Traitors Gate (36 page)

“Is that all?” Farnsworth said grimly. He was standing with his back to the window, but even so his expression was unmistakable, a mixture of shock and despairing anxiety.

“So far,” Pitt replied. “Oh, she was wearing a blue cloak when she left home, according to the maid who saw her go, but it wasn’t on her when we found her. Possibly it’s still in the river. If it is washed up somewhere else, it might provide an indication as to where she went in.”

Farnsworth thought for a moment. He opened his mouth to say something, then possibly realized the answer, and merely grunted. “Suppose it could have been anywhere, depending on the tide?”

“Yes, although according to the river boatmen, more often
than not they surface again more or less where they went in.”

Farnsworth pulled a face of distaste.

“The time of death may help with that,” Pitt went on. “If it is early enough it had to be well before the tide turned.”

“When did it turn?”

“About half past two.”

“What a damnable thing! I suppose you have no idea as to motive? Was she robbed … or …” His face crumpled and he refused to put words to the second thought.

Pitt had not even entertained that idea. His mind had been too full of treason, and knowledge of the murder of Arthur Desmond.

“I don’t know, sir,” he confessed. “The medical examiner will tell us that. I haven’t a report from him yet. It is a little early.”

“Robbery?” Farnsworth looked hopeful.

“I don’t know that either. There was a locket ’round her neck when she was found. That was how they knew who she was. I didn’t ask Chancellor if she were wearing anything else of value.”

Farnsworth frowned. “No, perhaps not. Poor man. He must be devastated. This is terrible, Pitt! For every reason, we must clear this up as soon as possible.” He came forward from the window. “You’d better leave the Colonial Office business to Tellman. You concentrate on this. It’s dreadful … quite dreadful. I can’t remember a case so … so shocking since …” He stopped.

Pitt would have said, The autumn of ’eighty-eight, and the Whitechapel murders, but there was no point. One did not compare horrors one with another.

“Unless they are connected,” he said instead.

Farnsworth’s head jerked up. “What?”

“Unless Mrs. Chancellor’s death and the Colonial Office treason are connected,” he elaborated.

Farnsworth looked at him as if he had spoken blasphemy.

“It is not impossible,” Pitt said quietly, meeting his eyes.
“She may quite accidentally have discovered something, without any guilt on her part.”

Farnsworth relaxed.

“Or she may very possibly be involved,” Pitt added.

“I hope you have sufficient intelligence not to say that anywhere but here?” Farnsworth said slowly. “Not even hint that you have thought it?”

“Of course I have.”

“I trust you to deal with this, Pitt.” It was something of a question, and Farnsworth stared at him with entreaty in his face. “I don’t always approve of your methods, or your judgments, but you’ve solved some of the worst cases in London, at one time or another. Do everything you can with this. Think of nothing else until it is finished … do you understand?”

“Yes, of course.” He would not have done anything else regardless of what Farnsworth had said, and perhaps Farnsworth knew that.

Further discussion was preempted by a sharp knock on the door, and a constable poked his head around the moment Farnsworth answered.

“Yes?” Farnsworth said abruptly.

The constable looked embarrassed. “There’s a lady to see Mr. Pitt, sir.”

“Well tell her to wait!” Farnsworth snapped. “Pitt is busy.”

“No, sir. I—I mean a real lady.” The constable did not move. “I daren’t tell ’er that, sir. You haven’t seen ’er.”

“For heaven’s sake, man! Are you scared of a woman just because she thinks she’s important?” Farnsworth barked. “Go and do as you’re told!”

“But, sir, I …” He got no further. An imperious voice behind him interrupted his embarrassment.

“Thank you, Constable. If this is Mr. Pitt’s office, I shall tell him myself that I am here.” And the moment after the door swung wide and Vespasia fixed Farnsworth with a glittering eye. She looked magnificent in ecru lace and silk,
and pearls worth a fortune across her bosom. “I don’t believe I have your acquaintance, sir,” she said coolly. “I am Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould.”

Farnsworth took a deep breath and gulped, swallowed the wrong way and relapsed into a fit of coughing.

Vespasia waited.

“Assistant Commissioner Farnsworth,” Pitt said for him, hiding both his astonishment and his amusement with some difficulty.

