Throwing the note and chess piece on the sideboard, I lock my door and bar it with a chair. Normally, I’d go immediately to Rashton’s possessions or a mirror to inspect this new face, but I already know what’s in his drawers and how he looks. I need only stretch my thought towards a question to find its answer, which is why I know there’s a set of brass knuckles hidden in the sock drawer. He confiscated them from a brawler a few years back, and they’ve come in handy more than once. I slip them on, thinking only of the footman and how he lowered his face to mine, breathing in my last breath and sighing with pleasure as he added me to some private tally.
My hands are shaking but Rashton isn’t Bell. Fear motivates, rather than cripples. He wants to seek the footman out and put an end to him, to take back whatever dignity was lost in our previous confrontation. Looking back at our fight this morning, I’m certain it was Rashton who sent me down the stairs and into the corridor. That was his anger, his pride. He had control, and I didn’t even notice.
It can’t happen again.
Rashton’s recklessness will get us killed, and I can’t waste the host. If I’m to get myself and Anna out of this mess, I need to get ahead of the footman, rather than constantly trailing behind him, and I think I know somebody who can help, though they won’t be easy to convince.
Taking off the brass knuckles, I fill the sink and begin washing in front of the mirror.
Rashton’s a young man – though not quite as young as he pictures himself – tall, strong and remarkably handsome. Freckles are splashed across his nose, honey-coloured eyes and short blond hair suggesting a face spun out of sunlight. About the only note of imperfection is an old bullet scar on his shoulder, the ragged line long faded. The memory would give itself to me if I asked, but I’ve enough pain without inviting another man’s misery into my mind.
I’m wiping my chest, when the door handle rattles, causing me to snatch up the brass knuckles.
‘Jim, are you in there? Somebody’s locked the door.’
It’s a woman’s voice, husky and dry.
Putting on a fresh shirt, I pull away the chair and unlock the door to find a confused-looking young woman on the other side, her fist raised for another knock. Blue eyes peer at me from beneath long eyelashes, a dash of red lipstick the only colour on a glacial face. She’s in her early twenties with thick black hair tumbling over a crisp white shirt tucked into jodhpurs, her presence immediately setting Rashton’s blood racing.
‘Grace...’ My host shoves the name onto my tongue, and plenty more besides. I’m boiling in a stew of adoration, elation, arousal and inadequacy.
‘Have you heard what that damn fool brother of mine has done?’ she says, barging past me.
‘I suspect I’m about to.’
‘He borrowed one of the cars last night,’ she says, flinging herself onto the bed. ‘Woke the stablemaster at two in the morning dressed like a rainbow and took off for the village.’
She’s got it all wrong, but I have no way of salvaging her brother’s good name. It was my decision to take the car, to flee the house and make for the village. At this moment, poor Donald Davies is asleep on a dirt road where I abandoned him, and my host is trying to drag me out of the door after him.
His loyalty is almost overpowering, and searching for a reason I’m immediately beset by horrors. Rashton’s affection for Donald Davies was moulded amid the mud and blood of the trenches. They went to war as fools and came back brothers, each of them broken in places only the other could see.
I can feel his anger at my treatment of his friend.
Or perhaps I’m just angry at myself.
We’re so jumbled together, I can no longer tell.
‘It’s my fault,’ says Grace, crestfallen. ‘He was going to buy more of that poison from Bell, so I threatened to tell Daddy. I knew he was angry with me, but I didn’t think he’d run off.’ She sighs helplessly. ‘You don’t think he’s done something foolish, do you?’
‘He’s fine,’ I say reassuringly, sitting down next to her. ‘He’s got the wind up, that’s all.’
‘I wish we’d never met that damn doctor,’ she says, smoothing the creases from my shirt with the flat of her hand. ‘Donald hasn’t been the same since Bell turned up with his trunk of tricks. It’s that damnable laudanum, it’s got hold of him. I can barely talk to him any more. I wish there was something we could...’
Her words run smack bang into an idea. I can see her standing back from it wide-eyed, following it from start to finish like a horse she’s backed in the Derby.
‘I need to go and see Charles about something,’ she says abruptly, kissing me on the lips before darting into the corridor.
She’s gone before I can respond, the door hanging open in her wake.
I stand up to close it, hot, bothered and not a little confused. On the whole, things were simpler when I was in that cupboard.
46
Step by slow step, I proceed down the corridor, poking my head into every bedroom before allowing myself to walk past it. I’m wearing the brass knuckles, and jumping at every noise and shadow, wary of the assault I’m certain is coming; knowing I can’t beat the footman should he catch me unawares.
Pushing aside the velvet curtain blocking the corridor, I pass into Blackheath’s abandoned east wing, a sharp wind stirring drapes that slap the wall like slabs of meat hitting a butcher’s counter.
I don’t stop until I reach the nursery.
Derby’s unconscious body isn’t immediately obvious, as it’s been dragged into the corner of the room, out of sight of the door and behind the rocking horse. His head is a mess of congealed blood and broken pottery, but he’s alive and well hidden. Considering he was attacked coming out of Stanwin’s bedroom, whoever was responsible obviously had enough of a conscience to keep the blackmailer from finding and killing him, but not enough time to take him anywhere safer.
I quickly rifle through his pockets, but everything he took from Stanwin has been stolen. I didn’t expect otherwise, but as he is the architect of so many of the house’s mysteries, it was worth a try.
Leaving him sleeping, I continue on to Stanwin’s rooms at the end of the passage. Surely only fear could have pushed him into this misbegotten corner of the house, so far from the meagre comforts afforded by the rest of Blackheath. By that criterion though, he’s chosen well. The floorboards are his spies, screaming my approach with every step, and the long corridor offers only one way in and out. The blackmailer clearly believes himself surrounded by enemies, a fact which I may be able to exploit.
Passing through the reception room, I knock on Stanwin’s bedroom door. A strange silence greets me, the din of somebody trying to be quiet.
‘It’s Constable Jim Rashton,’ I call through the wood, putting the brass knuckles away. ‘I need to speak with you.’
The declaration is met with a flurry of sounds. Steps go lightly across the room, a drawer scrapes, something is lifted and moved, before finally a voice creeps around the doorframe.
‘Come in,’ says Ted Stanwin.
He’s sitting on a chair, a hand stuck inside his left boot, which he’s brushing with a soldier’s vigour. I shiver a little, rocked by a powerful sense of the uncanny. The last time I saw this man, he was dead on a forest floor and I was going through his pockets. Blackheath’s picked him up and dusted him off, winding his key so he can do it all again. If this isn’t hell, the devil is surely taking notes.
I look past him. His bodyguard is sleeping deeply on the bed, breathing noisily through his bandaged nose. I’m surprised Stanwin hasn’t moved him, and more surprised to see how the blackmailer’s angled his chair to face the bed, much as Anna has done with the butler. Clearly, Stanwin feels some affection for this chap.
I wonder how he’d react knowing Derby’s been next door this whole time.
‘Ah, the man at the centre of it all,’ says Stanwin, the brush pausing while he regards me.
‘I’m afraid you have me at a loss,’ I say, confused.