Bedford Square (46 page)

Tellman stared at him. “He couldn’t know … could he?”

“He could if I told him,” Pitt responded.

“We can’t prove that Tannifer knew what Horsfall did.”

“I don’t think that will bother Remus too much ….”

Tellman’s eyes widened. “You would tell him?”

“I don’t know. But I should enjoy letting Tannifer think I would.”

Tellman laughed, but it was an unhappy, mirthless sound.

Sigmund Tannifer received them in the ornate withdrawing room without the slightest indication in his smooth features that there was anything amiss or that he could be concerned over any matter but Pitt’s progress in concluding his case. He looked at Parthenope, who was standing beside
his chair, her vivid face for once completely at peace, reflecting none of the anxiety that had so disturbed her on Pitt’s previous visits.

“Good of you to come, Superintendent,” Tannifer said, pointing to the chairs where Pitt and Tellman could be seated. “Miserable end to the matter. I admit, I never imagined Cadell could be so … I am at a loss for words ….”

“Vicious … cruel … utterly sadistic,” Parthenope supplied for him, her voice shaking and her eyes filled with anger and burning contempt. “I am so sorry for Mrs. Cadell; my heart aches for her. What could be more terrible than to discover the man you have loved, have been married to all your adult life and have given your loyalty and your trust …. is a total blackguard?” Her whole slender body shook with the force of her emotions.

Tellman glanced at Pitt, and away again.

“My dear,” Tannifer said soothingly, “you cannot bear the ills of the world. Theodosia Cadell will recover, in time. There is nothing you can do for her.”

“I know there isn’t,” she said desperately. “That’s what makes it so awful. If I could help …”

“I was quite shocked when I returned the day after his death and read the news,” Tannifer went on, looking at Pitt. “I admit, I would have believed it of almost anyone before him. Still … he deceived us all.”

“Returned from where?” Pitt asked, irrationally disappointed. He already knew no one had been to Cadell’s house. What had he hoped for?

“Paris,” Tannifer replied, leaning back a little in his wide chair, his hands folded comfortably. “I went over in the steamer the day before. Exhausting. But banking is an international business. Why do you ask?”

“Only interest,” Pitt replied. Suddenly all his anger returned in a wave, almost choking him. “And did you deposit money in a French bank?”

Tannifer’s eyes widened. “I did, as a matter of fact. Is it of interest to you, Superintendent?” He was at ease, bland, sure of himself.

“Is that where the money ends up from the orphanage, in a French bank?” Pitt said icily.

Tannifer did not move. His expression did not change, but his voice was oddly different in timbre.

“Money from the orphanage? I don’t understand you.”

“The orphanage at Kew which is supported by the committee of the Jessop Club,” Pitt explained elaborately. “All of whose members were victims of the blackmailer.”

Tannifer stared back at him. “Were they? You never mentioned the names of the other victims.”

“Yes … Cornwallis, Stanley, White, Cadell, Balantyne and you,” Pitt answered him gravely, ice in his voice. “Balantyne especially. That’s why the corpse was left on his doorstep, to terrify him, possibly have him arrested for murder. Of course, that is why Wallace tried to kill Albert Cole to begin with, only Cole fought back and escaped.” His eyes did not move from Tannifer’s. “Then he thought of the excellent idea of using Slingsby, whom he knew, and who resembled Cole so much. He bought the socks himself, spinning a yarn so the clerk would remember him and identify him as Cole, and put the receipt on Slingsby’s body. And Balantyne’s snuffbox too, of course.”

“Ingenious …” Tannifer was watching Pitt closely He opened his mouth as if to lick his lips, then changed his mind.

“Wasn’t it,” Pitt agreed, not even allowing his eyes to flicker. “If any of the committee had taken up Balantyne’s anxiety over the amount of money put into the orphanage, for what was actually very few children indeed, then the blackmail threat would have silenced them.”

Parthenope was staring at Pitt, her fair brows drawn into a frown, her mouth pinched.

“Why did it matter that there was too much money and very few children, Superintendent?” she asked. “Surely only too little would be cause for concern? Why would Mr. Cadell want that kept silent? I don’t understand.”

