Prince Of Secrets

The Prince called him into the game. Lady Heneage came to sit by him, to be advised as her husband was advising Susanna. Dinah had refused to play. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she had asked him earlier. ‘But I find it tedious.’

Cobie found it tedious, too, but had his reasons for playing. One of them being that watching Sir Ratcliffe carefully seemed reasonable when he was part of the game. He won a little himself. Lady Heneage won more until she announced that she was tired and needed an early night—which gave the Grants the opportunity to excuse themselves as well.

They had a suite of rooms, which included a small drawing room as well as two bedrooms, and a rather stark closet of a bathroom off Cobie’s bedroom, nothing like the luxurious one in Park Lane to which Dinah had grown accustomed.

‘What a boring way of passing the time,’ she exclaimed of the baccarat game.

‘True,’ said her husband. ‘I can think of a much better way, can’t you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she told him fervently, inviting him into her bed.

Well, at least if he were pursuing an affaire with Susanna here, at Markendale, she would soon know, since everyone knew of the amorous adventures of everyone else. It seemed as though Susanna had taken up with Sir Ratcliffe again, which was a great relief, and long might it last, she thought naughtily, before Cobie leapt into her bed, and thought disappeared altogether, and sensation was all…

Later on, in the small hours, sleepless, his wife on his arm, Cobie lay on his back and thought about Lady Heneage, Sir Ratcliffe, two dead children, and a diamond necklace which was hated by its owner—or temporary owner—for heirlooms were ambiguous things, their owner being unable to do anything but allow them to be passed on to the next Lady of the Heneage household when her husband died.

He had once read Trollope’s novel, The Eustace Diamonds. He remembered that Lizzie Eustace, who, unlike Lady Heneage, had loved her diamonds fiercely, had refused to hand them over when her husband died, and had carried them around with her in a small safe. She then stole them herself, claiming that someone else had.

Sir Ratcliffe was sure to carry the diamonds in a safe—and did he also hide the Prince of Wales’s letters in it? One might suppose so. Where else could be better? He would need to know that they were secure. How strong would the safe be? Could a man who had mastered the art of cracking safes, not only by using dynamite, but by more subtle, criminal means, crack Sir Ratcliffe’s?

Cobie had reconnoitred to some purpose that afternoon, and now knew the exact lay-out of the floor on which he was sleeping. The thing would be to arrange matters so that it looked as though an outsider was the thief—that is, if he managed to steal anything.

Chance, chance, he said to himself, be my friend again.

Dinah stirred as though she had heard him. He looked down at her fondly. After all, by chance, he had acquired a wife who pleased him in bed, unlikely though that had seemed when he had decided to marry her. He would have to be sure that she was sleeping peacefully in her own room when he carried out the plan which had taken shape in his mind. He slept at last, knowing ruefully that, for his plan to work, Sir Ratcliffe would have to be in Susanna’s bed, not his own.

For that, as well as for Lizzie and the other dead child, Sir Ratcliffe would lose more than his letters… Meantime, he would watch the swine enjoy himself, knowing the day of reckoning was coming, and soon—the next night, if all went well.

All did go well. He even enjoyed watching his intended victim win again at the races on the following afternoon and at the baccarat table at night. The grey man, Beauchamp, stopped him on the stairs on the way to dinner, ostensibly to admire a painting by Richard Wilson which hung above them, actually to say conversationally, ‘Have you thought over what we discussed at Sandringham, Mr Grant? Have you come to a conclusion yet?’

Cobie, watching Dinah talking to Lady Heneage in the hall below, said, apparently idly, ‘Oh, yes, indeed, Mr Beauchamp,’ and then fell silent. Playing cat and mouse was a game he excelled at.

There was a hint of exasperation in Beauchamp’s tone. ‘And?’

‘And?’ Cobie’s smile was as sweet as he could make it. ‘Why, as to that, Mr Beauchamp, sir, you will have to wait and see. It should add interest to your stay here. And, yes, the Richard Wilson is superb, one of his best, don’t you think.’

With that he walked lightly down to join Dinah and Lady Heneage who did not appear to be sharing her husband’s happiness at his constant winning. Indeed, the one person Sir Ratcliffe wasn’t happy with was his wife. When she went to her room that night, he caught her up, and followed her in.

‘A word with you,’ he said, his face ugly, his hand on her arm. She tried to shake it off, but couldn’t. ‘What are you doing, toadying up to that swine, Grant? I won’t have it, do you hear me? Keep away from him.’

Still trying to shake herself free she said defiantly, ‘No, indeed. I do not interfere with your pleasures, none of which is innocent. My pleasure in talking to Mr Grant is innocent. I shall do as I please.’

‘That you won’t,’ he snarled, and twisted her arm cruelly. ‘You’ll do as you are told, or it will be the worse for you.’

She tried to pull away from him, but failed again. ‘I won’t do as you bid me. You have forfeited that right.’

This time he let go of her arm only to give her a backhanded blow across the face. ‘You heard what I said, woman. You grow a deal too bold these days.’

‘My life is pure,’ she told him, still defiant. ‘Can you say as much?’

He struck her again, knocking her to the floor. He bent down and carelessly stripped her of her diamonds.

