Bedford Square (37 page)

“I am sorry,” she apologized. “I beg your pardon. I had barely thought of the newspapers.”

“I’ll call on Vespasia as I leave here,” he said decisively. “I am sure she will wish to be with you. It will be easier for her to face this if she is not alone.”

She looked at him, and there was a warmth of gratitude momentarily in her eyes. She did not question his decision. Perhaps she was glad to have any step taken for her, anything that relieved a bit of the weight she must bear alone from now on.

“Thank you,” she accepted.

There was nothing else to ask her. He rose to his feet. She could summon the maid if she wished. She might prefer just at the moment to be alone, perhaps to weep, although that would probably come later.

He was at the door when she spoke.

“Mr. Pitt … my husband did not kill himself … he was murdered. I don’t know how, or by whom, except that I have to presume it was the blackmailer. If you stop now, he will get away with it.” The last sentence was said with sudden, choking anger, and her eyes blazed a challenge to him, on the brink of blame.

He did not know what to say. There were no grounds for her charge except loyalty, pain and despair.

“I won’t take anything for granted, Mrs. Cadell,” he promised. “I shall look for proof of every detail before I accept it.”

He and Tellman questioned all the household staff, but there had been no break-in; no strangers had been seen. The delivery boys at the back door had not gone through the wooden gate in the wall to the garden; indeed, they had been too busy flirting with the scullery maid and the lady’s maid, respectively, to leave the step at all. They had barely succeeded in doing the duty they were employed for.

No one had come through the house, and the only person to go through the garden door was the gardener’s boy delivering ties and doing a little work on the old white climbing rose which was in bloom and in need of holding up.

No one knew anything about the gun. Cadell must have had it for some time. There were a pair of pistols in a case locked into the corner cupboard in the study, but this was not one of them. Theodosia said she had never seen it before, but
admitted that she hated guns and would not recognize one from another.

The staff were not permitted to touch them or have anything to do with them, so they could offer no information at all. It seemed that where Cadell had obtained it or how long he had owned it would remain a mystery, like much else to do with his whole blackmail scheme.

Pitt called at Vespasia’s house before returning to Bow Street. She, too, was shocked by the news of Leo Cadell’s death, and found it almost impossible to believe that he was responsible for the blackmail, but she did not deny it as Theodosia had done. She thanked Pitt for coming to tell her personally rather than allowing her to read of it in the newspapers, then she called for her carriage and her lady’s maid, and prepared to go and offer whatever comfort she could to her goddaughter.

Pitt decided then to tell Cornwallis. He also should not learn it from the evening editions of the newspapers.

“Cadell?” he said in amazement. He was standing in the middle of his office as if he had been pacing the floor. His face was haggard. He had neither eaten nor slept well in weeks. There was a very slight nervous tic in his left temple. “I … I presume you must be sure?”

“Can you think of another explanation?” Pitt asked unhappily.

Cornwallis hesitated. He looked profoundly miserable, but even as they spoke, some of the agonized tension had eased out of his body, and his shoulders were lowering into a more natural position. Whatever the surprise or the understanding of grief, his own ordeal was over, and even if he despised himself for it, he could not help but be aware of that.

“No …” he said at last. “No. From what you say, that must be the answer. What a damned tragedy. I’m sorry. I could have wished it were … someone I didn’t know. I suppose that’s idiotic. It had to be someone I knew …. It had to be someone we all knew. Well done, Pitt … and …” He wanted
to thank Pitt for his loyalty, it was there in his eyes, but he did not know how to word it.

“I’ll go back to Bow Street,” Pitt said briefly, “and tidy up the details.”

“Yes.” Cornwallis nodded. “Yes. Of course.”

10

V
ESPASIA WENT
immediately to Theodosia, taking her lady’s maid with her, and such necessities as she would require to remain overnight, or longer. She had no intention of allowing Theodosia to remain alone in the grief, confusion and despair which must follow upon such an appalling loss. In her long life she had encountered suicide before. It was in many ways the hardest of all to endure, and the loneliness and the guilt which invariably followed all but doubled the pain.

There was nothing to do that first afternoon and evening but to survive them, to be there and allow Theodosia to begin to realize that Leo was truly dead. Of course, tomorrow morning would be worse. Sleep, however little of it, would bring respite, then with waking there would be a few moments before memory returned. That would be like hearing it all over again, only without the numbing mercy of shock.

They sat up and talked in Theodosia’s boudoir. She seemed to need to speak of Leo, most particularly of the kind of man he had been when they first met. With a rising tone of desperation she recalled dozens of good things he had done, brave or kind or wise, acts of honesty where less would have passed uncriticized, even unnoticed, but he had silently done his best.

Vespasia listened, and indeed she could remember a great many of them herself. It was only too easy to recall all that was likable in him, all she had admired over the years.