“The answer was not easy to find.” He spoke now to her, not to Tannifer. “You see, the committee put money into the orphanage, and a great many orphans were sent there from all
over London. But it also made a huge profit, tens of thousands of pounds, over the years because the children didn’t stay there very long.” He looked at her puzzled face, the wild emotions in it, and felt a moment’s misgiving. But his anger was white-hot. “You see, they were sold to work in factories and mills and mines, especially mines, where they can crawl into spaces grown men cannot ….”

She gasped, her face bloodless, her voice choking.

“I’m sorry,” Pitt apologized. “I’m sorry you had to know that, Mrs. Tannifer. But the proceeds from this trade are what has finished this beautiful house and bought the silk gown you are wearing.”

“It can’t be!” Her words were torn from her in a kind of shout.

Pitt took the papers from the orphanage out of his pockets and held them up.

Parthenope swung around to Tannifer, her eyes beseeching, filled with terror.

“My dear, they were East End orphans for the most part,” he said reasonably. “Perfectly used to hard conditions. They were not children of people like us. They would have had to work wherever they were. At least this way they won’t starve.”

She stood frozen.

“Parthenope!” There was impatience in his tone. “Please have a sense of proportion, my dear, and of the realities of life. This situation is something you know nothing about. You really have no idea—”

Her voice was harsh, a travesty of its previous beauty.

“Leo Cadell was innocent!” There was agony in her cry.

“He was innocent of blackmail, yes,” he conceded. “But nothing was ever asked for, except worthless trinkets.” He looked at her with exasperation. “But I presume he must have been guilty of using his wife’s beauty to advance his career, which is pretty disturbing, because he shot himself when he feared exposure. Guilt does some strange things.”

Her face was racked with emotions so deep it was a white,
contorted mask, terrible, painful to see. “You know what he was accused of.”

“You had better go and lie down,” Tannifer said more gently, his cheeks a little red. “I’ll call your maid. I’ll be up to see you as soon as I have dealt with Pitt and …” He gestured at Tellman. “Whatever his name is.”

“No!” She staggered back, then turned and fled from the room, leaving the door swinging behind her.

Tannifer looked back at Pitt. “You really are unnecessarily clumsy, Superintendent. You might have spared my wife that sort of description.” He glanced down at the papers in Pitt’s hand. “If you think you have something with which to charge me, come back when I have my legal representative present, and we’ll discuss the matter. Now, I must go to my wife and see if I can help her to understand this business. She is rather naive as to worldly things, idealistic, as women sometimes are.” And without waiting for Pitt to answer, he strode from the room and into the hall.

Tellman glanced at Pitt, all his fury and frustration in his eyes, challenging, demanding some justice.

Pitt moved towards the door.

Before he reached it a shot rang out, a single sharp explosion, and then a thud.

Pitt lurched forward and almost tripped into the hall, Tellman at his shoulder.

Parthenope stood on the stairs with a dueling pistol in her hands, her arms rigid out in front of her, her back straight, her head high.

Sigmund Tannifer lay on the tiled floor below her, blood oozing from the hole in his forehead between his wide-open eyes, his face filled with amazement and disbelief.

Tellman went over to him, but examination was pointless. He had to be dead.

Parthenope dropped the pistol, and it clattered down the steps. She stared at Pitt.

“I loved him,” she said quite steadily. “I would have done anything to defend him. I did … anything … everything. I dressed up as the gardener’s boy and killed Leo Cadell be
cause I thought he was blackmailing Sigmund and would ruin him for something he didn’t do. I knew where to find him. I wrote the suicide note on our own stationery, just like the blackmail letters Sigmund received … wrote himself.” She started to laugh, and then to choke, gasping for breath.

Pitt took a step towards her.

She unfroze. Her whole body was shaking in agonizing grief for love and life and honor lost. She reached behind her waist to the back of her skirt, and her hand came forward holding the other pistol, the pair to the one on the floor at Pitt’s feet.

“No!” Pitt shouted, stumbling forward.

But quite calmly now, as if his cry had steadied her, she put both hands on the pistol, lifted it to her mouth and pulled the trigger.