‘Damn you, woman, you don’t deserve these. Perhaps one day I might have a woman I should be proud to see wearing them. May it soon come.’

He turned and left her. She struggled to her feet. He was doubtless going to Susanna Winthrop, and she wondered whether he was as cruel to her as he was to his unconsidered wife. Not yet, perhaps.

Slowly, she prepared for the night, not ringing for her maid. She climbed into bed painfully; there were bruises on her wrist and on her arms and legs where she had fallen heavily. Pain and shame kept her from sleep, as it did on many nights.

Some time after midnight, she dozed lightly, but a slight sound woke her. It seemed to come from her husband’s room, which she had thought to be empty. Moved by curiosity, wondering who could be there, for it was not Sir Ratcliffe’s habit to return from Susanna’s room until dawn, she rose, walked to his bedroom door to fling it open and switched on the light to see—what?

A man, all in black, wearing a kind of muffler which covered his head and face except for his eyes. He had Sir Ratcliffe’s small safe open before him on the dressing table in the window to take full advantage of the moonlight and was lifting out of it the leather cases in which the Heneage diamonds were kept. The necklace had already been abstracted and glittered on a large black silk handkerchief spread out on the bed.

For some reason she wasn’t frightened, although beforehand she would have thought that she would have been paralysed by fear. The burglar, for he was a burglar, calmly continued to pull out the cases. She now saw that a pile of papers, removed from the safe, also lay half-folded in the handkerchief, ready to be taken away.

For a moment she and the burglar stared at one another. She thought of giving the alarm, and then she thought of the misery which her life with Sir Ratcliffe had brought her, how the diamonds lay like fire on her skin, burning it, and that she hated them and him.

Slowly, slowly, she turned around, switched off the light, so that now only the moon illuminated the room, and returned to her bed, leaving the intruding thief to do his work.

Lady Heneage slept well for the first time in months. The thought of her husband’s face when he found his safe pillaged brought a smile to her lips as consciousness faded.

When the door had opened Cobie’s first thought was that it might be Sir Ratcliffe returning early from Susanna’s bed. And if so, what should he do then?

But it was Lady Heneage, ghost-like in a long white nightdress, her greying hair in a plait down her back, her eyes fearless, looking straight at him. He could have applauded her—he might have expected hysterics or wild screaming, either of which would have brought all the inhabitants of Markendale at the run, leaving him to escape…if he could.

Cobie decided to do nothing, simply to continue calmly unpacking the diamonds from the safe. To move towards her, to say anything, might only serve to destroy her unnatural calm.

She hesitated. She put up a hand to switch off the light, before walking silently from the room. The whole episode had taken only one nerve-shattering minute. From wondering sardonically what would follow if he were caught, he moved to understanding what her inaction, her refusal to arouse the house, told him of her relations with her husband.

Her intrusion also told him that the tightrope on which he was walking was higher above the ground than was usual, even for him. He didn’t think that he had been recognised. He did think that it behoved him to move as speedily as he could, which he did. At the end he took a card from his pocket and put it into the empty safe which he left, prominent in all its rifled glory on the dressing table.

The last leg of his dangerous odyssey lay before him. His booty in his pockets, he wriggled through the sash window, leaving it open. It was the work of a moment to walk briskly along the balcony to enter his bedroom through his own open window. Earlier, he had placed a ladder, fetched from the garden, to lean against the orangery wall, giving the impression of an outsider having gained entrance.

Luck had been with him again, but for how long? One day the horse beneath him would fall at one of the fences he was trying to take, and that would be the end—but not yet, please. He laughed noiselessly at the thought of the brouhaha the rifled safe would cause in the morning.

He parcelled up the Prince’s letters, to place them in a large and expensive envelope of white hand-made paper which he sealed with an elaborate and meaningless seal, bought from a pawnbroker’s in a dingy part of London, sinking it deep into the hot wax.

The envelope was addressed as to the personal attention of HRH the Prince of Wales. In the morning he would set out for his pre-breakfast ride—he had been taking one for the last week, so that his being up at such a time would cause no comment, and on his way out he would slip the envelope on to the table where the incoming mail was placed.

His last act after hiding the diamonds was to take a bath and dress himself for bed. Angelic in pure white, his newly washed and dried hair clustered in curls about his head, he offered the world the impression of a cinquecento saint. He opened the communicating door between Dinah’s room and his, to slip quietly into her bed where she lay sleeping, a small smile on her face, to be discovered by her in the early hours and to celebrate with him not only his presence, but his unknown skulduggery.

Sir Ratcliffe Heneage lay in bed with Susanna Winthrop in the curve of his arm. It was almost dawn, time for him to leave. He began to move; she protested against him in half-sleep. Waking fully, she said, a little fretful, ‘I really—can’t think what I’m going to do.’

He tensed a little, and asked, ‘About what?’ He was a trifle apprehensive. It was always dangerous when women began to think. Best if they only ever felt.

‘About the fact that I’m having a baby.’

‘What is there to do? Your husband knows, and hasn’t made anything of it.’

He could really do without this sort of thing to trouble him. Yesterday’s letters from his bankers and his creditors were enough trouble for a fellow without a woman having second thoughts when he was in bed with her. He was sure she was having second thoughts. He knew the tone of voice she was using only too well.