Traitors Gate (7 page)

Pitt felt the color burn up his cheeks. He had not perceived Chancellor as a fool, or anything like it, but he had not expected such forthrightness either, nor such perception of what his investigation would entail.

Chancellor smiled quickly. “Forgive me. That was too frank. But nevertheless, what I say is true. You must meet them all socially. Can you come to the reception at the Duchess of Marlborough’s this evening? I can obtain an invitation for you without any trouble at all.”

Pitt hesitated only a moment.

“I realize it is absurdly short notice,” Chancellor went
on. “But history waits for no man, and our treaty with Germany is on the doorstep.”

“Of course,” Pitt accepted. What Chancellor had said was true. It would be an ideal situation in which to make some judgment of the men in a more personal capacity. “It is an excellent idea. Thank you for your assistance, sir.”

“Yourself and your wife? You are married, I presume?”

“Yes indeed.”

“Excellent. I shall have my footman deliver them by six. Your address?”

Pitt gave it, with pleasure that it was the new house, and after a moment or two, took his leave. If he were to attend a reception at Marlborough House in a few hours, he had a very great deal to attend to. And Charlotte would have even more. Her sister, Emily, from whom she usually borrowed gowns for the better social occasions, was currently abroad in Italy again. Her husband, Jack, was very newly a member of Parliament, and since Parliament was in recess for the summer, they had taken the opportunity to travel. Borrowing from her would not be possible. She would have to try Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, Emily’s great-aunt by her first marriage, to Lord Ashworth.

    “What?” Charlotte said in disbelief. “Tonight? That’s impossible! It’s nearly five o’clock now!” She was standing in the kitchen with plates in her hand.

“I do realize it is not much time….” Pitt began. It was only now beginning to dawn upon him what an enormity he had committed.

“Not much time!” Her voice rose in something close to a squeal and she put the plates down with a clatter. “To prepare for something like this would take a week. Thomas, you do know who the Duchess of Marlborough is, I suppose? There could be royalty present! There could be everybody who is anyone at all—there almost certainly will be.” Suddenly the outrage vanished from her face and was
replaced by an overwhelming curiosity. “How in Heaven’s name did you get an invitation to the Duchess of Marlborough’s reception? There are people in London who would commit crimes to get such a thing.” Amusement tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Don’t tell me someone has?”

He felt laughter at the absurdity of it well up inside him too. It was such a wild contrast with the truth. Perhaps he ought not to mention it to her. It was a highly confidential matter, but he had always trusted her in the past, although of course no previous case had involved matters of state.

She saw his hesitation. “They have!” Her eyes were wide, and she was uncertain whether to laugh or not.

“No—no,” he said hastily. “The matter is very much more serious than that.”

“Are you not working on Sir Arthur’s death?” she said quickly. “That can’t have anything to do with the Duchess of Marlborough. And even if it had, you wouldn’t just get an invitation because you wanted one. I don’t think even Aunt Vespasia could do that.” That was the height of social power.

Vespasia had been the foremost beauty of her day, not only for her classic features and exquisite coloring, but for her grace, wit and extraordinary panache. Now in her eighties, she was still beautiful. Her wit had sharpened because she was assured in her position, and no longer cared in the slightest what anyone thought of her, as long as she rested easily in her own conscience. She espoused causes few others dared to, liked and disliked whom and what she pleased, and enjoyed pastimes of which many a younger and more cautious woman would have been afraid. But she still could not command an invitation to the Duchess of Marlborough’s receptions at short notice, and for someone else.

“Yes, I am working on Sir Arthur’s death,” Pitt answered with some stretching of the truth. He followed her as she whirled into sudden activity, turning to go into the passage and up the stairs.

“But I am also working on another matter Matthew left with me this morning, and it is in connection with that,” Pitt said from behind her, “that we are going to the Duchess of Marlborough’s this evening. The invitations came through Mr. Linus Chancellor, of the Colonial Office.”

She stopped on the landing. “Linus Chancellor. I’ve heard of him. He’s very charming, and extremely clever, so they say. He may even be Prime Minister one day.”

