Chapter Twenty-Five
Nico arrived at Carey Street the next morning at eleven prompt, as arranged by letter. Titus was waiting in the hall to answer the door while Alma had Mr. Thorpe distracted in the kitchen. She turned out to be very efficient at covert assignations, which felt like something Titus ought not to know.
Not that this was an assignation, but it felt like one.
All such thoughts fled his mind when a soft rap sounded, knuckles rather than door-knocker, and he opened the door to see Nico. He was wearing the brown suit, and it flattered him as well as ever, but he looked tired.
“Good morning,” Titus said, feeling horribly stilted. He wondered if he would regret this. “Come into the parlour. Uh, I would offer you refreshments, but Thorpe doesn’t know you’re here.”
“I hope he doesn’t learn that Perreau is here,” Nico said. “That, I suspect, would be more infuriating. Mon ami—”
“If I’m your friend, I should know your name.”
Nico flinched visibly at that. “Yes. I’m sorry. Uh, it’s Kemp. Nicholas Kemp.”
“Nicholas Kemp? Are you even French?”
“My mother was, and I grew up there. My father is English.” His voice was different as he said that. English, Titus realised. It didn’t sound right without the familiar accent. Titus didn’t like it.
“Well,” he said. “I asked you to come here because—because I think I understood what you were trying to say to me when we parted, about why you didn’t tell me the truth.”
“The Bible says the truth will set you free,” Nico said wearily. “But sometimes it just makes you look like the swine you are.”
“I’d like to know it now,” Titus said. “I want to understand. Because you did so much for me while you were lying to me so horribly, and I can’t make that fit. I want to be able to understand so I don’t have to wonder what happened for the rest of my life.”
“The short answer is that I made a damned mess of everything,” Nico said. “You were perfect, and I was a fool. If you want more than that—”
“Yes.”
“If you like. May I sit? Well, almost everything I told you was true, apart from the important parts. My father was an English gambler; my mother was French. My father came and went—mostly went, he was not a reliable man—so we lived for some years with my maternal relatives, including my cousin, Eve Perreau.”
“Perreau?” Titus said, pieces falling into place. “My valet Perreau? Perreau is your cousin Evelyn?”
“Regrettably.”
“You don’t look alike. Except the eyes, I suppose.”
“If you saw us together, you’d notice a resemblance eventually,” Nico said. “Which is why you didn’t see us together if I could avoid it. The point is, Eve’s mother and mine both worked at Versailles, and my Tante Anne was briefly chambermaid to Jeanne de La Motte.”
Titus blinked. Nico gave an approximate smile. “True. When La Motte got her hands on the necklace, she and her husband lost no time in breaking it up and selling the stones, and she spent like a sailor. Hiring Tante Anne was the least of it. Opulent furniture, all the clothes—”
“Wait. You’re saying La Motte did steal the necklace? The Queen was innocent?”
“Yes, of course,” Nico said indifferently.
“Tante Anne swept La Motte’s rooms. She found a couple of small diamonds, and two of the enamelled bows from the necklace.
Blue. You can see them in the painting. Well, Tante Anne pocketed them.
She sold the diamonds for a wedding coffer, and kept the bows as souvenirs. ”
“But that was evidence!” Titus protested. “Why did she not hand them to the courts during the trial? That could have helped prove La Motte’s guilt and the Queen’s innocence!”
Nico shrugged. “Admit a theft and involve herself in the affairs of princes? That would have ended poorly for her.”
“Yes, but—”
“She did what she did, and she kept the bows. Eve and I grew up hearing stories of Versailles, and of La Motte, until my mother died and I travelled with my father for a while. He took me to England for a few years. Didn’t like it.
I went back, then eventually came to Paris.
Actor, gambling hells, everything I said.
” He waved a hand, casually encompassing a life Titus couldn’t even imagine.
“Then Tante Anne died and left Eve the bows. You understand, there are people obsessed with Marie Antoinette who would pay a fortune for real parts of the famous necklace. The bows were Eve’s inheritance.
But it would have been a very bad idea to sell them in France, so Eve came to England, and went to various collectors, including Chilcott Baynes. ”
“He is certainly obsessed,” Titus said. “He has written to me twice in the past three days, wanting to buy the painting.”
“Don’t have anything to do with him,” Nico said. “He’s a madman.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Eve offered him the bows for five hundred pounds. He agreed to the price, and took the bows. Then, instead of paying, he and his serving-man gave Eve a beating.” His voice crackled with indignation.
