by Anne Perry
“Hello. Got your murderer yet?”
“No,” Pitt said, disconcerted that with his very first words Urban had made it impossible for him to be subtle or indirect. “No I haven’t.”
“Well what can I do for you?” Urban’s face was totally innocent. He regarded Pitt out of clear blue eyes, waiting for an answer.
Pitt had no alternative but to be completely frank, or else retreat altogether, and the whole exercise would become pointless if he were to do that.
“Where were you on Tuesday two weeks ago?” he asked. “Late evening.”
“Me?” If Urban were feigning amazement he was doing it supremely well. “You think I killed your usurer?”
Pitt sat down in the chair. “No,” he said honestly. “But your name was on his list, and the only way I can eliminate you is by your proving you were somewhere else.”
Urban smiled. It was charming and candid and there was a flicker of humor in the depths of his eyes.
“I can’t tell you,” he said quietly. “Or to be more accurate, I don’t wish to. But I was not in Cyrus Street, and I did not kill your usurer—or anyone else.”
Pitt smiled back.
“I’m afraid your word is not proof.”
“No, I know it isn’t. But I’m sorry, that’s all you’re getting. I assume you’ve tried the other people on this list? How many are there?”
“Three—and I’ve one man left.”
“Who were the other two?”
Pitt thought for a moment, turning over the possibilities in his mind. Why did Urban want to know? Was he being helpful, seeking some common denominator, or an excuse, someone else to lay the blame on? Urban had to know that he would rather be suspected than admit to it.
“I prefer to keep that confidential for a little longer,” Pitt replied, equally calmly and with the same frank smile.
“Was Addison Carswell one of them?” Urban asked, and then his wide mouth curled in a faint touch of humor when he saw Pitt’s face, the start of surprise before he formed a denial.
“Yes,” Pitt conceded. There was no point in pretending any more. Urban had seen it in his eyes and a lie would not be believed.
“Mm,” Urban grunted thoughtfully. He seemed not to find it necessary to ask who the third was, and that in itself had meaning. “You know that damned Osmar has put his friends up to raising questions in the House?” he said with anger and incredulity in his voice.
“Yes, Dilkes told me. What are you going to do?”
“Me?” Urban leaned back in his chair. “Carry on with the prosecution, of course. The law for ex-government ministers is the same as for anyone else. You don’t play silly beggars on the seats of public parks. If you must make an ass of yourself with a young woman, you do it in private where you don’t offend old ladies and frighten the horses.”
Pitt’s smile widened.
“Good luck,” he said dryly, and excused himself. He wondered how Urban knew the first name on Weems’s list had been Addison Carswell. From what reasoning did he deduce that?
He could not possibly follow Urban himself; they knew each other far too well by sight. Reluctantly he would have to hand it over to Innes.
He went home earlier than usual. There was not much more he could do unless he began to investigate Latimer, and that could wait until tomorrow. He felt no guilt at putting off what would almost certainly be another extremely distasteful task, and after his discoveries about Carswell and Urban, he dreaded what he would find.
The following day Pitt took over Innes’s duties pursuing the investigations of the people on Weems’s first list, the long catechism of misery, ill education, illiteracy, humble employment, sickness, debt, drunkenness and violence, more debt, falling out of work, small loans, larger loans, and finally despair. Innes had already found all of them and questioned them. Most of them had been where they could easily be vouched for: in public houses, brawling in the streets or alleys, some even in police charge. The more respectable-men quietly despairing—had been at home sitting silent and hungry, worrying about the next day’s food, the next week’s rent, and what their neighbors would think, what else there was left to pawn.
It was bitterly miserable and all the pity in the world would change none of it. He was pleased to get home again in the heavy, sultry evening and find Charlotte had been visited by Emily and was full of colorful and superficial gossip.
“Yes, tell me,” he urged when she brushed it all aside and dismissed it as too trivial to bother him with. “I should like to hear.”
