Traitors Gate tp-15

by Anne Perry

  The footman had worked for a cabinet minister for some time and he was not unused to matters of dire emergency.

  “Yes sir. If you will wait in the morning room, I will inform Mr. Chancellor that you are here.”

  Pitt hesitated.

  “Yes sir?” the footman said politely.

  “I am afraid I have some extremely unpleasant news. Perhaps you would send the butler to me first.”

  The footman paled.

  “Yes sir, if you think that’s necessary?”

  “Has he been with Mr. Chancellor long?”

  “Yes sir, some fifteen years.”

  “Then please send him.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The butler came within moments, looking anxious. He closed the morning room door behind him and faced Pitt with a frown.

  “I’m Richards, sir, Mr. Chancellor’s butler. I gather from Albert that something distressing has happened. Is it one of the gentlemen in the Colonial Office? Has there been a … an accident?”

  “No, Richards, I am afraid it is far worse than that,” Pitt said quietly, his voice rough at the edges. “I am afraid Mrs. Chancellor has met with … has met with a violent death.” He got no further. The butler swayed on his feet as if he were about to faint. Every vestige of color fled from his skin.

  Pitt lunged forward and grasped him, guiding him backwards towards one of the chairs.

  “I’m … I’m sorry, sir,” Richards gasped. “I don’t know what came over me. I …” He looked up at Pitt beseechingly. “You are sure, sir? There could not be some error … some mistake as to identity?” Even as he said it his face reflected his knowledge that it could not be so. How many women were there in London who looked like Susannah Chancellor?

  Pitt gave no answer. None was necessary.

  “I think it would be wise if you were to make yourself available close at hand when I have to break the news to Mr. Chancellor,” Pitt said gently. “Perhaps a decanter of brandy. And you might make sure that there are no callers and no messages until he feels able to deal with them.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you, sir.” And still looking very shaken and uncertain in his step, Richards rose and left the room.

  Linus Chancellor came in a moment or two later, an eagerness in his step and a directness in his eyes that gave Pitt a bitter jolt. He realized Chancellor was expecting news about the African information that was being passed. And with that keenness in his eyes, he also realized, if he had ever doubted it, that Chancellor was innocent of any involvement.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I have very grave news,” he said almost before Chancellor had closed the door. He could not bear the misapprehension.

  “Is it one of my senior colleagues?” Chancellor asked. “It is good of you to come here to tell me in person. Who is it? Aylmer?”

  Pitt felt cold in spite of the warmth of the room and the sun now bright outside.

  “No, sir. I am afraid it is about Mrs. Chancellor I have come.” He saw the surprise in Chancellor’s face and did not wait. “I am profoundly sorry, sir, but I have to tell you that she is dead.”

  “Dead?” Chancellor repeated the word as though he did not know its meaning. “She was perfectly well last evening. She went out to …” He turned and went to the door. “Richards?”

  The butler appeared immediately, the salver with brandy decanter and glass in his hands, his face ashen white.

  Chancellor looked back at Pitt, then at the butler again.

  “Have you seen Mrs. Chancellor this morning, Richards?”

  Richards looked enquiringly at Pitt.

  “Mr. Chancellor, there is no doubt,” Pitt said gently. “She was found at the Tower of London.”

  “The Tower of London?” Chancellor said incredulously. His eyes were wide with disbelief, and there was a look on his face that seemed close to laughter, as if the sheer idea of it were too absurd to be true.

  Pitt had seen hysteria before; it was not altogether unexpected.

  “Please sit down, sir,” he asked. “You are bound to feel unwell.”

  Richards set the tray down and offered a glass of brandy.

  Chancellor took it and drank it all, then coughed severely for several seconds until he managed to regain control of himself.

  “What happened?” he asked slowly, fumbling to get his tongue around the words. “What could she possibly have been doing at the Tower of London? She went out to visit Christabel Thorne. I know Christabel is eccentric … but the Tower of London? Where, for heaven’s sake? She can surely not have been inside it at that time of night?”