A little before midnight Theodosia suddenly found she
was able to weep, and the release of tears exhausted her. After that Vespasia’s maid brewed her a sleeping draft and she went to bed. Vespasia took a draft herself and retired fifteen minutes later.

The morning was even worse than she had expected, then she was angry with herself for not having foreseen it. She met Woods in the hallway as she was crossing to the breakfast room. He looked pale and red-eyed.

“Good morning, your ladyship,” he said hoarsely, and cleared his throat. “How is Mrs. Cadell?”

“Asleep,” Vespasia answered. “I shall not disturb her. Will you be good enough to bring me the newspapers.”

“The newspapers, your ladyship?” His eyebrows rose.

“Yes, please.”

He stood unmoving. “Did you mean the whole newspaper, your ladyship?”

“Of course, the whole newspaper, Woods. Am I not making myself plain?” It would have been pleasanter to have them burnt. It was her first instinct, but she needed to know what they said. There were truths that could not be avoided. “I shall be in the breakfast room. I shall have tea and toast. No more will be necessary.”

“Yes, your ladyship,” Woods said hastily. “I’ll … I’ll have them ironed ….”

“Don’t bother.” She realized that with the master dead the usual duties in this respect had been abandoned. “I’ll look at them as they are.” And without waiting for argument, she passed him and went to the breakfast room.

He brought them on a tray, smoothed but unironed, and she took them from him. They were uniformly dreadful. One of them summed up everything that was worst in all three and added a great deal of speculation that was both cruel and destructive. It was written by Lyndon Remus. He had done his own investigation into the corpse found in Bedford Square and its possible connection with General Balantyne. He must have followed Pitt because he also was aware of his visits to Dunraithe White, Tannifer and Sir Guy Stanley.

In his article on Cadell’s suicide he suggested a conspiracy
that Pitt had discovered and that he had been on the brink of arresting Cadell.

He continued for several paragraphs in a similar vein, and by the time Vespasia came to the end of it she was so angry she could hardly hold the paper still enough to read it. She set it down on the table. Lyndon Remus might have begun as a sincere journalist intending to expose corruption, but he had allowed ambition to warp his judgment. The chance of his own fame and the power that the pen afforded had prompted him to make unfounded assumptions. All of them had a marked lack of compassion for the results of his speculation upon the bereaved, who might have been innocent but for whom proof of that would come too late to undo the pain or the ostracism that went hand in hand with suspicion.

“I have read them,” she said to Woods when he returned to see if she was ready to have the table cleared. “You may burn them now. There is no need for Mrs. Cadell to see them.”

“Yes, your ladyship,” he said quickly. His opinion was clear in his face, and his hands, when he took the papers, shook a little.

“How are the staff?” Vespasia asked him.

“We are managing, your ladyship,” he replied. “I regret to say there are persons outside in the street attempting to ask questions … for the newspapers. They are … most … ill mannered. They are intrusive and have no respect for … death.”

“Have you locked the areaway doors?” she asked. “We can do without deliveries today.”

“I … I hadn’t,” he admitted. “With your permission I shall do so.”

“You have it. And no one is to answer the front door unless they have first ascertained who is outside and sought either my permission or Mrs. Cadell’s. Is that clear?”

“Yes, indeed. Cook asked me to enquire what you would like for luncheon, Lady Vespasia. I assume you will be remaining?” He looked a little desperate.

“Most certainly,” she answered him. “I think whatever Cook cares to prepare will be excellent. May I suggest something very light. An egg custard would be a suitable pudding, or a fruit fool.”

“Yes, thank you, your ladyship.”

Vespasia went to the withdrawing room; somehow the formality of it seemed appropriate to the mood.

Theodosia came down a little after ten. She looked exhausted and wretched, dressed entirely in black, but her head was high and she wore an expression of resolution.

“There is a great deal I need to do,” she said even before Vespasia had the opportunity to ask her how she was, although it would have been a pointless question. She would probably never in her life suffer more than she was doing this morning. “And you are the only one I can ask to help me,” she finished.

“Leo must have had a man of affairs,” Vespasia replied, regarding Theodosia gravely. “There is very little you’re required to do yourself. Even that, I can do for you, if you wish.”

Theodosia’s eyebrows rose. “I am not referring to that sort of thing, Aunt Vespasia. I am quite sure Mr. Astell can do all
of that. Although I should welcome your advice as to what you think would be suitable.” She frowned very slightly, concentrating. “I am quite certain Leo did not take his own life. No one could drive him to that, no matter what he thought or feared. I am even more certain he was not behind the blackmail.”

She stood with her back to the room, her face towards the garden but blind to its flowers and dappled light. “I do not delude myself I know everything about him,” she said slowly. “One never does … nor should one. It would be intrusive, and more dangerous than that, it would be boring. But I really do believe I knew Leo too well for him to have deceived me either to his elation when the plan seemed to have been succeeding or his despair when he would have felt such imminent failure as to have driven him to this.”