Lessons in Power (17 page)
“If you’re going to start making obscene rugby jokes I’ll go off to my own room, and won’t that give
Mrs. Ward a shock to find she has two beds to make in the morning?”
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The threat was patently hollow as Orlando, far from showing any signs of departing, was starting to
explore with his hands, surveying the hills and valleys of Jonty’s well-developed frame.
“Not once will I mention ruck or tackle, not so long as you carry on doing that.” Jonty shut his eyes, luxuriating in the sensations those mapmaking fingers were causing, as they traced their way ever
downwards. He wondered whether Orlando kept that chart in his head, if he’d a clear diagram of every inch of his lover’s body to which he could refer when they made love. Or did he tear up the map every time, begin the exploration afresh?
Orlando’s lips were contributing to the construction of the atlas, too, plumbing the depths of Jonty’s mouth, sounding the ridges of his ears and neck. It might be true that there were no new lands to be
conquered here, no territory which hadn’t already been claimed in the name of Coppersmith, but it didn’t matter. The re-treading of old ground was never monotonous, not in their bed.
“Jonty.” Orlando’s voice, hoarse with passion, was barely more than a whisper. “I wish I was the only person to have journeyed here.”
It wasn’t the best choice of words. Jonty knew that his lover was referring to Richard Marsters, he’d done the same on past occasions, but the phrase carried other resonances now. The first explorers had been invaders, unwelcome and incapable of being resisted. He swallowed hard, trying to muster up some sort of courage—surely their bed couldn’t witness another debacle? “So do I, with all my heart. Virgin territory for you to discover, like some Livingstone or Cook. We could always pretend.”
“We could, one day. Not now, though. Not till this case is all cleared.” Orlando’s hands moved off in exploration once more, Jonty making a good front of willing them onwards, until they’d found their El Dorado. “Yes, that’s it, just there. That’s the source of all pleasure, if not the source of the Nile.”
“Would you please give the clever talk a rest for once?” Orlando didn’t even need to say he was tired of the analogies. “All I want is to
do our duty
.” The usual phrase, their private idiom for “making love”.
His hands went back to where they’d been—this time Jonty didn’t say a word, although his own
movements spoke volumes, making it plain that, again, there’d be no bodily union. He’d bring Orlando to a climax and let himself be taken to the same place, although the pleasure would be tinged with bitterness.
The soft moans Orlando spoke into the night were interspersed with other, harsher voices.
Stop it,
Stewart. The more you fight the worse it’ll be for both of us.
Words Jonty thought he’d forgotten, come back to taunt him.
He held his lover closer; together, as ever, in rapture as in distress.
Jonty, spent, if not really satisfied, snuggled against his lover’s chest. “It doesn’t matter if other hands, other mouths have gone before you. Nobody has ever made me as happy as you do, Orlando. Orlando?”
A gentle snore gave him his answer. At other times it would have sounded as sweet as a sonnet—now
it just reminded him how good he was becoming at pretending.
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“Mr. Rhodes, will you tell us why you did it?”
Jonty’s voice sounded clear as a bell in the neat study of the house on Epsom Downs. How they’d
wangled themselves entry into the hallowed inner sanctum Orlando still wasn’t sure, but old Miss Rhodes having taken a shine to them hadn’t harmed matters. She’d fawned over Jonty, saying what a nice lad he was, how much he reminded her of someone she couldn’t quite place.
“I don’t understand what you’re referring to.” Sebastian Rhodes had been less keen to entertain them, yet it was better to be bearded in his own den rather than in front of the old lady.
“I think you do. Why did you make Jardine and Taylor do those things to me?”
Orlando tried to regain his composure. This wasn’t what they’d agreed upon during the journey down
to Epsom, not at all. The plan had been to gently probe Rhodes about the places where his story was
inconsistent with what other people had said, to gradually winkle out the truth about his relationships with the other main players, to creep towards a confession of guilt.
But now Jonty was ploughing in with both fists—metaphorically for the moment, although that could
become literally given the look on his face. His deep blue eyes were like cold sapphires and he bore the visage of some avenging angel, pure righteousness and retribution.