“How do you do, Mr. Farnsworth.” Vespasia swept past him into the office and sat down on the chair in front of Pitt’s desk, resting her parasol, point down, on the carpet and waiting until Farnsworth should have recovered himself, or taken his leave, or preferably both.

“Have you come to see me, Aunt Vespasia?” Pitt asked her.

She looked at him coldly. “Of course I have. Why on earth else should I come to this unfortunate place? I do not frequent police stations for my amusement, Thomas.”

Farnsworth was still in considerable difficulty, gasping for breath, tears running down his cheeks.

“How may I be of service?” Pitt asked Vespasia as he took his place behind his desk, Micah Drummond’s very beautiful oak desk with the green leather inlay. Pitt was very proud to have inherited it.

“You may not,” she replied, a slight melting in her silver eyes. “I have come in order to help you, or at least to give you further information, whether it helps or not.”

Farnsworth was still unable to stop coughing. He stood with his handkerchief to his scarlet face.

“In relation to what?” Pitt enquired.

“For heaven’s sake, assist that man before he chokes himself!” she ordered. “Haven’t you brandy, or at least water to offer him?”

“There’s a bottle of cider in the corner cupboard,” Pitt suggested.

Farnsworth grimaced. Micah Drummond would have
kept brandy. Pitt could not afford it, and had no taste for it anyway.

“If … you will … excuse me …” Farnsworth managed to get out between gasps.

“I will.” Vespasia inclined her head sympathetically, and as soon as Farnsworth was gone, she looked back at Pitt. “Regarding the murder of Susannah Chancellor. Can anything else be on your mind this morning?”

“No. I had not realized you would have heard of it already.”

She did not bother to reply to that. “I saw her the evening before last,” she said gravely. “I did not overhear her conversation, but I observed it, and I could not help but see that it aroused the profoundest emotions.”

“With whom?”

She looked at him as if she knew exactly what he feared. There was profound sorrow in her face.

“Peter Kreisler,” she replied.

“Where was this?”

“At Lady Rattray’s house in Eaton Square. She was holding a musical evening. There were fifty or sixty people there, no more.”

“And you saw Kreisler and Mrs. Chancellor?” he prompted, a sinking feeling of disappointment inside him. “Can you describe the encounter for me, as precisely as possible?”

A flicker of disapproval crossed her face and disappeared. “I do understand the importance of the issue, Thomas. I am not inclined to embroider it. I was some ten or twelve feet away, half listening to an extremely tedious acquaintance talking about her health. Such a tasteless thing to do. No one wishes to know the details of somebody else’s ailments. I observed Mrs. Chancellor first. She was talking very earnestly to someone whose face was mostly hidden behind a very luxuriant potted palm. The wretched place was like a jungle. I was forever expecting insects to drop out of the trees down my neck. I did not envy the
young women with deep décolletages!” She shrugged very slightly.

Pitt could picture it, but it was not the time to comment.

“Her face wore an expression of deep concern, almost anguish,” Vespasia continued. “I could see that she was on the verge of a quarrel. I moved so as to learn who her companion was. He seemed to be pleading with her, but at the same time adamant that he would not change his own mind. The course of the argument altered, and it seemed she was the one entreating. There was an appearance of something close to desperation in her. But judging from her face, he could not be moved. After the course of some fifteen minutes or so, they parted. He looked well pleased with himself, as if he found the outcome quite acceptable. She was distraught.”

“But you have no idea of the subject of this conversation?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

“None at all, and I refuse to speculate.”

“Was that the last time you saw Mrs. Chancellor?”

“Yes. And also the last time I saw Mr. Kreisler.” She looked profoundly unhappy, and the depth of her sadness troubled him.

“What is it you fear?” he asked frankly. She was not someone with whom subtlety or evasion would be successful. She could read him far too well.

“I am afraid Mr. Kreisler’s love for Africa, and what he sees as its good, far outweigh any other consideration with him, or any other loyalty,” she replied. “It is not a quality which will leave Nobby Gunne unhurt. I have known several men during my life whose devotion to a cause would excuse in their minds any behavior towards a mere individual, in the firm belief that it is a nobler and greater ideal.” She sighed and allowed her parasol to fall sideways against her skirt.

