“Lorenzo d’Ambrogio. Our very dear friend. He died upon this cliff. Twenty years ago.”
“I have heard something of the matter. He was your school friend and travelling companion, Tiberius tells me. His death must have been very tragic,” I observed. “To die so young...” I let my voice trail off invitingly, and as I expected, Sir James carried on. He was the very embodiment of the bluff British gentleman, feelings bound and buckled so tightly I doubted he would have spoken of them if any of the other gentlemen had been present. But it is remarkable what confidences a little womanly sympathy can coax from the most reluctant breast.
“A boy,” Sir James said. “Just a lad from Umbria. Or was it Florence? I can’t even remember.” He made a gesture of dismissal. “Foreign parts, anyway. But he was a good fellow, even if he was a Continental. Loyal to a fault, always thinking of honour.”
“You believe this is an English virtue? In my experience, Italians are keenly devoted to the matter of honour.”
“I do not count their duels and vendettas and whatnot,” Sir James said with a touch of pomposity. “I mean real honour, the sort that pays its debts and lives up to its promises.”
“And that is the sort of man Lorenzo d’Ambrogio was?”
Sir James grunted. “Aye. He was occasionally ridiculous, even if he was my dearest friend. He could make an utter mountain out of the tiniest of molehills if he thought something touched his honour. One time,” he said, settling himself a little more comfortably, “we were staying near Chambord with our friend Alexandre. Quite a nice château it was, but a very tiny village. The sort of place that sees one train per day and one train only.” He raised his index finger for emphasis. “There we were, packed up and ready to leave, standing on the platform, and suddenly Lorenzo starts bemoaning the fact that he’s just realised he hasn’t settled his bill with the cobbler in the village for mending a boot. Fairly upset he was, insisting he had to settle the debt before he left because he’d given his word as a d’Ambrogio. Now, we pleaded with him, explained we’d miss our train to Paris and it would spoil ourplans. And mind you, he could just as easily have sent the money on from Paris, and the cobbler wouldn’t have been the poorer for more than a day. But does Lorenzo listen to us? Does he heed our warnings? He does not.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
Sir James, like most men with an encouraging woman to talk to, opened like a flower as he finished the story.
“I will tell you what he did! He ran off down the road, and sure as the seasons, he missed the train. And so we all of us missed the train. Back we had to go to the château and stay another night. And fairly furious we were with him, I don’t mind telling you.”
“Did it really matter so much, the delay of a day?” I enquired.
He gave me a knowing look. “You’ve not come between Pietro and the opening night of the opera in Paris or you’d not ask that.” He thought a moment before he went on. “He was a kind fellow, though, Lorenzo. Old Lord Templeton-Vane held a country dance here in our honour. Lorenzo was the only one of us besides Tiberius to ask Elspeth Gresham to stand up with him.”
He looked around as if to make certain we were not overheard. “I don’t like to say it, but that woman scares the life out of me, and there’s no two ways about it.”
I could well imagine Elspeth as a debutante, dressed in stark, unflattering white and trembling with nerves. She was unprepossessing enough with the confidence of age; being paraded like livestock at the county fair in the full flower of her youthful awkwardness would not have brought out her best. I felt a thrust of pity for her, unwanted and unadmired, and I could not resist a waspish little jab.
“It would have been kind for all of you to have asked her and not just Lorenzo.”
Sir James blustered in response. “I was newly betrothed. It would not have been appropriate to dance with another lady.”
“It was a country dance,” I said serenely. “What harm could it have done?”
Sir James rose immediately to the bait. “I had to have a thought to how it would look if Augusta should see me dancing with another lady,” he protested. It was far too easy to pluck at Sir James’ puppet strings. He was an uncomplicated fellow, and I realised that, in common with many British gentlemen, he was far more concerned with appearing to possess virtue than actually having it.
But it made him an extremely apt subject for my little manipulations, and I carried on, changing tack with ruthless speed.
“I must confess, I did know something of your little group’s misadventures,” I informed him. “Tiberius showed me the cuttings.”
The unexpected swiftness of the charge disarmed him. He turned to me with frank astonishment, then abruptly looked back out to sea. “Oughtn’t to have shown them to a lady. I would never trouble Augusta with such a thing. If I had had one,” he amended hastily.
He had spoken in the conditional tense, but I knew a diversionary tactic when I saw it. “Haven’t you?” I challenged.
He turned back to me, surprise writ upon his features. “How can you... that is to say, what makes you believe such a thing has happened?”
I decided that a strategy of artfully constructed truthfulness would be the most effective. I leant towards him, assuming a confiding air.
“Sir James, I presume that I may trust you? That you are a man of your word?”
“Naturally,” he said stiffly.
“Then I may tell you that I am very well acquainted with Sir Hugo Montgomerie of Scotland Yard.” I gave him a knowing nod.
“The head of Special Branch?” His bushy brows rose in amazement. “What business have you with Sir Hugo?”
“That is just the point, Sir James. I havebusinesswith him. He has, over the course of many months, entrusted me with various and sundry undertakings. I am by way of being a consultant of sorts to him. On matters of extreme delicacy.”
I paused to let him consider this. He sat staring at me for a long moment, his mouth slack. “A young lady?Workingfor Scotland Yard?”
