by Anne Perry
Pitt did not interrupt again, knowing he would continue. He could see the struggle in his face, the attempt to find the words for the thought that previously troubled him profoundly.
“Could it be something to do with the Inner Circle?” Drummond at him narrowly. “I know the bus conductor is unlikely, but not impossible.”
“A betrayal?” Pitt said with surprise. “You mean some sort of internal punishment? Isn’t it a bit …”
“Extreme?” Drummond finished for him. “Perhaps. But sometimes, Pitt, I don’t think you understand just how powerful they are—and certainly not how ruthless.”
“A kind of execution?” Pitt was still doubtful. He thought Drummond was letting his own entanglement crowd his vision out of proportion. “Isn’t it more in their line simply to ruin someone, have them blackballed from all the clubs, cancel their credit, call in all the debts and loans? That is extremely effective. Men have shot themselves over less.”
“Yes, I know,” Drummond said grimly. “Some men. But Winthrop was in the navy. Perhaps they couldn’t reach him.”
Pitt knew his disbelief was in his face and he could not conceal it.
“Listen to me, Pitt.” Drummond took a step forward, his expression tense, his eyes bleak. “I know a great deal more than you do about the Circle. You only know the lower rings, the men like me who were drawn in without realizing anything beyond the charities everyone can see, and a little of the superficial obligations. They are just the knights of the Green.”
Drummond blushed very faintly, but he was far too serious to allow embarrassment to tie his tongue. “That is what I was, a knight of the Green, someone bound but, in any real sense, untried. Next are the knights of the Scarlet. They are the ones who have proved themselves: blooded, if you like, committed beyond retreat. Beyond them are the Lords of the Silver. They have the power of punishment and reward. But Pitt, behind them is one man, the Lord of the Purple.” He saw Pitt’s face. “All right!” he said with a sudden edge of anger to his voice Pitt had never heard before. “You can smile. It has its absurdity. But there is nothing even faintly ridiculous about the power that man holds. It’s secret, and for those in the Circle it’s total. If he pronounced sentence of ruin, or death, it would be carried out. And believe me, Pitt, the perpetrators would go to the gallows without betraying him.”
In this gracious room with its Georgian simplicity, its simple warmth and familiar touches, such talk should have been no more than a fanciful and rather ghoulish entertainment. But looking at Drummond’s face, the tight muscles of his body, the horror in his eyes, it woke an answering fear in Pitt, and suddenly he felt chilled inside. The warmth no longer touched him.
Drummond saw that he had at last conveyed what he meant.
“It might not be,” he said quietly. “It might have nothing to do with the Circle at all. But remember what I say, Pitt Whoever he is, you have already crossed him once, when you exposed Lord Byam and Lord Anstiss. He won’t have forgotten. Walk carefully, and make friends as well as enemies.”
Pitt knew better than to wonder if Drummond were suggesting he retreat. It was not in his nature even to think of such a thing. He had sometimes thought Drummond stiff, a product of his army career and his aristocratic upbringing, even lacking in information and grasp of which poverty or despair might be. He had wondered if he were capable of real laughter or of consuming passion. But never for an instant had he doubted his courage or his honor. He was the sort of shy, sometimes inarticulate, painfully polite, easily embarrassed, elegant, dryly humorous sort of Englishman who will face impossible odds without complaint and die at his post, but never, ever, desert it even if he were the last man living.
“Thank you for your warning,” Pitt said soberly. “I shall not dismiss the possibility, even though in this case, I think it is unlikely.”
Drummond relaxed very slowly. He was about to speak on some other subject when there was a tap on the door and both men turned.
“Yes?” Drummond answered.
The door opened and Eleanor Drurnmond came in. Pitt had not seen her since the day of her marriage, which he and Charlotte had attended. She looked quite different. The happiness was deeper and calmer in her, as if at last she believed it and did not feel the compulsion to clasp it to her in case it vanished. She was dressed in deep, soft blue and it flattered her dark hair with its touches of gray, and her olive skin and clear gray eyes. There was a repose in her face which Pitt found immensely pleasing.
