Belgrave Square (28 page)

He opened the door and as soon as he was inside took off his boots and hung up his jacket on the coat hook. Then he went with a nervousness that startled him, stocking footed, along to the kitchen.

It was bright and sweet smelling as always, clean linen on the airing rack suspended from the ceiling, wooden table scrubbed bone pale, blue-and-white china on the dresser and the faint aroma of fresh bread in the air. Jemima was sitting at the table solemnly buttering bread for Daniel. He was watching her and holding on to the jar of raspberry jam,
prepared to give it to her only when she had met his exacting standards and there was butter right to every corner.

Charlotte was dressed in floral muslin with a long lace-edged apron on, her sleeves rolled up and her hands in the sink preparing fresh vegetables. There was a pile of shelled peas in a dish on the table near Jemima, and a little heap of empty pods on a newspaper ready to be thrown out.

Charlotte smiled at him, took out the last of the carrots and dried her hands.

“Hello Papa,” Jemima said cheerfully without stopping her task.

“Hello Papa,” Daniel echoed, still holding on to the jam jar.

Pitt touched them both gently but his eyes never left Charlotte. He held up the violets.

“They’re not an apology,” he said guardedly.

She looked totally innocent, mystified. “For what?” she asked with wide eyes, then betrayed herself by a quiver of laughter at the corners of her mouth. She buried her nose in their damp fragrance and breathed in with a sigh. “Thank you. They smell wonderful.”

He passed her the small blue-and-white cup she usually put short-stemmed flowers in.

“Thank you,” she repeated, and filled the cup with water, all the time meeting his eyes. She put the cup in the middle of the table and Jemima immediately smelled the flowers too, holding them up to her nose and breathing in, eyes closed, with exactly the same expression.

“Let me!” Daniel reached for it and reluctantly she passed it over. He breathed in, then breathed in again, not sure what he was doing it for. Then he set the cup down, satisfied, and took up the jam jar again, and Jemima resumed her buttering.

Supper was conducted with the greatest good manners, but not with heads bent and eyes downcast as the previous evening, and intense concentration on the most trivial occupations as if it mattered enormously that every last pea should be chased into a corner and speared with the fork, every crumb of bread picked up. Now the food was barely glanced at. It could have been anything, and all the care that
went into preparing it was wasted, but their eyes met and though nothing was said, everything was understood.

Pitt continued to investigate Urban without success for another two days, going through the cases on which he had worked in Bow Street and finding nothing untoward, no pattern that spoke of anything other than hard work and intelligence, sometimes intuition beyond the normal skills, but no questionable judgments, no hint of dishonesty. He kept his private life very much to himself, he mixed little with his colleagues, which earned him their respect but not their affection. No one knew what he did with his spare time and amiable inquiries had met with equally amiable rebuffs.

Finally Pitt decided to confront Urban with the frank question as to where he was on the night of Weems’s death. That at least would give him the opportunity to prove himself elsewhere, and make further pursuit unnecessary, at least as far as the murder was concerned. There was still the question of debt, and in Pitt’s own mind, the conviction that Urban was lying about something.

He arrived at Bow Street station later in the morning than usual to find an atmosphere of uncharacteristic tension. The desk sergeant looked harassed, his face was pink and he kept moving papers from one place to another without adding anything to them, or apparently reading them. His top tunic button was undone but still he looked as if the neck were too tight. Two constables glanced at each other nervously and shifted from one foot to another, until the sergeant barked at them to get out and find something to do. An errand boy came in with a newspaper and as soon as he was paid, fled out past Pitt, bumping into him and forgetting to apologize.

“What is it?” Pitt said curiously. “What’s happened?”

“Questions in the ’Ouse,” the desk sergeant replied with a tight lip. “ ’E’s ’oppin’ mad.”

“Who’s hopping mad?” Pitt asked, still with more curiosity than apprehension. “What’s happened, Dilkes?”

“Mr. Urban called the solicitors to bring up the case against Mr. Osmar again, and ’E got wind of it and complained to ’is friends in the ’Ouse o’ Commons.” Awe mixed with disgust in his face. “Now they’re askin’ questions about it, and some of ’em is sayin’ as Crombie and Allardyce lied
’emselves sick in court, an’ the police is corrupt.” He shook his head and his voice became anxious. “There’s some awful things being said, Mr. Pitt. There’s enough folk undecided as to if we’re a good thing or not as it is. an’ then all that bad business in Whitechapel last autumn, an’ we never got the madman what done it, an’ folks sayin’ as if we were any good we’d ’ave got ’im. an’ all the trouble over the commissioner too. an’ now this. We don’t need trouble like this, Mr. Pitt.” He screwed up his face. “What I don’t understand is how it all came up over summat so, beggin’ yer pardon, damn silly.”

“Neither do I,” Pitt agreed.

“So ’E was ’avin’ a bit o’ ’anky-panky in the park. ’E should ’a known better than to do it in public, like. But ’e’s a gennelman, and gennelmen is like that. Who cares, if ’e’d just said yes, ’E was a bit naughty, sorry, an’ it won’t ’appen again, me lud. Only now we got questions asked in the ’ouses o’ Parliament, an’ next thing the ’ome secretary ’isself will want ter know wot we bin doing.”

“I don’t understand it myself,” Pitt agreed. But he was thinking more of Addison Carswell, and becoming uncomfortably aware of the general feeling against the police, especially as the desk sergeant had said, since the riots in Trafalgar Square known as Bloody Sunday, and then last autumn the failure to catch the Whitechapel murderer, followed almost immediately by the hasty resignation of the commissioner of police after a very short term of office and amid some unpleasantness. The thought kept intruding into his mind that Carswell and Urban were both on Weems’s list for very good reasons, which only too probably spoke of blackmail. And he still had to find Latimer, the third name.

“Is Mr. Urban in?” he asked aloud.

“Yessir, but—”

Before the desk sergeant could add his caveat, Pitt thanked him and strode along the passage to Urban’s door and knocked.

“Come!” Urban said absently.

Pitt went in and found him sitting behind his desk staring at the polished and empty surface. He was surprised to see Pitt.

“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.”