He said, "It isn't so much your face as your voice. I have an ear for voices—I remember them better than faces and names. And yours is singularly familiar to me."
"I wish I could help you, Mr. Kestrel, but I know of no occasion when we could have met. I've lived on the Continent for much of the last twenty years."
"So have I, for much of the last ten."
"Indeed? Then I daresay we might have run into each other in some European capital. But I can't recall it at all. Still, I'm nearly seventy-four—perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me."
"I hardly think any tricks are being played on
you,
Mr. Tibbs."
Tibbs smiled broadly. "My dear Mr. Kestrel, I can't tell you how delighted I am that you've come! I've been starved for civilised conversation."
"I'm happy to oblige you, but I must confess it wasn't you I came to see. Your nephew told me his sister lived here with you. Now I find that she doesn't and never has. I wonder if you have any idea how her brother could have been so mistaken?"
Tibbs smiled ruefully and walked back and forth, running a hand through his hair. "You mustn't blame the boy. He was only trying to protect his sister's reputation."
Julian's brows shot up. Tibbs was being extraordinarily candid—why? "If I've stumbled on a family secret, I'll guard it to the extent I can. The last thing I wish to do is imperil a lady's reputation. But this isn't a matter of idle curiosity. I'm engaged in helping the Bow Street Runners solve a murder."
"Yes, I know. My nephew's been writing to me all about it. In his last letter, he told me you'd become involved and had questioned him twice. I hope you're finished with him now—this has been mortally hard on him."
"How much has he told you about his part in the investigation?"
"That he found the body. That he's been questioned about the events leading up to the murder, and about his friendship with Alexander Falkland." For the first time, Tibbs looked wholly serious. "Do you suspect him?"
"Yes."
"May I ask why?"
Julian decided not to tell him about the letters to Sir Malcolm. Clare might have kept that from him, and revealing it would only put him on his guard against compromising his nephew further. "Because there are a number of matters on which he's been evasive, and some on which—pardon my frankness—he's lied outright. He said his sister lived with you; the villagers say she's a companion to a lady on the Continent. Is that another story told to salvage her reputation?"
"It's partly true. She's on the Continent, but not as a companion. She's alone."
"Forgive me, Mr. Tibbs, but when a respectable family attempts to conceal a young lady's whereabouts, it's rarely because she's alone."
"A point well taken. And I wish I could tell you a lurid story of her elopement with an Italian music master, but that would be far too conventional a scrape for Verity. She's a follower of Mary Wollstonecraft, you know. She believes with all her heart that if a man and a woman have equal intelligence and equal virtue, there's no reason the woman should be subservient. You can imagine the scandal she'd stir up, going about saying things like that in London—or, worse still, in a country village like this. The tide of public opinion is against her—ebbing away from the ideals of the American republic and the French revolution, and flowing towards family life, domestic bliss, and placing women on pedestals. Imprisoning them there, so my niece says.
"While we lived on the Continent, she had a good deal of freedom. She wasn't so circumscribed by proprieties as she would be here. So when Quentin opted to return to England and study for the Bar, and I decided to live out my last days on my native soil, Verity refused to come with us. She knew she couldn't play the demure debutante—she'd only make a spectacle of herself and damn Quentin by association. So she keeps away. But she won't stand to have a duenna, and though I'm not easy in my mind about her living alone, I can't control her. She's three-and-twenty, she has control of her income, and no power on earth can rein her in when she's made up her mind to something."
"She seems very different from her brother."
"Oh, yes. Quentin was never a whit of trouble. From earliest childhood, he was just what you see now: a shy, contemplative, studious lad, with a conscience almost crippling in its acuteness."
"It seems to have dulled somewhat. At all events, he's managed to reconcile himself to several blatant deceptions."
"I don't know what deceptions you're referring to, other than his telling you Verity lived with me. And that was for her sake, because it would be excessively awkward revealing the sort of life she's living. People would be outraged at a young unmarried woman travelling alone in foreign parts—if they even believed she was alone, which they quite likely wouldn't. Depend upon it: everything he's said or done that might not seem strictly honest can be put down to brotherly love and loyalty. Verity is the chink in his armour, you see. His conscience is wax in her hands."
