Belgrave Square (51 page)

There was nothing.

“Indeed? Are you sure? I am not being blackmailed, Inspector.” He made no protestations and there was humor in his face, not anxiety.

“I’m very glad.” Pitt smiled back. “It is someone who was a guest in your home some time ago.”

“Oh? Who is that?”

It was Anstiss’s first error, and not a serious one.

“I am sure, my lord, you will understand if I do not answer that,” Pitt said smoothly. “I must treat such information in confidence.”

“Of course.” Anstiss shrugged. “Foolish of me to have asked. I was not thinking. It was a sense of guilt. I feel responsible that a guest of mine should suffer such an offense.” He shifted his weight a little and relaxed, but he did not invite Pitt to sit. One did not entertain policemen as if they were social acquaintances. “How can I help? You said it was some time ago?”

“Yes. Several years. If I could speak to your butler he may have either records, or if not, then some memory of past servants. He may even know where they may be found now.”

“It’s possible,” Anstiss agreed. “But don’t hold much hope, Inspector Pitt. Some servants stay a long time, of course, indeed all their lives, but many others move position often, and this one sounds most unsatisfactory. The sort of person you are speaking of may well have passed from one place to another, always downward, and in quite a short space have ended up on the streets, or by this time dead. Still, by all means speak to Waterson if you like. I’ll call him.” And without waiting for any better instruction he moved to the bell rope and rang it.

Waterson proved a dignified man with a dry and individual humor in his face, and Pitt liked him immediately. On Anstiss’s instruction he conducted Pitt to his pantry, where he offered him a cup of tea with biscuits, an unusually civilized concern to a policeman. Then he recalled as well as he was able all the upstairs servants in the country house approximately twenty years previously.

He was tall and lean with a fine head of white hair. Were it not for his deferential and unobtrusive manner, one might have taken him for the aristocratic owner of the house. His features had a refinement Anstiss’s lacked, but neither the strength nor the blazing intelligence. Seeing them side by side one would never have failed to see that Anstiss was the leader designed by nature as well as by society.

“Probably a housemaid or a ladies’ maid,” Pitt prompted, sipping his tea. It was hot and delicately flavored and was served in porcelain cups.

“That would be about the time of Lady Anstiss’s death,” Waterson said slowly, his eyes on the ceiling as he leaned back in his chair. “Not a time easily forgotten. Let me see … we had young Daisy Cotterill then, she’s still with us—head laundress now. And Bessie Markham. She married a footman from somewhere or other. Left us, of course. We’ve got one of her daughters as tweeny now.” He frowned in concentration. “The other one I can recall would be Liza Cobb. Yes, she left shortly after that. Said it was something to do with family. Happens sometimes, of course, but not often a girl can afford to give up a good place just because her family has difficulties.” He looked up at Pitt. “Usually her job is the more important then—a little guaranteed money. Not a particularly satisfactory girl, not got her mind on her duty. Sights set on something better. Yes, Liza Cobb could be your girl.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Waterson. Have you any idea how I might find her?”

Waterson’s blue eyes opened wider. “Now?”

“If you please?” Pitt took the last biscuit. They were remarkably good.

“Well, let me see …” Waterson looked up at the ceiling again and concentrated for several minutes. “I don’t know myself, but it is possible Mrs. Fothergill, the housekeeper at number twenty-five, may know. I believe she was some sort of cousin. If you wish, I will write you a note of introduction.”

“That is very civil of you,” Pitt said with surprise and gratitude. “Really very civil.”

He spent another quarter of an hour sharing a little harmless gossip with Waterson, who seemed to have an ungentlemanly interest in detection, about which he was embarrassed, but it did little to dim his delight. Then Pitt took his leave and visited the house across the street Waterson had indicated. There he found Mrs. Fothergill, who was able with much shaking of her head and tutting to redirect him to yet another possible source of information as to Liza Cobb’s present whereabouts.

Actually it took him till the following noon before he found her behind the counter in an insalubrious fishmonger’s off Billingsgate. She was a large woman with raw hands and a
coarse face which might have been handsome twenty years ago, but was now rough-skinned, fleshy and arrogant. He knew instantly that he had the right person. There was a look about her that reminded him sickeningly of the half of Weems’s face which the gold coins had left more or less intact.

