Traitors Gate (44 page)

Yet he still believed British dominion of Africa was better than German, or a divided nation. What he said about war was almost surely true, and that would be a disaster of immeasurable proportions.

Why had Kreisler warned him? Their beliefs were not the same. Or was it not deliberate? Had Kreisler asked his questions and Thorne understood the meaning behind them?

It was all academic now. It explained why none of Hathaway’s figures had reached the German Embassy. Thorne had altered them all anyway.

He looked around him at the gracious, comfortable room: the ormolu clock ticking on the mantelshelf from which he had taken the letter, the pictures on the walls, mostly dark Dutch scenes of landscapes with animals and water. He had never before appreciated how beautiful cows were, how a body with so many protruding bones could still have about it such an air of peace.

On the chair beside his elbow, Archie, the orange kitten, uncurled himself, stretched out a silken paw with claws spread, gave a little squeak of satisfaction and began to purr.

“What on earth am I going to do with you?” Pitt asked, unconsciously admiring the perfection of the creature. It had a star-shaped face with bright, sea-blue-green eyes and enormous ears. It was watching him with curiosity, and no fear whatever.

He put out his hand and rang the bell. The footman appeared
immediately. He had obviously been waiting in the hall.

“Mr. Thorne has requested that I take these two cats,” Pitt said with a frown.

“Oh, I am glad,” the footman responded with relief. “I was afraid we were going to have them disposed of. That would be a terrible shame. Nice little things, they are. I’ll get a basket for you, sir. I’m sure there’ll be one suitable.”

“Thank you.”

“Not at all, sir. I’ll do it right away.”

Pitt took them home because he had very little alternative. Also he wanted to tell Charlotte about Soames, and knew it would devastate Matthew. Last night he had not told her of it, hoping in some way it would prove mistaken, although she knew there was something deeply wrong. Matthew had left without waiting to eat, or to speak with both of them, and she had watched him leave with anxious face and troubled eyes.

First he presented her with the cats. They were angry in the basket and in a considerable temper to be out, which took precedence over news of any other thought.

“They’re beautiful,” she exclaimed with delight, putting the basket on the kitchen floor. “Oh, Thomas, they’re exquisite! Where on earth did you get them? I wanted a cat as soon as we moved, but no one has had any.” She looked up at him with delight filling her face, then immediately turned back to the basket. Archie was playing with her finger, and Angus was staring at her with round, golden eyes. “I shall think of names for them.”

“They are already named,” he said quickly. “They belonged to Christabel Thorne.”

“Belonged?” She jerked her head up. “Why do you say that? What has happened to her? You said she is all right!”

“I expect she is. Jeremiah Thorne is the traitor at the Colonial Office, if
traitor
is the right word. I’m not sure that it is.”

“Jeremiah Thorne?” She looked crushed, her face filled
with sudden sadness. The kittens were temporarily forgotten, in spite of the fact that Archie was quietly biting her finger, and then licking it, holding it between his paws. “I suppose you are sure? Have you arrested him?”

He sat down on one of the wooden chairs beside the kitchen table.

“No. They have both gone to Portugal. They left last night. I think Kreisler’s constant questions warned them.”

“They’ve got away?” Then her expression sobered. “Oh. I’m sorry. I …”

He smiled. “There’s no need to apologize for feeling relieved. I am myself, for a lot of reasons, not least because I liked them.”

Her face was filled with a mixture of curiosity, guilt and confusion. “What other news? Is it not bad for you, for England, that they escaped?”

“For me, possibly. Farnsworth may be angry, but he may also come to realize that if we had caught them there would have been a considerable conflict as to what to do with them.”

“Try them,” she said instantly. “For treason!”

“And expose our own weakness?”

“Oh. Yes, I see. Not very good, when we are busy negotiating treaties. It makes us look incompetent, doesn’t it?”

“Very. And actually all the information he gave was inaccurate anyway.”

“On purpose? Or was he incompetent too?” She sat down opposite him, temporarily leaving the kittens to explore, which they did with enthusiasm.

“Oh, no, definitely on purpose,” he replied. “So if he defended himself by saying that, then we ruin the good he has done, as well as making ourselves look stupid. No, on the whole, I think it is best he goes to Portugal. Only he left his cats behind, and asked me if I would look after them so their servants don’t dispose of them. Their names are Archie and Angus. That is Archie, presently trying to get into the flour bin.”