Orlando felt confused and not a little frightened. Last night, in bed, he’d been visited with awful
dreams, reflections of the one question he’d tried hard to ignore—whether Rhodes had actually been
smitten with a crush on Jonty himself. If that turned out to be the case, murder would definitely be back on his agenda and bare hands the only possible weapon.
Rhodes seemed just as stunned. “I’m still unsure what you mean…”
“Don’t prevaricate,
Mr. Rhodes
.” Jonty made the title seem like the worst sort of insult. “You can’t play games with me any more.”
There was a long awkward pause before the man replied. “I will not discuss this in front of
him
.”
Rhodes gave Orlando a look of pure hatred.
“Dr. Coppersmith.” Jonty mustered a huge amount of tenderness into his voice. “Would you be so
very kind as to step outside for a moment? I hope that this won’t take too long.”
“As you wish, Dr. Stewart.” Orlando bowed to his friend, cast a withering glance at his enemy then
left, although he hovered about outside the door, just in case he needed to leap in. Inspector Wilson was lurking out in the road with a muscular constable at his side, ready to make an arrest should it prove necessary, but that was a good hundred yards away. He eyed a stout ceremonial baton on the wall, then carefully plucked it down and kept it handy.
Just in case
.
“Will you take a seat, Stewart?”
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The
Dr.
had been dropped, and it made Jonty think of how he’d been addressed back in the days when Rhodes could still scare the pants off him. Those days were long past. “You will sit down first and I’ll decide whether to follow suit. Then you’ll answer my question.”
Rhodes eased into his chair, took a huge breath, composed himself. “It was a long time ago, Stewart.”
“To me it feels as if it were yesterday. And always will, until I receive a proper explanation. Two of the men I could have gone to are dead and I’m fairly certain I know who killed them.” Jonty carefully noted the pallor which spread over his enemy’s face. “So I have to come to the third member of the triumvirate to demand the truth.”
“Now, why do you define me as the third member? I never laid a hand on you—and before you say
that because I know what happened I must be guilty, let me assure you Jardine and Taylor told me about what they’d done. And the contrition they felt.”
Jonty snorted. “Your hands may not have been upon me but it was at your instigation it happened. Do
they call it being an accessory before the fact?”
“And I ask again, why do you assume this?”
“Because I asked Taylor, when we saw him, and he confirmed all I’d suspected.” Jonty could easily
square the lie with his conscience, especially since a chance remark of Taylor’s all those years ago had first implicated the housemaster.
Rhodes’s eyebrows edged upwards. As the man steepled his hands, Jonty noticed that the fingers were
trembling—this game was getting to its culmination. “Stewart, we both know Timothy Taylor wasn’t the
most honest of men. He lied to both of us, I suspect, about a number of things.”
“I’m sure he did, but this wasn’t one of his fabrications. We both know it was you who set Jardine
upon me, and I’d like to know why. I’ll sit here until you tell me.” Jonty crossed his arms and legs, stared straight into his housemaster’s eyes, confident that the man wouldn’t keep the contact for long.
Rhodes leaned forward, laying his hands on the desk as if to steady himself. “You are quite right; I’ll deny it no more. This has eaten into my conscience for years, now I must confess and find absolution. I beg you to understand that this was an aberration, the actions of a man who was at the time unwell. I abhor what I did then and I plead for your forgiveness. If I could go back and make what occurred at school disappear, never to have happened, I would.”
He looked honest and truly contrite—Jonty wanted to take a poker to him. The fact that Rhodes had
used almost the same words as Jonty himself had used to Orlando in a tender moment made it ten times
worse.
“I’m sorry. I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you have an ounce of contrition in your soul.”
“Dr. Stewart—” Jonty noticed the title had returned and was heartened to hear Rhodes trying to
wheedle again, “—you are a Christian soul. Don’t you believe that a sinner can repent?”
