“He would, though,” Augusta said.
“How can you be sure?”
Edward looked so pathetic that Augusta was tempted to share her own secret knowledge with him. Would it be wise? It could do no harm. The shock of Hugh’s revelation seemed to have made Edward more thoughtful than usual. Perhaps the truth would be good for him. It might make him more serious. She decided to tell him. “Micky killed your uncle Seth,” she said.
“Good God!”
“He suffocated him with a pillow. I caught him red-handed.” Augusta felt a flush of heat in her loins as she remembered the scene that had followed.
Edward said: “But why would Micky kill Uncle Seth?”
“He was in such a hurry to get those rifles shipped to Cordova, don’t you remember?”
“I remember.” Edward was silent for a few moments. Augusta closed her eyes, reliving that long, wild embrace with Micky, in the room with the dead man.
Edward brought her out of her reverie. “There’s something else, and it’s even worse. You remember that boy Peter Middleton?”
“Certainly.” Augusta would never forget him. His death had haunted the family ever since. “What about him?”
“Hugh says Micky killed him.”
Now Augusta was shocked. “What? No — I can’t believe that.”
Edward nodded. “Deliberately held his head under the water and drowned him.”
It was not the murder itself but the idea of Micky’s betrayal that horrified her. “Hugh must be lying.”
“He says Tonio Silva saw the whole thing.”
“But that would mean Micky has been wickedly deceiving us all these years!”
“I think it’s true, Mother.”
Augusta realized, with a growing sense of dread, that Edward would not give credence to such a wild story without a reason. “Why are you so willing to believe what Hugh says?”
“Because I knew something Hugh didn’t know, something that confirms the story. You see, Micky had stolen some money from one of the masters. Peter knew and was threatening to tell. Micky was desperate to find some way of shutting him up.”
“Micky was always short of money,” Augusta recalled. She shook her head in incredulity. “And all these years we’ve thought—”
“That it was my fault Peter died.”
Augusta nodded.
Edward said: “And Micky let us think it. I can’t take it in, Mother. I believed I was a killer, and Micky knew I wasn’t, but he said nothing. Isn’t that a terrible betrayal of friendship?”
Augusta looked sympathetically at her son. “Will you throw him over?”
“Inevitably.” Edward was grief-stricken. “But he’s my only friend, really.”
Augusta felt close to tears. They sat looking at each other, thinking about what they had done, and why.
Edward said: “For nearly twenty-five years we’ve treated him as a member of the family. And he’s a monster.”
A monster, Augusta thought. It was true.
And yet she loved him. Even if he had killed three people, she loved Micky Miranda. Despite the way he had deceived her, she knew that if he walked into the room at this moment she would long to take him in her arms.
She looked at her son. Reading his face, she saw he felt the same way. She had known it in her heart but now her mind acknowledged it.
Edward loved Micky too.
MICKY MIRANDA was worried. He sat in the lounge of the Cowes Club smoking a cigar, wondering what he had done to offend Edward. Edward was avoiding him. He stayed away from the club, he did not go to Nellie’s, and he did not even appear in Augusta’s drawing room at teatime. Micky had not seen him for a week.
He had asked Augusta what was wrong but she said she did not know. She was a little odd with him and he suspected that she knew but would not say.
This had not happened in over twenty years. Every now and again Edward would take offense at something Micky did and go into a sulk, but it never lasted more than a day or two. This time it was serious — and that meant it could jeopardize the Santamaria harbor money.
In the last decade, Pilasters Bank had issued Cordovan bonds about once a year. Some of the money had been capital for railways, waterworks and mines; some had been simple loans to the government. All of it had benefited the Miranda family directly or indirectly, and Papa Miranda was now the most powerful man in Cordova, after the president.
Micky had taken a commission on everything — although nobody at the bank knew this — and he was now personally very rich. More significantly, his ability to raise the money had made him one of the most important figures in Cordovan politics and the unquestioned heir to his father’s power.
And Papa was about to start a revolution.
The plans were laid. The Miranda army would dash south by rail and lay siege to the capital. There would be a simultaneous attack on Milpita, the port on the Pacific coast that served the capital.
But revolutions cost money. Papa had instructed Micky to raise the biggest loan yet, two million pounds sterling, to buy weapons and supplies for a civil war. And Papa had promised a matchless reward. When Papa was president, Micky would be prime minister, with authority over everyone except Papa himself. And he would be designated Papa’s successor, to become president when Papa died.
It was everything he had ever wanted.
He would return to his own country a conquering hero, the heir to the throne, the president’s right-hand man, and lord over his cousins and uncles and — most gratifyingly — his older brother.
And now all of that had been put at risk by Edward.
Edward was essential to the plan. Micky had given Pilasters an unofficial monopoly of trade with Cordova, in order to boost Edward’s prestige and power at the bank. It had worked: Edward was now Senior Partner, something he could never have achieved without help. But no one else in London’s financial community had got a chance to develop any expertise in Cordovan trade. Consequently the other banks felt they did not know enough to invest there. And they were doubly suspicious of any project Micky brought to them because they assumed it had already been turned down by Pilasters. Micky had tried raising money for Cordova through other banks, but they had always turned him down.
Edward’s sulk was therefore deeply disquieting. It was giving Micky sleepless nights. With Augusta unwilling or unable to shed any light on the problem Micky had no one to ask: he himself was Edward’s only close friend.
While he sat smoking and worrying, he spotted Hugh Pilaster. It was seven o’clock, and Hugh was in evening dress, having a drink alone, presumably on his way to meet people for dinner.
Micky did not like Hugh and he knew the feeling was mutual. However, Hugh might know what was going on. And Micky had nothing to lose by asking him. So he stood up and went over to Hugh’s table. “Evening, Pilaster,” he said.
“Evening, Miranda.”
“Have you seen your cousin Edward lately? He seems to have vanished.”
“He comes to the bank every day.”