Traitors Gate (20 page)

“Yes, Mr. Pitt,” he said with something close to a smile, and turned on his heel and left.

Just under half an hour later Assistant Commissioner Farnsworth sent for Pitt to come to his office. The note was written in such terms there was no question about obeying, and Pitt went from Bow Street and caught a hansom along the embankment to Scotland Yard to report.

“Ah.” Farnsworth looked up from his desk when Pitt was shown in. He waited until Pitt had closed the door before he continued. “This matter at the Colonial Office. What have you found?”

Pitt was reluctant to tell him how very little it was.

“They are all outwardly without fault,” he replied. “Except possibly Garston Aylmer.” He saw Farnsworth’s face quicken with interest, but took no notice. “He has something of a weakness in his regard for a Miss Amanda
Pennecuick, which is apparently not returned. He is a remarkably plain man, and she is unusually handsome.”

“Not an uncommon occurrence,” Farnsworth said with obvious disappointment. “That’s hardly suspicious, Pitt, simply one of life’s many disappointments. Being plain, or even downright ugly, has never stopped anyone from falling in love with the beautiful. Very painful sometimes, but a tragedy, not a crime.”

“A great deal of crime springs from tragedy,” Pitt answered him. “People react differently to pain, especially the pain of wanting something out of reach.”

Farnsworth looked at him with a mixture of impatience and contempt. “You can steal anything from a meat pie to a diamond necklace, Pitt, but you cannot steal a woman’s affection. And we are not talking about a man who would descend to thieving.”

“Of course you cannot steal it.” Pitt was equally derisive. “But it is sometimes possible to buy it, or to buy a very good semblance of it. He wouldn’t be the first plain man to do that.”

Farnsworth disliked agreeing with him, but he was forced to do so. He had too much knowledge of life to argue the issue.

“Selling information to the Germans for money to get her gifts, or whatever she wants?” he said reluctantly. “All right. Look into it. But for God’s sake be discreet, Pitt. He’s probably a perfectly decent man simply in love with the wrong woman.”

“I was thinking also of the possibility that Miss Pennecuick may have an interest in Germany, and rather than Aylmer selling information for money, she might be drawing it from him as the price of her favor. Unlikely, but we have nothing better yet.”

Farnsworth chewed on his lower lip. “Find out all you can about her,” he ordered. “Who she is, where she comes from, who else she associates with.”

“I have Tellman on it.”

“Never mind Tellman, get on it yourself.” Farnsworth frowned. “Where were you yesterday, Pitt? No one saw you all day.”

“I went to Hampshire to a family funeral.”

“I thought your parents died a long time ago?” There was challenge in Farnsworth’s voice as well as question.

“They did; this was a man who treated me like a son.”

Farnsworth’s eyes were very hard, clear blue.

“Indeed?” He did not ask who that man was, and Pitt could not read his face.

“I believe you went to the inquest on Sir Arthur Desmond,” he went on. “Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Farnsworth’s eyebrows rose. “There’s no case there. Tragedy that a man of his standing should end that way, but illness and age are no respecters of persons. Leave it alone now, Pitt, or you’ll only make it worse.”

Pitt stared at him.

Farnsworth misunderstood his surprise and anger for incomprehension.

“The least that is said about it, the least will have to be known.” He was irritated by Pitt’s slow-wittedness. “Don’t let the whole sorry matter drag out before his friends and associates, never mind the general public. Let it all be forgotten, then we can remember him as the man he used to be, before all this obsession began.”

“Obsession?” Pitt said thinly. He knew he would achieve nothing by pursuing it with Farnsworth, and yet he could not help himself.

“With Africa,” Farnsworth said impatiently. “Saying there were conspiracies and secret plots and so on. He thought he was being persecuted. It’s quite a well-known delusion, but very distressing, very sad. For heaven’s sake, Pitt, if you had any regard for him at all, don’t make it public. For his family’s sake, if nothing else, let it be buried with him.”

Pitt met his eyes squarely and did not look away.

“Sir Matthew does not believe his father was mad, or so forgetful or careless as to have taken laudanum in the middle of the afternoon, and in such a quantity as to kill himself.”

“Not unnatural,” Farnsworth dismissed it with a slight movement of his well-manicured hand. “It is always hard to accept that those we love are mentally deranged. Wouldn’t have cared to think it of my father. I have every sympathy with him, but it has nothing to do with the facts.”

“He may be right,” Pitt said stubbornly.

Farnsworth’s lips thinned. “He’s not right, Pitt. I know more about it than you do.”

It was on the edge of Pitt’s tongue to argue with him, then he realized that over the last ten years his knowledge of Sir Arthur was sporadic at best, although Farnsworth could not know that. Still, it left him in a fragile position to argue.

His thoughts would not have shown in his face, but something of his emotions must have. Farnsworth was watching him with growing certainty, and something like a bitter amusement

“Just what is your personal knowledge of Sir Arthur, Pitt?”

“Very little … lately.”

“Then believe me, I have seen him frequently and he was unquestionably suffering from delusions. He saw conspiracies and persecutions all over the place, even among men who had been his friends for years. He is a man for whom I had a high regard, but feelings, however deep or honorable, do not change the truth. For friendship’s sake, Pitt, let him rest in peace, and his memory be as little damaged as possible. In kindness you must do that.”

Still Pitt wanted to argue. Sturges’s weather-beaten face came sharply to his mind. Or was his judgment just loyalty, an inability to believe that his master could have lost touch with reality?

