Belgrave Square (20 page)

“What?” Micah Drummond was incredulous. “Carswell dismissed it?”

“Yes sir,” Pitt agreed, standing in Drummond’s office in the sun. “He threw it out. Allardyce and Crombie could hardly believe it.”

“Did you say Horatio Osmar?” Drummond said more thoughtfully. “Wasn’t he a junior minister in the government a few years ago?”

“I believe so, but does that make it any better?” Pitt was ready to be angry at the abuse of privilege.

Drummond smiled with a small lift of his shoulders.

“None at all, but it may explain Cars well’s behavior—”

“Not to me,” Pitt said hotly. “If that is the sort of justice he dispenses then he is not the man I thought him, nor is he fit to sit on the bench.”

Drummond’s eyes widened. “A forceful opinion, Pitt.”

Pitt felt his face color. He admired Drummond and was suddenly aware he had exceeded his position and breached the social gap which lay between them in criticizing a man out of his own class, and in Drummond’s.

“I apologize,” he said huskily. “I should not have expressed it.”

Drummond’s face relaxed into genuine humor.

“I like your choice of words, Pitt, there is a nice difference between that and saying that you were mistaken in your estimate.” He moved from behind the desk. “I am inclined to agree with you, if that were the case, but I meant that Carswell and Osmar may have associates in common who may well have—” He hesitated, again uncomfortable, seeking to explain something which seemed to embarrass him.
Pitt was suddenly reminded of the emotion he had felt riding beside him through the darkness in the hansom to see Lord Byam the first time.

Pitt waited. The silence lay in the bright air. Outside someone dropped a wooden crate on the pavement, and in the distance a coster cried his wares, the sound coming clearly through the open window.

“—have reminded him of friendship,” Drummond finished, “of obligation.”

“I see,” Pitt said quietly, although he did not. It was a cloudy mass of possibilities, none of them hard-edged, all confused in the darkness of social pressures, debts of money, favor, the whisper of corruption, however politely phrased, and behind it all blackmail, and the ugly body of William Weems.

Drummond pushed his hand into his pocket and looked miserable.

“I suppose this mistress business is an excellent motive for murder, poor devil,” he said resignedly. “What about the other names on Weems’s list? Have you looked at them yet?”

“No sir.” Pitt felt his heart sink. “One of them is on the force—”

Drummond’s face paled. “Oh God! Are you sure?”

“I suppose there is a remote hope it is someone else by the same name,” Pitt said without any hope at all.

Drummond stared at the floor. “Well I suppose you’d better do it. What about the gun?” He looked up. “Have you found that yet? You said the one there—what was it?”

“A hackbut,” Pitt replied. “Ornamental, on the wall.”

“You said it wasn’t in working order?”

“It isn’t. It wouldn’t have killed him, but it must have been something like it, muzzle loaded and with a wide barrel, to accommodate the coins.”

Drummond winced. “I suppose you’ve got the local police looking for it? Yes, of course. Sorry. Well you’d better learn what you can about the others on the list. It gets uglier as it goes on.”

“Yes,” Pitt agreed. “I’m afraid it does.”

5

C
HARLOTTE SAT
at the dinner table at the Hotel Metropole opposite Emily and felt an immense satisfaction. Tonight was going to be marvelous. She had on her very best gown, a gift from Emily and Jack for her help over the last two weeks, and she was quite sure she looked splendid. She had paraded before the mirror enchanted by the grand lady she saw reflected in it, a magical change from the woman she ordinarily saw. This creature was perfectly corsetted to the ultimate shape, her shoulders were creamy white above the Venetian red of the satin fabric, cut in a style up to the very minute, with the new, slender skirt, and hardly any bustle. It was so new it was almost ahead of the mode. Her hair was piled up in a shining crown, and her face was radiant with the contemplation of the evening. They were dining in the most elegant of places, then going to the opera, to
Lohengrin
, no less, the greatest draw of the season. Personally she would have preferred something Italian, but this was the “in” thing this year, and who would quarrel with that on such a night? After all, it was still part of Jack’s campaign, and as such a duty.

Emily was dressed in her favorite delicate water green. She was feeling a great deal better and looked as lovely as an early flower with her fair hair and alabaster skin. Certainly she could have done with a trifle more color, but an attempt to lend it artificially had looked so awful they had both
laughed heartily, and Emily had scrubbed it off. The Ashworth diamonds at her ears and around her neck would lend all the sparkle her uncertain health might lack, and she was determined to enjoy herself.

Jack sat next to her, looking at her every few minutes in concern. But far more extraordinary than that, Pitt was present, dressed after considerable argument, and a mighty victory for Charlotte, in a borrowed dinner suit which really fitted remarkably well. Charlotte thought privately this was due to some clever and exceedingly tactful planning on Jack’s part. Pitt was sitting a trifle uncomfortably, now and again running his hand around inside his collar, and stretching his arms as if his cuffs were riding up, but he was smiling, and even when no one was looking at him, still appeared remarkably pleased with himself.

That might have been due at least in part to another occupant of the table—not Lord Anstiss, sitting playing with his fork and a mouthful of smoked salmon, his concentration on his plate, his face wreathed in mild anticipation, but Great-Aunt Vespasia, her hair pale silver, wound on her head like a coronet, the light shining through it, her eyes bright with humor, a tiny smile on her lips as she looked at Charlotte, then at Pitt. In fact as she watched Pitt ease his shoulders again in his jacket her smile widened and the affection in it was plain, as most definitely was the amusement.

