by Anne Perry
“I suppose it is honoring your promises,” he said slowly. “But then it is also honoring your obligations, even if there have been no specific promises made.”
“Exactly,” Matthew agreed. “But who sets out what those obligations are, or to whom? Whose is the first claim? What when people assume you have some obligation to them, and you don’t assume it? They can, you know.”
“Sir Arthur and the Inner Circle?”
Matthew lifted his shoulders in a gesture of vague assent. “Anyone. Sometimes we take for granted things, and imagine that other people do too … and perhaps they don’t. I mean … how well do we know each other, how well do we even know ourselves, until we are tested? You imagine you will behave in a certain way if you are faced with a choice, but when the time comes, you find you don’t.”
Pitt was even surer that Matthew had something specific in mind. There was too much passion in his voice for it to be mere philosophizing. But equally obviously, he was not yet ready to speak of it openly. Pitt did not even know if it was actually to do with Sir Arthur, or if he had merely mentioned that as something they had in common from which to begin.
“You mean a division of loyalties?”
Matthew moved a step away. Pitt knew he had touched a nerve, and it was too soon.
Matthew waited a moment before he replied. The garden was silent. Somewhere beyond the hedges a dog barked. A tortoiseshell cat walked along the wall and dropped soundlessly into the orchard.
“Some of those men at the inquest genuinely felt as if he had betrayed a trust,” Matthew said at last. “A loyalty to their secret society, perhaps in a way to their class. Somebody in the Colonial Office is betraying their country, but perhaps they don’t see it like that.” He took a deep breath, his eyes on the wind in the apple leaves. “Father felt that to keep silent about the Inner Circle was to betray all that he felt most important in life, although he might never have thought to give it a name. I’m not sure I like giving things names. Does that sound like evasion? Once you give things a name and promise allegiance, you’ve given part of yourself away. I’m not prepared to do that.” He looked at Pitt with a frown. “Can you understand that, Thomas?”
“Most things don’t ask for an unlimited allegiance,” Pitt pointed out. “That is what is wrong with the Inner Circle; it asks men to promise loyalty in advance of knowing what will be asked of them.”
“A sacrifice of conscience, Father called it.”
“Then you have answered your own question,” Pitt pointed out. “You didn’t need to ask me, and you shouldn’t care what my answer would have been.”
Matthew flashed him a sudden, brilliant smile. “I don’t,” he confessed, putting his hands into his pockets.
“Then what still troubles you?” Pitt asked, because the shadow and the tension were still in Matthew, and the smile faded as quickly as it had come.
Matthew sighed, turning away from the orchard wall and beginning to walk slowly along it. “Yes, you and I can say that comfortably because we have no issue between us that we see differently. But how would you feel if my course led me to do something which you felt betrayed you? Wouldn’t you hate me for it?”
“Are you talking about all this in theory, Matthew, or is there something specific you are trying to find the courage to say?” Pitt fell in step beside him.
Matthew looked away, facing back towards the house. “I don’t even know of anything about which I believe all that differently from you. I was thinking of Father, and his friends in the Inner Circle.” He glanced sideways for a moment at Pitt. “Some of them were his friends, you know? That is what he found so terribly difficult”
Nothing that Matthew said was untrue, but Pitt still had the feeling that in some way Matthew was lying. They walked up the lawn towards the house together but they did not touch on the subject again. Charlotte invited Matthew to stay and dine with them, but he declined, and took his leave, his face still shadowed with anxiety, and Pitt watched him go with a sadness he could not rid himself of all evening.
Charlotte looked at Pitt enquiringly when Matthew was gone. “Is he all right? He looked …” She searched for a word.
“Troubled,” Pitt supplied it for her, sitting down in his chair and leaning back, stretching a little. “Yes, I am almost sure there is something else, but he cannot bring himself to say it.”
“What sort of thing?” She looked at him anxiously. He was not sure whether she was concerned for Matthew or for both of them. He could see in her eyes the knowledge of his own regret mixed so heavily with his loss.
