Twenty-One Days

by Anne Perry

  But most of all, he had to ask his father for the full story of Luz dos Santos. How much was Graves only guessing, and how much did he know? At some level, it would hardly matter. The damage of suggestion would be enough. And his father could not explain it publicly. Rightly or wrongly, he would be disgraced, perhaps even worse.

  Daniel sat across from his father in his study, and reached over the desk with the list of people whom Graves had mentioned as sources for the book in his hand.

  Pitt took it from him, looked at the names, and thanked him.

  Daniel waited for something more.

  ‘Who I expected,’ Pitt said. ‘One or two I didn’t. It’s time to see if I can find any corroborative evidence. I wouldn’t damn anyone on Graves’ words alone.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘But it casts a shadow, and that may well be all they expect of it. Thank you, Daniel.’

  ‘I don’t think Graves killed his wife,’ Daniel said. It came out sounding like an excuse, and he had not intended that. ‘I can’t . . . let him hang just because he’s a swine.’ He wanted Pitt to understand. ‘I wish he were guilty!’

  ‘Letting him hang because he’s a swine is roughly the same as killing him yourself,’ Pitt answered. ‘I dare say he felt like that about his wife. It’s not an excuse.’

  ‘Actually, she sounds rather nice,’ Daniel answered. ‘I think I would’ve liked her. She was far better than he. Interested, funny, brave, according to her children.’

  ‘How old are they?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A lot of children view their parents uncritically for a time, and at others find them totally boring,’ Pitt said a trifle ruefully.

  ‘Oh . . .’ Then Daniel saw the wry smile and felt himself flush. ‘We all take a little while to grow up. They are sixteen and nineteen. The girl is the elder, and takes care of her brother. He’s in a wheelchair, and looks terribly frail.’

  ‘Don’t let pity slant your vision,’ Pitt told him gently. ‘It’s only part of the truth.’

  ‘They need their mother,’ Daniel replied, as if he were defending them against some charge. ‘She’s only a girl, and has a heavy responsibility, now that her mother’s gone, not least for poor Arthur.’

  ‘I’m sorry. We take our health for granted. But don’t let your pity rule you.’ Now there was humour in his face. ‘I’ve liked some people who have killed, a lot more than I liked their victims. Find all the mitigating facts you can, but do not lose the truth. Listen to me, Daniel! Most of any case has right on both sides. It’s your job to find as much of it as you can, not to weigh it, and not to hide it.’

  ‘Did you ever hide it?’ Daniel asked, and his disbelief was plainer in his voice than he meant it to be, but the murder of the Portuguese woman was crowding his mind.

  Pitt stared at him very steadily. ‘Yes. I’m part of the country’s defence against those who would spread terror and anarchy. You are not. Your part is to defend individuals against wrongful accusation, and to mitigate their punishment when their convictions are correct, in fact at least, if not in cause.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Daniel agreed. ‘And I don’t think that it was her husband. Which is a shame. I very much would have liked it to have been. He’s a dangerous and vicious man. He loves the power to destroy, and he’s hellbent on using it. Starting with Narraway and Vespasia, and going on to you, and then Special Branch in general.’

  They stared at each other steadily.

  Daniel knew that this was the moment. If he let it slip away, he might never have it again.

  ‘What exactly happened about the Portuguese murder? Graves is not going to let that go. Explain it to me, so I’m not fighting in the dark.’

  Pitt was silent.

  ‘I need to know! I’m a lawyer; you made me one. Trust me not to betray your confidence!’

  ‘Is that what it is?’ Pitt said wearily. ‘I don’t think Graves really knows anything about it, but I suppose on the chance that he does, I need to tell you.’

  ‘You need to know if you’ve got a traitor in Special Branch, Father! And if you have, you have to find him.’

  ‘I will. Believe me, I will. What do you want to know about the murder of Amalia dos Santos?’

  Daniel swallowed. ‘All of it. Then I won’t fall into any traps.’