The waiters came and served the next course, and Lord Anstiss resumed his extraordinary tale of courtly romance about Edward Heneage Dering who in 1859 had fallen in love with Rebecca Dulcibella Orpen.

He had gone to her aunt, Lady Chatterton, a woman quite naturally old enough to be his mother, and somehow so mishandled his request for Rebecca’s hand that the aunt had assumed the offer intended for herself, and accepted it forthwith. He had been too much the gentleman to disabuse her of her illusion.

“In 1865 all three were received into the Catholic church,” he went on with a wry smile. “And two years after that Rebecca Orpen married a friend of Dering’s named Marmion Edward Ferrars, also a Catholic.”

Charlotte was fascinated. Had she known him better she would have challenged the truth of this odd story, as it was
she had to content herself with a hasty glance at Aunt Vespasia, who nodded imperceptibly.

Anstiss saw the look, but his face registered only amusement.

“Indeed,” he said with relish, “they all four settled in Ferrars’s home at Baddesley Clinton, a marvelously isolated house in Warwickshire, with a moat.”

Pitt coughed but Anstiss took no exception to it as a comment. In fact their incredulity seemed to be precisely the reaction he desired. He looked to Vespasia for confirmation, which she readily gave.

“Ferrars had no money to speak of.” Anstiss picked delicately at his food. “And Dering had a great deal, so he paid off the mortgage, restored the local church and they all four settled down together to devote their lives to good works—and philosophy and sitting reading Tennyson together in the evenings. Dering wrote bad novels; Ferrars, who believed, quite correctly, that he resembled Charles I, dressed and cut his beard accordingly; Rebecca painted rather good water-color portraits of them all.

“Lady Chatterton—she still called herself that—died in ’seventy-six. Marmion Ferrars died in ’eighty-four, and the year after Dering at last married Rebecca, where they still live—one presumes happily ever after.”

“Absolutely marvelous,” Emily said with delight. “And you swear it is true.”

“In every particular,” he said, meeting her eyes with unfeigned amusement. “There have been a great many people devoted to the romantic ideal, artists, poets, painters and dreamers. We are only now being taken over by the aesthete movement, which I suppose is a natural progression from extreme innocence to ostentatious ’experience.’”

They continued speaking until the waiter brought the final course, then a trifle more hastily than would ordinarily have been the case, and still smiling, they repaired to their respective carriages and set out for Covent Garden and the opera.

“Of course all the world and his wife will be there,” Emily warned as they sat almost stationary, moving forward barely a step or two at a time in the press of traffic. “It is necessary to come this early if one hopes to arrive at a civilized
time and not inconvenience everyone and make a spectacle of oneself by taking one’s seat after the music has begun. And of course that is hopelessly vulgar, because it is the cheapest way of making everyone look at you.” She settled a little more comfortably. “Never mind. It is an excellent opportunity to catch up on events. I have not seen you for simply ages, Thomas.” She smiled with vivid humor which she did not bother to suppress. “You hardly look like yourself. It is most difficult to tell how you are.”

“I am sitting very carefully so as not to rumple my shirt, crease my jacket or lose my cuffs up my arms,” he replied with a grin. “But I am greatly obliged—and looking forward to the evening.”

“And are you pursuing some interesting case?” she went on. “I gather not, because Charlotte has said nothing about it. I doubt even Lord Anstiss’s tales could hold her interest against a really good case—or mine either.”

“The murder of a usurer,” he replied with a wry expression. “And I don’t yet know whether it is going to be ‘good’ or not.”

“A usurer?” Her voice reflected her disappointment. The carriage moved another twenty yards forward and stopped again. Somewhere ahead of them a footman shouted angrily, but it made no difference; they stayed precisely where they were. “That does not sound very promising.”

“I know they provide a service of sorts.” Jack pulled a face. “But I loathe them—most of them bleed their clients dry. I’m sorry, but I have some sympathy with whoever killed him.”

“He was also a blackmailer,” Pitt added.

“A lot of sympathy,” Jack amended.

“I too,” Pitt confessed. “But he blackmailed some interesting people—or it appears from his books that he did.”

“Oh?” Emily sat up a little straighter, her attention sparked. “Such as whom?”

Pitt looked at her without apology. “That is presently confidential, and the matter is one of indiscretion in one case, and poor judgment of character in another, which led to a tragedy, but there is no crime involved in either. There are others I have yet to investigate.”

Emily was quick and subtle to read his face in the light from the neighboring carriage lamps.

“And you are hating it. Are they people you admire?”

He shrugged ruefully. He had forgotten how very astute she was, not quite as brave as Charlotte or as passionate, but a better judge of others, and a far better actress when it came to presenting exactly the right expression and gesture to govern a situation. Emily was supremely practical.

“People I know,” he replied. “It will feel like a kind of betrayal, and I do not want to know their weaknesses, even if they turn out to be innocent of murder.”

Emily flashed him a quick smile of understanding.

“Of course not.”

Pitt fidgeted with his collar yet again. “Since I have nothing to contribute, let us speak of your affairs. Tell me something of Lord Anstiss. I hear he is a great patron of the arts and a political and social benefactor. He is certainly very entertaining. Is there no Lady Anstiss?”

“She died many years ago,” Emily answered. Then she leaned forward confidentially. “I believe it was very tragic.”