“They all had an intense vitality about them, a charm based upon the fire and bravado of their nature, and an ability to treat one, for a short time, as if all the ardor of their
spirit were somehow reachable to others, to love, if you like. Invariably I found there was a coldness at the core of them, an obsession which fed upon itself and which consumed sacrifices without return. That is what I am afraid of, Thomas—not for myself, but for Nobby. She is a fine person, and I am extremely fond of her.”

There was nothing to say, no argument to make that was honest.

“I hope you are mistaken.” He smiled at her gently. “But thank you very much for coming to tell me.” He offered his hand, but she rose, disregarding it. She walked, stiff backed, head erect, to the door, which he opened for her, and then he conducted her downstairs and out into the street, where he handed her up into her waiting carriage.

    “Before she went into the water, without doubt,” the medical examiner said, pushing his lower lip out and taking a deep breath. He looked up at Pitt, waiting for criticism. He was a long-faced, dour man who took the tragedies of his calling seriously. “One thing to be said for the swine that did this, though, he was quick. Hit her a couple of times, very hard.”

“I don’t see it!” Pitt interrupted.

“You wouldn’t. Side of the head, mostly hidden by her hair. Then he throttled her so violently he broke the bone”—he touched his own neck—“and killed her almost immediately. Doubt she felt more than the first blow, and then a moment’s choking before it was all over. Wasn’t strangled to death.”

Pitt looked at him with a sense of chill. “Very violently?”

“Very. Either he meant to kill her, or he was in such a monumental fury he didn’t realize his own strength. You’re looking for a very dangerous man, Pitt. Either he’s completely merciless and he kills to rob, even when there’s no need—he could have silenced her perfectly well without doing this to her—or else he’s someone with such a hatred
in him it erupts in something close to madness, if not actually into it.”

“Was she … molested?”

“Good God, of course she was molested! What do you call that?” He jerked his head towards the body on the table, now covered with a sheet. “If you mean was she raped, don’t be so damned lily-livered about it. God, I hate euphemisms! Call a crime by its ugly name, and be honest with the victim. No she wasn’t.”

Pitt let out a sigh of relief. He had cared about that more than he realized. He felt the knots in his shoulders easing a little and something of the pain inside him dulled.

“When did she die? Can you judge a time?” he asked.

“Not close enough to be of much use to you,” the medical examiner replied with a snort. “Anything between eight and midnight, I should think. Being put into the river doesn’t help. Cold, even at this time of the year. Makes a mess of rigor mortis. Makes a damned mess of everything! Actually, talking about a mess …” He frowned, looking across at Pitt with a puzzled expression. “Found some odd marks on her body, very slight, ’round her shoulders. Or to be more accurate, under her arms and across the back of her neck. She’d been dragged around in the water a lot. Could have been her clothes got caught up in something, pulled tight and caused it. When was she found?”

“About half past three.”

“And when was the last time she was seen alive?”

“Half past nine.”

“There you are then. You can work out for yourself almost as much as I can tell you. You’ve got a very dangerous man to look for, and good luck to you. You’ll need it. Lovely woman. It’s too bad.” And without waiting for anything further he turned back to the body he was presently examining.

“Can you tell how long she was in the water?” Pitt asked.

“Not any closer than you can work out for yourself. I
should say more than thirty minutes, less than three hours. Sorry.”

“Was she killed manually?”

“What? Oh yes. He killed her with his bare hands, no ligature, just fingers around the throat. As I already said, a very powerful man, or one driven by a passion the like of which I hope never to see. I don’t envy you your job, Pitt.”

“Nor I yours,” Pitt said sincerely.

The medical examiner laughed with a short barklike sound. “It’s all over when I get them, no more pain, no more violence or hatred left, just peace and a long silence. The rest is up to God … if He cares.”

“I care,” Pitt said between his teeth. “And God has got to be better than I am.”

The medical examiner laughed again, and this time there was a softer tone to it. But he said nothing.

    It was a surprisingly long time from half past nine in the evening until about midnight. Not many people could account for their whereabouts for those two and a half hours, beyond possible dispute. Pitt took two men from other cases, leaving Tellman on the matter of the Colonial Office, and also diverted his own time to questioning and checking, but he found no evidence that was conclusive of anything.