Lessons in Power (18 page)
“I have told you, Dr. Stewart, Andrew Nicholls did not take his own life.” Even Rhodes didn’t sound
as if he believed it.
“What I’d like to know is who you set on him. It couldn’t have been Taylor or Jardine. Who did your
dirty work then?”
Rhodes smote the desk with his fist. “Do you think that I would let any other hands touch Andrew
Nicholls’ flesh?”
Stewart sneered, “Kept him all to yourself then, did you? No wonder he topped himself if he’d had
your paws all over him.”
Rhodes rose, looking as if he was about to pick up the paperweight and launch it. “You will take
every word of that back, Dr. Stewart. I loved Andrew Nicholls.”
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If Jonty felt the case turning upside down again, as it had done half a dozen times these last few
weeks, he tried hard not to show it. He had Rhodes on the back foot and wanted to keep him there. “And he hated you in return, as all your victims did? So much that he had to take his own life?”
“You don’t understand.” Rhodes crumpled, sat again, looked a broken man. “He did love me, he just
didn’t realise it. He was too weighed down with conventions and the expectations of those around him.
They wouldn’t let him love me.”
Jonty shook his head, nauseous at the self-delusion. “So, because he wouldn’t let you lay your filthy hands on him, you took it out on Kermode, and on me?” A sudden thought struck him. “Kermode has the
same colouring and build as I do. Did Nicholls? Was it like having him back at the school? Did you watch Jardine having his way with me and pretend it was you and him?” He suddenly registered the gilt framed photograph which stood on the desk. “Is this him? This poor, benighted-looking lad?”
Rhodes had his head in his hands, overwhelmed by Jonty’s last onslaught. “I would never have
harmed Andrew. He didn’t understand what love was about. I tried to show him, I…” He stopped, abruptly, looked up. “I have nothing more to say to you.”
It was a last effort at wresting control of the interview, but the avenging angel was having none of it.
He wouldn’t spare this city even for fifty righteous men.
“So you killed the thing you loved, as surely as if you’d wielded the knife yourself. And because you loved him so very much, this poor lad, years later you had to kill the man who was threatening to expose you. You heard what Jardine said to Kermode, how he was sorry and wanted to make a clean breast of
things, and were so concerned to protect your ‘love’ that you took up a poker and effectively put an end to all the danger.”
“He wanted to go back to the school, to that wretch of a new Headmaster—the one who hates me and
wants to destroy all I hold sacred. His plan was to get Barrington to contact you and that other boy, what’shis-name, to make some sort of act of contrition. Then he wanted the school to find out whether anything similar has gone on in the past, in St. Vincent’s. In
my
house. Jardine said that Andrew had taken his own life. I couldn’t listen to such lies, nor would I have them spoken to Barrington—he would soon contrive evidence to support such slander. So I killed him.” Rhodes looked at the photograph on his desk, at Jonty, at the picture of Nicholls again. “I couldn’t have him saying such things.”
Jonty fought hard not to feel sorry for this man. Years of hatred and fear were dissolving into scorn and then something akin to pity. “And Taylor? He had to suffer the same fate for the same reason?”
It took Rhodes an age to drag his gaze away from the beloved face in the frame. When he did, he wore
a beatific expression. “Taylor? Oh yes, I killed him too.”
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Chapter Ten
“Matthew. What on earth are you doing here?” Charing Cross station seemed awash with young men,
but not so many that Jonty couldn’t spot a familiar face. On their platform, to boot.
“Off to stay with your mother. Did she neglect to tell you?”
“She did just that.” Jonty was happy enough at the surprise. “The old girl keeping secrets from us, eh, Dr. Coppersmith?”
Orlando wore such a look of disappointment, albeit fleeting and covered with a forced smile, that
Matthew felt obliged to make some sort of explanation. “We met at a mutual acquaintance’s house in
London. When Mrs. Stewart discovered I was the man you met on Jersey, she insisted I be her guest for the Easter weekend.”
“Quite right, too. Couldn’t think of better company. Dr. Coppersmith, could you check that the trunks are stowed properly? That porter had a fey look in his eye.” They watched Orlando along the platform.