“Right,” Farnsworth said briskly. “Now get on with the
job in hand. Find out who is passing information from the Colonial Office. Give it your entire attention, Pitt, until it is finished. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, of course I understand,” Pitt said, while still in his head determining not to leave the death of Arthur Desmond as it was, a quietly closed matter.

5

“W
HAT IT AFFECTS MOSTLY
is treaties,” Matthew said with a frown, regarding Pitt over his desk at the Foreign Office. He looked a little less harrowed than at the funeral in Brackley, but the shadow was still there at the back of his eyes and in the pallor of his skin. There was a tension in his body which Pitt knew too well to ignore or misread. The past was still intimate, for all that had happened since, and the experiences which separated them.

If anyone had asked him for dates, he could not have given them, nor even the events that one might have considered important. But the memories of emotion were as powerful as if they had happened yesterday: surprise, understanding, the desire to protect, the confusion and the learning of pain. He could recall vividly the death of a beloved animal, the first magic and surprise of love, the first disillusionment, the fear of change in people and places that framed one’s life. These things he and Matthew had faced together, in some things at least, he a year the sooner, so when Matthew’s turn came, he had already experienced them, and shared his emotions with an acuteness no one else could.

He knew now that Matthew was still just as deeply hurt over his father’s death; only his outward command of himself was better, as the sense of shock wore away. They were sitting in his wide office with its polished oak furniture,
pale green carpet, and deep windows overlooking St. James’s Park.

“You mentioned the treaty with the Germans,” he answered. “What I really need is to know what the information is, as far as you can tell me. That is the only way I am going to have a chance to trace where it came from, and through whose hands it passed.”

Matthew’s frown deepened. “It isn’t quite as cut and dried as that. But I’ll do what I can.”

Pitt waited. Outside somewhere in the street a horse whinnied and a man shouted. The sun made bright patterns through the window and onto the floor.

“One of the things that stands out most is the agreement made with King Lobengula, late in the year before last,” Matthew began thoughtfully. “’eighty-eight. In September Rhodes’s delegation, led by a man called Charles Rudd, rode into the king’s camp in Bulowayo—that’s in Zambezia. They are the Ndebele tribe.” His fingers drummed on the desk softly as he spoke. “Rudd was an expert in mining claims, and apparently quite ignorant about African rulers and their customs. For that purpose he had along a fellow called Thompson, who spoke some language understood by the king. The third member of the party was called Rochfort Maguire, a legal man from All Souls’ College in Oxford.”

Pitt listened patiently. So far this was of no help to him at all. He tried to imagine the heat of the African plains, the courage of these men and the greed that drew them.

“Of course there were other people seeking mineral concessions as well,” Matthew went on. “We very nearly lost them.”

“We?” Pitt interrupted.

Matthew grimaced. “As far as one can call Cecil Rhodes ‘we.’ He was—is—acting with the blessing of Her Majesty’s government. We had a standing agreement, the Moffatt Treaty, made with Lobengula in February of the same year,
that he would not give away any of his territories, I quote, ‘without the previous knowledge and sanction’ of the British government.”

“You say we nearly lost them,” Pitt brought the conversation back to the point. “Because of information going to the Germans?”

Matthew’s eyes widened very slightly. “That’s curious. The German Embassy certainly, but it began to look as if the Belgians might have known about it too. All of Central and East Africa is swarming with adventurers, hunters, mining prospectors and people hoping to be middlemen in all sorts of ventures.” He leaned a little further forward across the desk. “Rudd was successful because of the advent of Sir Sidney Shippard, deputy commissioner for Bechuanaland. He is a great supporter of Cecil Rhodes, and believes in what he is trying to do. So does Sir Hercules Robinson at the Cape.”

“What do you know that without question has passed from the Colonial Office to the German Embassy?” Pitt pressed. “For the time being, exclude suspicions. Tell me the information, and I’ll find out how it came in, by word of mouth, letter, telegram, who received it and where it went after that.”

Matthew reached out his hand and touched a pile of papers beside him.

“I have several things here for you. But there are other things also, which have very little to do with the Foreign Office, matters of money. A great deal of this rests on money.” He looked at Pitt to see if he understood.

“Money?” Pitt did not know what he meant. “Surely money would be useless in buying land from native kings? And the government would equip explorers and scouts going to claim land for Britain?”

“No! That’s the point,” Matthew said urgently. “Cecil Rhodes is equipping his own force. They are well on their way even now. He put up the finance himself.”

“One man?” Pitt was incredulous. He could not conceive of such wealth.

Matthew smiled. “You don’t understand Africa, Thomas. No, actually he’s not putting up all of it, but a great deal. There are banks involved, some in Scotland, and particularly Francis Standish. Now perhaps you begin to see the sort of treasures we are speaking of: more diamonds than anywhere else in the world, more gold, and a continent of land owned by people who live in the dark ages as far as weapons are concerned.”

Pitt stared at him, ideas uncertain in his mind, cloudy images, remembered words of Sir Arthur’s about exploitation, and the Inner Circle.

“When men like Livingstone went in, it was completely different,” Matthew continued, his face bleak. “They wanted to take medicine and Christianity, get rid of ignorance, disease and slavery. They may have gained a certain immortality out of it, but they didn’t look for anything for themselves. Even Stanley wanted glory more than any kind of material reward.