by Anne Perry
“A very clear connection. How did he explain it?” Carlisle asked.
“That his watch was stolen by a pickpocket,” Pitt replied.
“And you believe him?”
“I’m inclined to. It is not beyond your abilities to have had someone take it for you.”
“Good heavens! Rather a backhanded compliment to my abilities. A dangerous undertaking, don’t you think?”
“Extremely,” Pitt agreed. “Therefore you had a very good reason. I cannot imagine any love affair he could have that would stir your anger or passion to the degree where you would use these women like this in order to draw me in.”
“Not to love is to die by inches. Or perhaps it is worse than that. Maybe it is to hesitate on the shore of life and never step into its waters. But the waters are dangerous as well—go too far, and one cannot only drown oneself but take others with them,” Carlisle answered sharply, weighing his words. “He has at times allowed his heart to rule his head …”
“True,” Pitt agreed. “But I believe you have something more specific in mind.”
Carlisle’s eyebrows rose in a sharp double-V shape. “Perhaps. But you are calling upon me, not I on you.”
“Really?” Pitt said softly. “I had the idea that perhaps you were calling upon me, and that it was time I answered.”
Carlisle hesitated barely a second. “Indeed? What gave you that idea, or are we past that particular point?”
“We are past it.”
“I see. And your answer is?” Carlisle sat motionless, his whisky forgotten. In fact, he had not drunk more than a couple of sips. Its color reflected gold in the firelight; in the cut crystal it looked like a jewel.
“You have my attention,” Pitt replied. “I am listening.”
Carlisle did not answer.
“Come on!” Pitt said more sharply than he had intended. Carlisle was stretching his nerves. He could not afford to lose this game. Nothing in all of his experience with Carlisle suggested he had ever acted lightly or taken crazy risks that could cost him his freedom, even his life, unless the stakes were high enough to warrant it.
“I investigated Kynaston, and found nothing,” Pitt continued. “Kitty Ryder is still alive, but she left at night, and without taking her belongings. She must have been very afraid of something. I can’t see it as being the fact that apparently Kynaston has a mistress, unless she was an extraordinarily powerful man’s wife.” Even as he said it, he did not believe it.
“That’s not worthy of you, Pitt.” Carlisle sounded disappointed. “Why the hell should I care who Kynaston’s in bed with?”
“You don’t,” Pitt agreed. “So I wonder what it is you do care about—sufficiently to step into this macabre farce. And it is a farce, isn’t it?”
Carlisle’s eyes did not leave Pitt’s face. “Is it?” he whispered.
“If I don’t find the truth of it, yes it is!” Pitt responded sharply, his own nerves taut.
He saw a flicker of fear in Carlisle’s eyes, just for a moment, so brief he was not even certain he had seen it at all.
“I don’t believe you killed either one of them,” he added. “In fact you probably never saw them alive.”
Carlisle breathed out slowly. Something within him eased, but only a fraction.
“And you put the pieces of the watch there as well,” Pitt continued. He did not mention the mutilations; that was a hideous lacuna between them. “And probably the cupboard key. You must have been damn sure I wouldn’t connect it up, and charge you!”
“You’re the best detective I know,” Carlisle replied, his voice a little hoarse, as if his lungs were starved, his throat tight.
“So what is it you want me to find?” Pitt leaned forward. “You left those women up there without a care for their bodies, or for who might find them! What matters that much to you, Carlisle? Murder? Multiple murders?” He shook his head. “Still not enough! It has to be treason!”
Carlisle took a long, deep breath. “Do you know Sir John Ransom?”
“Not personally. I know who he is.”
“Precisely,” Carlisle agreed. “It was a rhetorical question. If the head of Special Branch did not know the name of the man who leads scientific inventions regarding the navy, and naval warfare, then we have very deep problems indeed.”
“What about Ransom?” Pitt asked.
“He is a friend of mine. A couple of years ahead of me at Cambridge,” Carlisle replied.
Pitt allowed him to continue, knowing that this much preamble must be necessary. A log collapsed in the fire, sending up a shower of bright sparks, but Carlisle apparently did not notice it.
“He came to me two or three months ago,” Carlisle resumed. “He had no proof at all, but he believed that certain highly sensitive facts regarding a new step forward in submarine warfare were being offered to another naval power. He did not say which because I believe he did not know.”
“From the department where Kynaston works,” Pitt concluded.
“Precisely. Ransom was very worried because he had little doubt in his own mind that it was occurring, but no idea who was responsible. But it rested between three men. The other two have since been exonerated …”
“Leaving Kynaston,” Pitt said unhappily. “But there is no proof, or you would not be discussing it. You would simply have handed over the evidence to us.”
“Yes. Without proof, allowing Kynaston to know that we are aware of what he is doing would only alert him, and perhaps make the matter worse,” Carlisle agreed.
“So instead you make it appear that he murdered his wife’s maid, over some real or imagined love affair, and hope that I will pull your chestnuts out of the fire!”