He smiled, and then hid it almost immediately as he followed her into the bedroom. Charlotte no longer moved in the social circles where people discussed serious politicians, as she had done before she had shocked her friends by marrying a policeman, a dramatic reduction of both her financial and social circumstances.

Her face fell. “Is that mistaken? Is he not charming at all?”

“Yes, he is most charming, and I should judge also very clever. Who told you about him?”

“Emily,” she answered, throwing open the wardrobe door. “Jack has met him several times. But also Mama.” She realized what he had meant. “All right, only two people. You actually met him today? Why?”

He was undecided for only a moment.

“It is highly confidential. It is a matter of state. I am not revealing the whole business even to those I question. Certain information is being passed from the Colonial Office to other people who should not know it.”

She swung around to stare at him. “You mean there is a traitor in the Colonial Office? That’s terrible! Why couldn’t you just say that, instead of hemming and hawing? Thomas, you are becoming pompous.”

“Well—I …” He was horrified. He loathed pomposity. He swallowed. “Can you find something to wear and get ready, or not?”

“Yes of course I can,” she said instantly, eyes wide, as if the answer were the only one possible.

“How?”

She shut the wardrobe door. “I don’t know yet. Give me a moment to think. Emily is away, but Aunt Vespasia is not. She has a telephone. Perhaps I can reach her and ask her advice. Yes. I’ll do that immediately.” And without waiting for comment from him, she brushed past him and went across the landing and down the stairs to the hallway where the new telephone was situated. She picked up the receiver. She was extremely unfamiliar with the instrument, and it took her several minutes before she was successful. She was naturally answered by the maid, and was obliged to wait for several moments.

“Aunt Vespasia.” Her voice was unusually breathless when she heard Vespasia at last. “Thomas has just been put onto a most important case, which I cannot discuss, because I know very little about it, except that he has been invited immediately, this evening, to attend the reception at the Duchess of Marlborough’s.”

There was a very slight hesitation of surprise at the other end of the line, but Vespasia was too well bred to allow herself anything more.

“Indeed? It must be of the utmost gravity for Her Grace of Marlborough to allow the slightest alteration to her plans. How may I be of assistance, my dear? I imagine that is why you have called?”

“Yes.” From anyone else such candor would have been disconcerting, but Vespasia had never been anything but frank with Charlotte, nor Charlotte with her. “I am not quite sure what to wear to such a function,” Charlotte confessed. “I have never been to anything quite so—so very formal. And of course I do not own such a thing anyway.”

Vespasia was thinner than Charlotte, but of a similar height, and it would not be the first occasion for which she had lent her a gown. Policemen of Pitt’s previous rank did not earn the kind of salary to afford their wives attire for the London Season, and indeed none of them would have been invited.

“I shall find something suitable and have my footman bring it over,” Vespasia said generously. “And don’t worry about the time. It is not done to arrive early. About half past ten would be excellent. They will serve supper at around midnight. One should be there between thirty and ninety minutes of the hour mentioned on the invitation, which, if I recollect, is eleven o’clock. It is a formal occasion.” She did not add that more intimate receptions might well begin an hour earlier. She expected Charlotte to know that.

“Thank you very much,” Charlotte said with real gratitude. It was only after she had put the receiver back on its hook that she realized if Vespasia knew the time on the invitation, she must have one herself.

The dress, when it arrived, was quite the loveliest she had ever seen. It was of a deep blue-green shade, cut high at the front, and with a sheer sleeve, and decorated with a delicate beading at throat and shoulder. The bustle was narrow and heavily draped, caught up in a bow of gold and a shade of the gown itself, but so dark as to appear almost black. Included with it was a most elegant pair of slippers to match. The whole effect made her think of deep water, exotic seas and wild dawns over the sand. If she looked even half as wonderful as she felt, she would be the envy of every woman in the place.

Actually as she sailed down the stairs, several minutes later than she had said she would (having mislaid a packet of hairpins which were vital to the whole effect), Gracie was awestruck. Her eyes were enormous, and both children crouched, wide-eyed, on the landing. Even Pitt was a little startled. He had been pacing the hall with impatience, and when he had heard her step, he swung around, then saw her.