"He told me they would each do anything the other asked, if the other wanted it badly enough."
Tibbs smiled. "Quite true. And for Quentin it's a very bad bargain, because while he would never demand anything base or dangerous of her, she isn't so scrupulous. Not that she would be venal or selfish—she wouldn't ask him to steal her a necklace, or anything of that sort. But if she got it into her head that it was right to do a thing—even if no authority on earth or in Heaven would agree with her—she would stop at nothing to do it and might look to Quentin to help her."
"Suppose she decided it was right to kill Alexander Falkland. Would her brother help her with that?"
"Frankly, yes, I expect he would. But why should she decide such a thing? She's never even met him."
"How can you be sure? You say you haven't seen her since you came here a year and a half ago."
"That's true. But as I told you, she's been on the Continent. And I know Mr. Falkland was in England—Quentin mentioned him from time to time in his letters."
"I should be interested to see those letters."
"Sadly, Mr. Kestrel, I don't keep letters. They have a way of coming back to haunt the writers—it's like holding a bit of a person's life hostage. And that seems rather unfair. So I burn them."
Julian smiled quizzically. At least Tibbs's evasions were entertaining. "Granted that Falkland was in England for the past year and a half, how do you know Miss Clare never returned to England during that time?"
"Because her letters were always postmarked from the Continent."
"Which of course we can neither prove nor disprove, because you don't keep letters."
"Alas, no."
"You're having a game with me, Mr. Tibbs."
"With
you,
Mr. Kestrel? I wouldn't dare. At the moment, you represent the majesty of the Law."
"You seem in no danger of being over-awed."
"Ah, well, I suppose I've lived a vagabond life too long. When you've seen as much of the world as I have, you become at once too cynical and too forgiving. You think it absurd that anyone seriously believes the law can force people to be virtuous, and you feel sorry for the poor wretches who are whipped and imprisoned and hanged merely for being the imperfect humans we all are."
"Murder seems rather more than an imperfection."
"You are right, of course." Tibbs bowed, conceding the point with grace.
Does he mean any of what he's saying? Julian wondered. Or is he merely amusing me, as he amuses the local children? "May I ask what you did before you lived abroad?"
"I was a tailor. And I take leave to tell you, as a professional, that you far surpass all the newspaper and magazine accounts of your magnificent taste in clothes."
It was Julian's turn to bow. "I'm honoured, Mr. Tibbs. May I say in return that I've never met a tailor who could approach you in gallantry or wit?"
Tibbs bowed again—and again Julian was stabbed with recognition. Where in the name of Heaven had he known this man before?
"Ah," said Tibbs, "but I'll lay you odds you never met a tailor who lived for years on the Continent, with nothing to do but improve his mind and polish his manners."
"You must have been remarkably successful, to retire so early, and so comfortably circumstanced."
"I did do rather well, I admit. And then, I've been guardian to the twins since they were six years old, and their father left a tidy sum for their maintenance. They never wanted for anything that his money or my ingenuity could provide."
"Why did you take them to live abroad?"
"I'd always wanted to travel," Tibbs said casually. "I'd never married, had no family of my own—nothing to keep me in England. The twins had no ties here, either, after their parents died. There was no reason we shouldn't light out for foreign parts."
"Where did you go?"
"For the first few years we had to dodge the wars on the Continent. We spent a good part of that time in Switzerland. But after Waterloo we travelled everywhere: France, Italy, Austria, the Rhineland. An unconventional sort of life for children. But I don't think a traditional English upbringing would have answered. I couldn't have sent Quentin to public school. He's too gentle—the other boys would have eaten him alive. And Verity had too much intellect and too strong a will to sit about sewing samplers and painting firescreens. Living abroad, with no Mrs. Grundy to shake her finger at us, I could manage their education as I liked. We had a private tutor who travelled about with us. Verity studied everything Quentin did, even Latin and Greek. She was resolved to have the laugh of people who said the ancient languages were too difficult for frail female minds."