He turned his gaze away. “I don’t know, something to do with loyalties….”
She drew in her breath sharply, as if to speak, then changed her mind tactfully. He almost laughed, it was so unlike her, but it would too easily have broken into misery.
“I suppose it is to do with the Circle,” he said, although he was not at all sure that was what had gnawed at Matthew so painfully. But either way, this evening he preferred not to think of it any further. “What is for dinner?”
“That’s not much,” Farnsworth said grimly when Pitt reported to him next. “The wretched man cannot have disappeared from the face of the earth.” He was referring to the driver of the hansom cab which had picked up Susannah Chancellor in Berkeley Square. “Who did you say you had on it?”
They were in his own office rather than Pitt’s room in Bow Street, and he stood by the window looking towards the Embankment of the river. Pitt sat in the chair opposite. Farnsworth had invited him to sit when he had first come in, and then a moment later had risen himself. It gave him a physical advantage he seemed to prefer.
“Tellman,” Pitt replied, sitting back a little farther. He did not in the least mind looking up. “And I tried myself. I know the man may be crucial, but so far we have found no trace of him, which leads me to-”
“If you are going to say Chancellor was lying, then you are a fool,” Farnsworth said irritably. “You surely cannot be so out of touch with reality as to imagine Chancellor would-”
“The whole question is irrelevant,” Pitt interrupted in his turn. “Chancellor went straight back to his house and was seen within ten minutes of having put her in the hansom. I already know that from his own household staff. Not that I suspected him anyway. It is merely a matter of form to ascertain where everyone was at the relevant time.”
Farnsworth did not reply to that.
“Which leads me to suppose,” Pitt finished the sentence Farnsworth had broken into, “that the driver was in some way implicated. Possibly he was not a regular cabby at all, but someone dressed as one.”
“Then where did he get the hansom from?” Farnsworth demanded. “Chancellor said it was a hansom. He would know the difference between a cab and a private carriage.”
“I’ve got Tellman looking into that now. So far we don’t know, but it must have come from somewhere, either hired or stolen. He’s going around to all the companies.”
“Good. Good. That could be the break we are needing.”
“Kreisler thought it might have been an attempt at kidnapping that went wrong,” Pitt suggested.
Farnsworth was startled and a flicker of irritation crossed his face.
“What? Who the devil is Kreisler?”
“Peter Kreisler. Something of an expert on African affairs.” Pitt spoke thoughtfully. “He seems to be very concerned about the case. In fact he has spent a lot of time pursuing it himself.”
“Why?” Farnsworth demanded, coming back to his desk and sitting opposite Pitt. “Did he know her?”
“Yes.”
“Then he’s a suspect, dammit!” His fist clenched. “I assume you are investigating him very thoroughly indeed?”
“Yes, of course I am.” Pitt’s voice rose in spite of his efforts to keep it level. “He says he was at home that evening, but he cannot prove it. His man had the evening off.”
Farnsworth relaxed. “Well that may be all there is to it! It may be as simple a
s that, no abduction, nothing political, simply a jealous man, infatuated and rejected.” There was considerable satisfaction in his voice. It would be an ideal solution.
“Possibly,” Pitt agreed. “Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould saw them in a heated discussion the previous night. But that is a long way from proving that Kreisler is violent and unstable enough to have murdered her simply because she refused him.”
“Well find out, man!” Farnsworth said sharply. “Look into his past. Write to Africa, if you have to. He must have been attracted to other women at some time or another. See how he behaved then. Learn everything about him, his loves, hates, quarrels, debts, ambitions, everything there is to know about him! I am not going to allow the murder of a cabinet minister’s wife to remain an unsolved case … and neither are you!”
It sounded like a dismissal. Pitt rose to his feet.
“And the Colonial Office,” Farnsworth went on. “How are you progressing with that? Lord Salisbury asked me only yesterday if we had learned anything of use.” His face tightened. “I did not inform him of your machinations to pass various different versions of false figures. God knows what he would have said if I had. I assume you have achieved nothing with that ploy or you would have told me?”