He rose to his feet.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Drummond. Forgive me taking up your time, but I was looking for a little counsel—”
“Of course, Mr. Pitt,” she said quickly, coming into the room and smiling first at Drummond, then at Pitt. “It is too long since we have seen you. I am sorry it is this wretched business in Hyde Park which has brought you. It is that—isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m afraid it is.” He felt guilty, and yet he would never have called upon them socially. Drummond had been his superior, only in a certain sense a friend.
“Then perhaps you and Mrs. Pitt will come to dine when this is over?” she asked. “And we can discuss pleasanter things.” She smiled suddenly with brimming pleasure. “I am so glad you are superintendent now, and this has nothing to do with Micah. It must be totally wretched. I was sorry to hear about Aidan Arledge. He was a charming man. Captain Winthrop I cannot grieve over as much as perhaps I should.”
“Did you know him?” he asked in surprise.
“Oh no,” she denied quickly. “Not really. But society is very small. I am acquainted with Lord and Lady Winthrop, of course, but I could not really say I knew them.” She looked at him apologetically. “They are not the sort of people it is easy to form any relationship with, but the most superficial, a matter of pleasantries when one meets them at the same sort of function year after year. They are very—predictable, very correct. I am sure there must be more that is individual, if one—” She stopped. They both knew what she was going to say, and it was pointless to pursue it.
“And the captain?” he asked.
“I met him once or twice.” She shook her head a little. “He was the sort of man who always made me feel condescended to, I am not sure why. Perhaps because there are no women in the navy. I rather formed the opinion all civilians were in his view a lesser species. He was perfectly polite.” She searched Pitt’s face. “But the sort of politeness one keeps for the inferior, if you understand me?”
“Do you think he might have known Arledge?” Pitt asked.
“No,” she said immediately. “I cannot think of two men less likely to have found each other agreeable.”
Drummond glanced at Pitt, his eyes dark.
Pitt smiled back at him. He understood the warning. He had no intention of discussing Arledge’s love affair in front of Eleanor, least of all its nature.
Eleanor moved over to Drummond, and a trifle selfconsciously he put his arm around her. The freedom to do so was still new to him, and acutely pleasurable.
“I wish I could be of assistance, Pitt,” he said seriously. “But it may well be the work of a madman, and to find him you will have to learn what it is these men had in common.” He looked steadily at Pitt and their previous conversation about the Inner Circle hung unspoken in the air between them. “It seems exceedingly unlikely it is an acquaintance with each other,” he continued. “But there may be someone they all knew. I assume you have thought of blackmail?” His arm tightened around Eleanor.
“I thought Yeats might have known something,” Pitt replied, equally carefully. “But how?”
“Does his omnibus route go past the park?” Drummond asked. “He does a late run, or he would not have been getting off at Shepherd’s Bush in the middle of the night.”
“Yes, but he does not go past Hyde Park,” Pitt replied. “Tellman checked that.”
Drummond pulled a face. “How are you getting on with Tellman?”
Pitt had already decided to keep his own coun
sel. “He’s quick,” he replied. “And diligent. He doesn’t want to arrest Carvell either.”
Eleanor looked from one to the other of them, but she did not interrupt.
Drummond smiled. “He wouldn’t,” he agreed. “If there’s anything Tellman cannot bear, it is to arrest someone and then have to let him go. He’ll want evidence to hang him before he’ll commit himself. He’s a hard enemy, Pitt, but he’s a good friend.”
“I’m sure,” Pitt agreed equivocally.
“He’s also a natural leader,” Drummond went on, his eyes careful on Pitt’s face, his expression both apologetic and amused. “The other men will follow him, if you allow it.”
“Yes I know,” Pitt said dryly, thinking of le Grange.
Drummond’s smile widened, but he said nothing.
