Midnight at Marble Arch (34 page)

Brinsley took a breath.

Pitt turned back. “Yes?”

“Was there anything particularly different about the victims? Or about the places of attack, or the circumstances?”

“Would that account for it being two men?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible.” There was no lift in Brinsley’s voice, no brightness in his face. “But you should look.”

“Thank you,” Pitt said again.

H
E DID NOT TELL
Charlotte what Brinsley had said when they sat alone in the parlor late into the evening. There was no need for her to
hear the details Brinsley had told him. He could spare her that much. She sat in one of the big armchairs. Pitt was too restless to sit, and too angry. The sense of helplessness burned inside him like acid, eating away at his belief in himself.

“He’ll go on,” he said bitterly, staring out at the familiar garden. This was where his children had grown up. They had played here with hoops, a skipping rope, had built castles with piles of colored bricks, ridden imaginary horses, used as make-believe swords the garden canes that now held up the delphiniums in bloom.

What good was he if he could not protect Jemima from such hideous violation of all her future promise? Or Daniel from turning into a monster? Would they ask of him one day, “Papa, why did you let it happen?” Charlotte wouldn’t accuse him, but it would be in her mind, it would have to be. Try as she wished, she would never again see him as the man she trusted always, the man he wanted to be.

And what was he doing? Advising Townley and Castelbranco to do nothing, admitting that the law, his law, was helpless to protect them or to find any justice. The legal system too would look the other way and pretend nothing had happened: timid, circumspect, afraid of making a fuss.

Neville Forsbrook, and anyone else like him, would go on without someone standing in their way or calling them to account. He reached to pull the curtain closed and it stuck. He yanked it harder and it tore.

“Thomas …” Charlotte began.

“Don’t tell me to sit down!” he shouted, yanking harder at the curtain and pulling the whole thing down off the wall to lie in a heap.

“I wasn’t going to,” she replied, standing up herself and walking over to join him at the glass, completely ignoring the pile of velvet on the floor. “You are sure Forsbrook will go on and rape other people?”

“Yes. I’d stop him if I could, Charlotte!” He felt his hands clench. He was behaving like a fool and he knew it. It was not her fault, but every word seemed like criticism, because he blamed himself. It was his responsibility to do better than this.

She took a deep breath and held it a moment or two. She was controlling her own temper, and he was sharply aware of it. There was
no point in apologizing because he knew he would do it again, probably within moments.

“I was going to say …” She was choosing her words carefully, still ignoring the curtain. “I was going to say that if this pattern of violence stretches into the future, how do we know that it does not also stretch into the past?”

“I imagine it does,” he said slowly.

“Then might there not be something there that you could find, and prosecute, without mentioning Angeles, or this new poor girl?” she asked. “Perhaps it was something less serious, but still enough to bring a charge?”

He let the idea take form slowly, testing every step of it. “Anyone who did not accuse him then would be unlikely to do so now,” he pointed out. “The disgrace would be the same, and the proof even harder to find.”

“But if you know the pattern of the past, then you can predict the future more accurately, maybe even prevent him next time he tries?” She would not give up. “One woman alone can’t do anything to him, but several might be able to. Or at least the fathers of several, if they know they are not alone.”

He turned to look at her. In the evening light the tiny lines of her face were invisible. To him she was more beautiful at forty than she had been in her twenties, though the softness of youth was gone. She still looked at life bravely and honestly with her steady eyes, but was better able to deal with it in a measured way.

“And do what?” he asked quietly, but he was not dismissing it. “It still may not be possible; Pelham Forsbrook will defend Neville to the very last ditch. It is not only his son’s reputation on the line, but his own.”

“The victims won’t accuse him because to do so would ruin them socially for the rest of their lives,” she began.

He almost interrupted her, but bit back the words.

“Surely the accusation from many people, all prepared to stand together, whether it was proven in a court of law or not, would also
ruin him?” she asked. “Reputation doesn’t require legal proof. If it did there’d be thousands of people still in Society who are not here now, because ill is believed of them, although never more than whispers. They do not fight because there is nothing said plainly enough for slander.”

He blinked. “You mean we should spread a rumor?”