The shot rang out.

He caught her as she pitched forward, holding her in his arms. She was so slight there seemed hardly any weight to her for so much passion. There was nothing he could do. She was already dead. The betrayal, the grief and the unbearable guilt were ended.

He bent and picked her up to carry her, unheeding of the blood, or the pointlessness of being gentle now. She had been a woman who had loved fiercely and blindly, giving her whole heart to a man who had defiled her dreams, and she had broken herself to protect something which had never existed.

He held her tenderly, as if she had been able to know what he felt, as if some kind of pity mattered even now.

He stepped over Tannifer, and Tellman held open the withdrawing room door for him, his face white, his head bowed.

Q. Anne, why did you decide, when you first began writing the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series, to set your novels in Victorian England?

A. I did not choose the Victorian period with intent. I had been writing nonmystery novels set in many periods, without success. My first mystery, and first book which sold, was
The Cater Street Hangman.
Believe me, nothing makes you love a period like acceptance!

Now I love it for its atmosphere, contrasts between wealth and poverty, what seems to be and what is, for its glamour and squalor, and for the fact that it is largely before the use of science in detection. It is also a mirror of our own time close enough to be valid, and far enough away to be bearable. I get immense pleasure from the manners which are so much subtler than ours, and therefore fun to write about. Romance can legitimately go on for ages.

Q. How much research have you had to do—in the past and on a continuing basis—to ensure that your novels are historically accurate? Do you enjoy the research?

A. To begin with I had to research a great deal. Now I hope I know the period well enough to write most of the book with only minor checking, except for whichever subject I have chosen that is unusual to that book. For example, photography, the workings of the Victorian theatre, 1890s spiritualism, and so on.

Q. Now that you have two long-running series—the Pitt mysteries as well as the more recent William Monk novels—you write two complete books a year. How do you organize your writing time?

A. I love working. I usually begin around nine
A.M.
, break for half an hour’s lunch, work again until five
P.M.
or six
P.M.
, have supper, and often go back for an hour or three in the evening. Monday to Saturday. No one is driving me to this. I do it from choice.

I plan a book in considerable detail long before I start Chapter One, etc. I brainstorm with my assistant, who picks all the holes she can, and then we mend them (I hope). Usually a full single space, legal page per chapter—twelve or thirteen chapters. That may be done up to a year before I start. I like to have two or three in hand.

Q. Do you have a favorite character in your novels?

A. A favorite character? Whomever I am working on at the time. Of all of them, if I have to choose—possibly Great-aunt Vespasia.

Q. In the Monk series, the protagonist is plagued by a faulty memory—sometimes inopportunely faulty. Do you plan to have Monk fully regain his memory, or will he always be troubled by partial amnesia?

A. No, Monk is not going to regain all his memory. Two reasons: I believe it is medically unlikely, and I have far too much pleasure dealing him his past a card at a time to spoil it by dealing the cards all at once. Then I could not spring any surprises.

Q. Some of your novels are being adapted for television. Please tell us about that. And how do you feel about your creations being interpreted by flesh-and-blood actors?

A. I am delighted to say that
The Cater Street Hangman
has been filmed for TV as a pilot for a series we hope. In the United
States it played on the A&E network. I think they have done a superb job, everyone involved, but particularly the casting director, who could have taken the actors out of my imagination and given them flesh. The physical appearances are all exactly as I would have wished, but far more important, the spirit is there. I am totally delighted. It is a most extraordinary thrill to see what has been inside your head become real in front of you.

Q. You also write short fiction, notably a story in Ballantine’s
Canine Crimes
anthology. For you, does the writing process change when you turn to the shorter form?

A. I enjoy writing short stories, from the totally light and, I hope, funny stories like “Daisy and the Archaeologists” in
Canine Crimes,
through to the dark and tragic mystery, such as the one called “Heroes,” set in the trenches of World War One. Yes, the writing process has to be tighter, the plot cannot be fudged at all, and there is little time to set an atmosphere. But drama does not change, nor does dialogue or character—and perhaps not mystery either. You still need a crime, some detection, and an honest resolution.