The Dorset House Affair (5 page)

‘The third party would like you to check that the contents of that envelope are satisfactory, sir,’ said Box. De Bellefort raised a haughty eyebrow, and then opened the envelope. He glanced briefly at the Treasury cheque, and then put the envelope and its contents into his pocket.

‘That is quite in order,’ said De Bellefort. ‘Has the third party ordered you to check the authenticity of the letter that I have just given you?’ There was a sneering condescension in the Frenchman’s voice, and in his choice of the word ‘ordered’, that prompted Box to reply in kind.

‘Certainly not, sir. I will hand it to him, unsealed, first thing tomorrow morning. If it’s
not
the letter in question, then the third party knows that a polite request to Field Marshal Claygate will put him on your tail.’

De Bellefort blushed with anger, but said nothing. He turned on his heel and left the room. As Box carefully secured the inside pocket of his suit with a pin, he thought of the trembling arrogance of Peter Sullivan – an arrogance that had led him to the gallows.

‘Elizabeth,’ said Maurice Claygate, ‘I’ve been wanting to have a private word with you all day, but I never seemed to get the chance. Come into the gallery with me. We can be private there for a few minutes.’

She had seen him catch sight of her, and detach himself from his little coterie of friends. They had glanced in her direction, and one of them had whispered something in Maurice’s ear. The others had laughed, but Maurice had waved them away angrily. Whatever could he want with her, on this night, of all nights?

He led her out of the grand saloon into a quiet, stone-flagged gallery, where portraits of his ancestors hung. The curtains were closed and the room was unlit, but sufficient light filtered in from the brilliantly lighted saloon for them to see each other. Maurice made no attempt to touch her, and they stood awkwardly beneath a great painting of a seventeenth-century Claygate in scarlet uniform and full-bottomed wig. They were both conscious of the babel of voices echoing from the vaulted ceiling of the grand saloon.

Maurice looked ill at ease, but he was as handsome as ever, with the unconscious allure that had enslaved her when she had first seen him. She was free of his magical attraction, now. She watched him silently, waiting for him to speak. She knew
instinctively
what he was going to say, and had already rehearsed her reply.

‘I say, Beth,’ he began, stammering a little, ‘you don’t mind about Julia, do you?
Really
mind, I mean? You and I will always be special friends. You never wrote a word to me after you returned to France. I wanted to write, but Mother said it would be unwise. Why didn’t you write? Did you hate me so much?’

She laughed, and making a Herculean attempt to mask her revulsion, she placed a hand gently on his arm.

‘Dear Maurice,’ she said, ‘don’t be so silly! When we parted, I wished to leave you quite free to form other attachments without being plagued by a ghost from the past. Of course I don’t mind, as you put it. Although I’ve never met Julia Maltravers, I’m sure she’ll make you an excellent wife.’

‘I don’t want you to feel let down, Beth, that’s all. A fellow at the club the other night took me to task about it, and I’ve
remembered
what he said. You see, I may have given you the impression that you and I – that we would perhaps marry one day. Maybe we would have done, but then Julia—’

‘But then Julia came along, and swept you off your feet! Do go away, Maurice, and stop being morbid! Go back to your friends.
We both made foolish mistakes. Our intimacy was not all your fault.’

She saw him relax in relief. He gave a carefree laugh, and kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘Bless you, Elizabeth,’ he said, and walked lightly from the gallery.

Elizabeth de Bellefort sat down at a table in the centre of the gallery, and listened to the noise of revelry from the great chamber beyond. How happy everybody seemed! Would they feel so elated when that night’s grim work was done?

Earlier in the evening, she had stood in the sitting-room of her private suite on the first floor of the great mansion, watching her brother as he had opened the top drawer of a dressing-table. He had withdrawn a bulky object wrapped in a silk head scarf, which he had carefully removed, revealing to view the heavy Webley Mk II .455 revolver, which he had given to her in Normandy.

‘You understand that there are six rounds in the cylinder?’ he had asked her. ‘You must fire just one shot, and then throw the pistol down. The cartridge will remain in the cylinder until someone breaks open the breech. You see the thumb catch? It is essential that it remains in the “off” position’ – he had made a swift movement with his thumb – ‘as it is now. When the deed is done, throw the gun down, and leave the passage immediately. It is an act of private vengeance. No one in this house must know what you have done.’

Elizabeth de Bellefort had picked up a capacious reticule from the dressing-table, and carefully placed the pistol inside it.

De Bellefort had pointed to a table in the centre of the room, where two full liqueur glasses stood beside an open bottle. She had known that the glasses contained Calvados, the apple liqueur of their native Normandy. Together, they had drunk a solemn toast to their future success. Since then, she had felt a curious drowsiness, a sense of detachment from reality. The music of the orchestra had sounded warped and muted, and she seemed to float rather than walk….

When Maurice had told her, over a year ago, that her services as a lover were no longer required, she had behaved with the kind of impeccable dignity expected of a French noblewoman. She and her brother had returned to the Manoir de Saint-Louis. In the
fullness
of time, she had learned that she was pregnant, and had confessed as much to her brother.

Alain had been a tower of strength, and had taken full command of the situation. The English family, including the scapegrace Maurice, would be told nothing of her plight. No one must know that she had conceived a child out of wedlock. When her time drew near, Elizabeth had been taken to a remote hospice run by the Visitation Sisters, and there she had been delivered of a stillborn child.

The sisters had done their duty, but their unspoken contempt for her as a fallen woman had been only too palpable. Or had she imagined that?