“May I offer you something, Mr. Pitt?” Eleanor asked. “It is too early for luncheon, but at least a glass of wine? Or lemonade, if you prefer?”
“Lemonade, thank you,” Pitt accepted gratefully. He had already made up his mind where his next visit would be, and anything to delay it, to fortify him a little, would be more than welcome. “I should enjoy it.”
When he left half an hour later he took a hansom over the river south across the Lambeth Bridge, past Lambeth Palace, where the Archbishop of Canterbury had his official residence, and up the Lambeth Road to the huge, forbidding mass of the Bethlehem Lunatic Asylum, more usually known as Bedlam. He had been there before, more than once, and it brought back memories of fear, confusion and wrenching pity.
He alighted from the hansom, paid the driver and approached the main gates. He was greeted with caution, and only after showing his identification did he obtain entrance. He had to wait over a quarter of an hour in a dim office crowded with dark leather-bound books and smelling of dust and closed air before finally the superintendent sent for him and he was conducted to his rooms.
He was a short man with round eyes and muttonchop whiskers. A few strands of grayish hair covered the top of his head. He looked distinctly displeased.
“I have already informed your junior, Superintendent Pitt, that we have had no one escape from here,” he said stiffly without rising from his leather chair. “It does not happen. We have the most excellent system, and even if anyone did leave without permission, it would be known instantly. And if they were of a dangerous nature, it would naturally have been reported immediately to the proper authorities. I don’t know what else I can say to you. My efforts so far appear to have been a waste of time.” His nostrils pinched and his right hand rested on the large pile of papers on the desk beside him, presumably unattended to and waiting his perusal.
With difficulty Pitt reminded himself why he was here. To answer the man equally brusquely would defeat his purpose.
“I do not doubt you, Dr. Melchett,” he replied. “It is your advice I am here for.”
“Indeed?” Melchett said skeptically, at last waving to the other chair for Pitt to sit down. “Well that is not the impression your inspector left. Far from it. He implied very strongly that our methods here were lax and that either some dangerous lunatic had escaped, or else we had released someone who should have been kept here, and in shackles.”
“He has a rough tongue,” Pitt admitted, without the regret that perhaps he should have felt. He accepted the seat. “It was an obvious question to ask,” he went on. “Someone insane enough to cut off three people’s heads might well have passed through here at some time.”
Melchett rose to his feet, his cheeks pink.
“If he was deranged enough to decapitate three total strangers, Pitt, he would not have passed through here!” he said furiously. “I assure you, he would have remained! Just come with me.” He marched around the desk. “I should have taken that damn fool man of yours, but I seriously doubt he would have the wits to apprehend what he saw anyway. Just come along and look at it.” He went to the door and flung it open, leaving it swinging back on its hinges, and strode along the corridor, assuming that Pitt was behind him.
Pitt hated the place. He had hoped he would never be here again. Now he was following a deeply offended Melchett along these corridors with their long silences and sudden screams, the moaning and the sobs, the wild laughter, and then the silence again.
Melchett was far ahead. Pitt had to hurry to catch up with him. It even occurred to him not to, to turn around and go back out. But he did not. His feet increased their pace and Melchett was waiting for him at the door, holding it open.
“There!” he said through clenched teeth, his eyes round and angry.
Pitt walked past him into the long high-ceilinged room. Around the walls was a kind of narrow walkway slightly three feet above the floor, creating the impression of a wall full of people, most of them sitting on chairs or on the floor, many huddled over, hugging themselves, some rocking back and forth rhythmically, moaning and muttering unintelligibly, and it was along this that Melchett now led Pitt. Between them a man with matted hair picked at a scab on his leg till it bled. His arms were covered with similar wounds, some half healed, others obviously new. There were what looked like bite marks on his wrists and forearms. He did not even see Pitt standing close above him, so intent was he upon his own flesh.
