Book 6 - The Fortune Of War Page 25

  It took Madame Franchon only a few minutes to decide that the inner rooms, with their closed, unbroken windows and their unviolated doors, contained no flying thief, but in that time Stephen thought he must die of cramp and suffocation. The worst was the flood of apologies, and he felt an infinite relief when Diana cut them short, closed the door on Madame Franchon, and shot the bolt.

  He came out into the air and gradually the drumming in his ears died away. 'You should have a drink, Maturin,' she whispered, reaching for a pretty little decanter by her bed. 'You don't mind drinking out of my glass?'

  She poured him a stiff tot and mechanically he drank it off: the fire spread in his vitals. He recognized the smell, the same smell that mingled with Diana's usual scent there in the bed. 'Is it a kind of whisky?' he asked.

  'They call it bourbon,' she said. 'Another drop?'

  Stephen shook his head. 'Is your maid here? The tall one, Peg? Send her away, right away, until tomorrow.'

  Diana went into another room. He heard the distant ringing of a bell and then Diana's voice, telling Peg to take Abijah and Sam to Mr Adams's house in the dog-cart and to give him this note. There seemed to be some low murmuring objection, for Diana's voice rose to a sharp, imperious tone and the door closed with a decided clap.

  She came back and sat on the side of the bed 'That's done,' she said 'I have sent them all off until Monday morning' She looked at him affectionately, hesitated, poured herself a finger of bourbon, and said, 'What are you at, Maturin? Flying from an angry husband? It is not like you to bound from one bed to another. Yet after all you are a man. You spoke to me from the other side of the window just like a man—just as though we were already married. You called me a fool. But perhaps I am a fool. I was truly desolated, hearing you with Johnson yesterday, and not seeing you after all. My God, Stephen, I was so glad to hear your voice just now. I thought you had deserted me.'

  He turned his face to her, and her smile faded. He said, 'I was escaping from Pontet-Canet and his band. They mean to kill me if they can. They waylaid me in the street yesterday—that was what I was speaking to Johnson about—and they made a far more determined attempt just now. Listen, honey, will you dress at once and go to the British agent? Tell him I am beset and cannot stir from here. Pontet-Canet and Dubreuil live in this hotel, do they not?'

  'Yes.'

  'Any others?'

  'No. But all the Frenchmen, officers and civilians, haunt the place. There are always half a dozen of them in the hall.'

  'Sure, I saw them myself. Now Andrews may not be in Boston on a Sunday; there was no light in his house this morning. But he has a cottage by the sea, somewhere this side of Salem. Herapath knows it; he has been there. Could you see Herapath without Wogan?'

  'Very easily. Louisa is in the country with Johnson.'

  'Ah. Then if Andrews is not here, take Herapath with you to the cottage. Tell Andrews that if he can gather a party of our officers to cover us, all will be well. Dubreuil will never risk the flaring public scandal of an attack on the Asclepia, and by tomorrow I shall have raised such a noise that private murder will be out of the question. Call a chaise and wear a veil: there is no danger, but it would be as well for you not to be seen. Is there any likelihood of the people of the hotel coming to clean the room?'

  'No. Johnson always insists upon his own house-slaves doing everything; but if you like you could go into his rooms. They do not open on to the corridor, and we have the only keys. There, on the table.'

  She bent down, kissed him, and hurried out of the room. He heard her order the carriage—was it more than two posts to Salem?—and in less time than he had ever known a woman take to dress she was back in a travelling habit and a broad-brimmed veiled hat. They embraced. He said, 'I never doubted your courage, my dear. Tell the man to drive slow, in this wicked fog. God bless.'

  She said, 'I will lock you in,' and she was gone.

  He walked into the big drawing-room next door, unshuttered, and by contrast fairly light. The fog had thinned a little more, and standing on a chair he could see the dim form of her chaise move out into the roadway, turn to the right and right again, down the side-street he had so lately traversed, towards Mr Andrews's house. If he were there she would be back in twenty minutes, if not, then in perhaps two hours or three. She had all the spirit in the world, all the courage, for this kind of thing, for a physical emergency; guts, as the seamen said; it was impossible not to admire her, impossible not to like her.

