He then looked over the codices and asked me to bear with him until the evening. By then he hoped to have obtained permission from his superiors to hand over the manuscript, and various oriental specialists would have decided which codex they would want in exchange. I took my leave of him and informed the Earl by telegram that I would return with the manuscript the following day.
I lunched in a little Italian restaurant in Soho. The only meal I ever took in the hotel was dinner. Two English meals a day would have done for me.
When I got in, after my short walk, there was a letter waiting for me.
Dear Doctor
I’m sure you must have got back by now. Kindly call on me at Grosvenor House.
Eileen St Claire
That was one thing I had no desire to do. Since the business of the ring I felt the deepest distrust of her. I was convinced that she was part of the conspiracy against the Earl, and I determined to avoid the whole area around that particular hotel.
That afternoon I called on one or two friends, then made my way back to the British Museum. Everything was in order, permission had been granted, and the experts had chosen their codex.
“The Museum is in fact making an excellent exchange,” the Director told me. “Compared with others of its kind, the codex is worth five hundred pounds, while the manuscript is a lot of worthless nonsense, so far as I can judge. But the Earl certainly takes an interest in references to the family. There’s some impossible story in it about one of his ancestors.”
When I got back to the hotel with the various tomes, the porter gave me a meaningful look.
“There’s a lady waiting for you in the foyer.”
I went down and found Eileen St Claire. She was surrounded by elderly ladies from New Zealand, all sitting stiffly at their needlework. Not a word was uttered. They just stared at her with the profound contempt all women feel for a certain sort of beauty.
She greeted me with a smile, coolly and calmly, as if nothing could be more natural than for her to be waiting there for me. “You simply must have dinner with me,” she said. “It’s most important that I should speak with you.”
With the awkward manner of a schoolboy I cobbled together a couple of lies. I’m not a good liar. My various appointments with supposed friends must have sounded pretty implausible, and I probably made too many excuses.
Not for a moment did she go through the motions of believing me. She didn’t even dismiss my excuses as unimportant. She simply continued to insist that I dine with her.
My resistance gradually weakened. After all, it wasn’t every day I had the chance to dine with such a beautiful woman. And dinner at Grosvenor House would surely be of a different order to the one that threatened me at the hotel. And what could possibly happen? I would tell her only what I thought fit. I might even learn some things I didn’t know.
The reasons for my reluctance were not, in the first instance, particularly rational. No doubt I was clinging to the superstitious notion that nothing good could come from anything connected with Eileen St Claire because I found her so very beautiful. Such paradoxical taboos lurk at the heart of our desires.
In the end I gave my consent, by which time I would have been distraught had she changed her mind. I felt an inexpressible longing to see her doing such ordinary things as eating and drinking.
I took the books up to my room and locked them in the cupboard. As fast as was humanly possible, I changed for the evening, and went back down. She straightened my tie in the foyer.
One of her Hispanolas was waiting for us outside, and we glided off to Grosvenor House.
As soon as we were in the car she asked:
“So, how did it happen?”
“Exactly as you read in the papers. He fell from the second floor. Climbing was his passion, and it cost him his life.”
“That’s horrible. But I don’t believe it. I was with him once in Switzerland. He went up the most impossible rock faces, with the very worst reputations. I can’t imagine him falling from a simple balcony.”
“It’s happened to others. You climb a hundred rocks with no problem, and fall off the hundred-and-first, which is probably far less dangerous.”
“It couldn’t have happened to Maloney.”
“So what do you think did happen?” I asked, somewhat alarmed.
“He was pushed.”
“What do you mean? Who could have pushed him?”
“I don’t know. I can’t point to anyone in particular. But I’ve known the people at Llanvygan a lot longer than you have. You’ve no idea, Doctor, what you’ve got involved in.”
I had no intention of letting her know that I did: that I was fully aware that she and Maloney were members of a very dark plot. All I wanted was to have dinner with the beautiful woman Eileen St Claire, and not to talk about anything beyond what one usually does talk about with a beautiful woman.
We arrived at Grosvenor House. I gathered, with a mixture of surprise, pleasure and anxiety, that we were to dine in her private suite.
The dinner-for-two began as if we had no secrets to exchange but simply wished to pass the evening pleasantly. But it was quite hard work keeping her amused. She gave minimal responses to my contributions and made very few herself. The same cannot be said of me: the fine meal and the wine were already loosening my tongue.
She ate and drank much as anyone else would; in fact she ate with good appetite and proved a serious drinker. The wine seemed to make her more human. Her voice became a shade more natural and casual, and she looked one in the eye in an almost friendly way — or at least very seductively. Every so often I would put a personal question to her, but she evaded it every time.
It was only when we were on the dessert that some promising mutual acquaintances finally emerged. Over coffee I ventured the remark that Lady Nichols always donned Russian costume for intimate meetings with her Russian chauffeur, to ease his homesickness … and that Edwin Ponsonby preferred boys because women reminded him of Queen Alexandra, for whom he had excessive respect … and that Mme de Martignan was so offended by certain habits of her countrymen that she put a notice on the palm trees outside her villa in St Juan les Pins saying, ‘For dogs only’ … and at last we began to make progress.
By degrees my imagination became bolder. Perhaps we might even get on more intimate terms. You never could tell with Eileen St Claire. My poet friend Cristofoli had little idea what would happen to him that memorable Fourteenth July in Fontainebleau. It augured well that my chitter-chatter frankly amused her, and no mention was made of such uncomfortable topics as the ring.
The truth is, the dark secret I associated with her would have made her even more alluring, had she not already been alluring to an infinite degree.
And then, quite abruptly, I still don’t understand why, it burst from me:
“I did give the Earl your ring.”
“I thought so. And … no doubt he wasn’t altogether pleased.”
“Indeed. He made no comment; just turned his back on me.”
“Did you tell him who gave it to you?”
“What do you think? I gave you my word.”
“Poor Maloney wrote to me about some of the dreadful things that happened. Someone took a shot at the Earl. Who do they think was responsible?”
“They didn’t tell me.”
“If they did tell you, it wouldn’t have been the truth. Some day, when I get to know you better, I’ll tell you one or two facts about the Pendragons.”