Page 62 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

I found Cosmos in a cell, a stone room with a bench and no window at all.

He stood with his hands behind him as though the room were his own greenhouse and I had called at an awkward hour. “Steele.”

“I went to Scotland Yard this morning to have you kept there. I failed. You go to Holloway this afternoon.”

His mouth moved toward a smile without arriving. “I have been arrested, Steele. I did not look to be unarrested by luncheon.”

“That is a great deal more grace than I have earned.”

“It is not grace, it is economy. Tell me the things that did work.”

“Gathorne and Pryce, solicitors, have had your affairs since yesterday. They are my family’s people, they have been at it a hundred years.” I gave it to him in order since it was the only comfort in my possession. “Sir Hugo Rennell, Barrister, is instructed. He cleared the week on my word alone, and asked me one question before he did it.”

“Which was?”

“Whether you were innocent.”

Something crossed Cosmos’s face and was put away again. “Rennell.” He said the name the way a man says the name of a good surgeon. “Then it is to be a real trial.”

“It was always to be a real trial.”

“Yes. But a man may go on not quite believing a thing until somebody engages Sir Hugo Rennell on his behalf.” He turned toward the wall for a moment. Once he’d regained his composure, he turned back to me. “They tell me my peers are to try me.”

“They are.”

“I would rather be tried by strangers. Strangers have not dined at my table.” A short breath. “You will have to stand up in your place, Steele, and say a word about me in front of every man who has ever taken my hand. I mention it because I would sooner it came from me than crept up on you in a corridor.”

“I am aware of it.”

“I know you are. I wanted it said aloud once, by somebody who is not sorry for you.”

Above us a door closed and the traffic of the Strand went on. Somewhere along the passage a man was being told to move along.

“Here is what I can promise,” I said. “Your sister will not be alone for one hour of this. Whatever she needs, and whatever she will not admit to needing, comes to me. She may quarrel with me about it afterward at her leisure. The children will be kept in ignorance while ignorance can be kept, and when it cannot, they will hear it from her and not from a newspaper. With your permission, Gathorne will manage the estate and the accounts, so that nothing of yours drifts while you are at Holloway.”

He listened to the whole of it without moving. And then he said, “Claire must be looked after as well.”

“Rosehaven—”

“No. Hear me out, because I have had a morning to arrange the words and I shall not have another.” His hands came out from behind him. “She has nobody. Her husband’s people never took to her. She has no brothers. Every friend she possesses in the world is under my roof and about to be a great deal too occupied. If this goes as it may go, she will be a woman whose name was read aloud in the House of Lords, and she will have got there for no reason on earth except that I loved her and struck a man on her account.” He stopped and made himself go on. “See to her. Not the case. Her. Whether she eats. Whether she is sitting alone. Whether some clever person is at her door with a card and a kind manner. Rosie will do it if I ask her, but she’ll have enough on her plate.”

“You have my word.”

“Do not let either of them do anything brave.” The almost-smile came back and did not stay. “They will try. They will call it duty. But it will be love, and it will hang me.”

“I shall mount a guard against bravery from every quarter,” I said, and hoped the boast lay within my power to make good.

“Bravery is the family disease.” He straightened his cuffs, which were not dirty yet but would be. “One last thing. It is small, but I want it done. The fern on the south bench wants misting and not watering. Rosie will drown it out of kindness when she thinks of it. The rest of the greenhouse needs to be looked after. There is a green notebook in my desk with the whole of the regimen written in it. Give that task and that notebook to Fox. He will see to it. And I’d like some seed catalogues. It will help pass the time.”

“It shall be done.”

“Thank you. It is nearly the only thing in England I can still arrange.”

The gaoler’s boots came along the passage.

“Go on,” Cosmos said. “You have a great deal to do, and I am to have a very great deal of nothing.”

Dodson found me on the steps, as I had known he would. Men like Dodson always know when their ground has been walked on.