  Pitt leaned back in his chair and looked at Daniel as he spoke. ‘Luz dos Santos was giving me extremely valuable information about agitators and anarchists in London, and plans for insurrections here and around Europe. I disliked the man, but as an informant he was irreplaceable. He telephoned me late in the evening, almost hysterical, saying that he had been quarrelling with his wife and had lost his temper and struggled with her, and that she was dead. He asked for my immediate help, with a reminder of how much I needed him.’

  His voice became a little more strained. ‘I went to his apartment and found a dreadful scene . . .’ He stopped, breathing deeply as if to steady himself.

  Daniel would have loved to have stopped him. He nearly did. Then he realised he would only have to make him begin again. That might be even more difficult.

  ‘There was broken glass and porcelain all over the place. Amalia was at the bottom of the curving staircase, lying so crookedly her neck had to be broken. And there was blood all over her face, her arms and legs. To me, it was obvious that he had killed her,’ Pitt continued even more quietly, his voice hoarse. ‘I said so. He agreed that he had. Then he reminded me that he knew the names, descriptions, and whereabouts of at least half a dozen British agents in Lisbon. He listed them off, and I knew he was right. He said he would betray them to the revolutionaries if I didn’t help him. They would all be murdered. I knew he was speaking the truth. He already set that in motion before he called me. Unless he rescinded it, it would happen. I knew he would do it. Amalia was dead and I couldn’t help her, but I could save our men in Portugal. I didn’t send them, but I knew the men who had.’ He looked at Daniel. ‘It was a bad choice, but the alternative was far worse. I called Tellman – you remember him?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Daniel had known Tellman ever since he had first become Pitt’s sergeant, when Daniel was a child. He was now superintendent at Bow Street. ‘You could trust him.’

  ‘Together, we tidied up,’ Pitt went on. ‘We made it look as if poor Amalia had been drunk, and tripped and fallen down the stairs. When the police came, they accepted our word for it.’

  ‘What happened to dos Santos?’

  ‘We – we gave him safe passage back to Lisbon.’

  Pitt’s eyes were so steady on Daniel’s face, he knew it was not a lie, but not the whole truth either. ‘So, he got away with it? He killed Amalia, and you got him safely home.’

  Pitt looked uncomfortable, but he did not avoid Daniel’s gaze. ‘Well – not exactly. Not safely. Most of the way there. There was a delay. Enough to get our men out of Lisbon.’

  ‘You . . .’

  ‘He met with an accident,’ Pitt said flatly, and the look in his eyes was enough to warn Daniel not to go further.

  Daniel said, ‘Thank you . . . I think.’

  Pitt reached across and put his hand gently on Daniel’s arm. ‘It’s an ugly business,’ he said, ‘and I wish you didn’t have to know. But this is an undeclared war, and there are some enemies who do so much damage that we have to stop them.’

  Daniel had a new understanding of the weight his father carried, and why he had to make bad decisions sometimes: because the alternative would have been even worse. Better in his hands than the hands of someone who liked to use such power. For a moment, he was choked with emotion.

  Pitt broke into the silence. ‘You have to save him if he’s innocent, but you know that already,’ he said softly. ‘Justice is not yours to deny. And if you do, you will regret it as long as you live. However a revolting creature he is, you’ve lost yourself if you decide to let him hang. In a sense, he’ll have won . . .’

  ‘I’m not going to! If I can stop it. You don’t think I would, really?’
r />   ‘No. But any mistake I may have made does not give you justification to do the same.’

  Daniel smiled ruefully, to break the tension, which was growing unbearable. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make different ones.’

  Pitt smiled also; there was anxiety, and an immeasurable tenderness in it. ‘That will restrict you quite a lot. Go on, get on with it. Good luck.’

  ‘Thank you.’ And before it could tip over into any more emotion, Daniel went out of the room into the hall.

  Daniel spent most of the next day in pursuits that earned him nothing further.

  It was not until mid-morning of the following day –a fortnight before Graves was due to be hanged – that Impney knocked on the door and told him, with some misgivings, that a Mr Roman Blackwell had an urgent message to deliver.

  ‘Thank you,’ Daniel replied. ‘Send him in, please.’

  ‘Would you like tea, sir?’ Impney barely raised his eyebrows.

