George Charnage had capped a career of gambling, extravagance, unpaid debts, and almost continual inebriation by losing a fortune he didn’t have at whist. He’d invited the two men he’d played with for another match at his house the next night, offering as stake all he had left: the house and its contents. They came with money in their pockets, ready to reduce George Charnage and his family to beggary for their night’s entertainment. Instead, he and Daizell’s mother had held them at gunpoint, stripped them of everything down to their clothing, and shot one of them when he resisted.
Daizell had come home late the next morning after a night’s debauchery in south London to discover an enraged man in his drawers bound and gagged in the drawing room and another lying on the floor in a pool of blood. George and Anna Charnage had left Mr Henry Haddon untended, unconscious, and bleeding all night. When Daizell had knelt to help him, the bone had been visible in his shattered shoulder. He died a few hours later.
Apart from a furious man and a dying one, the house had been bare. Daizell’s mother and father had packed upeverything they owned of value plus the proceeds of that candlelight robbery, and fled the country.
They hadn’t told their son of their plans beforehand and they hadn’t invited his company in their escape or exile. They had left him as the only one of the family there to blame, and he had been blamed. His father was cousin to the Marquess of Sellingstowe, who had given him an allowance on the basis of family obligation; at the scandal Sellingstowe had publicly repudiated the connection, cutting off Daizell too. His name was bloodstained and disgraced. George Charnage’s other victim had claimed the house in lieu of the debt. Daizell found himself with nowhere to live, no income, no skills, and no connections who would give him work, if there was any work he might be fit for given his curtailed education and lack of adult occupation.
He had been left with nothing but a tenuous claim to be a gentleman, a decent wardrobe, a likeable manner, and a knack for cutting profiles. He’d survived for seven years on those things and the tolerance of hosts which, like the wardrobe, became more threadbare every year. He was unwanted, aimless and useless, and though he’d always thought he’d somehow find a way out of the mess, it had never come to pass.
He swallowed all that down. ‘Well, it can’t be helped. He did what he did. I would prefer it if people didn’t blame me for his acts, that’s all.’
‘Do they?’ Cassian said. ‘How? That is, you were not involved, were you?’
Daizell hated the question in his voice. He’d been asked too often. ‘No. I wasn’t.’
Cassian didn’t reply. Daizell blinked into the dark, reminding himself that he was a provincial gentleman, that hewasn’t to know and had every right to ask, that it was all a long time ago and a life away.
‘I was in Vauxhall Gardens all that night,’ he said, slightly less harshly. ‘A friend had a small party. I had no idea what my parents had planned. They didn’t tell me Father had lost everything at whist the night before; they certainly didn’t advise me they’d be enlivening the evening with robbery and murder. I came home to an empty house and a dying man. They didn’t even leave a note. They just did it and fled.’
‘But – they said nothing? Not even goodbye? Have you not heard from them since?’
‘No.’ He had never received a letter. Perhaps his parents had written to the house he no longer lived in, or care of friends or relatives Daizell no longer saw. Or perhaps they hadn’t written at all. He’d given up wondering a while ago, because wondering meant hoping and he couldn’t do that any more.
Cassian was eloquently silent. Daizell sighed. ‘I told you about my name: well, my father was always like that. He was loud and he drank and I’m not sure he fully understood that other people were real too. He was convinced that anyone who behaved in a way he found inconvenient must be doing it out of personal malice towards him. We were all minor actors in the play of which he was the star.’
‘Even your mother?’
‘Oh, she agreed with him,’ Daizell said. ‘I expect it was the only way to live with him, but he was the heart of her world. She worshipped him, whatever he did. She loved me too, but only in the space he left for that, and he didn’t leave much. A jealous god, my father, and didn’t like to share. When he said,Take a gun and help me commit a robbery, she would have done it without hesitation. I expect she wept over leavingme behind, but that didn’t stop her going, or leaving me to take the blame for their mess.’
‘But why should you take it?’ Cassian demanded. ‘How could you be blamed when you weren’t there?’
‘Someone had to be. Vier very much wanted a scapegoat.’
‘Vier? Sir James?’
‘He was the other man in the house. He and his friend Haddon came ready to play deep. Apparently they intended to strip my father of everything he had left down to his home and, according to some rumours, my mother’s person. Instead Vier lost two thousand pounds that night, as well as his friend, so one can quite understand he wanted vengeance. And since I was the only Charnage available, he took it out on me.’
‘What did he do?’
Daizell shut his eyes, feeling the backwash of bewilderment, distress, injustice, helplessness. ‘It seems my mother wore breeches and a kerchief over her face while holding the gun. Vier claimed to believe it was me. He told everyone I was my father’s accomplice.’
‘But you were in Vauxhall.’
‘Iknow. I had witnesses. But I never had a day in court to say so, since he never tried to press charges. Instead he made a lot of remarks about how he couldn’t see the face of the second robber, about the hair – my mother’s was like mine – about drunken evenings and lying friends protecting me and how he can’t prove it but he knows. All implications, but he’s been whispering them so long – and what was I meant to do? Slam my hand on the table and say,No, sir, I did not conspire at robbery and murder, that was my mother? I’d lost everything – the house, the money, my parents – and Vier was spinning lies and sowing doubt, and people looked at medifferently and I didn’t know what to do. I just didn’t know what to do.’ He felt his voice fade in the darkness. ‘One of the men I was with in Vauxhall went to the wars and died there, and another I barely knew and wasn’t much in society himself. There was nobody speaking for me, whereas Vier was always there. And I suppose many people found it easier to believe that I had held up a man with a pistol than that my mother had. Or they didn’t really believe it but enjoyed the gossip, or perhaps nobody wanted my company anyway, with my father a murderer. In any case, people turned their backs.’
‘I’m so sorry, Daizell.’ Cassian’s voice ached. ‘That is dreadful. I quite see why you loathe Vier.’
‘Oh, that part only made me dislike him,’ Daizell said. ‘The loathing came—’ He glared at the night. Cassian was so close, and a hundred miles away. ‘I suppose you ought to know, if you’re in my company and all that. It wasn’t – shouldn’t have been – dreadful, but . . . The thing is, I stay with people, you see, as one does when one is a gentleman lacking any means of support. A few weeks here or there. One has to be an entertaining guest, if possible, so I cut shades. My one talent. I sing for my supper with profiles, as an entertaining little trick for a gentleman which isquitedifferent from being a jobbing artist. But some house parties are less reputable than others, and people have different ideas of entertainment, and to cut – as it were – a long story short, I have done some rather risqué scenes, for people who wanted them.’
‘Oh.’ Cassian sounded startled. Daizell would bet he was blushing, could picture how his cheeks had pinked. ‘I didn’t realise – that is,canyou, with profiles?’
‘Lord, yes. Full-length ones, you know, and scenes. You’d be amazed.’
‘I probably would. I had no idea.’
He sounded intrigued. Daizell hadn’t taken up his scissors in days – it had been a relief not to – but he had a sudden urge to snip something that would make Cassian really blush. Even more, to ask him what he’d like to see, and to watch his face as the figures emerged from the paper.
Stop it.
