Painting The Darkness (22 page)

‘A flying visit. But I’ve turned up some new evidence you might be interested in.’

Baverstock’s heart sank. Already, he sensed Lady Davenall would not approve. He wished he had never taken on her affairs and thought ruefully for a moment of the accolade he had first believed her patronage to be.

‘What can you tell me about Alfred Quinn?’

‘That rather depends on why you ask.’

As Trenchard explained, Baverstock’s heart sank still further. Miss Arrow’s bicycle – a forty-year-old newspaper-cutting – Mrs Oram’s macaw – a sighting in Sydney Gardens: Warburton would laugh at them.

‘Quinn, so I’m told, was valet to Sir Gervase Davenall,’ Trenchard concluded.

‘Yes,’ said Baverstock. ‘He was. And, later, butler.’

‘Was he dismissed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell me why?’

There seemed no point in refusing: it would only have encouraged him. ‘Lady Davenall reordered her affairs after Sir Gervase’s removal to a nursing home. She and Quinn did not … see eye to eye. I’m sure I told you—’

‘Is that all there was to it?’

‘As a matter of fact, no. Some of Sir Gervase’s possessions – a gold watch, a silver snuff-box, some cuff-links – went missing. It was suggested Quinn had taken them. The watch cropped up in the hands of a jeweller in Bradford-on-Avon, who confirmed that he had bought the items from Quinn. Quinn claimed Sir Gervase had given them to him prior to his collapse as tokens of his esteem. But selling them told against him. All in all, I should say he was lucky to escape without charges being brought against him.’

‘But he
was
turned out without a penny – after more than twenty years’ service.’

‘Not a moment too soon, some would say.’

‘Because he was a shady character?’

‘My impression was that he would not have been tolerated in another household. Sir Gervase presumably took him on out of sentiment.’

Trenchard leaned across the desk, a gleam of certainty in his eyes. ‘It’s my belief that Quinn’s plying Norton with all the knowledge he must have accumulated about the Davenalls over the years. It’s my belief he put Miss Whitaker up to spy on Dr Fiveash’s records. They stand to make a fortune between them, and Quinn would have his
revenge
on those who turned him out. Doesn’t it make sense?’

For all his awareness of how flimsy the evidence would appear in court, Baverstock could not deny that it did indeed make sense. He remembered the occasion, three years before, when he had confronted Quinn in his room at Cleave Court to tell him that he had to go. It was early December 1879, with Sir Gervase but lately removed to his nursing home and Baverstock still flushed with gratitude at Lady Davenall’s decision to use his services. It was an occasion, which, until now, had seemed merely a clinical disposal of disagreeable business, an occasion which, he now reflected, might not have been as inconsequential as he had supposed.

‘Lady Davenall wants you gone by the morning,’ said Baverstock peremptorily.

Quinn turned from the window, where he had been gazing down at the garden, and looked straight at him. It was the first time Baverstock had seen him out of uniform: he was surprised by how muscular the man was, rising fifty but with only flecks of grey in his short-cropped hair to suggest it. Quinn’s face was lean and sternly set, the brow somewhat hooded, the eyes darting and penetrative. He had the flattened nose and gnarled hands of a prizefighter, or the old soldier he was known to be. Beneath his respectful manner and featureless accent there had always seemed to be something watchful and threatening, something not quite suppressed. Baverstock shivered: the room was icy cold.

‘It’s assumed you’ll make no trouble.’

Quinn still said nothing.

‘Candidly, I think you’ve got off lightly. Lady Davenall has given you the benefit of very little doubt.’

Quinn put his hands on his hips and stared at Baverstock. Then he cocked one eyebrow and finally spoke. ‘Where did she find you?’

‘I hardly—’

‘Twenty-four years I served her husband. I know more of his secrets than she ever will. Does she really think she can afford to make an enemy of me?’

‘That’s not the issue, Quinn.’

‘Is it not? Be warned, Mr Lawyer. She hounded her son into suicide. She packed her husband off to a nursing home. She hired you to replace her cousin. Now she’s easing me off the premises. She’s a hard woman. Never forget it.’ He turned aside and pulled a carpet-bag from behind a chair; it was already full. ‘Tell her I’ll be gone by tonight. Bag and baggage.’