A second stared into space, saliva running down his chin. A third reached up towards them, hands clasping at the air, throat straining, mind seeking words and failing to find them. A fourth sat with his wrists in leather-padded chains, banging against the restraint with sharp, jiggling movements as if he were sawing at something. He too was so absorbed in his pointless, painful task that he neither saw Pitt nor heard Melchett when he spoke.
“How many do you want to see?” Melchett asked quietly, his voice hard with a mixture of anger and offense. “We have scores, all much like this, all sad, unreachable by anything we know how to do. Do you think someone like this is your lunatic? Do you think we accidentally let one go, and he got hold of an ax and started decapitating people in Hyde Park?”
Pitt opened his mouth to deny it, but Melchett rushed on, his anger if anything increasing.
“Where are they, Pitt?” he demanded. “Living in the park somewhere? Where do they sleep? What do they eat? All your police swarming over the area, searching for clues, cannot find the poor devil?”
There was no answer. Looking at the fierce, pathetic, troubled souls all around him, beyond reason, beyond reach, the idea was ridiculous. If Tellman had come this far into Bedlam, he would have curbed his tongue before making such comments to Melchett, or anyone else.
Pitt’s silence seemed to soften Melchett a fraction. He cleared his throat.
“Hm—if your man is insane, Pitt, his obsession has not reached the stage where he would be committed to a place like this. He’ll appear much like anyone else most of the time—that is if he is mad at all.” He lifted his shoulders and straightened them again. “Are you certain there is no sane reason for all this carnage?”
“No I’m not,” Pitt replied. “But there seems to be no connection between the victims, not one that we can find so far.” He turned away from the poor creature nearest him, who was reaching up to the full extent of his restraining jacket as if to pluck at him.
Melchett saw he had more than made his point. He turned and led the way out of the great room into the corridor and back down in the direction of his office.
“If he were mad,” Pitt went on, “what sort of an obsession would I be looking for, Dr. Melchett? What sort of a past makes a man turn to such random violence?”
“Oh, it is not random,” Melchett said immediately. “Not in his mind. There will be a connection: time, place, appearance, something said or done which prompted the rage, or the fear, or whatever emotion drives him. It may be a religious passion of some sort. Many lunatics have a profound sense of sin.” He raised his shoulders again and let them fall. “Nasty question, I know, but is it possible your men were all committing some act he might have felt to be sinful? Soliciting women, for example? It’s no
t an uncommon form of delusion—that sexual congress with women is evil, debilitating, a snare of the devil.” He sniffed. “Sick, of course. Springs from some dark recesses of the mind we have barely begun to realize is there, let alone what may be in it. Lot of most interesting work being done abroad, you know? No—why should you …” He shook his head and increased his pace a trifle.
Pitt did not attempt to press him further until they were back in his office and the door closed, surrounded by books and papers and the paraphernalia of administration. It looked impersonal, sanitized from the confusion and despair he had just seen, and which still clung to him, thick in his throat like a taste he could not get rid of.
“What sort of a man am I looking for, Dr. Melchett, if it is that kind of obsession?” he asked finally. “What sort of character? What manner of family? What past will he have that has driven him to this?” He stared at Melchett. “What event will have provoked him to do this now, not before, not after?”
Melchett hunched his shoulders again in his odd, characteristic gesture.
“God knows. It could be anything from a real tragedy, such as a death in the family, right down to something as trivial as an insult. It could spring from memory. Someone said or did something that reminded him violently of a past shock, and he was disconnected, so to speak, from reality.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I’m sorry, there is really little use in my speculating. I should think some sort of moral or religious passion is your best line. When I asked if your victims could have been soliciting women you did not reply. Were you being discreet?”
“Possibly,” Pitt conceded. “But it wouldn’t be the answer. One of them at least had a long-standing relationship with a lover.”
“You mean a mistress,” Melchett corrected. “That doesn’t prevent him from—”
“No—I mean what I said,” Pitt reasserted.
Melchett’s eyebrows rose.
“Oh. Oh I see. Yes, well that would make it excessively unlikely he was soliciting a woman. What about the others? Same thing?”