Her face softened into pure pleasure again as she looked down at the little animal, then at the other one, whose soft, black face was wide-eyed and filled with interest. He moved a step closer, then jumped back, then took another step forward, tail high.

It was hard to spoil the moment.

“I shall probably go and see Matthew this evening….” he began.

She froze, her fingers motionless above the kitten, then she looked up at him, waiting for him to tell her.

“Soames was the traitor in the Treasury,” he said. “Matthew knew it.”

Her face filled with pain. “Oh, Thomas! That’s dreadful! Poor Harriet. How is she taking it? Did you have to arrest him? Can Matthew be with her? Wouldn’t it be better if … if you didn’t go?” She leaned across the table, putting her hand over his. “I’m sorry, my dear, but he is not going to find it easy to understand that you had to arrest Soames. In time, I expect he will realize …” She stopped, seeing from his face that there was something she had not understood. “What? What is it?”

“It was Matthew who told me,” he said softly. “Harriet Soames confided to him, in ignorance, a telephone call she had overheard her father make, not understanding its meaning, and he felt honor-bound to repeat it to me. I am afraid she will not forgive him for it. In her eyes he has betrayed both herself and her father.”

“That’s not fair!” she said instantly, then closed her eyes and shook her head from side to side in a sharp little movement of denial. “I know it is natural to feel that way, but it is still not fair. What else could he do? She cannot expect him to deny his own life’s work and belief and be party to Mr. Soames’s treason! It’s not Matthew!”

“I know that,” he said softly. “And perhaps there is part of her which knows it too, but that doesn’t help. Her father is disgraced, ruined. The Colonial Office won’t prosecute,
or the Treasury either, because of the scandal, but it will become known.”

She looked up. “What will happen to him?” Her face filled with a cold, bleak sadness. “Suicide?” she whispered.

“It’s not impossible, but I hope not.”

“Poor Harriet! Yesterday she had everything and the future looked endlessly bright. Today there is nothing at all, no marriage, no father, no money, no standing in Society, only the few friends who have the courage to remain by her, and no hope for anything to come. Thomas, it’s sad, and very frightening. Yes, of course, she cannot forgive Matthew, and that will be a wound he will never be healed of either. What a terrible, terrible mess. Yes, go to Matthew; he will need you more than ever before.”

Pitt had stopped by at Matthew’s office and found him white to the lips, hollow-eyed and barely able to function in his duty. He had known the danger of such rejection when he had first gone to Pitt, but part of him had clung to the hope that it would not be so, that somehow Harriet would, in her despair and shame, turn to him, in spite of what he had done, what he had felt compelled to do. Given his own sense of honor he had had no choice.

He had begun to tell Pitt some of this, but Pitt had understood it without the necessity of words. After a few moments Matthew had ceased trying to explain, and simply let the subject fall. They sat together for some time, occasionally speaking of things of the past, happy, easy times remembered with pleasure. Then Pitt rose to leave, and Matthew returned to his papers, letters and calls. Pitt took a hansom to Farnsworth’s office on the Embankment.

    “Soames?” Farnsworth said with confusion, anger and distress conflicting in his face. “What a damn fool thing to have done. Really, the man is an ass. How could he credit anything so—so totally beyond belief? He is a cretin.”

“The curious thing,” Pitt said flatly, “is that it is largely true.”

“What?” Farnsworth swung around from the bookshelf where he was standing, his eyes wide and angry. “What are you driveling on about, Pitt? It’s an absurd story. A child wouldn’t have accepted that explanation.”

“Probably not, but then a child would not have the sophistication …”

“Sophistication!” Farnsworth grimaced with disgust. “Soames is about as sophisticated as my bootboy. Although even he wouldn’t have swallowed that, and he’s only fourteen.”

“… to be misled by an argument about the results of a clash of European powers in black Africa, and the need to prevent it in the interests of morality in general, and the future of all of us,” Pitt finished as if he had not been interrupted.

“Are you making excuses for him?” Farnsworth’s eyes widened. “Because if you are, you are wasting your time. What are you doing about it? Where is he?”

“At Bow Street,” Pitt replied. “I imagine his own people will deal with him. It is not my domain.”