“That’s about right,” Carlisle admitted. “But you’re damn slow about it!” He gave a harsh, twisted smile. “You like the man …”
“Yes, I do. But that has nothing to do with it,” Pitt said angrily. “Whatever I think of him, I can’t charge him with anything at all until I have evidence to prove something. And since Kitty Ryder was seen alive and well after the first body was found, and the second body doesn’t even resemble her, I have no reason to accuse Kynaston of anything, really!”
“I slipped up there,” Carlisle admitted, wincing at his own failure. “But I didn’t know Kitty had been seen. Are you sure?”
“Yes. I have a highly diligent assistant …”
“Ah! The redoubtable Stoker. Yes. An excellent man.” Carlisle smiled very slightly. “If he could actually find the woman, then she would testify as to what it was she saw, or heard, and why she ran away. Although it would be better to have something rather weightier than the word of a runaway lady’s maid.”
“I’ll widen the search for her,” Pitt promised. “Who else is involved? He must be passing the information to someone? And why, for God’s sake?” Even giving words to the question and speaking it aloud was painful. He had not thought Kynaston more than perhaps self-indulgent with his mistress, certainly not a man to betray his own country. He had become used to disillusion but this still hurt.
Carlisle pulled his mouth into a gesture of apology. “I have no idea. But I have no doubt he will have plenty of defenders simply because no one will wish to believe that he could have betrayed them, or that they could have let him! The prime minister will be displeased, to say the least of it!”
“I’m getting rather accustomed to displeasing the prime minister,” Pitt said tartly. “It seems to be a function of the job. But catching Kynaston, even proving what he has done, is far from the end of the task …”
“Oh, I know that!” Carlisle agreed. “You need to know all of it! More than anything else, you need to know exactly how much information he has given, and to whom. Preferably, you also need to know how he came into such a position, and everyone else who is involved. And then, naturally, you need to deal with him so that as few people are aware of it as possible, in the circumstances. To have a trial and exposure would be almost as damaging as the act itsel
f.”
“Thank you, Carlisle! I am aware of that!” Pitt snapped. “I also would prefer not to be obliged to prosecute you! I accept that you did not kill either of the women, but you took their bodies from wherever they were kept—a morgue of some sort, I imagine—and you laid them out in the gravel pits. I prefer not to know that you also mutilated them in identical ways so we would be forced to conclude they were killed by the same person, and the link to Kynaston was too clear to ignore. Well, I have your message, and I understand it. You have succeeded.”
Carlisle was pale, even in the firelight. “I am not proud of it,” he said very quietly. “But Kynaston is betraying my country. He must be stopped.”
“I will do all I can to stop him,” Pitt promised. “And you will help me, if I can think of a way. And from now on you will do exactly what I tell you to … so I can find a reason not to charge you with body-snatching, mutilating the dead, and generally being a damn nuisance!”
“Would you—” Carlisle began.
Pitt glared at him. “Yes I would! And if you involve Lady Vespasia in this I’ll see you pay for it with your seat in Parliament!”
“I believe you,” Carlisle said very quietly indeed. “I give you my word I have not done so, and I will not.”
“Thank you.” Pitt stood up. “I thank you for at least this much truth. Now I wish I’d had the whisky!”
“It’s still available …”
“No, thank you. I must go home. It’s late, and I need to think how the hell I’m going to clear this up, starting tomorrow morning. By the way, where did you get the bodies? I assume you took them from some morgue?”
“Yes. But I’ll see they are decently buried, when you’ve finished with them. As I promised in the first place,” Carlisle replied.
Pitt stared at him for a moment, trying to find words for what lay between them, and failing. He turned and left.
Outside, the rain had stopped, but the wind was even colder. Pitt thought, seeing the hard, brittle glitter of the stars, that there could be a frost.
Walking briskly along the pavement he thought again of Carlisle. The man infuriated him, but he could not dislike him. And he could not believe that Carlisle had had any part in the deaths of either of the women—he had merely seized an opportunity. Pitt could imagine him carefully cutting the dead faces, women beyond indignity or pain, and apologizing for using them for what he believed was a greater and more desperate good. The man he had known in the past would never have killed anyone, even to expose treason.
But people can change. Unknown pressures can fall on them, old debts can need to be paid. Was that why Carlisle had rescued Pitt from the fury of Edom Talbot so fortuitously? And was it he who had created the situation in the first place, so Pitt would owe him a debt?
What debts did Carlisle owe, he wondered. And Kynaston? Was that the reason for his betrayal?
He looked up at the thin starlight; he could feel the ice on the wind, and he increased his pace.
CHAPTER
14
CHARLOTTE HAD DELIBERATELY CHOSEN to spend more time with Emily, so when Emily invited her to go to a reception for a visiting Norwegian explorer, and to listen to his lecture, she accepted. She did it for Emily’s sake, not because she was particularly interested in islands in the North Atlantic and whatever manner of birds might inhabit them. The thought of so much floating ice made her cold, even before she set out.
Had Pitt been at home it would have been a greater sacrifice, but he had been out many evenings recently, pursuing one aspect or another of the case of Kitty Ryder. He had said she was alive, but they still could not find her.
As Charlotte sat while Minnie Maude dressed her hair up, a skill she was rapidly developing, Charlotte thought more about the whole issue. She had not questioned Pitt further, because she knew from watching his face that he was deeply worried about the case and that it now concerned some other issue, which he could not tell her. That did not mean she was not free to try to discern it for herself.