“Please excuse
someone’s
bad humour. He’s no doubt cross that we won’t be the only guests and probably miffed to only discover the fact at Charing Cross station. No, don’t apologise.” He raised his hand, smiling sweetly. “It’ll do him good to realise that Mama has other friends and that he can’t always be the favoured one. He’ll soon see sense—it’ll be an appropriate end to this investigation, for one thing.”
“I’m looking forward to hearing all the detail.” Matthew fought to keep his voice level. “And I am
immensely grateful, as you know.”
Jonty slapped him on the shoulder, leaving any words for now—they both knew how much this case
meant.
They’d boarded and relative calm had descended onto their first-class carriage when they discovered
that Mrs. Stewart had lined up another surprise. It came in the form of the fourth man who bounced through the door just as the train was about to depart, Rex Prefontaine, his limp not inhibiting a spectacular leap from platform to carriage.
From the very start in that bumpy train compartment the four men rubbed along together well, even
Orlando coming out of his bad temper by the time they’d passed Reigate.
“I was so relieved to hear Rhodes had been arrested.” Matthew was about to carry on, express his true gratitude, as Rex’s intrigued expression brought him up short. Why on earth was he baring his soul in the presence of a stranger? “I’m sorry, Mr. Prefontaine, we’ll keep our business for later.”
Charlie Cochrane
“As you see fit, Mr. Ainslie.” Rex inclined his head to one side—a sweet, endearing gesture. “If it
can’t keep, I can be remarkably good at being deaf, or so my mother assures me.”
Matthew was tempted to return to the Jardine case, to relate how Angela Stafford had been all floods
of tears and thankfulness when he’d told her the news. How, although barely coherent with joy, she’d
apologised that she and her brother would be spending some time with family abroad and would Ainslie be very upset if he didn’t come and give his thanks in person just yet? He caught the warning look in Jonty’s eye and turned the subject to horseracing.
It had been just a matter of days since Rhodes’s arrest, yet all these events already seemed ages ago, receding further into the past as the train moved deeper into Sussex and the rather unreal world of the Stewarts’ estate. Perhaps when they were there, the whole case would seem like some strange dream, of which the only tangible evidence would be a new suit, new socks, and Jonty’s not having to keep part of his life hidden from the people he loved. The four men took the Stewart carriage from the station to the Old Manor, Rex’s and Matthew’s eyes popping out like organ stops as they rounded the bend in the road which opened up a proper view of the Stewart house.
“I had no idea, Jonty,” Matthew was struggling to find his breath, let alone the right words, “when
your mother invited us down, that I’d be staying in a castle. ‘Our little country house’, she described it as.”
“You have to be very careful with Mama. She tends to hide the family lights under a bushel and to
rather underestimate the size of things. She bewailed the small size of the Christmas goose last December then the thing turned out to be about as big as an ostrich. And she’s convinced that I’m thin and in need of a good feed.”
Rex grinned. “My mother’s just the same. Fusses and frets over me as if I were only nine years old.
Does she ask you if you’re still wearing your undershirt, even when it’s eighty degrees outside?”
“She does indeed. She even sent me to my bed last winter for being out without my hat on. I love her
dearly, Mr. Prefontaine, but she would try the patience of a saint. And tell him off for his halo not being on straight.”
They pulled in through the gateway, where Richard Stewart greeted them. He sometimes watched
from one of the upper bedrooms then sneaked down to be first to meet guests, determined to steal a march on his wife. Helena Stewart soon followed, dressed in as much finery as if she’d been summoned to see Queen Alexandra. Her son and his lover might have warranted her grey silk, but the other young men
deserved the sapphire blue which matched her eyes.
She beamed brightly at all and sundry then grabbed Orlando for a fierce embrace while Mr. Stewart
shook his son’s hand heartily. If Matthew was worried that his hostess had it in mind to give him a cuddle as well, he’d underestimated her sense of propriety.
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“Mr. Ainslie, I’m so pleased that you were able to join us. And Mr. Prefontaine, it is my honour to
have you at my table.” She let them kiss her hand, then turned to Jonty. “Not looking as thin as usual, dear.