A severe brainstorm had followed this devastating experience, and she had been confined for a time to the insane asylum of Bon Sauveur at Caen. When she had recovered, her brother had urged her to seek vengeance on the man who had brought her to the verge of madness, and she had solemnly agreed to do so. Family honour was very precious to both of them.

‘You don’t mind about Julia, do you?’ Maurice had asked her. No; she did not mind about Julia. Because whoever she was, and whatever her particular fascinations, she would never become the wife of Maurice Claygate.

It seemed that by one consent all hundred guests had congregated on the long rear terrace of Dorset House to watch the firework display that would conclude the evening’s festivities. Flaring torches had been placed at intervals on the flags, and on some of the garden paths, so that Box could dimly make out the long covered passage on the far right of the garden, the door of which
Tom Fallon had opened for him during his visit to Dorset House earlier in the week.

As the stable clock struck ten, a massive barrage of explosions signalled the start of the display. A breathtaking spectacle of many-coloured exploding stars erupted across the night sky, temporarily lighting up the whole of the grounds. The audience cheered, and as the spectacle in the sky died away, there came a loud hissing and spluttering from somewhere in the dark beyond the lawn, and a great set piece burst into silver and crimson fire. The words ‘Happy Birthday, Maurice Claygate’ were suddenly illuminated by a flanking display of Catherine wheels, and
everybody
clapped. Box recalled his own excited visits to Sydenham as a boy, to witness the Guy Fawkes displays.

The air on the terrace was now permeated by the smell of gunpowder. An explosive show of Roman candles had begun, shooting their brilliant coloured balls of light high into the sky. Field Marshal and Lady Claygate were standing in admiration a few yards to Box’s left. They had been joined by their elder son, Major Edwin Claygate, and his wife. Of the pock-marked Monsieur de Bellefort and his sister there was no sign.

Box moved away through the crowd, and found himself near to Maurice Claygate, who was talking animatedly to a group of friends, all of whom had clearly drunk more than was good for them. There was a good deal of loud laughter, but the general noise level of the party had risen so high that the laughter was not especially noticed.

‘You’re a good fellow, Brasher, to take it so well,’ Maurice was saying. ‘I was dashed rude on Saturday – or was it Sunday? – and you’d have been quite within your rights to pummel my head. But it’s all been squared now, you know. I’ve—’

Maurice stopped as a man in the scarlet livery of a footman approached him, bearing a folded piece of paper on a tray.

‘Hello,’ said Maurice, ‘what do you want? You’re new here, aren’t you? A note? Well, let me see what it says.’ The footman
presented the note, and disappeared in the throng. Hello, thought Box, glancing after the retreating figure, I think I know you, my friend. Now what are
you
doing here tonight?

Box brought his gaze back to Maurice Claygate, and watched him as he read the note. He saw him raise his eyebrows in surprise, and then give a little amused smile.

‘Sorry, you fellows,’ he said. ‘A little assignation is on the cards. I’ll be back in time for the closing speech, I expect, and then perhaps we could all slope off to the Cockade Club?’

The others murmured their enthusiastic agreement to this plan, and in a moment Maurice Claygate was lost to sight in the crowd.

Another fireworks tableau, set up further down the garden, suddenly burst into life with a shattering roar, revealing the royal monogram VRI made from brilliantly coloured fiery fountains. When the patriotic tableau had died down to a glow, Field Marshal Claygate and his wife began to turn away. Evidently, the display was coming to an end.

But it was not quite over. A grand finale of bangers and flashers set up an exhilarating din, and almost immediately a whole battery of coloured rockets shrieked their way upwards, bathing the whole garden in a lurid glow. Then there came a single bang! from
somewhere
near the garden passage, followed immediately by a reverberating echo. If I were an imaginative man, thought Box, I’d say that that was a shot – a revolver shot, to be exact. But, of course, it could only have been another firework. He had always been astonished at the quite deafening racket set up by fireworks.

The crowd of guests had started to drift back from the terrace, talking animatedly of the evening’s entertainment. Box threaded his way through the throng of guests returning to the grand saloon for a final toast to Maurice Claygate before dispersing to their carriages.

Suddenly, a dramatic commotion erupted from somewhere beyond the saloon. Men’s voices were raised, and there came the chilling sound of a woman’s hysterical scream, high and plaintive.
This, thought Box, was no time to observe social etiquette. He shouldered his way through the crowd of startled guests and came into a circular vestibule, where three passages met.

A beautiful blonde young woman, pale-faced and trembling, stood with her back to a door in the wall, her arms spread out as though to prevent anyone seeking access. She was wearing a green dress of watered silk, and the light of the candle sconces in the vestibule reflected the many brilliant facets of her diamond
necklace
. Box had glimpsed her more than once in the evening’s assembly, but did not know who she was.

‘I’m a police officer,’ said Box without preamble. ‘Who are you, miss? And what’s the matter? You’re trembling. Did you hear a shot?’

The young woman looked at him with a kind of frozen fear that unnerved him. Her eyes held an expression of desperate panic.

‘A shot?’ the young woman stammered. ‘No. Why should I? It was a firework. I am Mademoiselle de Bellefort, a guest here in Sir John Claygate’s house.’ Even while she was speaking, her arms remained outstretched, guarding the door in the wall behind her. ‘What do you want?’ she continued. ‘There’s nothing there, I tell you. The garden passage – it is empty. Why should it – why…. Leave me alone!’