“No!” Now she was angry too. “You don’t need to do it! Just prove you could, so Pelham Forsbrook knows it is true, and that you mean to stop his son because he has to be stopped.”

He turned it over in his mind, carefully, uncertain.

“Thomas?” She put her hand on his arm. He felt the strength of her fingers as well as the warmth.

He waited.

“How would you feel if it were not Alice Townley, but Jemima?”

“The same as Townley, exactly,” he answered. “I would see Neville in hell, if I could, but more than anything else I would want to protect my daughter.”

“And if it were me, instead of Catherine Quixwood?”

He felt cold to the bone. “I would want to kill him,” he said honestly. “I might even do it.”

“So isn’t this worth at least trying?” She smiled very slightly, pleased at his anger, as if it were a shield for her, at least in her mind.

“Perhaps,” he said. “A little unorthodox, but then the orthodox isn’t working. But don’t do anything yourself, Charlotte. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, of course,” she said obediently. “If I were clumsy, it would warn him. Give me credit for a little sense, Thomas.”

He had several answers for that, but he forbore from giving them. Fifteen years of marriage had taught him something at least.

“I
WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING
that might be interesting,” he told Stoker the next morning. The door was closed and he had given orders that he was not to be interrupted. “The man’s a rapist. He may have
started years ago.” He explained Charlotte’s reasoning, without mentioning her name.

Stoker looked a little puzzled. “What am I looking for, sir?”

“I don’t know,” Pitt admitted. “Why does a young man have this kind of rage inside him? He barely knows the young women concerned. Who does he really hate? Could he help himself if he wanted to? Who else did he hurt in the past, who also dared not accuse him? Does his father know? Does he care? Has he ever disciplined him himself, or paid off anyone to keep their silence?”

“Pelham Forsbrook?” Stoker said in surprise. “Why would he need to? He’s one of the most influential bankers in London. If he grants you a loan for business venture capital, you’re made. If he puts word out against you, then no one else’ll back you either. Although whisper has it that he’ll lose pretty badly if the British South Africa Company has to pay damages to the Boers after the Jameson Raid.”

Pitt was suddenly interested. “Really? Has he partners in the venture, or is he all on his own?”

“No idea. Do you want me to find out?”

“Not unless it has anything to do with his son.”

Stoker shrugged. “If I had a son like that I’d keep an eye on him, and definitely want him where I had enough influence to protect him.”

“Would you? Would you protect him?” Pitt thought for several moments. “I’m not sure what I’d do if it were Daniel. Maybe I’d ship him off to Australia, and let him take what’s coming to him if he didn’t straighten himself out. I’ve no idea. I need to make damned sure it doesn’t happen, so I won’t ever have to find out. I like to think I’d have the strength to deal with it, but maybe in the end I’d see the child in him that I’d loved, and I wouldn’t be able to. God knows.”

“I’ll bring you all I get, sir. It’ll take a day or two.”

“Good. And do be discreet, Stoker!”

“Yes, sir. Believe me, I don’t want to get caught at it.”

“Neither do I,” Pitt said with feeling. “We can’t afford to. Oh, and Stoker?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Find out where young Forsbrook was the night before last. And if a girl called Alice Townley was at the same place. And for God’s sake, be doubly discreet about that!”

“Yes, sir.”

P
ITT FOLLOWED A DIFFERENT
path himself. If there was something in the past with which they could trap Neville Forsbrook, then the home in Bryanston Mews, where he had grown up, would be the place to find it.

He knew from experience in his police days that servants were almost always loyal, so instead of going to the Forsbrook house, where failure was certain, he went to the servants of neighbors, beginning with inquiries that were completely fictitious.

He was very careful to start with, perhaps too much so. He had concocted an imaginary story, of which the Forsbrooks, father and son, could have been the heroes. He thought it necessary, in case any whisper of it should leak back to them, and thus to the Home Secretary. He was quite open about who he was, though. To be caught in an evasion could be damning, and make him seem ridiculous.

He had been to a dozen houses without learning anything more than a general impression that the Forsbrooks were feared but not liked. He was growing a bit desperate when he found in Bryanston Mews an elderly groom, busy brushing down horses.