“Thomas.” She looked at him with wide, laughing eyes. “Don’t be so terribly agreeable. It’s unnatural and it makes me feel nervous, as if we were not quite at ease with each other.”
He laughed and leaned back in his chair, putting his feet up on the small stuffed pouffe, something which he did regularly, and which always annoyed her because his heels scuffed it.
“I would love to hear something totally inconsequential,” he said honestly. “About people who are always well fed, well clothed, and have nothing more serious to worry about than what he said to her, and she said to him, and what someone else wore and whether it was fashionable or not, and if the shade became them.”
Perhaps she understood. For a moment there was a softness in her face, then she grinned and settled herself back, arranging her skirts to be comfortable.
“Emily was telling me about some of the latest debutantes being presented to the Queen, or perhaps it was the Princess of Wales,” she began in rather the same voice she used when telling Jemima or Daniel a particularly good story. “Apparently it is a fearful crush, and after hours and hours of standing around waiting, one finally gets to the royal presence. One is so busy keeping one’s headdress straight—all those feathers, you know—and not falling over one’s skirt, or seeming too bold with raised eyes, that one does not even see the Queen.” She tucked her feet up beside her. “Only a small, fat hand which one kisses. It could have belonged to anyone—the cook, for all we know. It isn’t the doing of it at all, it is the having done it, which matters.”
“I thought that was the case with most of society’s events,” he said, recrossing his legs.
“Oh no. The opera, as you know, is beautiful, the Henley regatta is fun—so I am told—and Emily says that Ascot is terrific. The fashions are simply marvelous—and it is always wonderfully full of gossip. It matters so much who is seen with whom.”
“What about the horses?”
She looked up, surprised. “Oh I’ve no idea about them. But Emily did tell me that Mr. Fitzherbert was there, with Miss Morden, of course. And they met up with Miss Hilliard and her brother again.”
Pitt frowned. “Fanny Hilliard?”
“Yes—you remember! Very pretty girl, about twenty-four or twenty-five I should say. You must remember,” she said impatiently. “She spoke to us at the opera, and then again at the supper table afterwards. Fitzherbert seemed rather taken with her!”
“Yes,” he said slowly. A picture of Fanny in the coffee shop took shape in his mind, her eager face soft and full of affection as she took the hat and the parasol from Carswell.
“Well,” Charlotte went on quickly, “she seems to be equally attracted to him.” There was a mixture of pleasure and a sharp, sensitive regret in her face. One moment her words were rapid as if the excitement of love were echoed in her with pleasure, and the next it disappeared as she understood the cold shock of loss. “Of course he is betrothed to Odelia Morden, and I had thought they looked so set together, in such a comfortable relationship that nothing could intrude into it, or at least not seriously.”
He looked at her face, the slight puckering of her brow and the gravity in her eyes. He knew it disturbed her, but not whether it was for the people concerned, or just the reminder of the frailty of happiness, how easily what you assumed safe can slip from your grasp.
“Are you sure it is not just a handsome man who cannot resist a flirtation?” he asked.
She thought
for a moment, considering it.
“No,” she said at last. “No, I don’t think so. One …” She sought very carefully for the exact meaning she wanted. “One can tell the difference between fun and a feeling that threatens to hurt because it is not just”—she hunched her shoulders and slid a trifle further down in the sofa—“not just laughter and a little entertainment that one can forget when it is past, and go back to everything else and it will all be just the same. I don’t think Fitz can go back and feel exactly as he used to about Odelia.”
“Are you being romantic?” Pitt asked without criticism. “Is Fitzherbert a man to fall in love beyond what is pleasant and will serve his ends? After all, he has to many someone if he is to succeed in his career. He hasn’t the political brilliance to climb very far if he lacks the social requirements.”
“I’m not saying he will forgo marrying Odelia,” she denied. “Simply that there is something there which will not leave him without scars when he and Fanny separate and go their different ways. And Odelia won’t forget. I’ve seen it in her face.”
