Free Painting The Darkness by Robert Goddard Page B

whilst hope remained, however slender. But I am not to be swayed by such …
faiblesse du coeur.’
    ‘
Nor, strangely enough, is Lady Davenall. I do understand a father’s weakness. But what of a mother’s?
’
    For the first time, Moncalieri’s face betrayed a faint tremor of reaction. ‘Too subtle, monsieur. Too subtle for your own good, I think.’ His eyes fixed themselves upon me whilst the piano played on behind us and the sound of opening and closing doors elsewhere in the house announced an arrival. ‘Ask yourself only one question. Do you wish James Davenall to be alive – or dead? I suggest you think well before answering, because much may depend upon it
.’
    Cleveland stopped playing in the middle of a bar and swung round. ‘If it comes to it, Count, I don’t wish poor old Jimmy dead. He was my friend, dammit
.’
    ‘
Is not Hugo your friend? Do you wish him to lose his title and his fortune?
’
    ‘
Well … no
.’
    ‘
Then, you do wish James dead, Frédéric, just as Monsieur Trenchard does
.’
    ‘
Do I?
’
    ‘
I believe so, monsieur. I believe each of us here this evening wishes the same. That is why we came
.’
    The Count was right, of course. Over dinner, Richard Davenall listed the questions he would put to Norton, the ways he hoped to catch him out, the traps he thought he might fall into, and we all nodded and consented to play our parts. Not for the first time, I could not keep from my mind the awful thought: How would it feel to return as Norton claimed he had and be denied by those who once had called him son and brother and friend? I can claim no credit for the sentiment, for it was as quickly swamped by the growing conviction that I must show him no quarter: in the contest about to open, it was every man for himself. Yet the worst of it was that I did not feel his equal. If only Richard Davenall could have announced that his investigations had uncovered a real, live, fraudulent James Norton. But he had learned nothing: Norton remained a total enigma. That, I think, is why the foreboding with which the journey to Somerset had left me remained as strong as ever, proof against our confident talk of crushing his claim once and for all. So long as I did not know our enemy, I could not truly believe that we had the beating of him
.
    IV
    It had rained all morning in Holborn. The traffic had reduced the street to squelching lines of mud, whilst standing pools in sluggish gutters encroached on the crowded pavements. Awnings dripped and horses steamed; costermongers cursed and carts lurched; the louring clouds choked and smeared the business of the day. Every surface was clammy, every small silence invaded by the irregular percussion of the rain. Where did the river end and the city begin? No man, squinting and storm-collared, could be certain on such a day as this.
    It was wanting but an hour to noon, yet, in confirmation of the conditions, the gas-lamps burned in the partners’ room of Warburton, Makepeace & Thrower, the high gallery windows that looked up Gray’s Inn Road doing little to relieve the gloom. Rain washed the mullioned glass and cast its mobile shadow on the plaster friezework; an unfastened stay rattled periodically at a lofty transom; coal sputtered and flared in a draughty grate; and Hector Warburton called the meeting to order.
    ‘Gentlemen, now that introductions are concluded, may we begin?’
    Warburton was seated at the head of the table, in the high-backed chair normally reserved for his father: the fire was behind him and so did nothing to light his pale and predatory features. Not so James Norton, who sat to his left, leaning slightly forward, with hands resting calmly on the table, his expression clear-browed and placidly expectant, firelight catching in his eyes a look bordering on the arrogantly confident. Opposite him, Warburton’s clerk, Lechlade, stooped diligently over his papers, making a preliminary note of the proceedings. Next to Lechlade, Sir Hugo