The smells of leather polish, dung, hay, and horse sweat brought back a sudden and very sharp memory of childhood on the big estate where he had grown up. His father had been the gamekeeper and his mother had worked in the house, before tragedy struck them and his father was deported.

Reminder of that childhood bewilderment and pain made the present injustice burn the more intensely. He had tried everything he could then to help his father, and been helpless. He had been a country boy, educated alongside the son of the manor house, as companionship and competition for him, but still a nobody, dependent upon
Sir Arthur Desmond’s patronage even to survive. Now he was a man in his late forties, and head of Britain’s Special Branch. He would not allow himself to be helpless this time.

He smiled at the groom. “Good animal you have there,” he remarked, looking at the horse.

“Aye, sir, she is that,” the man agreed. “Can I ’elp yer?”

“Unlikely,” Pitt said with a slight shrug. “I grew up in the country. I miss the friendship of horses, the strength … the patience.” Memory flashed back again. “I used to clean the harness for the groom sometimes. There’s a satisfaction in working the leather, in making the brass shine.”

“There is that, sir,” the man agreed. He was thin and strong, a little bow-legged. His hair stuck out in wisps from under the cap he was wearing. “But if I can say so, you don’t look like a country boy, sir.” He regarded Pitt’s well-cut city suit. For once there was very little stuffed in his pockets and his cravat was almost straight. The only detail familiar from the past was the fact that his hair was too long and curled in no particular shape.

“Ambition,” Pitt admitted. He found himself wanting to be completely honest with this man. He was tired of evasions that achieved nothing. “My father was a gamekeeper, accused of poaching, a serious crime back then. I always believed him innocent, still do, but it didn’t save him. Injustice cuts deep.”

The man stopped working for a moment and stared at Pitt with sudden interest deeper than mere politeness. “Ye’re right about that, sir,” he said with feeling. “Yer got summink as yer workin’ on right now, then?”

“Yes.” Pitt knew well enough to stop far short of the truth this time. “Looking for a bit of understanding of the past, to get the present right, if you know what I mean. See that blame doesn’t fall where it shouldn’t.”

The man nodded. “So wot d’yer want to know?” The horse swung its head round and nudged him. He patted it and began to brush again. “All right, girl,” he said with a smile. “I ain’t forgot yer.” He smiled at
Pitt. “Like women, ’orses are. Don’t like yer to put yer mind to someone else when it’s their turn.”

“I know,” Pitt agreed. “But horses don’t ask much.”

“Ye’re right,” the man said happily. “Give yer their ’ole ’earts, they do. Don’t yer, girl?” He patted the horse’s smooth neck without altering the pace of the brush. “What d’yer want ter know, sir?”

Pitt gestured behind him, toward the back of the Forsbrook house. “Do you know Sir Pelham Forsbrook and his family?”

The man’s face tightened so very slightly that had Pitt not been watching closely he would have missed it. “Yeah, some,” he said. “Knew Lady Forsbrook—Miss Eleanor, as she used to be.” His face softened with memory. “Wild, she was, but so alive. Couldn’t ’elp but like ’er in the end. Wot they call ironic, in’t it?”

“Is it?” Pitt said curiously. “I heard she died in an accident. How was it ironic?” He sensed something further, something unsaid that the man half seemed to expect him to know.

The groom concentrated on brushing the horse’s gleaming flanks for several seconds before he replied. “Accident, right enough,” he said at last. “ ’Ad her cases with ’er, an’ all. Knew that from Appley, ’e were the groom there then. Runnin’ away, she were. Some said it were to go with the feller she was ’avin’ an affair with. Others said it were just that she couldn’t take the beatin’ no more. Dunno the truth of it, but beat black and blue that night she were. Face all swole up.”

Pitt held his breath, afraid even to acknowledge that he had heard.

“Accident, all right,” the man was almost talking to himself as memory filled his mind. “In an ’ansom, an’ the ’orse got spooked by summink. Some said it were a dog went fer it. Dunno. Terrible thing. Poor driver got killed too.”

“How long ago was that?” Pitt asked, trying to keep his voice level, the razor-sharp interest at least half-concealed.