‘Good. There remains only the question of your outstanding wages. I’ve brought them with me.’ Baverstock drew the prepared envelope from his pocket – and held it out. ‘Correct to the end of the month.’

Quinn took the packet and tossed it into his bag. ‘I’m obliged.’

‘In the circumstances, it’s extremely generous.’

‘In the circumstances, it’s a bloody insult. But don’t worry. What this family owes me I’ll take – in my own good time.’

The slamming of the office door jolted Baverstock back from his recollections. He looked up, to find himself alone. Trenchard had gone.

VI

Nanny Pursglove, in her spick and span cottage by the swollen River Avon, was by some way the most welcoming of my hosts that day. Her only hint of disappointment was when I told her I was alone
.

‘
Mrs Trenchard not with you?’ she said, with a downcast look back at me as she led the way into her tiny sitting-room
.

‘
No,’ I replied. Then, to forestall further enquiry: ‘I was hoping you could tell me something about Alfred Quinn
.’

‘
Bless me, what would you be wanting to know about him?
’

‘
Mr Baverstock tells me he was dismissed
.’

‘
He would know, I’m sure
.’

‘
For thieving
.’

‘
So it was said. Will you take some tea?
’

‘
Was there any other reason suggested?
’

‘
Do sit down, Mr Trenchard. Lupin and I are forgetting ourselves.’ She filled a cup from the ever-ready pot and handed it to me. ‘I worked with Mr Quinn for more than twenty years. Long enough to judge whether he was a scoundrel, wouldn’t you say?
’

‘
Yes, I would. That’s why I came to see you
.’

‘
He never fitted in with the rest of the staff. He never seemed suited to a life of service. A scoundrel? Well, so we always thought. But a cunning artful fox of a man. I could have believed he’d steal from his master. He had that in him. But be caught doing it? Not Mr Quinn.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘He had Sir Gervase on a string. He had no need to steal from him. Lady Davenall knew that
.’

‘
So she wanted rid of him and any excuse would have done?
’

Miss Pursglove looked at me sharply. ‘Why do you want to know about Mr Quinn? You never mentioned him when you called before
.’

‘
Something you said then set me thinking. You said that Norton—
’

‘
Mr James, you mean,’ she put in
.

‘
You said that he didn’t seem surprised when you mentioned that Quinn had left. You said it was as if he already knew
.’

‘
Did I?
’

‘
How could he have known?
’

She had grown suddenly defensive. ‘Perhaps I had already told him. You know how we old ladies can get confused, Mr Trenchard. I’m being told as much often enough
.’

‘
“Not suited to a life of service,” I think you said. What do you suppose led him into it?
’

‘
He was Sir Gervase’s batman in the Crimea. Sir Gervase came to rely on him out there and didn’t want to lose him when the war ended. It was very generous of him to offer Mr
Quinn
such a position. Valet to a baronet would be a vast improvement on a common soldier’s wages and conditions, I should think
.’

‘
As you say: very generous
.’

‘
I once said as much to Mr Quinn, you know.’ She was warming to her theme. ‘“You fell on your feet with Sir Gervase,” I said. And do you know what he replied? “No more than my due.” Those were his words and those were all his words. What do you make of that?
’

‘
I don’t know
.’

‘
No more do I. He wasn’t to be drawn on what happened out there. Sir Gervase fell ill: that we did know. Perhaps Mr Quinn nursed him back to health. Either way, there was something between them
.’

‘
But you’ve no idea what?
’

‘
What Mr Quinn didn’t want to tell you, you didn’t get told. A man’s entitled to his privacy, of course, but he took it further than that. No. He was never one of us. You could see it in his face
.’

‘
I wish I could. Any idea where he is now?
’

‘
Not a one, Mr Trenchard. Not a one where that man is concerned. But as to his face – I can show you that right enough
.’

‘
You intrigue me
.’

She needed no encouragement. Already, she was bustling towards a glass-fronted cabinet in the corner of the room. She opened the door, setting the contents quivering, and plucked a silver-framed photograph from behind a porcelain shepherdess. ‘Some of we senior staff had our pictures taken … oh, it must be twelve years ago. You’ll recognize me, no doubt
.’

