by Anne Perry
“Yes of course it is,” Jack agreed. “And from what Lord Anstiss says, it would be the most powerful single step I could take to ensure the support of those who really matter in the political and social world.”
Charlotte wanted to muster an argument, but all she could think of was Pitt’s fears for Micah Drummond, his misery over the corruption he had uncovered, and the deeper corruption he so far only suspected.
“And what do they want from you in return?” she demanded. “What loyalty? What sacrifice of your independence, perhaps in time of your conscience?”
“Nothing.” Jack was surprised and mildly amused. “It is a society for doing good, Charlotte!”
“But secret?” she persisted.
“Not secret,” he corrected. “Discreet. Surely that is how charity should be, done quietly, modestly and without seeking recognition?”
“Yes.” She was reluctant to admit it not because what he said was untrue, but because she feared so much more. “But Jack, there may be other things. Thomas is dealing with a society at the moment …”
Emily looked at her with skepticism. “He is investigating the murder of a usurer, you told me.”
“Yes, but he has uncovered a society as well …” She was out of her depth and floundering. She was not prepared to tell them of the police corruption. It was too indefinite in form as yet, and too painful. In some basic way she felt it reflected on Pitt, on his profession, and she did not wish them to know if it could be avoided.
“London is full of societies,” Jack said more quietly, aware that her concern for him was real. “This one is very honorable, I promise you.”
“What is it called?”
“I don’t know—Anstiss did not tell me.”
“Be careful.”
“I will be. I give you my word.” He stood up. “Now it is past time Emily went to bed, and you too I am sure. Would you prefer to go home in the carriage now, or stay here until morning and go then? You are very welcome, you know, always.”
“Thank you, but I will go now. I would prefer to be there when Thomas leaves in the morning.”
Jack smiled and took Emily’s hand in his. “Then good night, my dear.”
Pitt listened as he had breakfast to all that Charlotte related to him of the evening before, which was only impressions of conversation, emotions and fears, and the conviction that Micah Drummond had learned to love Eleanor Byam, with all the pain and conflict that that meant. She did not mention Anstiss’s invitation to Jack to join the society. She would not burden him with that yet.
Pitt did not say anything, but he knew she understood his silence. He kissed her, long and gently, and went out into the hot, dusty street to find an omnibus and travel slowly to Scotland Yard and resume his investigations of Latimer’s cases. From there he spent a miserable day going from one old underworld source to another, through filthy alleys, up steps of rotting wood into rookeries where rats scuttled at the sound of his feet, squeaking, their claws rattling on the boards and their little eyes red in the shadows. Refuse lay heaped in slowly sagging piles and the gutters stank in the heat. He swatted ineffectually at some of the flies, and gave all his coppers to children who begged.
Finally in a small, crowded public alehouse called the Grinning Rat he sat opposite a little man with a twisted arm, broken when as a child he had been a sweep’s boy and fallen inside one of the vast chimneys. It had healed badly, and been broken a second time when he slipped off a church roof, stealing the lead, and now it was deformed past help. He made his living by selling information.
“Joey.” Pitt brought his wandering attention back from a large man with a protuberant belly hanging over grimy trousers and a tankard of ale in each hand.
Joey looked back at Pitt reluctantly.
“Yes, Mr. Pitt. I dunno wot yer wanna hear.” His voice sank into a plaintive whine as he expected to be criticized.
“ ’E in’t wot yer’d call reelly bad—just a bit kind o’ selective abaht ’Oo ’E does, like. Y’ unnerstand?”
“No,” Pitt said unhappily. “Explain to me, and there’ll behalf a guinea.”
“ ’Alf a guinea.” Joey’s face brightened.
“The truth,” Pitt warned. “Not what you think I want to hear. You don’t know what I want, or don’t want. If I discover you’re telling me lies I’ll come back and do you for everything in the book—I swear it.”
Joey let out a wail of outrage.
“Be quiet!” Pitt warned sharply. “Do you want everyone in the place looking at you?”