  ‘No . . . at least not yet. I may have to go out immediately.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Impney withdrew, and barely a moment later Roman Blackwell came in, practically glowing with a sense of achievement. ‘Midnight,’ he said simply.

  ‘What?’

  Blackwell closed the door behind him, then came back towards the desk. ‘Midnight,’ he repeated. ‘That’s the hour at which they disinter bodies.’

  ‘I knew that—’ Daniel began, then stopped himself. ‘Are you . . . are you saying you have permission?’ He found himself holding his breath.

  ‘Yes.’ Blackwell reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper with a flourish. ‘Duly signed and delivered. Permission to exhume the body of one Ebony Jane Graves.’ He put it down on the desk in front of Daniel.

  Daniel looked at it, then at Blackwell. ‘Is it a forgery?’

  Blackwell was affronted. ‘Certainly not! It’s a perfectly genuine order, signed by the judge whose name appears on it. Would I send you to a graveyard at midnight, to dig up a corpse, without genuine papers? Apart from that, to go to all that trouble of cutting it open, or whatever you’re going to do to it, without proper justification?’

  Daniel thought he would, if he could get away with it, but it was not the time to say so.

  ‘How did you manage to do it?’ he asked instead.

  ‘Am I your client?’ Blackwell asked, eyes wide.

  ‘You mean if we get into trouble for this, would I defend you?’

  ‘No, I do not!’ Blackwell was indignant. ‘I mean, is anything I tell you privileged information?’

  ‘It can be . . .’

  ‘You don’t want to know. Your father’s career depends on solving this matter . . .’

  ‘Is he involved? My father?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then why . . . Blackwell! What have you done?’

  ‘I’m looking after you. That’s all you have to know. Shut up, and get Miss fford Croft to do the job! She’s not mentioned in this, and neither are you. If there’s any risk at all, it’s mine. Now stop wasting time and get hold of her.’ Blackwell’s face was suddenly devoid of all humour. ‘Midnight tonight. They’re going to hang the bastard, and when they do, you want your conscience to rest easy. Heaven only knows why. I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I suppose you do?’

  Daniel’s mind raced over the possibilities, and any other answer that fitted the facts. Was it worth it? What had Blackwell done? He had no answers.

  Blackwell stared at him.

  Daniel stood up. ‘All right, thank you, Roman. Don’t tell me any more.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to. You’re a good man, and quite clever at times, but you don’t know when to keep your mouth shut,’ Blackwell replied.

  Daniel gave him a withering look, but he did not bother to respond to the jibe. ‘Thank you,’ he said instead. ‘Are you coming to the exhumation?’

  ‘I’m taking Mother to the theatre. It’s going to be a cold and a windy night,’ Blackwell replied.

  Daniel gave the exhumation order to fford Croft, who had far more weight of authority to see it attended to immediately. It was possible an innocent man might hang because of unexamined evidence.

  ‘Don’t wait for this.’ fford Croft stood up from his desk, waving the paper in his hand. ‘I’ll get the information to the necessary people. The grave will be opened at midnight tonight. You go and tell Miriam. Here, I’ll write the address for you. You will find her, no doubt, working on something in the library, but it can wait. Now hurry up and go, for heaven’s sake, don’t stand there waiting.’ And he pushed past Daniel with an urgent enthusiasm.

  Daniel turned and followed after him.

  The butler showed him in, as if he had been expecting him, and took him straight to the door of the library. ‘Miss Miriam, the gentleman your father mentioned is here for you. Would you like to have some luncheon in the dining room?’

  Daniel found Miriam exactly where her father said she would be, curled up with a book in the huge library in his house.

  ‘Oh?’ She looked up with a smile. ‘Not yet, Membury. We may not have time, thank you. Hello, Mr Pitt.’ She rose to her feet. ‘So, you have an exhumation order? That’s brilliant! How on earth did you do it?’ Her face was alight with interest. She was dressed in a plain white blouse and a dark skirt. Her wild auburn hair was so loosely tied back that half the pins had fallen out of it and were put back in anywhere, regardless of effectiveness.