  A French clock on the mantelshelf struck eleven, twice. He sat down, and while deep within himself he went on musing about Diana his medical side, his medical hands moved about his painful ribs, his far more painful head. He felt curiously exhausted, and his mind did not focus well but moved vaguely round and round the central point. The physician was in better shape, stating that the eighth and ninth ribs were probably cracked, no more; but that there was something very like a crepitation along the coronal suture, a little above the temporal crest, while the main seat of pain was on the other side, a clear contre-coup effect. 'I wonder that there was no concussion,' he observed. 'But no doubt nausea will ensue.' This was all the physician had to say since there was no remedy but rest, and Stephen's thoughts returned wholly to Diana. A glance at the clock showed him that she must by now have gone on to the Andrewses' cottage, and he pictured her haranguing the anxious, worried little man.

  The half hour roused him to a sense of his duty. He returned to the bedroom, picked up the keys, and passed through the long suite of rooms to Johnson's private quarters, unlocking and relocking the doors as he went. The last true room was evidently his closet, with a large roll-top desk, a strong-box, and a quantity of files and papers: a door in the far corner led to a privy, which also contained a hip-bath. It was just as well, because at this point the nausea that he had foreseen came on, and he knelt there, vomiting for a while.

  Recovered now, and washed, he walked back into the study: the difficulty, was to know where to start. On the scientist's principle of dealing with the easiest first, he went through the open files and papers. Most were the private records and accounts of a very wealthy man, but there were some interesting French documents with translations in Diana's dashing hand. These dated back to before the war: the more recent were in hands he did not recognize, except for Louisa Wogan's. Even so, Diana would possess useful knowledge about the background of the French connection. Memoranda about the military position on the Great Lakes and the Canadian land frontier: a coded list, presumably of agents there. A note about himself: 'Pontet-Canet confirms that Maturin has an inclination to retire to the States: a grant of land in a district of unusual interest to a naturalist might swing the scale.' More accounts and official correspondence, lists of prisoners, with remarks and interrogations. Nothing of the first importance, but useful material among the dross.

  He turned his attention to the desk. None of the keys fitted it, which was significant. But roll-top desks in general presented no great difficulty to one who was used to these things, and once Stephen had found which of the ornamental knobs controlled the back-bar, one firm thrust of his catling released the bolt and the top rolled back.

  The first thing he saw was the blaze of Diana's rivière in its open case, blazing even in this pale ghostly light, and beside it, under the heavy obsidian phallus that acted as a paperweight, a letter addressed to himself. The seal had been raised and he was not the first to read:

  Dearest Stephen—I heard you talking and I expected you but I saw you go away without coming to me. Oh what can it mean? Have I vexed you? I did not give you a clear answer—we were interrupted—and perhaps you thought I refused your offer. But I did not, Stephen. I will marry you whenever you wish and oh so gladly. You do me too much honour, Stephen dear. I should never have refused you in India—it went against my heart—but now, such as I am alas, I am entirely yours—Diana. PS That gross fellow is taking his trollop into the country: come and see me—we shall have all Sunday together. Remember me to Cous
in Jack.

  He had barely grasped the full implication of this before he heard a sound at the door, a slight metallic grating at the lock. It was certainly not Diana. He seized the paperweight, silently closed the desk, and stepped behind the opening door.

  It was Pontet-Canet, on the same errand as himself. The Frenchman obviously knew the place, and he was better equipped than Stephen. He selected one of the many skeleton keys on his ring and opened the strong-box, took out a book and carried it to the desk. His practised hand went straight to the master-knob, the top rolled back, and he sat down to copy from the book. He moved the diamond necklace to make room for the paper he brought from his pocket and in doing so he saw the letter. 'Oh, oh, la garce,' he whispered as he read it. 'Oh, la garce.'

