“Running Bear,” I said. “Right.”
“You’ve no objection to my discussing this with him?”
“Not me,” I said. “Ask him whatever you want.”
“Good. I thank you.”
“Don’t mention it, Sir Arthur.” I stood up. “Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to run myself. I need to talk to Harry about something.”
“As I hear it, sir,” said Briggs, “you’re one of the Pinkertons. The American detectives, sir.”
“You hear it right, Mr. Briggs,” I said.
We were in the library, just the two of us, and the door was shut.
Briggs glanced toward the closed door. In only a minute or so I had learned that he could put a pretty good assortment of expressions on his pale narrow face. This one, as he looked back toward the door, was furtive. The next one, when he turned back to me, was politely inquisitive. “As I hear it, sir, you Pinkerton gentlemen have access to, um, certain discretionary funds, shall we say, sir. Money which on occasion you are permitted to, um, dispense to those individuals who come forward to assist you in your enquiries.”
“We sometimes pay for information,” I admitted.
“And how much, if I may ask, might you be permitted to, ah, allocate, sir?”
“That depends on the information.”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. You were enquiring, as I recollect, about individuals who might recently have visited the late Earl?”
“That’s right. You know of any, Mr. Briggs?”
“Well, sir.” He made a dainty cough into his balled fist. “It would be imprudent of me, wouldn’t it, sir, to impart such information as I might possess without the two of us, you and I, first coming to some general category of understanding, as one might say.”
I smiled. “I could see my way to a pound.”
He frowned. “Oh, that is a pity, sir. Because, you see, I must tell you that the, um, emolument which I myself had in mind was of a rather larger order, sir.”
“How much larger?”
He glanced at the door and then back at me. “Well, to be perfectly frank, sir, I was contemplating an amount which more nearly approached the figure of, oh, shall we say five pounds, sir?”
“How do I know I can’t get the information from someone else, and for free?”
“Oh no, sir,” he said sadly. “No, that would be quite impossible. Inconceivable, sir. I am confident, sir, entirely so, that I am the sole owner, shall we say, of this intelligence.”
“You could be wrong about that.”
“I could, sir, yes. Logically speaking. But I am certain, in this particular instance, sir, that I am not.”
“I can go to three pounds, Mr. Briggs. That’s where I tap out.”
Briggs thought about that. He studied the cut of my jacket, the length of my pants, the shine of my shoes, or the lack of one. Finally he sighed. “You have the better of me, sir, I must tell you. But very well. I accept, sir.” He coughed into his fist again. All that remains at this juncture is for the actual, um, disbursement to take place, sir.”
I reached into my back pocket and tugged out my wallet. If I didn’t pay him now, he’d probably keep talking like that.
I gave him three pound notes and he folded them neatly and slipped them into his jacket pocket.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “Well now, sir, what you need to know, initially, is that we have a member of the household staff named Darleen, sir…”
He kept talking like that anyway, and it took him a while to get everything out. But what he said, basically, was that this Darleen, one of the maids, had been secretly visiting the Earl’s bedroom at night for the past few months.
I said, “And no one else knew about this, Mr. Briggs?”
“No one, sir. The young woman would bide her time, you see, until after two o’clock in the morning, and by that time Carson, the Earl’s valet, was fast asleep.”
“So how do you know about it?”
“Well, sir, I confess to you that until rather recently the young woman and I, well, we had a certain, ah, understanding.”
“The two of you were involved.”
“In a manner of speaking, sir, yes.”
“And she dropped you for the Earl.”
He nodded sadly. “Well, sir, it does go without saying, does it not, that an individual such as the Earl would be in a better position than I, sir, to offer the young woman inducements of, um, shall we say a financial nature?”
I nodded. “And when did this all start, Mr. Briggs?”
“Several months ago, sir. Sometime in June. Carson was ill, and Mrs. Blandings-the housekeeper, sir-sent the young woman to the Earl’s room with his afternoon tea. That evening-or, I should say, early the next morning-she made her first clandestine visit.”
“And the visits have been going on ever since?”
“Yes, sir. Regularly, sir.”
“Every day?”
“No, sir, not so often as that. Two or three times a week, I should say.”
“Up until the time the Earl died?”
“So far as I know, sir. I must tell you, sir, that the young woman and I have ceased communicating.”
Beyond Briggs, in the north wall of the library, surrounded by rows of books, there was a closet or a storage room with a white wooden door. The door was slightly ajar now. It had been closed when I got here.
“Okay, Mr. Briggs,” I said. “Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome, sir.” He gave a small bow and then he turned and sailed off. He stopped at the library entrance, opened that door, and turned back to me. “Shall I leave this opened, sir, or closed?”
“Closed,” I told him.
“Very good, sir,” he said, and he glided through it and pulled it shut behind him.
I reached into my coat pocket and slid out the Colt automatic and I pointed it at the door. Without bending over, I slipped off my shoes. Silently, in stocking feet, I padded around the sofa until I was about six feet from the closet door.
“Okay,” I said. “You in the closet. Come on out of there.”
The Evening Post
Maplewhite, Devon
August 18 (again)
Dear Evangeline,
So much has happened, and within so few hours, that I honestly don’t know where to begin.
It’s really a hopeless task, Evy, scribbling these letters. Life keeps overtaking my account of it. I feel like Sisyphus, but poor Sisyphus had only a single paltry boulder to fret over, and shove about. Every time I succeed in wrestling one of my boulders up the hill (and into the post), another boulder trundles down the slope, knocks me down, and rumbles over me.
Where was I? I had just fainted gothically from my horse, I believe, at the close of the last letter. According to Mrs Corneille, I should have hurtled to the gravel pathway, had Mr Beaumont not swiftly interposed himself between me and it. He is, perhaps, rather more useful than he appears to be. (And it transpires that he is not what, since he arrived, he has claimed to be. More on this later.)
It was all a dreadful bother after that, people hovering over me and coddling me and whisking me off to bed. Mrs Corneille enlisted Dr Auerbach to examine me, which he did with a dreadful bedside manner, all fumbling thumbs and darting glances. He hasn’t practiced medicine for some time, he told me; and I can easily believe him. His prognosis was certainly less than accurate; he told me that “there might be some small bruising”; in fact I am turning, rather spectacularly, into an aubergine.
