Chapter Twenty-Three
Nico went with Eve. His cousin was quiet as they walked. Eventually, with difficulty, Nico said, “So Alma talked?”
“It’s not her fault,” Eve said. “She’s not part of this. She had a knife at her throat.”
“I’m not complaining. I just want to know.”
Eve sagged. “She told Mr. Thorpe, yes. She thought it was your debt, that we—me and her—were being harassed because of you being feckless. She didn’t know.”
“Not if you didn’t tell her otherwise.”
“I couldn’t! Why would she believe a valet ran up two grand of debt?”
“She’d have believed it if you’d trusted her with the whole story already,” Nico said. “Which you didn’t, just like I didn’t trust Titus with it.”
“We’ve fucked up, haven’t we?”
“So badly.”
Eve exhaled hard. “Not gone well for you, then.”
“I have the money. He knows—something, I don’t know what, but he still gave me the money.”
“Tell him the truth,” Eve said urgently. “All of it. I got you into it, and it was my idea all along—”
“I lied to him from the start to get a share of the old lady’s money. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be here now.”
“Let me talk to him, Nic. I’ll tell him that you did it all for me. He can blame me.”
“He knows who to blame,” Nico said wearily. “And I’m not going to tell him it was all right for me to treat him like shit, and nor are you. He’s had enough people tell him that.”
They walked the rest of the way to Nag’s Head Court in silence.
It was as down at heel and dangerous feeling as before, with Jacky Gaskin holding court in front of his crowd of seedy hangers-on. Nico felt a lot of eyes on him and Eve as they approached the throne.
Gaskin was sprawled in a battered horsehair chair. “It’s the Frenchies. Got my money?”
“Oui, monsieur,” Nico said tightly, presented Titus’s banknote, and stood there as Gaskin performed delighted astonishment to a degree that Nico would have found quite insulting if he gave a damn what Jacky Gaskin thought.
The moneylender spoke expansively on what a pleasure it was doing business with people who understood their obligations, even if they had to be reminded, made some jovial remarks on pretty young lady friends, and assured them both he was available for their future financial needs.
He’d taken eight hundred pounds “interest” as pure profit, and ruined Nico’s life with it, but who was counting?
Nico forced a smile, since Eve clearly couldn’t, shook Gaskin’s hand, and confirmed that they were all square, accounts settled.
He even took the offered gin rather than decline a gesture of goodwill.
“Talking of drink,” Gaskin said, swigging the oily spirit. “We have a friend in common.”
“We do, monsieur?”
“Mr. Matthew Laxton. Perhaps he’s a friend of a friend.” Gaskin fished out Titus’s banknote with two fingers and waved it. “Through your pal Mr. Pilcrow, I mean.”
Every one of Nico’s hair follicles sprang to attention. “I know Monsieur Laxton, yes,” he said easily.
“Clear something up for me, then,” Gaskin said. “What I heard was, Laxton thought he’d get the Whitecross fortune. This Pilcrow snatched it from under his nose and he hasn’t given Laxton a penny since. No love lost there.”
“Correct, monsieur.
“So why’s Pilcrow paying him off now?”
“Paying him?”
“Mr. Laxton assures me that Mr. Pilcrow is settling a sum on him as compensation for what he’s lost. All without going to court, very reasonable of him. What’s he doing that for?”
Blackmail, Nico thought instantly, and rejected it.
Titus could not have kept that from him, not this last week.
And in any case, there was the deathbed promise; Titus would not break that.
No, Laxton was lying to Gaskin, which doubtless meant that he owed the man money he couldn’t pay and was stalling for time, much as Nico had done for the last weeks.
“Monsieur Pilcrow is not paying him a sou,” he said. “In my opinion, the Laxton would need to hold him at gunpoint to get money from him. If he says otherwise, he lies.”
Gaskin nodded slowly. “Well, now. I’ll be honest, that’s disappointed me. Thank you, Comte, very good of you. More gin? Then come again, any time.”
Eve let out a long breath as they headed back to Carey Street. “That wasn’t fun.”
“No.”
“I thought I’d feel better with him paid off.”
“If we’d paid him off with Chilcott Baynes’s money, you’d feel marvellous right now,” Nico said. “So would I.”
“Piece of shit,” Eve muttered. It wasn’t clear if that referred to Gaskin, Baynes, or Nico, but any of those would be fair. “Why’d you help him?”
“Gaskin? He’s helping me.”
“What? You told him—”
“Laxton murdered Miss Whitecross,” Nico said. “Now with any luck Gaskin will make an example of Laxton, and serve him fucking well right. She deserved better. I’m glad I could do that on my way out.”
“Nasty,” Eve said. “But fair. You’re sure—”
“Yes. Titus will want me gone, and I don’t blame him.”
Eve’s head dropped. “I’m sorry, Nic. I dragged you into this.”
“No, I volunteered, just like you would for me if I had a bloody stupid idea that was obviously going to go wrong, you utter clown.”
“It was a good idea!” Eve protested. “It could have worked. And you couldn’t have done more, and I’m so sorry I fucked it up with Titus for you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Nico said. “I fucked it up with Titus all by myself.”
When they returned to Carey Street, Mr. Thorpe emerged from down the hall and gave Nico the kind of glare he deserved. “Mr. Pilcrow is in the parlour and wishes to see you at once.”
Titus was indeed there, sitting staring at the wall. Nico didn’t think he was looking at the painting on it.