He smiled and said nothing, but it did cross his mind to wonder what Emily thought of it, and indeed if she had had any hand in it. If Fitzherbert jilted his fiancée it would affect Jack not at all unfavorably. He forbore from saying it.
Charlotte took a deep breath.
“And Jack has struck up quite a friendship with Lord Anstiss,” she continued. “He is a most remarkable man, you know.” She recalled his comments about her social ambitions with a tolerant irony. It was no more than she expected. “I don’t think I have listened to anyone more interesting in such a wide variety of subjects. He has so many tales about people, and he recounts them with such a dry, clever wit. And Emily says nothing seems to bore him. Sometimes one might forget how important he is, until one looks at his face for a moment in repose. There is a great deal of power in him, you know.”
He listened in silence, watching her face, the animation, the play of light and shadow over her features and the intense vividness of her interest.
“He was telling Emily about the pre-Raphaelites and the beautiful pictures they have painted creating a whole new idealism, and about William Morris and his furniture. She said he was so interesting he made it all seem urgent and important, not just a collection of facts. And also she met that odd young man, Peter Valerius, who is so consumed with interest in international finance in Africa—of all the tedious subjects so utterly the opposite of Lord Anstiss who is absolutely never a bore.”
She continued about other people Emily had told her of, what they wore and to whom they spoke, but he did not listen with any great attention. Rather he allowed it to wash over him in a pleasant blur of sound. He was far more pleased just to see her face full of life and know that she was telling him not because it was important to her either, but because she was sharing it with him and that mattered intensely.
It was only another day before Innes reported on the unenviable task of following Urban. As a precaution he did not come to Bow Street, but sent a message that he had turned up something which he felt Pitt ought to know.
Accordingly Pitt left Bow Street, where he had been reporting to Drummond and sifting yet again through Urban’s records, and tracing the will of the uncle who had left him the house in Bloomsbury to see if there were also pictures in the legacy. If there were, or if there had been money, it would at least excuse Urban’s indulgence in such things. It took him some time to learn the uncle’s name and trace his will through probate. When he did he found it was quite simple. The house went to “my dear sister’s only son, Samuel Urban.” It included the contents thereof, which were duly listed. There were no modern pictures, indeed there were no pictures at all.
Pitt was immensely relieved to have an excuse to leave the task and at least for the length of the journey involve himself in some physical action, even if it was only a hansom ride to Clerkenwell. He felt the urgency of Innes’s message would allow that indulgence instead of the longer, more circuitous omnibus ride.
He was inside the hansom and bowling along High Holborn when he remembered that Innes had been following Urban, and his discovery was far more likely to concern him than one of the people on the first list. Those were being traced entirely from Clerkenwell, since they were almost all local inhabitants. Although even if Innes had found Weems’s murderer there and had him in custody with irrefutable evidence, that would give Pitt no pleasure. He dreaded seeing the defeat and the guilt in the face of whatever wretched person had finally turned out of his despair into violence, and precipitated himself into even deeper disaster. Cursing or silent, fighting or crushed, underneath it he would be deathly afraid, knowing Newgate and the hangman awaited him.
Pitt realized grimly that he did not really want to find out who had murdered William Weems. And yet the case could not go unresolved from choice. Murder in theory was always wrong, and society, if it was to survive, must find the offender and punish him. It was just that in practice so often it was immeasurably more complex, and the victim was sometimes as much of an offender, in more hidden ways. It was a complicated tragedy with intertwined offenses and sufferings; one could not simply punish one participant and call the matter justly settled.
He was lost in tangled thoughts and memories when the cabby drew up at the Clerkenwell station and announced his arrival.
Pitt climbed out, paid him, and went in to find Innes.
As soon as he saw Innes’s face he knew the news was disturbing. Innes’s thin features were twisted in unhappiness and there were dark circles under his eyes as if he had been up too long and slept badly.