That Mrs. Ward must be doing a good job.” She squeezed Stewart junior as if he were a cloth to be wrung out, then gathered her guests together for tea and cakes to recompense them for the mighty tribulations of the train journey from the capital.
“You’ve taken a bit of a shine to Mr. Prefontaine,” Jonty whispered to his mother as they made their
way to the drawing room. “Should Papa be worried?”
Mrs. Stewart slapped her son’s backside. “Behave yourself, child. Your father and I both admire the
type of person who’s determined to make his own way in the world, especially when it’s against a
background of ‘Old Money’. Too easy for youngsters to take it all for granted.” She didn’t make reference to the man’s marked limp nor did she speculate as to how it had come about, which showed great strength of character on her part. “How are you?” It wasn’t just a pleasantry, mother to son. When she’d heard of Rhodes’s confession Mrs. Stewart had cried, sobbing down the phone and getting herself into an awful
tizzy, cursing the housemaster and praising her two boys almost in the same breath.
“Much better. How’s Papa?” Mr. Stewart had been noble and gallant, glad to have played a small part
in bringing a double murderer to justice.
“He’s starched his upper lip again.” Mrs. Stewart winked—she’d already confessed to her beloved
sprog that his father had burst into tears the minute he’d put the earpiece on the telephone stand after hearing the news.
“Daft old thing. I do love you both. And I’m so immensely relieved.”
Not relieved enough to have broken the bedroom moratorium, though. Jonty and Orlando were given
their usual set of rooms, in the guest wing the far side of the gatehouse, with the oddly accented footman, Macgregor, to dance attendance on them, but very little in the way of hanky-panky was going to be gracing the huge four-poster beds. Orlando had hoped Rhodes’s confession was going to prove the turning point, the solution of the case the catalyst for a triumphal recommencement of intimacy. It wasn’t. Jonty showed even less interest in ‘doing his duty’ and wouldn’t even discuss why, more than saying, “There’s pieces of the jigsaw still missing and I’m not even sure what picture I’m trying to make any more.”
Orlando hoped that the Old Manor would work its magic, as it had on his broken memory. He wasn’t
even bothered that Matthew was located at the bottom of their staircase—the man could camp outside their doors, for all Orlando cared, so long as Jonty got over whatever was inhibiting him.
Matthew’s suite was rather darker than some of the other rooms, although very atmospheric. He’d
been offered a choice of this or something in the main wing, but he said he’d plumped for the sensation of being in a real castle, not the modern comfort of the apartments above the library.
Rex was given a ground floor suite directly off the gatehouse, just the other side of where the
portcullis might have been had the original owner of the castle not run out of money, honour, and his head
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before his plans could come to fruition. He had his own bathroom and sitting room, which wasn’t afforded to the others, who had their sleeping and living apartments combined. Mrs. Stewart insisted that it was because of his status as a foreign national—the stranger in our land and all that—although everyone knew he’d been given this suite to avoid his having to limp up and down the unforgiving stone staircases.
The other Stewart children had commitments with their own families or in-laws over Easter week, so
Mrs. Stewart had just a small, exclusive male party to fuss over. She didn’t miss the presence of her kind, always having averred she was a man’s woman, totally happy to retire alone after the coffee and await her guests in splendid isolation. Her reaction to Orlando’s appearance in his new suit proved a mixture of pride and admiration, squeezing his cheeks then making him turn around a dozen times for
everyone
, an everyone consisting at the time of her and Jonty, to admire it.
Over the next three days, the men spent hours playing croquet in the early spring sunshine, attending the necessary services in church or concentrating at bridge after dinner, usually letting their host take one of the hands while whoever sat out chatted with their hostess. They avoided tennis, not just because it seemed unfair to Rex and his leg—Orlando still couldn’t quite dissociate in his mind tennis, Matthew Ainslie, and unnecessary liberties. On the odd occasion when rain had threatened they’d entertained themselves with billiards or snooker. They barely touched on the Alistair Stafford case, even though Jonty kept hinting that he felt one of his missing pieces was wrapped up in it. Here, in an unreal world of English delights, it could wait for its full denouement to be expounded.