He stood in front of the counter between the scales and the wooden slab and knife on which the fish were cut, and wondered how to approach her. If he were too direct she would simply leave. The door to the interior of the shop was behind her, and the counter between her and Pitt.

Perhaps she was as greedy as her relative.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said with a courtesy that came hard to him.

“Arternoon,” she said with slight suspicion. People did not customarily address her so.

“I represent the law,” he said more or less truthfully. Then as he saw the dislike in her pale eyes, “It is a matter of finding the heir, or heiress, to a gentleman recently deceased,” he went on. Yes, it was the eyes that were like Weems. “And if I may say so, ma’am, you bear such a resemblance to the gentleman in question, I think my search ends right here.”

“I ain’t lorst anyone,” she said, but the edge was gone from her voice. “ ’Oo’s dead?”

“A Mr. William Weems, of Clerkenwell.”

Her face hardened again and she glanced angrily at the queue of women beginning to form behind Pitt, faces curious. “ ’E were murdered,” she said accusingly. “ ’ere! ’Oo are yer? I don’t know nuffin’ abaht it. I don’t get nuffin’ ’cause ’e’s dead.”

“There’s his house,” Pitt said truthfully. “It seems you may be his only relative, Miss—er, Miss Cobb?”

She thought for several seconds, then eventually the vision of the house became too strong.

“Yeah, I’m Liza Cobb.”

“Naturally I have one or two questions to ask you,” Pitt continued.

“I don’t know nuffin’ abaht ’is death.” She glared not at him but at the women behind him. “ ’ere—you keep your ears to yerself,” she said loudly.

“I have nothing to ask you about Mr. Weems’s death,” Pitt replied soothingly. “What I want to ask you goes back long before that. May we speak somewhere a little more private?”

“Yeah, we better ’ad. Too many ’round ’ere can’t mind their own business.”

“Well I’m sure I don’t care if you got relations wot was murdered,” the first woman said with a sniff. “But you keep a civil tongue in yer ’ead, Liza Cobb, or I’ll get me fish elsewhere. I will.”

“Yer comes ’ere ’cause I give yer tick when no one else will, Maisie Stillwell, an’ don’t yer ferget it neither!” Liza Cobb spat back at her. She turned and cried out shrilly for someone to come and take her place at the counter, then led him into a hot, stale-smelling back room.

“Well?”

“Twenty years ago you were in service in Lord Anstiss’s country house?”

“Yeah—must’a bin abaht then. Why?”

“You found a letter from Lady Anstiss to Lord Byam, who was a guest there?”

“Not exactly,” she said guardedly. “But what if I ’ad?”

“Then what did happen—exactly?”

“W’en Lady Anstiss died, Rose, ’er ladies’ maid, took some of ’er things, they gave ’em ’er, there weren’t nuffin’ wrong in it,” she answered. “Well w’en Rose died, abaht three year ago, them things passed ter me. All rolled up inside them, like, were this letter. Love letter, summink fierce.” Her broad lip curled in a sneer. “Din’t know decent folk wrote letters like that to each other.”

“How did you come to give it to Weems?”

Her eyes were sharp and clever. “I din’t give it ter ’im. Least not all of it. It were in two pages, like. I sold ’im one, an’ kept the other.”

Pitt felt a prickle of excitement.

“You kept the other one yourself?”

She was watching him closely.

“Yeah—why? Yer want ter see it? It’ll corst yer—yer can take a copy, fer five guineas.”

“Is that what Weems paid you?”

“Why?”

“Curious. It’s a fair price. Let me see it. If I think it’s worth it, I’ll pay you five guineas.”

“Let’s see the color o’ yer money. Yer don’t look like yer got five guineas.”

Pitt had come prepared to buy information, although he had not expected to spend it all on one person. But he was increasingly certain that this letter was at the heart of the case. He fished in his pocket and found a gold guinea, six half guineas and a handful of crowns, shillings and six-pences. He held his hand half open so she could see them but not reach them.

