Until the Colours Fade (38 page)

Tom said nothing, but walked across to a large canvas covered by drapes; he lifted a corner, half-exposing his rendering of Nick Bottom’s ‘most lamentable comedy’.

‘She talked about finding out what’s wrong with you.’

‘And how does she propose doing that?’ asked Tom, letting the drapes fall back into place.’

‘Why not ask her? She thinks you’re in love with somebody.’

‘She said that?’

‘By implication.’ Magnus moved closer to Tom and smiled
encouragingly
.
Tom’s face remained cold and expressionless. ‘Is she right?’ Tom looked down at the stained floorboards. ‘If she is, you should have told me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re unhappy and I might be able to help you. You once helped me.’

Tom threw up his hands and laughed harshly.

‘Me help
you.
Dear God, I’d have to be the Tsar, the Sultan and the Prime Minister to do that these days.’

‘Is it so ridiculous to be concerned about the probability of a disastrous war?’

‘As absurd as stepping into the path of a train in the hope of stopping it.’

‘You don’t believe that, Tom?’

‘Because you once disgraced the governor of an unimportant colony, you think you can control the fate of nations.’

‘After what happened at Rigton Bridge?’ asked Magnus,
confused
and wounded by Tom’s aggression. ‘Of course I tried to
influence
my father. In my position would you have done nothing?’

Tom sighed and bowed his head.

‘I had no cause to say what I did.’

The cries of a costermonger shouting his wares rose from the street. Magnus looked at Tom’s hunched shoulders and
handsome
unhappy face and felt a rush of sympathy.

‘Are you in love with Catherine?’ he whispered.

Tom slowly met Magnus’s eyes; exasperation, pain and
contrition
in his voice:

‘Would to God I was.’

‘Helen?’

‘Yes, Helen.’ He kicked at the leg of a trestle table and caught Magnus’s expression of pity, rather than anger. ‘Helen, your future step-mother. A fine friend, am I not?’

Magnus shook his head and turned away.

‘How can you love any woman prepared so blatantly to marry for money?’ He had spoken softly and intensely as if searching for his own explanation.

‘The fault is common enough,’ replied Tom sharply.

‘With a man of my father’s age and character?’

‘She agreed to it for her son’s sake.’

‘So he could enjoy the money Catherine and I should have had?’

‘I am sure she intended you no harm.’ Tom glanced anxiously at Magnus. ‘What will you do?’

‘Do?’ shouted Magnus, trembling with anger. ‘Did you tell me so that I would warn my father? Did you hope to marry that
calculating
woman yourself? I shan’t save them from each other. You told me in confidence and I shall respect that confidence.’

‘I knew you would.’

‘She’ll use your emotions just as she’ll use my father’s money. Does she care that you’re unhappy? Does she even notice it? All right, serve her lascivious needs, go to her like an
obedient
footman when she calls and let her use you. You say Lydia’s incapable of understanding anything except the manipulation of men – What else does Helen Goodchild understand? Lydia’s worked for her achievements. Has her ladyship as much as fastened her own shoes? I know such women, Tom and she’s not fit for you. She has assurance, but think of the narcissistic hours she spent working on it. With years of idleness a milk-girl would have learnt as much poise and wit and memorised as many polished sentences.’

‘We are not speaking of the same woman.’

‘Then no more need be said.’

‘Are you angry on your father’s account?’

Magnus raised his hands to his face and groaned aloud.

‘Hang my father. I care about
you.
I thought you more discerning. I thought you proof against the effete charms of aristocratic shams. I thought merit weighed more with you than wealth or blood.’

‘Must the coincidence of birth preclude all merit? Wealth does not guarantee corruption or poverty virtue. Your family
misfortunes
give you no right to brand an entire class with the same mark.’

‘Her intention to marry my father proves her worth.’

‘Love has no scales to measure worth. I did not choose to feel as I do.’