“Mornin’, Mr. Pitt,” he said glumly, rising to his feet. “You’d better come out.” And without explaining himself any further he pushed past an overweight sergeant and a constable chewing on a peppermint stick, and led the way out again into the street.
Pitt followed close behind him and then fell into step on the pavement where there was room to walk side by side. He did not ask. The sun was bright again the morning after the previous night’s rain and everything looked cleaner and there was a crispness in the air.
“I followed ’im,” Innes said, looking down at the stones beneath his feet as if he must watch his step in case he tripped, although the way was perfectly smooth.
Pitt said nothing.
“If Weems were blackmailing ’im, I know what it were for,” Innes went on after another few yards. He ran his tongue over his lips and swallowed hard. Still he did not look at Pitt. “ ’E spent the evenin’ at a music ’all in Stepney.”
“That’s not an offense,” Pitt said, knowing there must be more. An evening at a music hall was a perfectly acceptable type of relaxation for a busy man. There were tens of thousands in the city who spent their time so. His remark was pointless; it was only a rather futile way of putting off the moment when Innes would tell him the real discovery. He could almost hear the words before they were spoken. There would be a woman, pretty, probably buxom, perhaps a singer, no doubt wooed by many, and Urban, like countless men before him, had got into debt trying to outdo his rivals.
“Get on with it,” Pitt said abruptly, stepping off the pavement for a couple of yards to avoid a peddler.
“ ’E worked there,” Innes answered equally abruptly, catching up with him.
“What?” Pitt could scarcely believe him. “In the halls? Urban! I can’t see him as a turn on the boards. He’s too—too sober. He likes fine paintings—probably classical music, given the chance.”
“No sir—not on the stage. As a bouncer, throwin’ out them as gives trouble.”
“Urban!”
“Yessir.” Still Innes stared down at his pacing feet on the pavement, face straight ahead. “Quite good at it, ’E is. Big feller, and got the kind of air of authority as people don’t argue wiv. I saw ’im break up a nasty quarrel between a couple o’ gents what ’ad ’ad a bit too much, and ’E did it quick and quiet like, and only them closest ’ad any idea it’d been nas
ty.” He moved aside to allow a woman with three children in tow to pass. “Paid ’im quite nice fer it, the management,” he continued when she was gone. “ ’E could ’a saved quite a bit over the years if ’e’s bin doin’ it long. Wouldn’t ’a needed Weems’s money to do quite nice fer ’isself. But o’ course if Weems knew, ’e’d ’ave ’ad a nice ’old over ’im. Rozzers moonlighting. Thrown off the force. an’ I don’t suppose Mr. Urban wants to do bouncin’ for a livin’.”
“No,” Pitt said slowly. A small part of him was relieved because it was so much less pathetic than making a fool of himself over a woman he would never have married anyway. But it was far more serious. As Innes said, he would have been dismissed from the force. The mounting sense of relief was darkened over and with thoughts much uglier and more painful. If Weems knew of it, then it was motive for murder.
They walked side by side in silence for several more minutes, going nowhere, simply moving because it was easier, and stopping meant coming to some conclusion.
“You’ll take care of it, sir?” Innes said at last as they came to the crossroad with the main thoroughfare. They were obliged to wait several minutes for the traffic to ease.
“Yes,” Pitt answered, without any inner decision. Of course he must face Urban with it, but if in some way Urban could prove he had not killed Weems, if he had been in Stepney that night and had witnesses, then would Pitt still report his moonlighting? It was a decision he did not have to make today. If Urban was guilty of murder it would hardly matter.
Innes began across the road, dashing in and out of manure; there was no crossing sweeper. Pitt followed him, narrowly missed by a berline driven by a gentleman in a high temper.
“Mr. Pitt—” Innes began when they were over the street and on the far pavement.
“Yes?” Pitt knew he was going to ask if he had to report Urban.
“Ah—” Innes changed his mind. It was a question to which he did not really want to know the answer; he preferred to hope.