“It was daylight robbery. Chilcott Baynes stole Eve’s inheritance, and left my cousin with two broken ribs.
Eve is prone to infections on the lungs. It could have been murder.”
“My God. Did he make a complaint?”
“Did the dubious, transient foreigner trust to English law and make a complaint of robbery against a rich local man?” Nico said. “No.”
“So what then?”
“Eve convalesced in a very bad humour and came up with an idea for revenge: Forge the painting and create a fake Comte de La Motte who would sell it to Baynes for a fortune. That meant having the painting made to order by a Le Brun expert, which was eye-watering—and not worth it, clearly. Plus the Comte’s wardrobe, that wasn’t cheap, and all the costs of establishing me in London Society.
Eve borrowed the money from a man named Jacky Gaskin and hauled me in. ”
“That was the task,” Titus said, realising. “You said you had to do it for your cousin.”
“We grew up together. We help each other.”
“But it’s insanity. You were masquerading as the Comte de La Motte all over London! What if the real man had turned up?”
“There is no real man,” Nico said. “La Motte’s husband disappeared a long time ago, as well he might, and if their children survive, I have not heard of them.”
“You were still abusing their name,” Titus said. “And what about Marie Antoinette?”
“What about her?”
“You’ve been maligning a dead woman! Accusing her of perjury and adultery and theft! How could you do that?”
“She’s long dead,” Nico said, though he reddened a little. “And she wasn’t ‘a woman’; she was the Queen of France while people starved in the street. And mostly, if you ask me to choose between Marie Antoinette and Eve, I choose Eve.”
Titus didn’t think it was as simple as that. He was also aware that it might have felt that simple to Nico. “Well. Go on.”
“Where was I? Masquerading in Society. The idea was that my presence in the news sheets would make the story credible to Baynes, and also, we thought he would not dare assault and rob a nobleman. Ha. Alors, I posed as the Comte and eventually met Miss Whitecross.”
“And lied to her too?”
“She didn’t believe me for a minute,” Nico said. “No fool, la Whitecross. But she found me entertaining, and needed to marry someone, and she liked the idea of making it a foreigner: It would have incensed the Laxton. So—”
“You’re speaking French again,” Titus said. “With a French accent, I mean.”
Nico shut his eyes. “Sorry. Habit. I have been doing this a while. I’ll try to stop.”
Titus wished he wouldn’t. It had felt, just briefly, like having his Nico back. “Go on,” he said.
“Well, I had the prospect of my rich marriage, and Baynes had agreed to five thousand pounds for the painting, which was far more than I had thought possible. Too easy; I should have realised. I went to make the exchange, and everything was going well until he produced a pistol. We scuffled; I took the first opportunity to jump out of a window and got away. I returned to my inn to collect my things, and the damned fellow followed me there, brandishing his pistol. I had to go out another window and down a drainpipe, and he shot at me as I fled. It was ghastly.”
“But why would he do that?”
“An economical method of increasing his collection, perhaps, or a deep dislike for la famille La Motte and what we—they—did to Marie Antoinette. Who cares? The man is a violent bedlamite, and I hope you are not corresponding with him.”
“Well, I wrote back,” Titus said uneasily. “He offered me five thousand for the painting, and I said it was not for sale at any price.”
“Good. Stay away from him. Well, I fled with no money and no vengeance, but it was all right because we had Miss Whitecross’s fortune to come.
I hoped she would give me the funds to pay Gaskin at once, but I could have persuaded him to wait if need be, knowing I was to be rich.
Except that when I returned to London, she was dead. ”
“Ah.”
Nico looked up at the ceiling. His face was tense with remembered stress. “It was a catastrophe. We owed Jacky Gaskin close to two thousand pounds we had no way to repay—”
“How ‘we’?” Titus asked. “You said this was all Perreau’s idea.”
“What should I do, leave my cousin to a moneylender’s mercy?
Gaskin hurts people. Eve said we should find another collector to buy the painting and pay him off.
Me, I wanted to flee the country, but we needed money to do that.
You had taken the fortune that was to be mine, so I came to see you in the hope of a few pounds. You know the rest.”
“I do not know the rest!” Titus yelped. “That’s where it begins! What did you mean to do? What did you want from me?”
Nico rubbed his face with both hands, hard enough to redden the skin. “I wanted money, bien s?r. I wondered if I might sell you the painting. Then I thought I might— Well, help us both. You needed assistance, and I could delay payment of my bills by taking you to the right shops—”
“I did realise that. I was quite ready to pay you for your assistance.”