“Yer an ’ard man,” Joey complained.
“I am,” Pitt agreed. “Now tell me.”
And slowly Joey told Pitt what he most feared to hear. There was no explanation for Latimer’s omission to press some of his cases, for not calling certain witnesses. Joey did not know of his having taken money for his decisions, but he had assumed it, because to him there was no other answer. Why else did men do things, unless of course it was from fear? But to Joey, policemen of Latimer’s rank had nothing to fear. They were the powerful, the unassailable, the safe.
“Thank you,” Pitt said with a bitter misery inside. He handed over the half guinea he had promised and left the Grinning Rat. Tomorrow he would go back to Clerkenwell and Sergeant Innes.
Of course there were still the ordinary debtors from Weems’s first list, and perhaps Innes would turn up evidence against one of them. He half hoped for it, although he did not expect it; but perhaps a more conscious, sharper half would hate it even more should some desperate man struggling to survive prove to have shot Weems.
“Nothing,” Innes said gloomily, his thin face tired and without any lift of hope anymore.
“Nothing on Weems’s private life?” Pitt pressed pointlessly. “He must have had friends of some sort, surely? No women—not one?”
“Found nothin’,” Innes said flatly. His eyes looked anxious, even guilty.
“What is it?” Pitt demanded. They were sitting in the small room, little more than a cubbyhole, where Innes kept his notes and papers on the Weems case. Innes was perched on the narrow windowsill, leaving the solitary chair for Pitt, as the senior officer, and his guest.
Innes looked even more uncomfortable.
“I know as ’ow Mr. Latimer gets ’is money, sir. It weren’t borrered from Weems—”
Pitt would have been pleased, had not the look on Innes’s face made it impossible. Whatever the answer was, it was no better than usury.
“Well?” he said more sharply than he had intended.
Innes took no offense, he understood.
“Gambling, sir. ’E gambles, very successfully, it seems.”
“How do you know?”
“Discovered it by accident, sir. Was lookin’ inter one of our local debtors, ’Oo gambles. Come across proof as Mr. Latimer does—in a big way. An’ ’e wins, no doubt about it. ’E knows ’is bare-knuckle fighters.” His face was pinched with unhappiness. Apart from the brutality, bare-knuckle fighting was illegal and they both knew it; so would Latimer.
“I see,” Pitt said slowly. He did not bother to ask if Innes was sure beyond any doubt. He would not have mentioned it until he was.
Innes was looking at him earnestly. Neither of them needed to explain the possibilities ahead. Latimer would be ruined if his gambling, and condoning an illegal sport, were known. Was that what Weems had blackmailed him over? That would account for his name on the second list.
It was a powerful motive for murder.
“What are we going to do, Mr. Pitt?” Innes said quietly. “You want me ter go ter Mr. Drummond, like?”
It was a generous offer, made at some cost, and Pitt felt a tiny spark of warmth because of it.
“No,” he said with a bleak smile. “Thank you. I’ll go.”
“Yes sir.”
9
PITT MADE NO OBJECTION whatever when Charlotte said she would like to attend Emily’s musical evening towards the end of that week. Indeed when she explained, by
the way, as though she had assumed he knew it already, that the Carswells would be there, he was quite openly pleased.
They had no time to discuss it because he was leaving early to go to Clerkenwell. He and Innes must work on the very last of the debtors on Weems’s first list. Little by little Innes had whittled it down, but there were still a dozen or so left who were not accounted for beyond doubt. It was still possible one of them might have gone to Cyrus Street late in the evening, been admitted, and seized the blunderbuss, found the powder, and loaded the gun. But neither of them believed it. Weems may have despised his clients, but he surely knew despair when he saw it, and over the years had learned that desperate people can be dangerous.
Today they planned to question Weems’s errand runner, Windy Miller, yet again, although they expected little useful from him, and later perhaps his housekeeper, in case there were any details they had overlooked, any thread of knowledge however frail. But both of them were convinced that Weems’s killer was someone on the second list—or else Byam himself, although Innes had not said so, because of course he still did not know of Byam, a fact which weighed heavily on Pitt’s mind and disturbed his conscience increasingly.
