wealth and privilege, but nor did he like calling men 'my lord' unless he truly found them or their office worthy of respect. He had no doubt that the Marquess of Skavadale had noted that reluctance, just as Sandman had noted that the Marquess was gentleman enough not to remark on it. But though Sandman was unwilling to address Lord Christopher Carne as my lord, he was equally unwilling to call him Kit, so it was better to call him nothing.
Sandman just listened. Lord Christopher Carne was a nervous, hesitant young man with thick-lensed spectacles. He was very short, had thin hair and the faintest suggestion of a stammer. In all he was not a prepossessing man, though he did possess an intensity of manner that compensated for his apparent weakness. 'My father,' he told Sandman, 'is a dreadful man, just d-dreadful.'
'Dreadful?'
'It is as though the ten commandments, Sandman, were quite d-deliberately compiled as a challenge to him. Especially the seventh!'
'Adultery?'
'Of course. He ignores it, Sandman, ignores it!' Behind the magnifying lenses of his glasses Lord Christopher's eyes widened as though the very thought of adultery was horrid, then his lordship blushed as if to mention it was shameful. He was dressed, Sandman noted, respectably enough in a well-cut coat and a fine shirt, but the cuffs of both were stained with ink, betraying a bookish disposition. 'My p-point,' Lord Christopher seemed uncomfortable under Sandman's scrutiny, 'is that like many habitual sinners, my father takes umbrage when he is sinned against.'
'I don't understand.'
Lord Christopher blinked several times. 'He has sinned with many men's wives, Captain Sandman,' he said uncomfortably, 'but he was furious when his own wife was unfaithful.'
'Your stepmother?'
'Just so. He threatened to kill her! I heard him.'
'To threaten to kill someone,' Sandman observed, 'is not the same as killing them.'
'I am apprised of the difference,' Lord Christopher answered with a surprising asperity, 'but I have talked with Alexander and he tells me you have a duty to the painter, Cordell?'
'Corday.'
'Just so, and I cannot believe, cannot believe he did it! What cause did he have? But my father, Sandman, my father had cause.' Lord Christopher spoke with a savage vehemence, even leaning forward and gripping Sandman's wrist as he made the accusation. Then, realising what he had done, he blushed and let go. 'You will perhaps understand,' he went on more mildly, 'if I tell you a little of my father's story.'
The tale was briefly told. The Earl's first wife, Lord Christopher's mother, had been the daughter of a noble family and, Lord Christopher averred, a living saint. 'He treated her wretchedly, Sandman,' he said, 'shaming her, abusing her and insulting her, but she endured it with a Christian forbearance until she died. That was in 'nine. God rest her dear soul.'
'Amen,' Sandman said piously.
'He hardly mourned her,' Lord Christopher said indignantly, 'but just went on taking women to his bed and among them was Celia Collett. She was scarce a child, Sandman, a mere third his age! But he was besotted.'
'Celia Collett?'
'My stepmother, and she was clever, Sandman, she was clever.' The savagery was back in his voice. 'She was an opera dancer at the Sans Pareil. Do you know it?'
'I know of it,' Sandman said mildly. The Sans Pareil on the Strand was one of the new unlicensed theatres that put on entertainments that were lavish with dance and song and if Celia, Countess of Avebury, had graced its stage then she must have been beautiful.
'She refused his advances,' Lord Christopher took up his tale again. 'She turned him down flat! Kept him from her b-bed till he married her, and then she led him a dance, Sandman, a dance! I won't say he didn't deserve it, for he did, but she took what money she could and used it to buy horns for his head.'
'You obviously didn't like her?' Sandman observed.
Lord Christopher blushed again. 'I hardly knew her,' he said uncomfortably, 'but what was there to like? The woman had no religion, few manners and scarce any education.'
'Did your father — does your father,' Sandman amended himself, 'care for such things as religion, manners or education?'
Lord Christopher frowned as though he did not understand the question, then nodded. 'You have understood him precisely,' he said. 'My father cares nothing for God, for letters or for courtesy. He hates me, Sandman, and do you know why? Because the estate is entailed onto me. His own father did that, his very own father!' Lord Christopher tapped the table to emphasise his point. Sandman said nothing, but he understood that an entailed estate implied a great insult to the present Earl of Avebury for it meant that his father, Lord Christopher's grandfather, had so mistrusted his own son that he had made certain he could not inherit the family fortune. Instead it was placed in the hands of trustees and, though the present earl could live off the estate's income, the capital and the land and investments would all be held in trust until he died, when they would pass to Lord Christopher. 'He hates me,' Lord Christopher went on, 'not only because of the entail, but because I have expressed a wish to take holy orders.'
'A wish?' Sandman asked.
'It is not a step to b-be taken lightly,' Lord Christopher said sternly.
'Indeed not,' Sandman said.
'And my father knows that when he dies and the family fortune passes to me that it will be used in God's service. That annoys him.'
The conversation, Sandman thought, had passed a long way from Lord Christopher's assertion that his father had committed the murder. 'It is, I understand,' he said carefully, 'a considerable fortune?'
'Very considerable,' Lord Christopher said evenly.
Sandman leant back. Gales of laughter gusted about the taproom which was crowded now, though folk instinctively avoided the booth where Sandman and Lord Christopher talked so earnestly. Lord Alexander was staring with doglike devotion at Sally, oblivious of the other men trying to catch her attention. Sandman looked back to the diminutive Lord Christopher. 'Your stepmother,' he said, 'had a considerable household in Mount Street. What happened to those servants?'
Lord Christopher blinked rapidly as if the question surprised him. 'I have no conception.'
'Would they have gone to your father's estate?'
'They might.' Lord Christopher sounded dubious. 'Why do you ask?'
Sandman shrugged, as if the questions he was asking were of no great importance, though the truth was that he disliked Lord Christopher and he also knew that dislike was as irrational and unfair as his distaste for Charles Corday. Lord Christopher, like Corday, lacked what, for want of a better word, Sandman thought of as manliness. He doubted that Lord Christopher was a pixie, as Sally would put it, indeed the glances he kept throwing towards Sally suggested the opposite, but there was a petulant weakness in him. Sandman could imagine this small, learned man as a clergyman obsessed with his congregation's pettiest sins, and his distaste for Lord Christopher meant he had no wish to prolong this conversation so instead of admitting to Meg's existence he just said that he would like to discover from the servants what had happened on the day of the Countess's murder.
'If they're loyal to my father,' Lord Christopher said, 'they will tell you nothing.'
'Why should that loyalty make them dumb?'
'Because he killed her!' Lord Christopher cried too loudly, and immediately blushed when he saw he had attracted the attention of folk at other tables. 'Or at least he c-caused her to be killed. He has gout, he no longer walks far, but he has men who are loyal to him, men who do his bidding, evil men.' He shuddered. 'You must tell the Home Secretary that Corday is innocent.'
'I doubt it will make any difference if I do,' Sandman said.
'No? Why? In God's name, why?'
'Lord Sidmouth takes the view that Corday has already been found guilty,' Sandman explained, 'so to change that verdict I need either to produce the true murderer, with a confession, or else adduce proof of Corday's innocence that is incontrovertible. Opinion, alas, does not suffice.'
Lord Christopher gazed at Sandman in silence for a few heartbeats. 'You must?'
'Of course I must.'