She knew more of the personal lives of people like Dudley Kynaston than Pitt or Stoker could, because the Kynastons belonged to the level of society in which she had grown up, and to which Emily had belonged all her life. She and Pitt were now on the fringes of it, but to him it would always be alien, at least in some of its values, no matter how skilled he became at appearing to be comfortable.
When Emily arrived, Charlotte saw that she was dressed in pale green, the color that became her most. The gown itself was exquisite, and perfectly suited to the occasion. Charlotte recognized it as “battle dress” from the way it fitted, and the beauty of the subtle emerald and diamond earrings that Emily wore with it. When Charlotte kissed her quickly on the cheek, the opinion was confirmed by the perfume she detected, so subtle that she wanted to come closer again in order to catch it more definitely. It was nothing she could name, and no doubt very expensive. It was the sort of thing a woman buys herself if she does not have to count the cost of it.
As soon as they were seated in the carriage and had moved off from the curb into the roadway, Charlotte asked the question.
“Why are we going to a lecture on arctic exploration?”
Emily smiled. Even in the gathering dusk and the first glow of streetlamps, her satisfaction was visible. “Because Ailsa and Rosalind Kynaston are going to it,” she replied. “I have been getting to know Rosalind a little better recently. It isn’t difficult or odd in the circumstances. If Jack is going to be offered this position with Dudley Kynaston, then we shall possibly become friends.”
“And is he?” Charlotte knew how another disappointment would affect Emily, and Jack himself. She couldn’t keep the anxious edge from her voice.
“You don’t want him to, do you!” There was a sudden edge of challenge in Emily’s voice. “He’s brilliant, you know. Or perhaps you don’t know? It would be very interesting for Jack to work with him, and a promotion, of course. But you must know that, if you’ve thought about it at all!”
Charlotte forgot her resolve to be patient and gentle. “I want him to take it, as long as Kynaston’s not guilty of anything,” she said tartly. “If he was having an affair with his wife’s maid I suppose that isn’t very important, except to his wife, and perhaps to the maid. But if he has anything to do with those bodies found near his house, then I would very much rather Jack did not work with him. Until he is accused, of course, then I daresay he will be in jail, and there will be no possibility of anybody working with him.”
“Jack will be pleased to know that you love him,” Emily said icily. “Even if it does appear to infect your imagination with grotesque fantasies.”
“Don’t be so stupid!” Charlotte snapped. “It’s you I love, and I like Jack, very much, but that will cease instantly if he hurts you.”
“He isn’t—” Emily began, but stopped equally quickly. When Charlotte turned to look at her she saw the tears brim over her eyes and down her cheeks. At another time she would have said something, even hugged her. Now the emotion between them was too brittle.
Charlotte sat in silence for several moments, allowing Emily time to regain her composure. When she thought it was long enough, she began another conversation. “What is Rosalind like?” she asked. She did not have to feign interest.
“Actually, I like her,” Emily replied, her voice almost level again. “She is much more individual than she appears at first. She reads quite a lot, and she knows about all sorts of unusual things: adventures, explorers, the people who go to Mesopotamia, and Greece, and dig up tombs and find amazing things—artifacts and writings. And she has great knowledge of plants. I went to Kew Gardens with her, and she could tell me where dozens of the different trees and flowers came from, and who found them. I started paying attention to her out of courtesy, but quite quickly found I was genuinely interested. And she is nothing like as bland or easily misled as I used to suppose.”
“Is that why she is going to this lecture?” Charlotte asked, surprised. S
he had thought Rosalind to be rather colorless when they met. Perhaps she was guilty of supposing that because her husband had a mistress, then she must be dull. Did all married women suppose that? If a man seeks another woman, then his wife must be cold, tedious, plain—something one could avoid being oneself, so it would never happen to you?
“I look forward to getting to know her better,” she said.
EMILY MIGHT HAVE BEEN unhappy, but she had lost none of the social skills. She could still make careful planning look like complete chance, and soon she and Charlotte found themselves standing close to Rosalind and Ailsa Kynaston.
Rosalind was soberly dressed in a deep plum color, which looked gracious and expensive, yet lacked the flair that Emily could have achieved with far less.
Ailsa, on the other hand, had the advantage of height and the grace it gave her movement. There was a vitality in her face and a silver-pale gleam to her hair that attracted the eye, willingly or not. The somber blues of her gown were of no importance; if anything, they were a contrast that heightened her own energy.
They greeted each other with pleasure, as if it were good fortune that had placed them so closely. Both Ailsa and Rosalind remembered Charlotte and affected to be happy to see her again. If they connected her immediately with Pitt and the wretched business that had brought him into Rosalind’s house, they were too polite to say so.
Conversation was easy and touched only on trivial things. Emily was at her best, being both interesting and amusing. Particularly she made Rosalind laugh, leaving Charlotte free merely to listen, and to watch the language of looks and gestures between Rosalind and Ailsa. Perhaps that was what Emily had intended. If she had, she could not have contrived it better.
