement of the light. He was coming towards the storage-room door at the back of the library, where Curtis stood. A little closer, and he could spring on the fellow. He readied himself for action.

The light travelled up, over the desk, and stopped with a jerk on the dark lantern that Curtis had left there. He tensed, and the light swung round and beamed directly into his face.

Shocked, blinded but unhesitating, Curtis launched himself forward, left fist leading into—nothing, because the intruder wasn’t there. He heard the faintest whisper of movement, and a hand was clapped over his mouth, warm fingers pressing against his lips.

“Dear me, Mr. Curtis,” murmured a voice in his ear. “We really must stop meeting like this.”

Curtis froze, then as the smooth hand moved from his mouth, he hissed, “What the devil are you playing at?”

“I might ask you the same.” Da Silva was right behind him, body pressed close, and his free hand slid, shockingly intimate, over Curtis’s hip.

He shoved a vicious elbow back, getting a satisfying grunt from da Silva as he made contact, although not as hard as he’d have liked, but when he turned and grabbed where his opponent should have been, he found only empty space. He glared into the dark, frustrated.

“Well, well.” Da Silva’s low voice came from a few steps away. The little light flicked on again. Curtis moved towards it, intending violent retribution, and stopped short as he saw what it was illuminating. His skeleton keys, in da Silva’s hand.

“You picked my bloody pocket!”