“What blackmail?” Curtis was hopelessly confused now. “I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know anything about any blackmail and I don’t suppose my uncle has any idea I’m here.”
Da Silva’s dark eyes were on his face, reading it. He said, slowly, “If you aren’t here about that… You were wounded at Jacobsdal. Lafayette’s business collapsed because of what happened there, and Armstrong made a fortune. Is that it? Something to do with Jacobsdal?”
Curtis took a stride forward, fist clenching. “If you know anything about that—”
“Nothing whatsoever. I’m here about something else.”
“Then why did you say our interests might coincide?”
Da Silva shrugged with some irritation. “I was wrong. It was one o’clock in the morning. Forgive me for not divining your purpose on the spot.”
Curtis glowered at him. “Well, what’s your purpose? What’s this about blackmail?”
Da Silva didn’t answer that. He was watching Curtis, weighing something up. When he spoke, it was with care, but little trace of the mannered drawl. “Mr. Curtis, I need, probably more urgently than you, to get into the private rooms and papers here. It is of some importance that you do not get in my way or arouse suspicion. Two of us playing the same game will double the risks for us both. Could I persuade you to enlighten me on dealing with the alarm, and then leave this business to me?”
“No.”
“I can look for information as well as you can, and probably with rather more subtlety. Suppose you tell me what you’re after, and I pass you whatever I find—”
“What do you know about armaments, or sabotage?” The banked rage that never stopped smouldering leapt into life. “What do you know about war?”
Da Silva pressed his lips tight. “Granted, I’m not a military man—”
“I lost friends at Jacobsdal. Good men. If Armstrong was responsible for sabotaging British guns for British troops—”
“Then he committed murder and treason,” da Silva interrupted. “For which the penalty is a short drop and a lengthened neck. This may be a matter of life and death, Mr. Curtis. You will need to proceed with great caution.”
“The only thing I’ve to be cautious about is you. What do you know, and what the devil are you up to? And what’s this about blackmail? Someone’s blackmailing you?”
“Oddly enough, no.” Da Silva paused, considering, then spoke with sardonic precision. “There was another victim. A man with, ah, unusual tastes. He was bled dry with the threat of arrest and exposure, and when he had nothing more to give, he took the only way out left to him.” Da Silva’s lip curled. “He was not the sort of man to say publish and be damned, but nor was he altogether weak. He told me about the blackmail before he jumped from Beachy Head.”
Curtis blinked. “Why you?”
“He was a…friend.” Curtis thought he could guess what that meant. “And he told me that the compromising situation that ruined him occurred at Peakholme. What he did in this house was used to destroy him. He mentioned other names too, other guests, amongst whom there has been at least one other suicide. Two dead men, and they may only be the tip of a very sordid iceberg.”
“But how would that happen? People are indiscreet at country houses all the time.” He knew of houses where a bell was rung to give guests ten minutes to return to their own marital beds before morning tea was brought in. That wasn’t his idea of entertainment, but it suited a great many people, and it was generally accepted, but never mentioned.
“There are different levels of indiscretion, of course.”
“I suppose you mean queers.” Curtis didn’t like this sly, allusive way of speaking, mostly because he wasn’t sure he could follow it. “You still can’t blackmail a man to his death with gossip.”
Da Silva gave him a curling smile. “Did you inspect your room closely?”
“How do you mean?”
“Anything strike you as odd about it, at all?”
“No. Why should it?” Curtis found Da Silva’s tilted eyebrow an irritant.
“Not the layout?”
Curtis opened his mouth to respond, and stopped. It seemed absurd to complain about the rather awkward arrangement of the rooms, set in pairs and widely spaced along a long corridor. It was a modern house; they did things in modern ways. He was not going to argue about any such trivialities, anyway. “What are you getting at?”
“In your bedroom, there’s a large mirror, hanging on the wall opposite the bed. The wall which backs onto a service area.”
“And? Just a moment. Have you been in my bedroom?”
“My room is on the other side of the corridor from you. A mirror image of yours. Should you care to visit me, you’ll observe that the large mirror in my room is also opposite the bed, also backing onto a service area.” He gave Curtis a meaningful look.