  He had thought beforehand how he was going to answer her. ‘I asked the help of a friend who knows the right people to ask,’ he said casually.

  She looked at him very carefully. ‘Oh, yes? They are judges, I hope?’

  ‘Certainly, they are!’ He was very glad that he had asked Blackwell. He did not like being even slightly misleading to Miriam. She was willing to help where probably no other doctor would have, considering the case, not to mention the urgency. And he had liked her on the journey they had made together just a few days ago to see the site of Ebony’s death.

  ‘Then we will arrange for the grave to be—’

  ‘Mr fford Croft is organising it already. Do you need to arrange a place to . . . a laboratory, I mean . . .?’ He did not know what she would need. He had never had occasion to attend an autopsy.

  She smiled. ‘No, thank you. I have my own laboratory, and it is fully equipped. We just need a van in which we can carry the coffin, and the body, from the graveyard. I will need a little assistance with lifting the body, and that kind of thing. Are you good for it? She might be too heavy for just two of us. And you can assist at the autopsy, passing me instruments, and so on. Do you think your stomach will stand it?’ She looked at him with amusement, but it was not unkind. He knew she was trying to steer a course between not using him, on the one hand, and taking for granted that he could hold down his dinner when faced with the sight and, above all, the smell, of a two-month-old corpse.

  He was not at all sure he could do that, but the embarrassment of vomiting, or even fainting, was not as bad as that of refusing even to try. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. He nearly added, ‘I’ll try,’ but changed his mind.

  ‘Good. Then you may pick me up here, at half-past eleven tonight. I have some preparations to make, and I dare say you have also.’ She smiled. ‘Wear something warm, apart from a greatcoat. Graveyards are always cold at midnight, and standing around is not particularly pleasant. Not like a brisk walk. And it will be cold in the laboratory too. Believe me, it is better that way. And, Mr Pitt . . . thank you for including me in this task. The least we can do is find that there is nothing to discover, as a certainty, not just a guess.’ She rose to her feet. ‘Perhaps you’d better make it a quarter past eleven. There will not be much traffic, but I always find it is better to build in a quarter of an hour for unforeseen events.’

  He went out into the hallway where Membury was waiting. ‘Thank you, Miss fford Croft,’ Daniel said. ‘Until a quarter past eleven.’

  At exactly a quarter past e
leven he knocked on the fford Crofts’ front door, and it was opened immediately by Membury. Miriam was standing just behind him, wearing a plain, dark overcoat, and a shawl over her head. Apart from the hall light on her bright hair, she could have been somebody’s housemaid out keeping an illicit appointment. Daniel was glad he also had dressed in his oldest, most casual clothes. He felt he looked disrespectful, but how could one be respectful digging up a corpse, and then cutting her open?

  Miriam came outside, thanked Membury briefly, and said, ‘Good evening.’

  He led her to where the horse-drawn van he had hired was parked, helped her up beside the driver, and shortly after they set off.

  It was no time to make light conversation. They rode through the fair, moonlit night in silence. It was not cold, but there was a rising wind and it blew in the leaves of those streets that were lined with trees.

  They reached the graveyard without delay, and therefore were early. It was ten minutes before they saw anyone else arrive, and Daniel was happy they had paid the driver for the extra time so they could wait in the van, rather than stand outside in the wind. The gravediggers arrived, accompanied by the sexton. Daniel showed them the order again, and the sexton read it by the lantern light. Then, as he put it in his pocket, he gave the signal to the gravediggers to begin.

  Daniel stood beside Miriam, then suddenly realised he was to the leeward of her, and the wind was strengthening, and moving shreds of cloud across the moon. He moved down to the other side of her, so he was sheltering her. The wind rattled the branches of the ancient trees at the far edge of the graveyard, and rustled the dense yews. They were dark, impenetrable. Why did they so often plant yew trees in graveyards? They were poisonous. They crowded together, like silent ornaments to death. The earth underneath them was black and seemed always to be damp.

  Half a dozen lanterns were hung on poles that swayed in the wind, and the lights danced over the ground. It was mostly bare. There was not room enough between the graves for much to grow.