  “Could she and Mrs. Thorne have taken a trip on the river?” Pitt asked, although it seemed a strange thing for two ladies to do alone. Would they find Christabel’s body also, on some further stretch of the riverbank?

  “And what … a boating accident?” Chancellor said doubtfully. “Did Mrs. Thorne suggest such a thing?”

  “We have not yet enquired of Mrs. Thorne. We did not know Mrs. Chancellor had been with her. But it was not an accident, sir. I am deeply sorry, but I am afraid it was murder. The only comfort I can offer is that it would have been very quick. It is unlikely she suffered.”

  Chancellor stared at him, his face white, then red. He seemed about to choke on his own breath.

  Richards offered him another glass of brandy and he drank it. The blood left his face and he looked ill.

  “And Christabel?” he whispered, staring at Pitt.

  “So far we know nothing about her, but we will naturally make enquiries.”

  “Where … where was she found … my … wife?” Chancellor seemed to have difficulty saying the words.

  “At Traitors Gate. It has a slipway down-”

  “I know! I know, Superintendent. I have seen it many times. I know what it is.” He swallowed again, gulping in air. “Thank you for coming to tell me yourself. It must be one of your most unpleasant tasks. I appreciate that you came in person. I imagine you will be in charge of the case? Now if you don’t mind, I would prefer to be alone. Richards, please inform the Colonial Office that I shall not be in this morning.”

  Pitt walked from Linus Chancellor’s to the home of Jeremiah Thorne, across the square and along to the far end of Mount Street, and north to Upper Brook Street. It took him less than twenty minutes to reach the front door and ring the bell. His heart was pounding as if he had run twice the distance, his tongue dry in his mouth.

  The bell was answered by a footman who enquired as to his business, and when presented with his card, showed him into the library and asked him to wait. He would enquire whether Mrs. Thorne was at home. At this time in the morning it was a ridiculous pretense. He could hardly fail to know if she were at home, but he had been trained to use the polite fiction before allowing any visitor in. If it were inconvenient, or his employer did not wish to see someone, he could hardly return and say so as bluntly.

  Pitt waited with a tension so severe he was unable to sit down or even to stand in one spot. He paced back and forth, once catching his knuckles on the edge of a carved table as he turned, oblivious of his surroundings. He was aware of the pain, but only dimly. His ears strained to hear the sound of footsteps. Once when a maid passed he went to the door and was on the point of flinging it open, when he realized he was being absurd. Then he heard giggling and a male voice answering back. It was a simple piece of domestic flirtation.

  He was still close to the door when Christabel came in. She was wearing a pale gray morning dress and looked in excellent health, but very questionable temper. Although curiosity was holding it in check, at least until she had ascertained the cause of his call at such a time.

  “Good morning, Superintendent,” she said coolly. “You alarmed my footman by your rather vehement insistence upon speaking to me. I hope your reason is adequate to justify it. This is a very uncivil time to call.”

  He was too shaken to respond sharply; the tragedy was real. His mind’s eye was still filled with Susannah’s face as she l
ay in the silence of Traitors Gate, the water of the river lapping over her feet.

  “I am extremely relieved to see you well, Mrs. Thorne.”

  Something in the gravity of his face frightened her. Quite suddenly her manner altered entirely, the anger evaporated.

  “What is it, Mr. Pitt? Has something happened?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I am very sorry indeed to have to tell you that Mrs. Chancellor met her death last night. Mr. Chancellor had believed she was with you, so I naturally came immediately to make sure you were not …”

  “Susannah?” She looked stricken, staring at him with her enormous eyes, the arrogance fled out of her. “Susannah is dead?” She took a step backwards, then another until she found the chair behind her and sank into it. “How? If … if you feared for me also, then it was … violent?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Thorne. I am afraid she was murdered.”

  “Oh, dear God!” She put her hands up to her face and sat quite motionless for several moments.

  “May I call someone for you?” he offered.