Charlotte kissed him good-bye, and when he was gone immediately set about that housework which could not wait, so that she could leave in the late afternoon with a clear mind and no housewifely guilt.
By six o’clock she was sitting on the Hepplewhite chair in Emily’s withdrawing room, wearing a rose-colored gown spread around her elegantly, and surrounded by about thirty other people also sitting upright, facing the grand piano where a very earnest young man was playing some extraordinarily beautiful, dark and sad music by Franz Liszt. Indeed it was so lovely Charlotte’s attention was entirely taken by it and she forgot even to glance at Addison Carswell, Regina, one of the Misses Carswell, or at Herbert Fitzherbert and Odelia Morden, or Fanny Hilliard, whom she was surprised to see present. Then she realized precisely what political value Fanny had in the possible fall from grace of Herbert Fitzherbert and Emily’s so gentle part in it.
However at the first interval Charlotte remembered her own reason for being here, cast aside self-indulgence and began to observe other people. One of the first she noticed was the Miss Carswell present; she did not know her name as she could not tell one from another. She was no more than seventeen or eighteen, a girl pretty in a usual sort of way, clear complexion, all pink and white, fair hair tending a little towards mouse, and an agreeable, good-tempered face of no particular character. No doubt if one knew her one would find the individuality, the beliefs and emotions which made her unique, the humor, the dreams, the small kindnesses.
She now stood a few yards away from her mother, effectively unchaperoned, and was speaking with some animation to a young man Charlotte could not remember seeing before; but obviously Miss Carswell had. Her face was full of interest, instead of the usual rather simpering response many young women had to a first approach from an eligible and attractive man. And the man was responding with warmth and a total involvement of his attention.
Charlotte smiled. It was a most promising situation, and she imagined it might well progress into a happy relationship, most young girls’ profoundest ambition. So much the better if it could accompany a genuine affection as well, and this looked, from their faces, as if it did. How wise of Regina Carswell not to interrupt with quite unnecessary affectations of propriety.
Since the Carswells were the only ones present who in Charlotte’s mind could possibly be considered suspects, she determined to engage at least one of them in conversation, as the only way in which she might learn something more than sheer observation would teach, which seemed to be precious little. Accordingly she rose to her feet and made her way between the small groups of people exchanging polite enthusiasm for the pianist, until she reached Regina Carswell.
“Good evening, Mrs. Carswell,” she said with a smile. “How pleasant to see you again. I hope you are well?”
“Quite well, thank you,” Regina replied courteously. “And you, Mrs. Pitt?”
“Oh in the best health, thank you. Isn’t it a lovely summer? I cannot recall the weather being quite so agreeable for a long time. But I daresay it is, and the winter simply makes one forget.”
“Indeed,” Regina agreed. She was about to continue with some pleasant triviality when a rather large lady with diamonds strung across an ample bosom engineered her way past them, lifting her skirts slightly to avoid crushing either her own gown or Regina’s. She gave Regina a strange smile, forcedly bright and rather fixed, then turned away quickly and grasped the arm of the woman next to her.
“Poor soul,” she murmured in a stage whisper perfectly audible to at least the half dozen people closest to her.
“Poor soul?” her companion said curiously. “Why? Is she not in good health? I hear she has three daughters, but I know she is doing quite well with them.”
“Oh I know that,” the large lady said, dismissing the subject. “Poor creature,” she added in a hiss. “So difficult. Especially when everyone knows.”
“Knows what?” Her companion, dressed in a fashionable but particularly repulsive shade of green, was getting irritated by the suspense. “I’ve heard nothing.”
“Oh you will do,” the large lady assured her. “No doubt you will do. Far be it from me—of course—”
Regina looked puzzled and embarrassed, a slight tinge of pink in her cheeks.
