“The Comte, I must conclude, was against your marriage?”
“The Comte is in the pocket of the Buonapartes, Mr. Austen, and despises everything to do with monarchy and England. He is too short-sighted to perceive the advantage of financial ties with this Kingdom.” Mr. Grey, it seemed, had commenced to pace again — a rapid, purposeful sound that conveyed all his anxiety. “His father, however, understood that progress was impossible, absent the judicious flow of capital throughout Europe — and promoted the marriage between myself and his ward with that end in view. The first Comte de Penfleur, Mr. Austen, was an excellent man. He died but six months ago. His son shall never do him credit.”
“I quite liked the Comte,” Neddie offered mildly.
If I expected an oath or a blow — some form of brutal denial — I was disappointed. Valentine Grey laughed.
“Everyone does,” he said. “They cannot fail to find Hippolyte everything that is charming. Even those who have cause to know him well — to understand the extent of his depravity — choose not to see the truth. Francoise—”
Grey broke off, and there was a heavy silence.
“Yes, Mr. Grey?” Neddie enquired politely. “You were speaking of your wife?”
“The Comte de Penfleur has what we English sometimes call address — the air of authority, of refinement, of self-restraint and confidence. It never deserts him, even in the most hideous of places. And I have seen him in any number of hells, Mr. Austen, to which a respectable man like yourself should never descend.”
There was the briefest of pauses, as my brother assessed his visitor across an expanse of mahogany desk. “Why do you tell me all this, Mr. Grey?”
“Because I hope it will persuade you to divulge your conversation with the Comte last evening.”
“To what end?”
“The elucidation of his motives.”
“You have said yourself that he came to pay his last respects.”
“And perhaps to put paid to the delicate balance now existing between our two banking houses. I believe, in short, that he means to ruin me.”
Neddie drew breath. “For the crime of allowing your wife to be murdered?”
“—Or for making her my wife in the first place.”
“I was never very good at the taking of hints,” Neddie observed. “I much prefer a plain-spoken man to a riddling one.”
That for Neddie, I thought. It was not for nothing that his patron, Mr. Knight, had seen him schooled in the art of fencing.
“I believe the Comte to have a purpose in discovering how much you know.” Grey's voice was as taut as a violin too-strenuously tuned. “He is adept at the drawing-out of the unwitting, through subtle ploys of which they are unaware. He may have learned much from the most trifling of your remarks — and will move in the greatest unease, or the greatest security, depending upon what he believes.”
“Indeed? Then he moves in a sharper light than I!” Neddie's exasperation was obvious. “If the Comte is aware of how much I know, then he is in possession of the dearest intelligence in all of Kent, not excepting the intended landfall of the French! To what, exactly, would you refer, Mr. Grey? The facts of your wife's murder? Her liaison with Denys Collingforth? The state of your own marriage? Or her affection for her adoptive brother, the disreputable Comte de Penfleur?”
“Remember to whom you are speaking, Austen,” Mr. Grey retorted ominously. “I am not a man to be insulted, in your home or my own.”
“Then perhaps you might tell me what it is you seek.” From the sound of his movements, Neddie had thrown himself into his favourite chair — a wing-backed fortress drawn up near the cold hearth. Grey, however, paced restlessly to the very edge of the room, and peered unseeing through the French windows. The sight of his compact and powerful form looming near my own had the power to strike terror into an eavesdropping heart — and so I threw my back into snipping flowers as tho' my very life depended upon it. I might have been a sheep cropping grass, or an under-gardener tilling earth, for all the attention Grey paid me.
“Appearance to the contrary, Mr. Austen, I loved my wife. My feeling for her was against the force of all reason — I had long known what she was. A spendthrift, a libertine, an unprincipled creature who lived only for pleasure. But I had waited perhaps too long to marry— and when I fell in love, I did so with utter heedlessness. I threw caution to the winds. I sacrificed everything— pride, principle, even common sense — to win Francoise from her family, and at length I prevailed.”
“And your wife, sir?” Neddie enquired drily. “She met your passion with an equal ardour?”
“She accepted it as a familiar token; men had been driving themselves mad about her since she was sixteen. But Francoise cared for no one but herself. Herself— and her guardian's son.”
“The present Comte.”
Grey must have nodded assent, for no sound fell upon my ears.
“It was in part to separate them that her guardian— the late Comte — betrothed Franchise to me. He must have known that once united in marriage, Hippolyte and his ward would destroy the Penfleur heritage. They are — or were — both selfish, headstrong, dissipated characters; neither restraint nor prudence would survive in their household. They could not be allowed to ruin what he jealously nurtured through revolution and the Empire's rise. And so Francoise was despatched to England.”
“He sold her to the highest bidder,” Neddie said harshly.
“And I was pleased to buy,” Mr. Grey returned, without a flicker of emotion. “I counted the purchase cheap, so mad was I to claim Francoise.”
But what, I thought, had been the currency of exchange? How much of his own financial house had Valentine Grey consigned to his enemy's bankers?
“The letter that was discovered in your wife's novel, Mr. Grey,” my brother broke in. “It was written by the Comte, I presume.”
“Of course.” Grey dismissed this abruptly. “I knew his hand the moment you showed it me. I merely denied the fact, from a desire to keep everything that was painful at bay. That letter can have nothing to do with my wife's death.”
“It may have everything to do with it.”
Grey turned. “What can you mean? Even did the Comte intend to meet my wife by night on the shingle at Pegwell, he cannot have been at the Canterbury Races the very same morning. Every sort of caution would inform against it. And why should he kill her, if he loved her enough to plead for flight? It is beyond all understanding.”
“Perhaps she refused him.”
“Refused him?” Grey's voice was incredulous. “She could refuse Hippolyte nothing, Mr. Austen, from the time she was a girl.”
“Perhaps she had learned to love her husband. Perhaps she thought to remain in Kent, and wrote to the Comte informing him of as much. In a jealous rage, he waited upon the Wingham road, and waylaid her coach…”
“… only to lay the blame upon a complete unknown, the absent Mr. Collingforth? It will not do, Mr. Austen; it decidedly will not do. A man of the Comte's cunning would certainly engage for his rival to hang; he should place the blame squarely upon my shoulders, and laugh the length of my road to Hell. Unless—”
There was a troubling stillness, an interval filled with thought. Then Grey said, “Is that what he told you last evening? That I had strangled Francoise, because she had determined to elope?”
“The Comte de Penfleur said very little to your detriment, sir.” Neddie's attitude was easy. “He may have intimated a good deal — that you had neglected your wife, that you bore her litde affection, and, indeed, had perhaps allowed her to expose herself to the ridicule of the neighbourhood, from a desire to be rid of her through some deplorable scandal—”
“You call this very little?” Mr. Grey burst out. “Upon my word, Austen, I should tremble to learn what you consider a great deal!”