“His own people? Who do you mean? The Treasury?”

“The government,” Pitt answered. “It will no doubt be up to them to decide what to do about it.”

Farnsworth sighed and bit his lip. “Nothing, I imagine,” he said bitterly. “They will not wish to admit that they were incompetent enough to allow such a thing to happen. That is probably true of the whole issue. To whom did he give his information? You haven’t told me that yet. Who is this altruistic traitor?”

“Thorne.”

Farnsworth’s eyes widened.

“Jeremiah Thorne? Good heavens. I had my money on Aylmer. I knew it wasn’t Hathaway, in spite of that lunatic scheme to disseminate false information to all the suspects. Nothing ever came of that!”

“Yes it did, indirectly.”

“What do you mean, indirectly? Did it, or didn’t it?”

“Indirectly,” Pitt repeated. “We got the information back from the German Embassy, and it was none of the figures Hathaway had given, which supports what Soames said of Thorne. He was giving misinformation all the time.”

“Possibly, but I shall want proof of that before I believe it. Is he at Bow Street as well?”

“No, he’s probably in Lisbon by now.”

“Lisbon?” A range of emotions fought in Farnsworth’s face. He was furious, contemptuous, and at the same time aware of the embarrassment saved by the fact that Thorne could not now be tried.

“He left last night,” Pitt went on.

“Warned by Soames?”

“No. If anyone, Kreisler …”

Farnsworth swore.

“… but I imagine unintentionally,” Pitt went on. “I think Kreisler was more concerned with finding out who murdered Susannah Chancellor.”

“Or finding out how much you knew about the fact that he killed her,” Farnsworth snapped. “All right, well at least you have cleared up the treason affair—not very satisfactorily, I might add, but this is better than nothing. And I suppose it could have been very ugly if you had arrested Thorne. You are due some credit for it.”

He sighed and walked over to his desk. “Now you had better return to the tragedy of Mrs. Chancellor. The government, not to mention the press, want to see a solution to that.” He looked up. “Have you anything at all? What about the cabdriver? Do you have him yet? Do you know where she was put into the river? Have you found her cloak? Do you even know where she was killed? I suppose it would be by Thorne, because she discovered his secret?”

“He said he knew nothing about it.”

“Said? You just told me he had left for Portugal last night, and you got there this morning!”

“He left me a letter.”

“Where is it? Give it to me!” Farnsworth demanded.

Pitt passed it across and Farnsworth read it carefully.

“Cats!” he said at the end, putting it down on his desk. “I suppose you believe him about Mrs. Chancellor?”

“Yes, I do.”

Farnsworth bit his lip. “Actually, I am inclined to myself. Pursue Kreisler, Pitt. There is a great deal that is not right about that man. He has made enemies. He has an unreliable temper and is acquainted with violence. Seek out his reputation in Africa; nobody knows what he stands for or where his loyalties are. That much I have learned for myself.” He jerked his hand sharply. “Forget the connection with Arthur Desmond. That’s nonsense, always was. I know it is painful for you to accept that he was senile, I can understand that, but it is incontrovertible. I’m sorry. The facts are plain enough. He cadged brandy from everyone he knew, and when he was too fuddled to have any clarity of thought at all, he took an overdose of laudanum, probably by accident, possibly intending to make an honorable end of it before he became even more uncontrolled and finally said something, made some accusation or slander he could not live down.”

Pitt froze. Farnsworth had used the word
cadged.
How did he know Sir Arthur had not ordered every brandy himself in the usual way? There was one answer to that—because he knew what had happened that afternoon in the Morton Club. He had not been there. It had not come out in testimony at the inquest; in fact the opposite had been said, that Sir Arthur had ordered the drinks himself.

Pitt opened his mouth to ask Farnsworth if he had spoken to Guyler himself, then just in time, with the words on the edge of his tongue, he realized that if he had not, the only way he could have known would be if he were part of the same ring of the Inner Circle which had ordered Sir Arthur’s death.

“Yes?” Farnsworth said impatiently, his blue-gray eyes staring at Pitt. It seemed at a glance as if he spoke in temper, but behind the surface emotion, the exterior that Pitt could see—and had seen so often before he could picture it
with his eyes closed, so familiar was it—he saw for a moment that colder, cleverer mind, far more watchful, waiting for Pitt to betray himself.