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“I believe it implicitly, although I don’t think it has happened this time. I’m prepared to accept that Christopher Jardine had a change of heart and wanted to make some sort of confession. I shouldn’t be
surprised if that contributed to his death. But in your case I don’t see any evidence of a change of heart, not like there was with his lordship.” Jonty spoke his suppositions as if they were established facts and the ploy seemed to be working. “Did
you
once try to contact me, or Simon Kermode, or the family of that poor lad who committed suicide?”
Rhodes’s face turned a deathly colour—he had to steady himself again on the desk. “Andrew Nicholls
didn’t commit suicide, it was a terrible accident.” For the first time, the man’s voice sounded tremulous.
“If that’s what you seek to believe, then so be it. I know the truth. I know exactly what happened.”
Jonty wasn’t sure where the words he was speaking came from, although he was certain he should be
saying them. “But I want to hear why, from your own lips.”
“Can I help you, dear?” Auntie appeared around the corner, smiling sweetly and seeming not to notice
the blunt instrument which Orlando was trying to hide behind his back.
“No, thank you. I’m just waiting for my friend. He and Mr. Rhodes have confidential matters to
discuss.”
“Old pupil, is he?” Auntie beamed. “Sebastian is awfully fond of helping out his former scholars.
They’ll probably be chin-wagging for ages. Would you like some tea?”
“That’s very kind, but I’m replete, thank you.”
“Oh that’s a shame, I thought that you might like to come and look with me at some old photographs I
was sorting through. There’s a few from Sebastian’s time as housemaster. Your friend may be on them.”
Orlando felt torn. He knew he should stay at the door, yet what the old lady said was piquing his
interest. “I’m sure they’re charming…”
“Oh, they are. There are some particularly nice ones of Sebastian with one of the pupils who came
and stayed here. So sad—the young man died not long afterwards in a tragic accident.”
Orlando started, regained himself, patted the lady’s arm. “Miss Rhodes, I think that I would love to
see those photographs.”
Auntie produced seemingly interminable group shots from school, in which, if Jonty did feature, he
was no more than a fuzzy presence, unrecognisable to his lover. At last they reached the ones Orlando found really interesting, a set of photos which Auntie displayed with particular pride, ones taken at her house and featuring her nephew and a handsome blond youth. Miss Rhodes carefully explained that these had been taken in the summer holidays some years ago, although she couldn’t recall how many. The boy
had been in St. Vincent house at school and had come to stay for a fortnight while his parents were
travelling.
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“Such lovely manners he had. I do admire comportment in a man.” Auntie beamed at her guest, to
whom she’d clearly taken quite a shine.
Orlando wondered why women of a certain age seemed to want to ply him with tea, cakes and
confidences. “You said he had some sort of an accident?”
“Indeed, in the autumn term, not long after he stayed here. Sebastian visited me a fortnight after that, when I’d been very unwell and he was given leave to come here for a few days. He told me all about it. It seems this boy—I really wish I could remember his name—fell on a knife and it entered his neck.” Orlando winced at the memories this evoked but managed to hide it. “Sebastian was so upset. He cried like a baby when he told me.”
Orlando patted Auntie’s hand and studied the pictures again—this same young man appeared in the
photograph on Rhodes’s desk. Perhaps he was reading too much into these other prints, seeing what he
wanted to, but he noticed a distinct air of unease about the boy. As if he profoundly wished to be elsewhere, while Rhodes appeared to be a man enraptured. In one portrait the look he was giving his pupil seemed undeniable. It was identical to the one that Orlando was giving Jonty in the photograph which graced his own wall.
Orlando’s mind raced, as if he could influence what was going on in Rhodes’s study by sheer
willpower or by divine intervention. As he’d done before, when things had been too difficult, he prayed to the God in whom he’d no belief.
He says that You talk to him, then speak to him now. Tell him to ask about
the boy who committed suicide
.
Jonty hadn’t given up the verbal assault, even in the face of repeated denials from his adversary. “So why did he cut his own jugular, this Nicholls? Was it that he couldn’t face the pain any more, the bleeding and the discharge?” He saw Rhodes blanch, ignored it. “Or was it the shame, the sense of being treated as nothing more than a lump of meat? Or was it simply that he couldn’t go through another twenty-four hours of thinking
is tonight the night, again
?”