  Stephen had his pistol ready, 'but although this was an inside room, enclosed, he wished to avoid the noise. Pontet-Canet stiffened, uneasy, raising his head as though he felt the threat. Stephen strode forward and as the Frenchman turned he brought the massive obsidian down on his head, breaking both. Pontet-Canet was on the floor, limp but breathing. Stephen bent over him, catling in hand, felt for the still beating common carotid, severed it, and stood back from the jet of blood. Then he pulled the body to the hip-bath, placed towels and mats to prevent the blood soaking through to the floor below, and went through the dead man's pockets. Nothing of significance, but he did take Pontet-Canet's pistol and, since he did not possess one, his watch, a handsome Breuguet very like that which had been taken from him years ago, when he was captured by the French off the coast of Spain.

  Changing the bloody chair for another, he sat down to the open book. Memoranda of Johnson's conversations with Dubreuil, copies of his letters to his political chief, day-by-day transactions, future projects, uncoded, perfectly frank: no wonder Pontet-Canet had gone straight to it. With this book before him he had his ally's secret mind wide open, without the last reserve.

  On the most recent page, after a complaint about the Frenchmen's attack on Dr Maturin, Johnson had written, 'I shall have a further interview with him on Monday, when I propose to bring greater pressure to bear; if however he should still prove obdurate, I believe he must be discreetly resigned to Dubreuil in exchange for a free hand with Lambert and Brown, preferably in a place where this will excite no public comment. I have already repatriated virtually all the fit prisoners, to prevent any unpleasant incident.'

  Had Johnson written this before or after he had read Diana's letter? If before, had he then given Dubreuil leave to go ahead, or had the Frenchman, fearing that Stephen would yield on Monday, decided to confront Johnson with a fait accompli once again? They were interesting points; but purely academic at this stage. He returned to the study of the book. It was easier to read now, the midday sun having partially dispersed the fog; and with the greater light the town had woken up—the noise of traffic in the street had reached something near its usual pitch, and someone at no great distance was letting off fireworks. Was this perhaps a holiday? Another American victory at sea? The pain in his head was growing and in spite of the greater light his eyes would not keep their focus long.

  Lost in his reading and his conjectures and his pain he did not perceive the opening of the door that Pontet-Canet had left unlocked until it was already on the jar. 'Tu es là, Jean-Paul?' whispered Dubreuil.

  No choice this time; no question of silence now. Stephen rose, whipping round with the pistol already in his hand, thrust it against Dubreuil's recoiling chest and fired. The man jerked back against the edge of the open door and as it slowly yielded so he fell, the expression of amazement and malignity lasting until his head was quite down, dull and indifferent at last.

  Stephen stood with the smoking pistol in his hand, listening to the immense report that seemed to fill the room and his head so lastingly. The smell of powder and scorched cloth. Slow, slow, the minutes passed; yet no one seemed to have heard the shot. No running feet, no hammering on the outer doors, no sound at all but for the clock striking the quarter; and outside some kind of a procession was passing the hotel—remote cheers, laughter, a squib or two.

  The tension diminished to a tolerable pitch. He put the pistol down and dragged Dubreuil to the privy, to the hipbath. 'This is like the end of Titus Andronicus,' he said, with an affectation of callous brutality, as he heaved the body in.

  But he was, he found, seriously disturbed, and he wondered why. He had not even searched Dubreuil. Why not? Corpses he had seen by the score, even by the hundred, in open and clandestine battle, yet this killing sickened him. It was unreasonable: he had had to kill or be killed, and Dubreuil was the man who misused Carrington and Vargas so inhumanly until they died. Yet there it was, and he found that he could do no more than read mechanically, scarcely retaining anything of significance . . . the squalor of his own conduct and of his enemies', all for the best of motives. The extreme violence of this morning, the physical and perhaps moral exhaustion, were obvious causes for his state, yet it was strange that he could not master his thinking mind and compel it to answer the question, What was he to do next? He posed the question again and again and the only answer was that it was impossible to leave the hotel with the Frenchmen waiting in the hall; that he must nevertheless get these documents and Diana clear; and that the Asclepia could be no sort of refuge once Johnson was back. A string of negatives, no more.

  He heard Diana return. She was talking and for a moment he thought it must be Johnson, back before his time, perhaps warned by the traitor Peg; but then he realized that the other voice was Herapath's.

