‘No indeed, again. Of course you have a choice—although I take your comment to mean a grudging acceptance of my generous offer.’
‘Generous offer,’ wailed Allinson. ‘You mock me again. I am your prisoner.’
Devenish pounced on Allinson once more. He grabbed hold of him, gripping him by his over-elaborate cravat.
‘Listen to me, you ungrateful young fool. You have, through my leniency, escaped the gallows because otherwise that is where your stupid escapade would have taken you. I offer you freedom and a chance to reform your dissolute life—and you jib at doing so.
‘Answer me! Yes or no, unequivocally?’
‘Yes—if you will stop strangling me,’ Allinson croaked.
‘Unequivocally, I said. Yes, or no?’
‘Yes, yes, yes.’
‘And remember what awaits you should you backslide.’
‘I’ll not do that.’ Inspiration struck Allinson. ‘I’ll…I’ll buy a commission, turn soldier—that should keep me out of trouble.’
Devenish gave a short laugh and released him. ‘God help the British Army, then! Now, go. I have letters to write and a speech to rehearse. Oh, and by the way, give Tresidder a guinea from your pocket to make up for the fright which you gave him.’
‘I haven’t got a guinea. My pockets are to let.’
‘Then give him the pin from your cravat instead—and be gone.’
The relieved boy scuttled out of the room, pulling the pin from his cravat as he left. Devenish said aloud to the damaged portrait of his grandfather, ‘God forgive me—although you wouldn’t have done—for letting him off. I must be growing soft these days.’
And then he sat down to finish his letter.
He was late arriving at Lady Leominster’s that night. He had written to Robert, naming a date for his arrival at Tresham—‘and God help you if you have sent for me for nothing,’ he had ended.
His speech in the Lords, asking for clemency and help for the starving Midlands framework knitters, who had recently rioted at Loughborough in Leicestershire, had created a great deal of excitement, if nothing else.
‘What interest do you belong to?’ one excited peer had shouted at him. ‘You’re Whig one week, and Tory the next.’
‘None,’ Devenish had shot back. ‘I’m my own man and you’d better not forget it.’
‘A loose cannon, careering round the deck then,’ his neighbour, Lord Granville, had said languidly to him. ‘Hit, miss and to the devil when anyone gets in your way.’
His reward for this shrewd comment was a crack of laughter from Devenish. ‘By God, Granville,’ he had offered, ‘you’d be Prime Minister if you could make a speech half as incisive as your private judgements.’
‘Not a remark anyone would make about you,’ returned Granville, his perfect politeness of delivery robbing his words of their sting. ‘You have no private judgements. Everything you say is for public consumption. So far as that goes, you’re the most honest man in the two Houses.’
Remembering this interchange, Devenish smiled when he saw Granville and his wife across the Leominsters’ ballroom, talking to the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth. Some devil in him, which desired confrontation today, had him walking over to them.
Sidmouth’s response to him was all that he had expected. ‘Ah, here comes the noble advocate for the murdering Luddites I’m busy trying to control! What got into you, Devenish, to have you defending them?’
Devenish had a sudden vision of a mean street in a Northern town where a half-starved boy and his penniless and widowed mother had eked out a poor living.
He repressed it and said, ‘I don’t condone their violence, you know, but I do understand what causes it. Some relief, surely, could be given to those who wish to work, but who are unable to do so.’
‘Not Jacobin tendencies then, eh, Devenish? No feeling for revolution?’ Sidmouth said this quietly. He was a mild man. ‘No, don’t answer me, I know that on the whole you are more like friend Granville here and favour moderate and gradual change.’
He paused, ‘Perhaps Lord and Lady Granville, you will forgive us both. Devenish is well met. I have need of a private and quiet word with him. You will both excuse us, I trust.’
The Granvilles assured him that they would. Sidmouth led Devenish into an ante-room and shut its double doors behind them. Without preamble he said, ‘Do you intend to visit Tresham in the near future?’
Devenish said, ‘I have thought of doing so, yes. It’s years since I was there. My agent reproaches me every month for my absence, so I have arranged to go as soon as the House rises.’
‘Yes, you take your duties seriously. As I take mine. I ask you because something odd has been happening there recently. The Lord Lieutenant of Surrey has brought to my notice that over the last few years two men, one a person of quality, have disappeared. The gentleman was later found murdered. Several women of the lower orders have also disappeared—one as recently as a month ago. No reason has been found for their disappearance, and apart from that of the gentleman, not one of their bodies has been recovered. He would like an enquiry made.
‘Now, I have the hands of myself—and the few men I have at my disposal—overfull with this business of controlling radical revolution, to say nothing of Luddite discontent. I was speaking to an old friend of mine—Wellington, to be exact—and he told me that he has reason to believe that you are a sound man in a crisis involving danger. That being so I would ask you—discreetly, mind—to investigate this sorry business and report back to me should you find anything of moment.’
Devenish’s first thought was of Robert’s mysterious letter. He said nothing, however, other than, ‘I think that the Duke overestimates my abilities, but I will do as you ask. As a stranger to the district it will not seem odd if I ask questions about it. I take it that that is all the information you have. Has no other landowner raised the matter?’
‘Yes, Leander Harrington, the eccentric fellow who lives at Marsham Abbey, alerted the Lord Lieutenant about the second man who disappeared. It was his valet, and although he had no reason to believe that foul play was involved, he had given no warning of his imminent departure. On the other hand his clothes and possessions had gone, which seemed to indicate that he had left of his own free will.’
‘As a matter of interest, have you any information about the murdered gentleman?’
‘Yes, indeed. He was Jeremy Faulkner of Lyford, a young man of substance. He was found dead in a wood some miles from his home. His body had been brutally savaged by an animal, it was thought, although whether before or after death was not known. His widow, Mrs Drusilla Faulkner, the late Godfrey Stone of Stone Court’s daughter, had reported him missing at the beginning of the previous week.’
‘And Lyford House is less than a mile from my seat at Tresham. I see why you thought of me.’
‘Coupled