  She looked up. “What? Uh-no, no thank you. My poor Susannah. How did it happen? Where was she, for heaven’s sake, that she could be … was she attacked? Robbed?”

  “We don’t yet know. She was found in the river, washed up on the shore.”

  “Drowned?”

  “No, she was strangled, so violently that her neck may well be broken. It was probably very quick. I’m sorry, Mrs. Thorne, but since Mr. Chancellor had believed she was coming to visit you, I have to ask you if you saw her last evening.”

  “No. I dined at home, but Susannah did not come here. She must have been attacked before she …” She sighed and a shadow of a smile, small and very sad, touched her lips. “That is, if, of course, she intended to come here. Perhaps she went somewhere else. It would be unwise to suppose it had to be here she had in mind. Although I do not believe it would be an assignation. She was too much in love with Linus for that to be … likely.”

  “You don’t say ‘possible,’ Mrs. Thorne?” he said instantly.

  She rose to her feet and turned to look out of the window, her back to him. “No. There is not much that is impossible, Superintendent. That is something you learn as you get older. Associations are not always what you suppose, and even when you love one person, you may not necessarily behave in a manner other people would understand.”

  “Are you speaking in generalities, or do you have Mrs. Chancellor in mind?” Pitt asked quietly.

  “I don’t really know. But Linus is not an easy man. He is witty, charming, handsome, ambitious, and certainly extremely talented. But I have always wondered if he was capable of loving her as much as she loved him. Not that many marriages are composed of two people who love each other equally, except in fairy stories.” She kept her back to him and her voice suggested she was indifferent whether he understood her or not. “Not everyone is able to give so much. There is usually one party who has to compromise, to accept what is given and not be bitter or lonely for the rest. That is especially true for women who are married to powerful and ambitious men. Susannah was clever enough to know that, and I think wise enough not to fight against it and lose what there was for her … which I believe was much.”

  “But you do not think it impossible she may have found some friendship or admiration elsewhere?”

  “Not impossible, Superintendent, but unlikely.” She turned back to face him. “I liked Susannah very much, Mr. Pitt. She was a woman of intelligence, courage, and great integrity. She loved her husband, but she was well able to speak and act for herself. She was not … dominated. She had spirit, passion and laughter….” Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and they spilled down her cheeks. She stood quite still and wept without screwing up her face, simply lost in a deep and consuming grief.

  “I am so sorry,” Pitt said quietly, and went to the door. He found Jeremiah Thorne in the hall outside, looking surprised and a little anxious.

  “What the devil are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Mrs. Chancellor has been murdered,” Pitt replied without preamble. “I had reason to believe your wife might also have been harmed. I am delighted that she is not, but she is distressed and in need of comfort. Mr. Chancellor will not be in to the Colonial Office today.”

  Thorne stared at him for a moment, barely comprehending what he had heard.

  “I’m sorry,” Pitt said again.

  “Susannah?” Thorne looked stricken; there was no mistaking the reality of his emotion. “Are you sure? I’m sorry, that’s an absurd question. Of course you are, or you would hardly have come here. But how? Why? What happened? Why in God’s name did you think Christabel was involved?” He searched Pitt’s face as if he might have seen some answer in it more immediate than words.

  “Mr. Chancellor had been under the impression that his wife was intending to visit Mrs. Thorne yesterday evening,” Pitt replied. “But apparently she did not reach here.”

  “No! No … she was not expected.”

  “So Mrs. Thorne told me.”

  “Dear God, this is dreadful! Poor Susannah. She was one of the loveliest women I ever knew-lovely in the truest sense, Pitt. I am not thinking of her face, but of the spirit that lit her inside, the passion and the courage … the heart. Forgive me. Come back and ask anything you like later on, but now I must go to my wife. She was deeply fond of Susannah….” And without adding anything further he turned and went towards the library, leaving Pitt to find his own way out.