  He went towards her, door after door, and she met him in the dining-room. Her face was anxious and downcast and as soon as she saw him she said, 'I am so sorry, so very sorry, Stephen darling, but Andrews was not there. He is gone back to Halifax in the cartel, with nearly all the prisoners of war.'

  'Never mind it, my dear,' said Stephen gently—he felt an immense pity for her, he could hardly tell why. 'Herapath is with you?'

  'In the drawing-room.'

  'Were there any Frenchmen in the hall?'

  'Yes, quite a crowd, laughing and talking, some in uniform; but neither Pontet-Canet nor Dubreuil.'

  They walked into the drawing-room. Herapath greeted Stephen with a look of deep concern, but Stephen only gave him a vague how-d'ye-do and said he must write a note. 'There is a writing-table in my room,' said Diana, opening the door and pointing.

  He stared stupidly at the paper for some moments and then wrote: Jack, I have been obliged to kill two Frenchmen here. There are other Frenchmen below and I cannot get out—they tried to kill me this morning. I must get Diana out of here at any cost at all, and some papers and myself if it can be done. Wogan will not do—do not tell Herapath this—nor the Asclepia. Choate might find Diana a refuge or Fr Costello, who is to marry me. I am not myself. Jack, do what you can. The big porter might prove a friend.

  'Mr Herapath,' he said, coming back, 'might I beg you to give this to Captain Aubrey as soon as ever you can reach him? It is of the very last importance to me, or I should not trouble you.'

  'With all my heart,' said Herapath.

  They were alone, and Diana moved about the room, lighting candles, drawing curtains. She looked at him from time to time and said, 'My God, Stephen, I have never seen you look so down, or low, or such a wretched colour. Have you had anything to eat today?'

  'Not a thing,' he said, trying to smile.

  'I shall order a meal at once. And while it is coming, lie on my bed and have a drink. You look as if you could do with it. I shall have one too.'

  He did as he was told—his head was furiously painful now—but he said, 'No food.'

  'You do not like to see me drinking, do you?' she said, pouring out the bourbon.

  'No,' said he. 'You are a fool to your complexion, Villiers.'

  'Is whisky bad for it?'

  'Spirits harden tissues, sure: that is a fact.'

  'I only drink any when I am excited, as I am now, or when I am low. Still, as I have be
en low ever since I came here, I dare say I must have swallowed gallons. But I will not be low with you, Stephen.' A long silence, and she went on. 'Do you remember, years and years ago, you asked me whether I had read Chaucer, and I said "Filthy old Chaucer?" and you abused me for it? Well, at least he did say "In woman vinolent is no defence. Thus knoweth lechers by experience . . ." '

  'Diana,' he said abruptly, 'do you know anyone in America—have you any sure friend that you can trust, that you can run to?'

  'No,' she said, surprised. 'Not a single soul. How could I, in my position? Why do you ask?'

  'You were so kind as to write me a letter yesterday, a very, very kind letter.'

  'Yes?'

  'It never reached me. I found it on Johnson's desk, next to your diamonds.'

  'Oh my God,' she said, quite deadly pale.

  'Clearly we must be away before he returns,' said Stephen. 'I have sent to Jack, to see what he can do. If he can do nothing, why, there are other possibilities.' Maybe there were: but what were they, apart from a wild flight in the dark? His mind could not, or would not, grapple with the problem hard and tight: clear, prolonged incisive thought was beyond his power.

  'I don't care,' she said, taking his hand. 'I don't mind, so long as you are there.'

  Chapter Eight

  'Captain Aubrey, if you please,' said Michael Herapath.

  'What name?' asked the porter.

  'Herapath.'

  'You are not Mr Herapath.'

  Looking into those black implacable eyes Herapath replied, 'I am George Herapath's son. I have brought the Captain a message from Doctor Maturin.'

  'I will take it up. No visitors are allowed.'

  Shortly afterwards he reappeared with a nurse and said in a more human tone, 'Ascend. Miss will show you the way.'

  'Mr Herapath,' cried Jack, holding out his hand, 'I am heartily glad to see you.' And when the door had closed, 'Come, sit close by my bed. Is the Doctor hurt?'