Charlotte did not know whether to pretend she had not heard the exchange, although it was quite obvious they both had, or to acknowledge it candidly and say something dismissive. She looked at Regina’s face to try to judge which would be the kindest. She saw only confusion. Perhaps it had to do with the ridiculous Osmar case. Charlotte chose to assume it did.
“It seems Mr. Horatio Osmar is bent on causing trouble everywhere,” she said with an attempt at cheerfulness. “I should put it from your mind, if I were you. A lot of people with little knowledge and even less judgment tend to pass comment. It will all die away as soon as some fresh scandal breaks.”
Regina still looked puzzled.
“I fail to see why they should pity me for the matter,” she said, opening her eyes wide and smiling rather tentatively. “I am sure my husband behaved with judicial correctness. The police must have failed to produce a proper case against him, or he would not have dismissed it from court. And it has little reflection on me.”
“They must be very hard put for scandal to gossip over,” Charlotte agreed. “Silly creatures. Don’t you find that an astoundingly unbecoming shade of green? I cannot recall when I have seen anything quite so displeasing!”
Regina relaxed into a smile at Charlotte’s determination to dismiss the whole episode as meaningless and of no importance whatever.
“Quite horrible,” she agreed warmly. “Were her maid of any use at all she would have advised her not to wear it.”
“These yellow-greens are most trying, especially to a sallow complexion,” Charlotte went on. “I cannot imagine who makes such a gown in the first place. I would have suggested a soft blue, I think. She is something of a plain woman to begin with.”
Regina touched her arm gently with her hand. “My dear Mrs. Pitt, it was the large lady who was the real offender. I think it is she we should be picking apart!”
“You are right,” Charlotte agreed with enthusiasm. “Where shall we begin? She should never wear diamonds on so large a bosom. All that glitter only draws attention to what is only too obvious anyway.”
“Crystals,” Regina said with a slight giggle. “They are not diamonds, you know.”
“Of course,” Charlotte amended. “Crystals. Some muted color, a little darker, would have been best—” She was about to continue when out of the corner of her eye she noticed another woman looking at Regina with a softness that verged on pity, and as soon as she met Charlotte’s glance, she looked away quickly, her face pink, as though she had been caught staring at someone improperly dressed,
an intrusive and embarrassing thing to do.
Charlotte lost her place in what she had been going to say.
“What is it?” Regina asked, quick to sense her discomfort, however momentary.
“Nothing,” Charlotte lied instantly, then, knowing the lie pointless, said, “I saw someone with whom I had a mildly unpleasant altercation. But I had forgotten.” She dismissed the second lie as of no matter. And then she rushed on with some other topic of total triviality, a piece of gossip she had picked up from Emily.
She returned to her seat again for the second long piece upon the piano, and enjoyed it rather less. It was a composer she was unfamiliar with, and the work seemed to lack emotion, or perhaps she was simply unable to concentrate. In the interval that followed she made her way to Emily, who had been talking to Fitz.
“You look concerned,” Emily said hastily. “Have you found something?”
“I don’t think so. What do you know of Horatio Osmar? Is he politically important?” Charlotte whispered back.
Emily’s face puckered. “I don’t think he matters in the slightest. Why?”
“People seem to be speaking of him.”
“What on earth do you mean, ‘seem to be’? Are they or not?”
“I don’t know. I have seen people giving Mrs. Carswell the oddest looks, and I wondered if it were to do with Horatio Osmar.”
“You are talking nonsense,” Emily said sharply. “What has Regina Carswell to do with Horatio Osmar?”
“It was Addison Carswell who threw out the case,” Charlotte said impatiently. “Thomas seems to think it was quite a corrupt thing to do. It was a perfectly good case.”
Emily frowned. “Who was looking at Regina Carswell oddly?”
“I don’t know—a fat woman with crystals all over her bosom.”
“Lady Arnforth—that’s absurd. She doesn’t know anything about justice, and cares still less. It must be gossip, probably about love or immorality—or both.”