  It was far too soon to expect any information from the medical examiner. The body would barely have reached him. The physical evidence was slight. As the boatman had said, she could have been put into the water upstream after the tide had turned at about two-thirty and drifted down, or downstream on the flood tide, and have been carried up, and thus left when the ebb began. Or as likely as either of those, she could have gone in roughly where she was found. Below the Tower were only Wapping, Rotherhithe, Limehouse, the Surrey Docks, and the Isle of Dogs. Deptford and Greenwich were too far for the brief time before the change from flow to ebb. What on earth would Susannah Chancellor have been doing in any of those places?

  Above were much more likely sites: London Bridge, Blackfriars, Waterloo; even Westminster was not so far. He was talking about miles. Although she was probably put in either from a bridge or from the north bank to have washed up on the north side as she was.

  To have gone in where she was found, at the Tower of London, seemed impossible. What could she have been doing there? Nor could she have been in the immediate area. There was only Customs House Quay on one side and St. Catherine’s Docks on the other.

  The best thing would be to find out what time she left her home in Berkeley Square, and how. No one had mentioned if she took one of her own carriages; presumably they had at least one. Where had the coachman left her? Was it conceivable she had been killed by one of her own servants? He could not imagine it, but it had better be eliminated all the same.

  He was already retracing his steps to Berkeley Square and it took him only another few minutes to reach number seventeen again. This time he went down to the areaway steps rather than disturb them at the front door.

  It was opened by the bootboy looking white-faced and frightened.

  “We ain’t buyin’ nuffink today,” he said flatly. “Come back another time.” He made as if to close the door.

  “I am the police,” Pitt told him quietly. “I need to come in. You know what has happened. I have to find out who did it, so I must discover all you know.”

  “I don’t know nuffink!”

  “Don’t you know what time Mrs. Chancellor went out?”

  “Who is it, Tommy?” a man’s voice called from somewhere behind him.

  “It’s the rozzers, George.”

  The door opened wider and a servant with his right arm in a sling faced Pitt suspiciously.

  Pitt handed him his card.

  “You’d better come in,” the man said reluctantl
y. “I don’t know what we can tell you.”

  The bootboy stood aside to allow Pitt in. The scullery was full of vegetables, pots and pans, and a small maid with red eyes and her apron bunched up in one hand.

  “Mr. Richards is busy,” the man went on, leading Pitt through the kitchen and into the butler’s pantry. “And the footmen are in the hall. The maids are all too upset to answer the door.”

  Pitt had assumed he was a footman, but apparently he was mistaken.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Coachman, George Bragg.”

  Pitt looked at the arm. “When did you do that?”

  “Last night” He smiled bitterly. “It’s only a scald. It’ll mend.”

  “Then you did not drive Mrs. Chancellor when she went out?”

  “No sir. She took a hansom. Mr. Chancellor went with her to get one. She was going to be some time, and Mr. Chancellor himself was planning to go out later, in the carriage.”

  “They keep only one carriage?” Pitt was surprised. Carriages, horses and general harness and livery were marks of social standing. Most people kept as many and of as high a quality as they could, often running into debt to maintain them.

  “Oh no sir,” Bragg said hastily. “But Mrs. Chancellor hadn’t been planning to go out, and so we hadn’t got the big carriage harnessed up, and Mr. Chancellor was going to use the brougham himself, later. She was going only less than a mile away. I daresay she’d have walked it in daylight.”

  “So it was after dark when she left?”

  “Oh yes sir. About half past nine, I would say. And looked like it could come on to rain. But Lily saw her go. She would tell you more exact. That is if she can pull herself together long enough. She was very fond of Mrs. Chancellor, and she’s in a terrible state.”

  “If you can find her, please,” Pitt requested.

  George left Pitt alone to do as he asked, and was gone nearly a quarter of an hour before he returned with a red-faced, puffy-eyed girl of about eighteen, who was obviously extremely distressed.

  “Good morning, Lily,” Pitt said quietly. “Please sit down.”

  Lily was so unused to being asked to sit in the presence of superiors, she did not comprehend the order.