“It is too early yet,” Pitt replied. “And the Colonial Office is in something of an upheaval with Chancellor himself not present.”
“When do you expect that little piece of deception to bear fruit?” Farnsworth asked, not without sarcasm.
“In the next three or four days at the outside,” Pitt replied.
Farnsworth frowned. “Well, I hope you are right. Personally I think you are a little too sanguine about it altogether. What do you propose to do next, if it fails?”
Pitt had not thought that far. His mind was taken up with Susannah Chancellor, and always at the back of his thoughts, intruding at every opportunity, was the death of Arthur Desmond-and, since he had seen Dr. Murray, the near certainty that he had been murdered by the Inner Circle. He still intended to prove that, as soon as the urgency of the Chancellor case allowed.
“I have no further ideas,” he admitted. “Beyond continuing with usual police routine, to learn all I can of every possible suspect, in the hope that some fact, or lie, will prove who is guilty, both in the Colonial Office and in the Treasury. A connection that is not openly acknowledged would be indicative.”
“Not very satisfactory, Pitt. What about this woman Pennecuick?” He stood up again and walked restlessly over towards the window. “It still looks to me as if Aylmer is your man.”
“Possibly.”
Farnsworth put his hands into his pockets and looked thoughtful. “You told me Aylmer could not account for his time that evening. Is it possible Mrs. Chancellor had in some fashion discovered his guilt, and that he was aware of this, and that he murdered her to protect himself? And had he, for example, any connection with Kreisler?”
“I don’t know….” Pitt began.
“Then find out, man! That shouldn’t be beyond your wit to do.” He looked at Pitt coldly, regret in his eyes.
Pitt was sure he was thinking of the Inner Circle, and how much easier such investigations might be with the help of a widespread, covert network to call on. But who would know, with all the interlocking covenants and obligations, the hierarchy of loyalties, who was bound to whom, what lies or silences were promised? Even which officers in the police might be involved, a thought which was peculiarly frightening. He met Farnsworth’s stare with bland denial.
Farnsworth grunted and looked away.
“Then you had better be about it,” he said, then turned to the river again, and the bright light on the water.
“There is another possibility,” Pitt said quietly.
Farnsworth did not look around, but kept his back to the room and to Pitt.
“Yes?”
“That she did in fact visit the Thorne house,” Pitt replied. “We are still looking for her cloak. She was wearing it when she left, but it was not with her body. If we find it, it may tell us something.”
“Depending on where, I suppose,” Farnsworth conceded. “Go on. What if she did visit the Thorne house?”
Farnsworth’s shoulders tightened.
“Then either Thorne murdered her,” Pitt answered, “or he and his wife did together, although I find that harder to believe. I think Mrs. Thorne was genuinely grieved and shocked when I told her.”
“Why on earth would Thorne kill Mrs. Chancellor? You’re not suggesting an affair, are you?” This time there was mockery in Farnsworth’s voice.
“No.” Pitt did not bother to add how unlikely he thought it.
Farnsworth turned to look at him. “Then what?” His eyes widened. “The Colonial Office treason? Thorne?”
“Possibly. But there is another solution, which may not be unconnected….”
“What do you mean, not unconnected?” Farnsworth frowned. “Explain yourself, Pitt. You are talking in circles. Do you mean it is connected, or don’t you?”
Pitt gritted his teeth. “I think the death of Arthur Desmond may have been connected with his beliefs-”
He got no further. Farnsworth’s face darkened and his eyes narrowed. “I thought we had already dismissed that, and put it to rest. Arthur Desmond was a good man who unfortunately, tragically if you like, became senile towards the end of his life and suffered from serious delusions. The kindest thing one can assume is that he accidentally took an overdose of his sleeping draft.”
His lips tightened. “Less kindly, one might conclude that he knew he was losing his mind and had already seriously compromised his reputation and slandered many of his erstwhile friends, and in a moment of lucid realization of just what was happening to him, took his own life.”