“Oh,” he said, uncharacteristically lost for words. He had forgotten what a very handsome woman she was with her rich dark auburn hair and warm, honey skin. Tonight the
excitement had given her a color and a brilliance to her eyes that made her close to truly beautiful. “That …” Then he became self-conscious, and changed his mind. This was not the time to indulge in compliments, however merited. “It becomes you very well,” he finished. It was immeasurably less than he meant. Actually it awoke in him an awareness of her physical presence, and a strangeness, a frisson of excitement as if she had been someone he had newly met.

She looked at him a trifle uncertainly, and said nothing.

He had hired a carriage for the evening. It was not an event for which one could arrive in a hansom cab. For one thing, its cramped space would have crushed Charlotte’s dress, or more accurately Vespasia’s dress, and for another, and more importantly, it would mark him out as different, and inferior.

There was a considerable jostle of carriages in the driveway, and indeed in the street beyond, as dozens of people arrived at what Vespasia had said would be the optimum time. They were almost swept along up the stairs and into the great foyer and the hall beyond. On all sides they were surrounded by swirling skirts, nervous laughter, just a little loud, and voices high-pitched, too obviously intent upon immediate companions and affecting to ignore everyone else. The lights of the chandeliers were thrown back in tiaras, brooches, necklaces, earrings, bracelets and rings. The men were girded by scarlet and purple sashes of orders of merit, and chests gleamed with medals against the sober black and stark white of formal dress.

Up the great staircase and into the reception rooms they were announced by a majordomo whose face remained entirely expressionless, regardless of the name or rank of the personage he introduced. If he had never heard of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Pitt, there was nothing in his features to register it, not a flicker of his eyes or intonation of his voice.

Pitt was far more nervous than Charlotte. She was bred
to conduct herself at social events of this nature, even if not of this status. Pitt felt suddenly as if his stiff collar were cutting into his chin and he hardly dared turn his head. Charlotte had insisted on cutting his hair, and he was self-consciously aware now that he had not seen a respectable barber in years. His evening boots were excellent, a gift from Jack, but his black suit was of nothing like the quality of those around him, and he was certain they would be as aware of it as he was the first time they looked closely enough at him to conduct any sort of a conversation.

For the first fifteen minutes they drifted from one group to another, making the most superficial remarks, and feeling increasingly ridiculous and as if they were wasting time which could easily be better spent, even if only in bed asleep, ready for the next day and its duties.

Then at last Pitt saw Linus Chancellor, and beside him a uniquely striking woman. She was unusually tall, very nearly of a height with Chancellor himself. She was slender but well proportioned with handsome shoulders and arms, and awareness of her height had not made her stoop or try to hide it. She stood with head high and back straight. Her gown was palest oyster shading to pink and it flattered her dusky coloring and rather long, wide-eyed face.

“Who is she?” Charlotte whispered quickly. “Isn’t she interesting, quite unlike most of the women here. There is nothing predictable about her at all!”

“I don’t know, but perhaps she is Chancellor’s wife,” he replied under his breath, conscious of those close to him and possibly overhearing.

“Oh! Is that Linus Chancellor beside her? He’s rather handsome, isn’t he!”

Pitt looked at her with interest. He had not considered whether Chancellor was handsome or not, or indeed whether his looks might be appealing to women. He had only seen the strength and the imagination in his face, the unusual angle of nose and jaw and the power of will it suggested,
the fine eyes and the total confidence of his bearing. He had seen him as a politician, and tried to estimate his skill and his ability to judge men.

“Yes, I suppose he is,” he said with growing conviction.

Charlotte looked at the woman again, and at that moment saw her place her hand on Chancellor’s arm, not obtrusively—it was not a statement of ownership—but discreetly, a gesture of pride and affection. She was moving herself closer to him, not drawing him to her.

“If he is married, then she must be his wife,” Charlotte said with absolute certainty. “She would never do that in public were she not now, or about to become so.”