I took the picture from her and held it up to the light. It had evidently been taken in the garden of Cleave Court, with the rear windows of the house in the background. Seated on a bench were two stolid aproned women with a look of the kitchen about them. To one side, Miss Pursglove, indistinguishable from her present self, alert and upright on a chair. Behind the bench, three rigidly posed and uniformed male servants. In the space between the bench and the chair, a waistcoated grizzled man, leaning on
a
rake, whom I took for Crowcroft the head gardener. Behind the chair, one hand resting on its back, a short, squarely built man in bowler hat and high-buttoned tweed jacket. Towards this last figure Miss Pursglove’s wavering finger moved
.

‘
That’s Mr Quinn for you. Though it’ll not tell you much
.’

I peered closer. Was this, I wondered, with a sudden chill in Miss Pursglove’s sun-warmed sitting-room, the face of my true enemy? Was this the conspirator for whom Norton was merely acting a part? It scarcely seemed possible. Alfred Quinn, batman, valet and butler to Sir Gervase Davenall, stood, it was true, neither in frozen awe nor in grinning worship of the camera lens. Yet he revealed nothing, by pose or expression, that could hint at his character. A lean, strongly built man whose look was perhaps too proud and piercing for natural servility: that was all
.

‘
When did you say this was taken?’ I said at length
.

‘
If my memory serves, as it usually does, it was the summer before Mr James disappeared. 1870, that would have been
.’

‘
How old would Quinn have been then?
’

‘
He came to us as a young man in his twenties. He’d have been about forty when that picture was taken
.’

‘
Any idea where he was born? What he did before joining the Army?
’

‘
Not a one. He seemed to know London, but not so well that I could say that’s where he came from. He wasn’t a man to reminisce – or even answer a civil question about himself if he could avoid it. What I know about him is much what you see there
.’

A thought occurred to me. ‘Might I borrow this picture, Nanny?
’

She frowned. ‘Well …
’

‘
I promise to return it
.’

A lifetime of obedience overcame her reservations. ‘Well, be sure you do
.’

All the way back to London on the train that afternoon, I thought of Alfred Quinn, the cautious guarded servant who had always been more than that. Where was he now? The question had become my talisman, my token of hope that nothing more sinister than a servant’s grudge lay at the heart of the mystery
.

VII

Richard Davenall was a man of regular and moderate habits. His few servants, had they not already retired to bed, would have found it inconceivable that their master should still be in his study, the lamps blazing, the fire stoked, the whisky-decanter unstoppered on his desk, as the clock struck midnight and Sunday, 15th October 1882 announced its arrival with a buffet of rain at the uncurtained windows.

It had rained that day, too, Richard recalled. That day in January 1861, of his father’s burial at Highgate Cemetery, where half a dozen dutiful employees and grey, dank, bitter chill met to mourn an unloved man. Most members of the family had tendered unconvincing excuses, and the last-minute arrival of cousin Gervase, with the thirteen-year-old James in the carriage beside him, came therefore as a pleasant surprise.

Parsimonious in life, Wolseley Davenall had dismayed his son by his extravagance in death. The purchase of a family vault in the sombrely bowered and ornately wrought Egyptian Avenue, to where the late Mrs Davenall had been transferred from her more humble grave of seventeen years before to join her husband, seemed to Richard an unwarranted and unsuitable piece of ostentation for such a notably puritanical man, rendered all the more grotesque by the paltry turnout of mourners.

As the massive iron door of the vault was ceremonially sealed and the funeral party began to disperse, Gervase, who had turned several disapproving heads by his swaggering gait and lack of uniformly black attire, pulled a hip-flask from beneath his travelling-coat and offered it to Richard.

‘No thank you, Gervase.’

‘Please yourself.’ Gervase took a swig.

Richard winced as Gregory Chubb, his office overseer, glanced back from the knot of lawyers and clerks moving
down
the avenue ahead of them. ‘Glad you could come,’ he said to his cousin with an effort.

‘Don’t mention it, old man. Trust you didn’t mind my bringing the boy.’ He patted James, walking silently and blank-faced beside him, on the shoulder. ‘Felt he ought to pay his last respects to his great-uncle.’