He swallowed. “Perhaps I should not say that is an unkind solution. On second thoughts it was a highly honorable thing to do, and most like him.” His eyes met Pitt’s for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure that is the man you knew also. It required a considerable courage. If you have the regard for him that you profess, you will leave it at that and let him rest in peace. By keeping on raking up the matter you are prolonging the pain for his family and seriously misadvising them. I cannot warn you more gravely that you are making a profound mistake. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” Pitt agreed, staring back at him, sensing the power of his resolve, and driven to ignore it. “But none of that is relevant to what Mrs. Chancellor may have thought, which is what we are concerned with.”
“You didn’t discuss this farrago of nonsense with Mrs. Chancellor, for God’s sake!” Farnsworth was aghast. He was still standing with his back to the window, his face in his own shadow from the sunlight, throwing its lines and planes into sharp relief.
“No I didn’t,” Pitt replied steadily. “But I am aware that Mrs. Chancellor knew Sir Arthur and thought very highly of him, and that he discussed his beliefs about Africa with her. Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould told me so.”
Farnsworth pulled a face at the mention of Vespasia’s name again. He was beginning to dislike her intensely.
“And how did she know that, pray? I suppose she is acquainted with Mrs. Chancellor? She is something of a busybody, and I think not to be taken seriously.” The moment he had said that he regretted it. It was a mistake, and he not only saw it in Pitt’s face, but his own social background was sufficient to have heard her name before, and to have recognized a true aristocrat when he met one. His temper had spoken before his intellect.
Pitt merely smiled, which was patronizing. Losing his own temper would have placed him in an equal position; this was superior.
“Well?” Farnsworth snapped. “Are you suggesting on the strength of that, that Mrs. Chancellor believed Mr. Thorne murdered Desmond, and that in fact he did, and felt compelled to murder her to keep her silent about it? Wouldn’t simply denying it have been just as effective, and a great deal less trouble?” His voice was dripping sarcasm.
Put as baldly as that,
it did sound absurd. Pitt felt the color rush up his face, and saw the satisfaction in Farnsworth’s eyes. Farnsworth’s shoulders relaxed and he turned back towards the window.
“You are losing your grip, Pitt. That was unworthy of you.”
“That was your suggestion, not mine,” Pitt denied it. “What I am suggesting is that possibly Sir Arthur knew something about the missing information from the Colonial Office. After all, he often went in to the Foreign Office, and still had close connections there at the time of his death. He may not have realized the full importance of what he knew, but if he mentioned it to Susannah Chancellor, and she did understand it, because of Standish, and her family background in African finance, and Chancellor’s knowledge in the Colonial Office, and her friendship with Mrs. Thorne, then …”
“She put it all together and tackled Thorne with it?” Farnsworth was staring at him with growing interest. “And if Thorne is the traitor after all … yes, yes, you have a possibility!” His voice lifted a little. “Look into that, Pitt, but very carefully. For heaven’s sake remain discreet, both not to offend Thorne if he is innocent, and possibly more important, not to warn him if he is guilty.”
He made an effort of will. “I apologize to you, Pitt. I should not have leapt to such a hasty conclusion as to what you were saying. This does indeed make sense. You’d better get to it straightaway. Go and see the servants at the Thorne household. And keep on looking for that cabdriver. If he delivered her there, then he has nothing to fear, and will be a witness at Thorne’s undoing.”
“Yes, sir.” And Pitt rose from the chair to obey. It was what he had been intending to do anyway.
But the servants in the Thorne household could tell him nothing of use. He questioned them each, but no one had seen or heard Susannah Chancellor on the evening of her death. He pressed them as to the possibility of her having called without their knowledge. But it required a stretch of the imagination beyond reason to suppose that she had, unless she had specifically been asked to alight short of the house and not to present herself at the front door; instead to walk around the side, through the garden to the doorway to the back, and then make her way across the lawn to the French doors of the study and let herself in that way. Or possibly someone had been waiting for her.
