from the room. The whole episode had taken only one nerve-shattering minute. From wondering sardonically what would follow if he were caught, he moved to understanding what her inaction, her refusal to arouse the house, told him of her relations with her husband.
Her intrusion also told him that the tightrope on which he was walking was higher above the ground than was usual, even for him. He didn’t think that he had been recognised. He did think that it behoved him to move as speedily as he could, which he did. At the end he took a card from his pocket and put it into the empty safe which he left, prominent in all its rifled glory on the dressing table.
The last leg of his dangerous odyssey lay before him. His booty in his pockets, he wriggled through the sash window, leaving it open. It was the work of a moment to walk briskly along the balcony to enter his bedroom through his own open window. Earlier, he had placed a ladder, fetched from the garden, to lean against the orangery wall, giving the impression of an outsider having gained entrance.
Luck had been with him again, but for how long? One day the horse beneath him would fall at one of the fences he was trying to take, and that would be the end—but not yet, please. He laughed noiselessly at the thought of the brouhaha the rifled safe would cause in the morning.
He parcelled up the Prince’s letters, to place them in a large and expensive envelope of white hand-made paper which he sealed with an elaborate and meaningless seal, bought from a pawnbroker’s in a dingy part of London, sinking it deep into the hot wax.
The envelope was addressed as to the personal attention of HRH the Prince of Wales. In the morning he would set out for his pre-breakfast ride—he had been taking one for the last week, so that his being up at such a time would cause no comment, and on his way out he would slip the envelope on to the table where the incoming mail was placed.
His last act after hiding the diamonds was to take a bath and dress himself for bed. Angelic in pure white, his newly washed and dried hair clustered in curls about his head, he offered the world the impression of a cinquecento saint. He opened the communicating door between Dinah’s room and his, to slip quietly into her bed where she lay sleeping, a small smile on her face, to be discovered by her in the early hours and to celebrate with him not only his presence, but his unknown skulduggery.
Sir Ratcliffe Heneage lay in bed with Susanna Winthrop in the curve of his arm. It was almost dawn, time for him to leave. He began to move; she protested against him in half-sleep. Waking fully, she said, a little fretful, ‘I really—can’t think what I’m going to do.’
He tensed a little, and asked, ‘About what?’ He was a trifle apprehensive. It was always dangerous when women began to think. Best if they only ever felt.
‘About the fact that I’m having a baby.’
‘What is there to do? Your husband knows, and hasn’t made anything of it.’
He could really do without this sort of thing to trouble him. Yesterday’s letters from his bankers and his creditors were enough trouble for a fellow without a woman having second thoughts when he was in bed with her. He was sure she was having second thoughts. He knew the tone of voice she was using only too well.
‘He knows the child can’t be his, but he’s prepared to accept it, it gives him an heir, keeps the money from his cousin, but I’m frightened that he might find out that it’s yours.’
Sir Ratcliffe gave a coarse laugh. ‘Never tell me that he thinks it’s Apollo’s!’
Susanna put her face into the pillow, said in a muffled voice, ‘For some reason he took it for granted that it was. I suppose he thought that it happened just before you and I became friendly. He thinks Cobie’s my lover.’
She fell silent, then raised an agonised face.
He said, brutally, ‘I’d have thought that it would have disturbed him more for Grant to be the father than myself. After all, Grant’s an illegitimate nobody, I’m the possessor of an illustrious name.’
Susanna said tearfully, ‘I know, but since he’s always believed that I’ve been unfaithful to him with Cobie, he didn’t mind a child by him—he half-welcomed it. But if he knew that it was yours he would be enraged. It would mean that I’d been unfaithful with two lovers, not one. He couldn’t stand that.’
Sir Ratcliffe began to laugh. ‘A good joke, isn’t it—seeing that you’ve assured me that you were never Grant’s mistress. Well, it’s to both our advantages to let him think that it’s Grant’s, so why worry?’
‘Because—’ and now Susanna’s voice was agonised ‘—I’m doing Cobie a dreadful wrong. He’s always behaved honourably towards me, and now everyone thinks that I became pregnant by him before I began my affaire with you. I’ve even let his wife believe that—as much by what I haven’t said as what I have. Now I don’t know how to tell the truth. Oh, it was a wicked thing to do…I can’t think why I did it….’
‘But sensible,’ said Sir Ratcliffe briskly, rising and putting on his heavy brocade dressing gown, ‘seeing that I can’t afford to keep a mistress and an illegitimate brat, and I don’t want to be involved in a nasty divorce case either. Now, if your husband doesn’t mind Apollo’s get, why should you have qualms? You gain every way. I’d better go, it’s getting late, and you’d better stop all this pious talk about doing wrong.
‘First of all you don’t mean it, and secondly, I find it a damned bore. I can get that sort of whining cant from my wife—from my mistress I expect better things. So put a bright face on, my dear, if you want to keep me in your bed.’
He had never spoken so coarsely to her before, but he was beginning to tire of her. Ordinary love was always milk-and-water to him: he needed strong brandy, but for safety’s sake, he dare not, at the moment, try to find any. It was too soon after he had enjoyed the last child. He wondered how long Susanna would go on clinging to him if he meted out to her some of the treatment his wife received. It might be interesting to find out.
He was humming cheerfully to himself when he walked along the corridor to his room, the morning light growing stronger by the minute. No one was about, although he knew that by now the servants in the attics would be stirring, getting ready for the day. He unlocked the bedroom door to let himself in, and switched on the light.
He didn’t, at first, see the open safe on the dressing table, only the bed, turned down for him, but not yet entered. He pulled off his dressing gown, yawned, and strode towards it…
To see on his way—no, he couldn’t be seeing that, no, not that! There was the safe, yawning as widely as he had just done, and empty, quite empty, except for a piece of card left on its floor. Fearfully he leaned forward, picked up the card, and felt the breeze from the window, which was wide open, although he had left it almost shut.
The message on the card was plain and unequivocal. I’VE TAKEN PAYMENT FOR LIZZIE STEELE—BUT IT’S NOT THE FINAL PAYMENT was printed on it in bold capitals. Sir Ratcliffe’s head buzzed and roared. For a moment the loss of the diamonds and the Prince’s letters were forgotten. Someone knew! Someone was aware of Lizzie’s death and his part in it, and that someone had taken the diamonds—and the letters—to punish him.
He was no longer safe, his secret was no secret. Some midnight thief had come through the window and robbed him, not only of his last few pieces of wealth, but of his security. Still holding the card, he sank on to the bed. What to do? He must report the theft of the diamonds. He couldn’t keep that from his wife.
Whatever he had said to her, he still wanted her to wear them every night. They were the only proof left that he wasn’t entirely bankrupt, wasn’t beginning to sell the last remnants of the Heneage wealth, everything else having gone. No, he must reveal the theft, but not the card which the thief had left—for what questions might not the police ask him about it?
He fetched his wallet from where he had left it on the previous evening and stuffed the card in it. As soon as there was a fire going and he was alone with it he would destroy the incriminating thing, but he couldn’t destroy the fact that someone,