A Corpse in Shining Armour. Caro Peacock

      He nodded as if the thing were settled and at last moved aside to let us through the gate.

      ‘So is it in the line of business, then?’ Amos said, as we rode along the west side of Regent’s Park.

      He knew me well enough to guess that I hadn’t been bowled over by Miles Brinkburn’s charm to the extent of losing all discretion. A lot of my friends were embarrassed by the singular way I made a living, but Amos was unsurprisable.

      ‘Probably, yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve been asked to investigate something connected with his family. I can’t decide whether to agree or not.’

      ‘I don’t think there’s much harm in him,’ Amos said. ‘But he’s a touch impudent, like. He wants watching.’

      Was that meant as a warning to me to watch my reputation? Mr Brinkburn had indeed been impudent in trying to make an assignation with me when we’d only just been introduced. There were two possible reasons for that. The obvious one was that he’d taken me, from my unmarried state and apparent readiness to attract attention, as a woman whose business it was to make assignations with gentleman. The other was more worrying. Was it possible that he knew already, by some means, that I’d been approached to investigate his family’s extraordinary problem? If so, Amos was right and the younger Mr Brinkburn certainly did want watching.

       CHAPTER TWO

      The approach had come, as was often the case in my investigations, from that rising young Conservative MP, Mr Benjamin Disraeli. He’d told me about it two days before, at a private viewing at an art gallery in Pall Mall that I was attending with the family of one of my singing pupils. He’d come up to me in the refreshment room.

      ‘What a pleasant surprise to find you here, Miss Lane.’

      I was sure he would have had sight of the guest list in advance and knew very well that I’d be there. He was a man who preferred surprising other people to being surprised. But I played him at his own game, making social chat.

      ‘I understand I am to congratulate you on your forthcoming marriage, Mr Disraeli.’

      To a plump chatterbox of a widow, with a more than comfortable income, a dozen or so years older than he was. At least that should take care of his debts.

      ‘Yes indeed. Mary Anne has consented to make me a happy man very soon. I only wish all unions could be as well starred.’

      While we were talking, he was deftly steering us towards two empty places on a sofa at the far end of the room, under a landscape in oils so gloomy that nobody was likely to come for a closer look. When we were settled he inquired politely how business was going.

      ‘Reasonably well, thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m doing more private intelligencing than music teaching these days.’

      ‘Yes. I understand the Staffords were more than grateful about that regrettable business with the statue.’

      He was entitled to know something about my work. It had been Mr Disraeli who’d invented my metier for me, pointing out that I seemed to have a talent for investigation and might make a living by using it on behalf of people whose problems were too delicate to go to the police. His network of acquaintances was wide, growing all the time, and he cheerfully admitted that favours to friends were useful currency for a politician. We were useful to each other. Far more than that–and in spite of our political differences and my knowledge of his failings–I liked the man. He took his risks gallantly and was never dull. Even now, sipping lukewarm tea under one of the most dismal paintings in London, I felt my pulse quickening.

      ‘So you want to talk to me about somebody’s ill-starred marriage,’ I said. ‘It’s no good asking me to collect evidence for a divorce. I’ve tried that once and it was my only failure.’

      ‘Yes, but that was because you decided to take the wife’s part. If you’d stayed on the husband’s side…’

      ‘He was a liar, an adulterer and a bully. I’d rather teach music to tone-deaf five-year-olds all my life than work for people like that.’

      ‘Then we must hope that my unfortunate friend’s morals come up to your high standards. It really is a most unusual case–quite possibly a unique one.’

      He had me there, of course. I could no more have refused to listen to him than a child could walk away from a sweet-shop window. The need to earn money was strong, but curiosity stronger. So that was how I first came to hear about the Brinkburn brothers, although Disraeli didn’t mention their names until at last I’d agreed to consider taking on the case.

      ‘It’s an old family,’ he said. ‘They’ve been living on their estates in Northumberland since the Conqueror. Until quite recently they had no money to speak of; they’ve made good marriages in the last couple of generations so they own considerable property near Newcastle, including four or five coal mines. With the railways coming up so fast, that’s almost as good as gold. Then there’s a smaller estate on the Thames in Buckinghamshire. The heir will be more than comfortably placed.’

      ‘But the family are unhappy?’

      ‘By most accounts, the father, the old lord, is happy enough in his way. He’s sixty or so, hale and hearty until recently, but the word is that he’s been out of his mind for some months. He spent quite a lot of his life travelling and had a villa in Rome. Apparently he now believes he’s the Emperor Hadrian. They’ve stored him in a private asylum near Kingston upon Thames and I’m told he’s perfectly easy to manage, provided the attendants drape themselves in bed sheets and remember to say good morning in Latin.’

      ‘Is he likely to recover?’

      ‘No. I understand he’s paying the penalty for being too ardent a worshipper of Venus in his youth and is not expected to live long.’

      So the mind of the old lord had been eaten away by syphilis. Even though Disraeli and I talked pretty freely, he couldn’t say that outright.

      ‘And the wife?’

      ‘She lives mostly on the Buckinghamshire estate. She’s twenty years younger than he is. It was never a love match. The present lord’s father had gambled away quite a lot of the money he’d married, so the son had to do his duty and marry some of it back again. I gather he was reasonably good looking in his day and there was the title, of course. He married a woman from his own part of the world. She was considered a beauty by local standards; amiable, although inclined to be bookish. She inherited fifty thousand a year and the four or five coal mines, so it seemed suitable enough.’

      He pretended not to see the grimace I was making. When it came to old families and new money, the usually irreverent Disraeli came too close to being serious for my liking.

      ‘So were there children of this perfectly suitable union?’ I said.

      ‘Two sons. One of the sons is twenty-two now and the other’s twenty. That’s where the problem lies.’

      ‘Sowing wild oats?’

      If so, I couldn’t see how I was expected to trail a young man, or two of them, through the gambling clubs and brothels of London.

      ‘Nothing like that, no. The elder one’s sober as a judge. The other’s probably had his moments, but nothing out of the way.’

      A thin woman in ill-advised purple wandered our way, peering short-sightedly at the picture through a lorgnette. Disraeli greeted her politely and they held a meandering conversation about apparently mutual acquaintances before she drifted away.

      ‘Who was that?’ I said.

      ‘I haven’t an idea in the world. Nobody important, or I’d have known her. So, may I tell him you’ll take it on?’

      ‘Tell whom I’ll take on what?’