Julian considered. "What does Miss Clare look like?"
"Why do you ask?" Tibbs countered pleasantly.
"I hope to have the honour of meeting her one day. And I shouldn't like to miss an opportunity through failing to recognize her."
"She's not unlike Quentin: fair and light-eyed. Tall for a woman, and very slender."
"Pretty?"
"My dear Mr. Kestrel, that's so utterly in the eye of the beholder, I couldn't presume to say."
"I take it she hasn't warts or a squint or a crooked back?"
"No," said Tibbs, smiling, "nothing of that sort."
"Have you any idea how I might go about finding her? She must have friends on the Continent you're acquainted with—assuming for the sake of argument that she really is there."
"It's very good of you to assume, even for the sake of argument, that I am not an egregious liar." Tibbs's eyes twinkled. "And I would be happy to give you the names and directions of her friends in Paris, Vienna, and so on. Only give me a few minutes to write them down."
Yes, you'd like that, wouldn't you? Julian thought—to see me ramble all over Europe raking up one mare's nest after another. "I shan't put you to the trouble. Thank you for being so obliging as to talk with me."
"You're not going so soon? I hoped you'd stay to luncheon."
Julian smiled wryly. "That's good of you, but cat and mouse is a tiring game, and I have other calls on my energies. Your servant, Mr. Tibbs."
He returned to the inn where he had left his driver. Finding him still reasonably sober, he sent him to fetch the trap. As they jogged back along the road they had come by, he wrestled with the enigma of Tibbs. His face, his voice—even, strangely, the name Montacute—all hovered on the brink of his memory, yet they eluded his grasp. He felt sure Tibbs could unravel the mystery if he chose. But how to make him speak?
At least he knew now that Verity Clare was missing, and her uncle and brother were concealing her whereabouts. But why? Had she been seduced, ruined, left with a child? Was she ill, or dead? Had she committed a crime—and could that crime be Alexander's murder?
More questions than answers. And only three days left to win his bet. His mind, frustrated and a little mortified by his defeat at Tibbs's hands, refused to concentrate any longer. The road being smooth, and the trap tolerably comfortable, he fell asleep.
He dreamed he was looking down from a great height on David Adams. Light blazed up at Adams from below. He was wearing a black robe and skull-cap, with a long grey beard half hiding his face. He lifted a hand and sent his voice soaring across the vast space:
Hath not a Jew eyes
?—
Julian sat bolt upright. "Stop!" he exclaimed to the driver. "Turn around! We're going back!"
23: Ghosts
In a matter of minutes, Julian was knocking at the door of Tibbs's cottage.
"Mr. Kestrel!" Tibbs appeared in the doorway. He had exchanged his worn gardening coat for an elegant frock coat of dark green wool. "Come in, come in! I little expected to have the pleasure of seeing you again so soon."
"I came back to beg your pardon."
"My dear Mr. Kestrel! Whatever for?"
"For having failed, even for a moment, to recognize Montague Wildwood."
A slow smile spread across Tibbs's face. He bowed, and Julian marvelled that he had not realized at once where Tibbs had acquired a bow like that: proud but subservient, courting applause and yet deeming it his due. "I saw you play Shylock when I was a boy. You were magnificent."
"My dear sir, you leave me speechless."
"Is that possible?" asked Julian mildly.
"A rare occurrence, but not unknown. Seriously, I'm quite overwhelmed that you should remember a performance so long ago. It must have made quite an impression."
It had. It was one of the few plays he and his father had ever attended from beginning to end. Ordinarily they had arrived after the third act, when the ticket prices dropped. That night they had been unusually flush. After the play, they had gone out for ices and explored the West End, with its rows of sumptuous houses, carriages adorned with glittering crests, footmen in brilliant plumage, ladies like goddesses in Grecian gowns. No, he was not likely to forget that night—his first vivid glimpse of what had once been his father's world.
"We must speak further," Tibbs was saying. "I have so little opportunity to conjure up the ghosts of those days. I was just going to sit down to an early luncheon, and I insist that you join me."