Magnus no longer felt angry as he looked at Tom’s pale drawn face.

‘She will reject you.’

‘I know that.’

Magnus nodded and walked to the door.

‘She’s made a sad man of you.’

‘I would not change my lot.’

Magnus touched his hand and smiled at him.

‘Poor Tom.’

He gazed at Tom for a moment and then turned the china door-handle. Tom followed him to the street door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To find somewhere to live.’

‘Stay here.’

‘You must have cursed me when you wanted to bring her here.’

Tom saw Magnus opening the door.

‘I never intended this, Magnus. Don’t hate me.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Will we see each other?’

‘If you want to, Tom.’

Tom nodded dumbly as Magnus slipped out into the street.

The New Burlington Street premises of the private inquiry agency, which Charles Crawford had engaged to report on the movements of Tom and Helen, combined something of the
atmosphere
of an undertaker’s parlour with that of a solicitor’s office; in musty files the records of dead marriages and thwarted loves, once matter for great passions, were now reduced to neatly
numbered
sheaves of yellowing paper. The staff all spoke in muted sympathetic tones, as if their clients suffered from loss or bereavement rather than jealousy and hatred; but this veneer of consideration concealed a lawyer’s love of detailed information and facts. Mr Featherstone, the principal, also reminded Charles of a skilful physician, never afraid of admitting that his
medicine,
however delicately administered, might be painful, but always confident that if bravely taken it would lead to a final cure. His speciality was the collection of evidence for divorce cases.

Mr Featherstone’s establishment, like Madame Negretti’s, was dedicated to discretion. There were three waiting rooms so that clients should never know the embarrassment of being observed during their time of trouble. Charles sat in one of these three rooms staring at the door. In front of him on a small table copies of
Fraser’s,
the
Saturday
Review
and,
thoughtfully
, the
Army
and
Navy
Gazette
; soldiers and sailors, he reflected, being particularly prone to marital warfare and domestic shipwreck. The room was on the ground floor facing onto the street, but protected from prying eyes by thick muslin curtains. Not liking the idea of having such
confidential
papers posted to him, Charles had come in person to read the report on the first ten days’ surveillance.

On being ushered into Mr Featherstone’s office, Charles
experienced
the same disconcerting resentment he had felt during his first appointment the week before. Like God, Mr Featherstone was a deity ‘unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid’. Charles was sure that no crime or moral outrage could be repulsive enough to ruffle his host’s benign composure. Featherstone was wearing a black swallow-tail coat of a slightly antiquated cut, doubtless intended to suggest old-fashioned service and reliability. He had
an unnerving habit of cracking his knuckle-joints during silences and stroking his side-whiskers when thinking but these, in Charles’s eyes, were minor irritants compared with his
exaggerated
solicitude for his clients’ feelings: a deference not far
removed
from parody.

A clerk handed his employer some papers and withdrew. Charles felt an apprehensive fluttering in his stomach, making him want to snatch the papers and start reading them at once.

‘There was matter of substance to report?’ he asked,
attempting
to hide his anxiety, while Featherstone glanced through the first and second pages. He looked up and smiled disarmingly.

‘No inquiry, Captain Crawford, is ever entirely fruitless. A gentleman comes to us suspecting his wife. We establish her innocence beyond a doubt.’ He paused and cracked his knuckles. ‘In doing so we discover his son is a blackmailer, his butler a thief and his daughter planning to elope.’ He chuckled quietly and tapped the report with two fingers. ‘The case you have entrusted to us intrigues me.’

‘I would have thought it perfectly routine,’ Charles replied coldly, uncertain whether Featherstone was attempting to flatter or confuse him.

‘You claim no personal interest in the lady, captain, and I believe you – although many men are deliberately reticent;
suggesting
they are acting for friends or using other equally transparent devices to divert attention from themselves.’ He glanced at Charles searchingly. ‘I ask this question, captain,
because
I wish to serve you well; not, you must understand, to appease any personal curiosity. Is there not some connection you have kept from me? Something of a family nature?’