“Mon ami. Your brother has left?”
“Yes. He took offence because I snatched a treasure from under his nose out of a vengeful desire to flaunt my wealth.”
“If he believes that, he does not know you at all.”
“Oh, be fair,” Titus said. “What else was he supposed to think? I could have bought your painting at any time and instead I did it only when he wanted it, and in such a flashy manner, making an offer he couldn’t possibly match.
Putting myself forward in the worst way.
And of course I could not explain why I could not let him or Mr. Baynes buy it, so naturally he thinks I acted out of malice, and I daresay I will not hear from him again. ”
“I’m very sorry. That is my fault.”
“Yes, it is. I don’t suppose he and I ever stood a chance of making things better, but I would have preferred them not to be so much worse.”
Nico could not really summon up any guilt for that; he was using it all already. Instead he took a deep breath and said, “Why did you make that offer?”
“You know very well why.”
Nico had a number of suspicions, and a tiny faint wisp of hope, the wretched bedraggled thing in the corner of Pandora’s box, whispering that perhaps it might not be that bad, perhaps there could yet be a miracle. “Could you just tell me?”
“Because of the daffodils in your painting.”
Nico had not expected that. “Should there … not be daffodils?”
“The daffodils aren’t the problem. It’s that they’re painted in chrome yellow. It’s an unmistakable colour, sharp and strident, with an acid sort of flavour. You often get that with the new artificial pigments.”
“With—”
“Chrome yellow has been in use for little more than a decade.”
Nico’s mind froze. He simply couldn’t think of a response.
“Of course overpainting is always possible,” Titus went on steadily, “but I looked very closely, and the daffodils are unfinished, just a few brushstrokes. I can see the weave of the canvas under them. And they are an integral part of the composition: it would be grossly unbalanced without them there. I have to conclude that this painting is a few years old at most. And that means everything you said of it was a lie.”
Nico couldn’t speak. Perhaps there was nothing to say.
“It didn’t hang in your childhood home. It doesn’t prove Marie Antoinette’s guilt.
I thought for a moment you might have faked it to salvage your mother’s reputation, but of course that isn’t true, because you have kept the painting secret.
And not because of Bourbon spies or any such fantastical stuff.
You wanted to keep it secret because it is fraudulent and—and so are you. ”
“Titus—”
“Who are you?” Titus said, and his voice was no longer steady. “Are you even the Comte de La Motte? Is any of it true? What did I do to deserve this?”
“Nothing,” Nico said, balling his fists rather than reaching for him. “Nothing at all. You have always deserved only the best, and I am sorry, I truly am. I didn’t want any of this—”
“Then why did you do it?” Titus shouted. “Why did you lie to me about everything? What sort of game was this? You must have realised I’d have given you everything you wanted!”
“I didn’t want you to!” Nico shouted back. “I wasn’t trying to cheat you! Christ almighty, I tried not to take your money!”
“Not very successfully,” Titus said, with a sharp rap to his voice, and there was nothing at all Nico could say to that.
“I suppose it is my fault, really: I was warned that you were untrustworthy from the start, and I thought I knew better. I believed you, and I believed in you—is this why you pushed me to interest myself in art? To meet people who buy paintings?”
“No!”
“But that man Baynes talked about me being in the running. I was your rich friend who buys paintings, just as I was your rich friend who buys expensive clothes. You didn’t have to take my money when you could use it to take other people’s.”
That was grotesquely, horribly accurate. Nico couldn’t breathe. “It was not— Yes, I did do that, but—”
“It is one thing that you lied to me all this time. But it is outrageous that you brought dangerous men to my house and that Alma and Perreau were threatened. Is that dealt with?”
“Yes,” Nico managed.
“Well then. If two thousand pounds has bought me your—your company and your help for these last weeks, and it has purchased Alma’s safety now—I will not say it’s a bargain. But I have had a lesson in who to trust, and I daresay that is invaluable. I’d like you to leave my house today.”
“Yes. But please, Titus, can I explain?”
“Explain what? Why you presented yourself under a false name and let me believe your lies all this time? If you wanted to explain, you might have done it before you sold me a forged painting for a fortune!”
“You bought it knowing it was forged!” Nico couldn’t help protesting.
“I bought it so you could not cheat my brother, and so my brother could not discover he had been cheated by my friend. I daresay you have explanations, and I am sure they are very plausible, but I don’t care to have yet another man explain to me why I have no reason to be angry when I know very well that I do.
Did you have to do this to me?” His voice broke on that.
“I thought you were gammoning me at the start! But you made me believe you, and trust you and love—”
He tried to swallow that, too late. The word hung in the air between them, a flaming sword.
After a horrible moment, Titus went on more calmly. “You knew I cared for you. If you had been honest with me—if you had just said you were in debt and asked for my help, or even accepted it when I offered it—I don’t understand why you could not have done that!”
“I didn’t want to take your money,” Nico repeated doggedly, as if that would somehow wipe out two thousand pounds and a lot of lies.
“But why couldn’t you tell me the truth?”
“Why couldn’t you tell me the truth about Henry?” Nico demanded, his voice rising abruptly. “You didn’t give that till you were forced—”
“Don’t you dare,” Titus said. “Don’t you dare blame me for that, and don’t you dare turn this back on me and make it my fault. I will not do this. No, don’t say anything more. I don’t want to hear it. Just go. Leave me alone.”