‘I was wondering if it would be a dreadful dereliction to look at Stratford while we’re here? There’s the church, and I believe Shakespeare’s birthplace is preserved.’ He sounded longing.
‘You should absolutely see them while you’re here,’ Daizell said. ‘If you want, I can go around the staging posts on the outskirts while you visit the sights?’
‘No,’ Cassian said reluctantly. ‘That would be very tedious for you, and not very fair.’
Daizell knew an impulse to suggest they both forget the whole thing since his faith in their chances, never high, was more or less exhausted. He bit it back, and thought about what a useful and efficient person might say. ‘Perhaps we could try to track your quarry down today? If we get a good lead, we’ll follow it, and if we don’t, we take tomorrow as a holiday and decide what to do next.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ Cassian said, perking up. ‘Yes. I don’t want to feel consumed by guilt at not looking, but this travelling business is rather tiring.’
‘Do you spend a lot of time consumed by guilt?’
‘A certain amount. I was brought up to take my responsibilities very seriously.’
‘I wasn’t. Perhaps we could . . .’ He waggled a hand. ‘Strike an average.’
‘That’s an excellent idea,’ Cassian said, a laugh in his voice. ‘So we will be exceedingly responsible today and take a holiday tomorrow.’
They did precisely that. It made for a blasted long day. Cassian hired a couple of hacks, and they rode out along the cross roads from Stratford to the first stage on each, asking at inns, talking to coach-drivers, searching for the man in the mulberry coat. They had, to Daizell’s entire lack of surprise, no luck at all: nobody had seen their quarry, or remembered him if they had. It was a great deal of riding for nothing, if you counted quiet, easy conversation and companionable silences as nothing.
They were everything. Daizell needed people, needed friendship and talk and laughter and touch. Solitude drained his soul, leaving him bleak and joyless; companionship hadhim fizzing with energy. He tried to restrain that, since Cassian was clearly the opposite, and made sure not to babble when his companion lapsed into one of his many thoughtful silences, not wanting his own presence to grate. He didn’t need to be always talking anyway. He was quite happy looking around, watching the world go by, as long as he had someone to do it with.
Not just someone. Cassian, with his gentle voice, murmuring enchantments to his blasted lucky horse: Daizell could listen to that all day. He also rode superbly and made some fairly cogent criticisms of Daizell’s seat, which indicated more clearly than anything yet that he was an exceptional horseman. A horseman, with things to do he didn’t care to discuss, and knowledge that Daizell wasn’t sure how he came by.
‘How did you know about the gambling ring?’ he asked as they rode back.
‘The . . . ?’
‘At school. That I was sacked for that.’
‘Oh. Um. Actually, I was at Eton myself, a few years below you. So, you know, I heard it mentioned.’ He looked a bit pink. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s not pleasant to be gossiped about.’
‘I had it coming. You were at Eton? Is that how you knew me?’ Daizell couldn’t remember if Cassian had mentioned it on their first meeting. He hadn’t paid much attention.
‘I was. Didn’t I say? But it hardly matters: you wouldn’t have noticed me.’
Probably not. Daizell’s friends at school had been as loud and boisterous as himself and he hadn’t troubled to acquaint himself with younger pupils. He might have thought the name would ring a bell, though, unusual as it was. Vernon Cassian . . . no, he could not for the life of him rememberany such boy. He did, now he thought about it, have a vague memory of some undersized shrimp with a pale face whom he was meant to have noted for some reason or other. It tugged at his mind a moment, then he lost the thread.
But, as Cassian said, it hardly mattered. If he didn’t want to tell Daizell things, he probably had good reason, and Daizell didn’t intend to spoil the companionship they had with pushing where he wasn’t invited.
A long day on horseback, a pleasant, tired evening afterwards. The White Swan was a comfortable inn, rather better than the kind of place Daizell normally stayed. He enjoyed feeling like a man of means, even if they weren’t his means, and Cassian had lost his initial air of a visitor at the zoological gardens, and seemed very comfortable.
‘Should we talk about what to do next?’ Daizell said as they addressed an excellent veal and ham pie. ‘I know we’re declaring a holiday tomorrow, if you still want to do that.’
‘I do. Afterwards . . .’ He made a face at his plate. ‘Do you think we’ve any hope? Really?’
‘Of finding John Martin? Honestly, no.’
‘Oh.’
‘If he was more distinctive in appearance, or if we had been sooner on his track, we might have stood a chance. Or not lost so much time to the crash and then Miss Beaumont.’
‘Those couldn’t be helped.’
‘Not much of it can be,’ Daizell said. ‘Including being robbed in the first place.’
Cassian gave an unhappy little laugh. ‘On the contrary. That’s the only part I could have controlled.’
‘In retrospect, yes, just as I could have discovered that my parents were planning to commit a violent crime and abandon me. If either of us could see the future, we’d be adeal better off. As it is, sometimes things just don’t go our way. Are you going to treat everyone as a possible thief now? I’m not going to treat everyone as if they’re keeping some cursed great secret from me.’