“I’ll get it for yer,” she said, her eyes keen, and she disappeared into the back room. Several minutes later she returned with a piece of paper in her hand. She held out her other hand for the money.

Pitt gave it to her, counting it out carefully, and then quickly took the paper. He unfolded it and saw written in a strong, emotionally charged hand:

There was no more, no signature. Apparently there had been at least one other page, and it was missing.

Pitt kept it in his hand. It was a passionate letter, nothing modest in it or waiting to be wooed. Indeed it seemed Laura Anstiss had been a woman of violent emotions, self-assured, willful, not even considering that her love might not be equally returned.

He began to see how indeed she might have been so stunned by rejection that it temporarily unbalanced her mind and threw her into a state of melancholia. If Byam had ever received that letter, he would have been far less surprised at her suicide.

“ ’ere—gimme it back!” Liza Cobb said sharply. “Yer read it.”

Had Laura Anstiss lived in a world of her own fantasy? The letter implied they had been lovers in a very physical sense. Anyone reading it would assume so. Had Anstiss seen either this, or some other like it?

“No,” he said levelly. “It is evidence in a murder case. I’ll keep it for now.”

“Yer thievin’ swine!” She lunged forward at him, but he was taller and heavier than she. He held out his other hand in a loose fist and she met it hard and retreated with ugly surprise in her face. “It’s mine,” she said between closed teeth.

“It was apparently never sent, so it belongs to Lady Anstiss,” he contradicted. “And since she is dead, presumably to her heirs.”

Her lip curled in a sneer. “Yer goin’ ter give it ter ’is lordship, are yer? I’ll bet—at a price. The more fool you! D’yer fink if it were that easy I wouldn’t ’a done that meself ? I know ’im. You don’t. ’e’ll never pay yer. ’Orse-whip yer more like.”

“I’m going to give it to the police,” he said with a tight smile. “Which I am—Inspector Pitt of Bow Street. When the case is finished, if you’d like to come to Bow Street, you can try to claim it back.” And he turned on his heel and marched out, hearing her string of epithets and curses following him.

He walked briskly, pushing past the now wildly curious crowd. He was glad that the corner of small, open square lay across his way; the sight of the leaves against the sky was a clean and uncomplicated thing after the greed and the rage of the fishmonger’s shop and the woman in it. Reading the letter gave him a much clearer picture of why Byam had paid Weems for over two years. It was not the innocent passion he had implied, at least not in Laura Anstiss’s mind, and would not be read as such by any impartial person now.

If Frederick Anstiss hated Byam it would not be surprising. It would take a man of superhuman forgiveness not to feel betrayed by such emotions in his wife for his best and most trusted friend, and guest under his roof.

The square was crossed diagonally by a path and there
were two couples strolling along, heads close in conversation, and a third couple standing facing each other in what was unmistakably an angry exchange. The man in a high winged collar was very pink in the face and clutched his cane fiercely, twitching it now and again, jabbing at the air. The woman was equally heated, but there was a certain air of enjoyment in her, and it served only to exacerbate her companion’s rage. After a few moments more he turned on his heel and strode off, and then as he passed a flower bush he lifted the cane high and sliced off a small branch in sheer temper. The action was so sudden and unforeseen it took Pitt by surprise.

Then startlingly he had a picture in his mind of Lord Anstiss standing in front of Weems’s desk in his office while Weems read that damning letter aloud, jeering, demanding money, and a stick going up in the air without warning, striking Weems on the side of the head, robbing him of his senses long enough for Anstiss to take up the blunderbuss, fill the powder pan and load it with gold coins, and fire it.

Or it might have been anyone else, any gentleman who quite normally carried a stick or a cane, and any other provocation. But the letter stayed in his mind, and the image of Anstiss’s face.

Had Weems, after two years of successful blackmail of Byam, tried his hand with Anstiss, and met a very different man; a man not plagued by guilt, but still burning with injury, humiliation and a long-hidden and unsatisfied hatred?

But why should he hide the hatred, if indeed he felt it? Friends drift apart; it would need no explanation, and Byam of all people would understand. He would never tell anyone the truth, in his own interest if not in Anstiss’s.