“Good God, sir, as if you need to ask.”
Sir Maurice nodded. “You’ll have to stay up for the coroner’s inquest on James Armstrong, we can’t have you committed for trial. I’m going to get da Silva out of the way, and we’ll give you a story that doesn’t feature him.”
“He’d be perfectly capable of making a good impression on a jury,” Curtis said. “You must know he puts that manner on.”
His uncle gave him a look that blended a moderate amount of affection with a great deal of irritation. “You don’t need to be chivalrous, my boy, he’s not actually a woman. I need him out of this because I have a damned sight more work for him to do, and I don’t want his name bruited about too widely in association with this business.”
“Work? Good Lord, sir, he was almost killed not two days ago—”
“That’s his job. Yours, at the moment, is to tell me everything you know. Now, pay attention.”
Sir Maurice’s debriefing was thorough to the point of madness; his instructions on dealing with the inevitable inquest so detailed that Curtis was tempted to plead guilty and ask for gaol. He was closeted with his uncle for four hours, and when he finally emerged, it was to learn that Daniel had left for London. There was no message.
Chapter Sixteen
It was eleven days before he returned to London.
The inquest had been relatively plain sailing. He, Miss Carruth and Miss Merton all testified that James Armstrong had been drinking too much and distressed about his friend’s departure. Curtis’s account, uncontested, told how a drunken James Armstrong had sprayed the empty folly with bullets, then shot his stepmother, how he had shot James, just too late to prevent murder, and how Sir Hubert had turned the gun on himself. March did not appear in his account, or at the inquest.
The Graylings were in attendance, tight-lipped and miserable, but were not called. The Lambdons did not appear. Mr. Lambdon had not recovered from his head injury, it was said; his wife was receiving care in a sanatorium.
Daniel da Silva was mentioned in passing as a guest who had left the house long before the terrible events. James’s mental collapse was linked to his friend Mr. Holt’s abrupt departure, but to the coroner’s annoyance, Mr. Holt could not be found. He had testy words to say about that.
There was a brief difficulty over why Curtis had gone out for a morning stroll with a loaded revolver, but Vaizey had briefed him well. He held up his right hand and explained that he was trying to accustom himself to his disability; and if anyone felt that a one-handed man using wildlife for target practice seemed dangerously eccentric, that was outweighed by natural respect for a wounded war hero, which the coroner expressed throughout in glowing terms. The whole thing was thoroughly embarrassing.
Worse came after. Vaizey had left him in the company of an agent named Cannon, who explained that he couldn’t return to London till the nine days’ wonder over a rich man’s familial murder and suicide had died down, and who then proceeded to interrogate him for every scrap of information he could recall, on Holt, on the Armstrongs, on Lambdon, over and over. Cannon informed him, sourly, that he’d had his eye on Holt for some time; the man’s untimely death had lost their best chance at discovering the extent of the blackmail network and the channels through which information was flowing to the Continent. He went so far as to suggest that England would have been better served with Holt alive and Daniel dead, at which point Curtis had stopped cooperating and started expressing his desire to go home in forceful terms.
Eleven days. If Daniel had kept his promise, Curtis would have been counting them off, waiting to see his lover.
He had thought of it all, endlessly, over long walks and angry, solitary nights. He had thought about the possibility of social disgrace, about disappointing his uncles, about what he would do with the rest of his life. He had thought of Daniel, who didn’t back down for Sir Maurice Vaizey, walking away from him.
Now he was back in London, at last, in a small, stuffy room in a nondescript building somewhere off Whitehall, facing his uncle across a table.
“It seemed to go well,” Sir Maurice said. “No repercussions so far. There’s been some fluttering in the dovecotes here, but less than one might have expected. Have you heard about Armstrong’s will?”
“Yes.”
“That’s rather a stroke of luck—”
“No.”
Sir Maurice eyed him thoughtfully. “It’s a fair sum, my boy, and you can hardly refuse it without raising questions that I’m afraid I don’t want you to raise.”