‘I told you all that was needed,’ returned Charles brusquely. He had not told Featherstone anything of his father’s intended marriage.

Featherstone nodded agreeably and stroked his side-whiskers.

‘Naturally when we started our inquiries I sent a man to spend several days at Flixton. Of course he visited Hanley Park.’

‘I must deplore such an uncalled-for intrusion.’

‘Mr Kirkup went, I should add, in the guise of a literary man compiling an architectural guide to the homes of the nobility and gentry in that county. The housekeeper welcomed him with
perfect
trust and civility. I had not been aware that your sister has been her ladyship’s guest for several months.’

‘I did not think it relevant.’

‘Nor that your brother shares lodgings with the other party?’

‘I should like the report, Mr Featherstone.’

‘You will find it most satisfactory, captain.’

Charles was stung by the man’s tone and the way he was
looking
at him. A smile of respect, admiration and sly complicity.

‘Satisfactory?’ he snapped. ‘Be so good as to explain.’

‘I would not cause further offence for the world, captain. Pray accept my apologies for presuming to predict your satisfaction.’ He handed the papers to Charles and added softly: ‘There was one discovery my man made in the north. The housekeeper
supposed
that Lady Goodchild will marry your father. Since this is mere hearsay it is omitted in the report.’ He coughed discreetly and moved to the door. ‘I am sure you would prefer not to be
disturbed
. Ring when you have finished, captain.’

As soon as Featherstone had gone, Charles brought down a fist on the arm of his chair with all his strength. So that was what the unctuous hypocrite thought, was it? A concerted plot by two brothers and their sister to prevent their father marrying a woman of child-bearing age – Strickland their paid instrument of destruction, hired to protect their inheritance by ruining a woman’s reputation. A year in Featherstone’s line of business and even the most trusting of men would imagine treachery and cunning behind every innocent action. Charles felt
contaminated
and soiled by his association with him. Whatever the rational justification for paying to have a woman spied upon, such proceedings would still appear mean and dishonourable to any impartial person. For all the public expression of outraged virtue at the behaviour of lovers – in private, only hardened hypocrites would not admit to feeling sympathy for them. Better to have gone straight to Helen and stated his suspicions at once, even though risking a scathing denial, than to have resorted to sneaking subterfuge. But Charles’s self-doubts soon changed to anger when he began to read. That she should have preferred a socially ambitious parvenu to him and his father made him ache with loathing. Then, while giving herself to this man, she had written to dear loyal unsuspecting Charles, asking him to
nominate
her son; and now he could not avoid taking the boy without telling his father why. The last traces of Charles’s guilt ebbed away, leaving only bitterness and a desire for revenge.

The report was a painstaking document with an appended list of expenses detailing every hansom fare, every drink, meal, tip and bribe incurred by the investigator and his assistant. The first page dealt mainly with the largely abortive trip to Flixton and Hanley Park, and then went on to chronicle some early surreptitious
attempts to extract information from the three servant in Helen’s London house. Contact had been made in publi houses, dancing rooms, and ‘other places of recreation’, bu ‘since these approaches were not attended with immediat results, it was thought best to abandon them as likely to excit suspicion if persisted with’. From the bottom paragraph of th second page Charles started reading attentively:

Charles put down the report without bothering with the sheets detailing expenses. His head was throbbing and his jaws ached with the pressure of his clenched teeth. He thought for some
minutes
and then rang for Featherstone.

‘Your men have been most diligent, Mr Featherstone.’

‘May I assume, captain, that this inquiry is concluded?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Absolute proof cannot be obtained without considerable
expenditure
both in time and as you will appreciate….’

‘I do not require it.’

Featherstone was looking at him with unconcealed surprise.

‘Instruct your men to do nothing for a week, and then to resume their watch the following Monday. I shall call here again in a fortnight.’