Bethlehem Road

by Anne Perry

They gathered on three sides while the pallbearers lowered the coffin, and the grim ritual was played out, the wind whipping skirts and pulling at streamers of black crepe. Women held up black-gloved hands to secure their hats. Lady Mary and Zenobia put up their arms at exactly the same moment, and the two huge brims were pitched at even wilder angles. Someone tittered nervously and changed it into a theatrical cough. Lady Mary glared round for the culprit in vain. She skewered the ferrule of her umbrella into the ground with a vicious prod and stood with her chin high, looking straight ahead of her.

  Charlotte watched Jasper Royce and his wife. She was well-dressed but unremarkably so and appeared to be there as a matter of duty. Jasper was a softer, less emphatic version of his brother. He had the same sweeping forehead but without the striking widow’s peak. His brows were good, but straighter and less powerful; his mouth was more mobile, the lower lip a little fuller. He was not as individual, not nearly as striking, and yet, Charlotte thought, perhaps an easier man with whom to spend any degree of time.

  Now he was bored; his glance wandered idly over the faces opposite him on the far side of the grave, and none seemed to catch his interest. He might have been thinking of dinner or the next day’s patients, of anything but the purpose for which they were come.

  Sir Garnet, on the other hand, was alert; in fact he seemed to be studying the others present quite as diligently as Charlotte herself, and she had to be careful he did not catch her eye and mark her observation of him. To stare at him as steadily as she was doing, if caught, would seem extraordinary and require an explanation.

  He watched quietly as the coffin was lowered into the grave and the first drops of rain spattered on the hats and skirts of the ladies and the bare heads of the men, and umbrellas were twitched nervously, and left alone. Only one person broke his poise sufficiently to look up at the sky.

  The vicar’s voice grew a trifle more rapid.

  Garnet Royce was tense; there were lines of strain in his face more deeply etched than there had been after Lockwood Hamilton’s death. He shifted uneasily, watching, glancing about as if every movement might be of some importance, as though searching might yield him an answer he needed so badly that the pursuit of it dominated his mind.

  Was there some factor he knew of that Charlotte did not? Or was it merely that his intelligence made him fully aware of the magnitude of these horrors, more so than the other mourners, who were come from personal grief, or a sympathy born of a similar loss? But what about the other members of Parliament? Did they not know that the newspapers were clamoring for an arrest, that people wrote letters demanding a solution, more police, a restoration of law in the streets and safety for the decent citizen going about his duty or his pleasures? There was talk of treason and sedition, criticism of the government, of the aristocracy, even of the Queen! There were very real fears of revolution and anarchy! The throne itself was in jeopardy, if the worst rumors were to be believed.

  Perhaps Royce could see what others only imagined?

  Or did he guess at a conspiracy of a private nature, a secret agreement to murder for profit, or whatever three quite separate motives might drive three people to ally with each other to make all the crimes look like the work of one fearful maniac.

  Then was Amethyst after all at the heart of at least her husband’s death, either as the perpetrator, or the cause?

  It was over at last, and they were walking back towards the vestry. The rain came harder, the glittering shafts silver where the light caught them. It was unseemly to hurry. Lady Mary Carfax put up her umbrella, swinging it fiercely round and swiping at Zenobia’s skirt with the sharp ferrule. It caught in a ruffle and tore a piece of silk away.

  “I do beg your pardon,” Lady Mary said with a tight smile of triumph.

  “Not at all,” Zenobia replied inclining her head. “I can recommend a good maker of spectacles, if you—”

  “I can see perfectly well, thank you!” Lady Mary snapped.

  “Then perhaps a cane?” Zenobia smiled. “To help your balance?”

  Lady Mary trod sharply in a puddle, splashing them both, and swept on to speak to the Cabinet Minister’s wife.

  Everyone was hastening towards the shelter of the church, heads down, skirts held up off the wet grass. The men bent their backs and tried to move as fast as was consistent with any dignity at all.

  Charlotte realized with irritation that she had dropped her handkerchief, which she had taken out and held to her eyes from time to time so that she might observe Garnet Royce undetected. It was one of the few lace-edged ones she had left and far too precious to lose simply for the sake of keeping dry. She excused herself from Aunt Vespasia and turned to retrace her steps back round the corner of the church and along the track towards the grave.

  She had just rounded the corner and was coming up behind a large rococo gravestone when she saw two figures standing facing each other as if they had met unexpectedly the instant before. The man was Barclay Hamilton, his skin ashen and wet with rain, his hair plastered to his head. In the harsh daylight the pain in him was startlingly clear; he looked like a man suffering a long illness.

  The woman was Amethyst. She blushed darkly, then the blood fled from her face and left her as white as he. She moved her hands almost as if to ward him off, a futile, fluttering gesture that died before it became anything. She did not look at him.

  “I ... I felt I ought to come,” she said weakly.

  “Of course,” he agreed. “It is a respect one owes.”

  “Yes, I—” She bit her lip and stared at the middle button of his coat. “I don’t suppose it helps, but I ...”

  “It might.” He watched her face, absorbing every fleeting expression, staring as if he would mark it indelibly in his mind. “Perhaps in time she may feel ... that it was good that people came.”

  “Yes.” She made no move to leave. “I—I think I am glad people came to—to—” She was very close to weeping. The tears stood out in her eyes, and she swallowed hard. “To Lockwood’s funeral.” She took a deep breath and at last raised her face to meet his eyes. “I loved him, you know.”

  “Of course I know,” he said so gently it was little more than a whisper. “Did you think I ever doubted it?”

  “No.” She gulped helplessly as emotion and years of pent-up pain overtook her. “No!” And her body shook with sobs.

  With a tenderness so profound it tugged at Charlotte’s heart to watch them, he took her in his arms and held her while she wept, his cheek against her hair, then his lips, for a moment, brief and immeasurably private.

  Charlotte shrank behind the gravestone and crept away in the rain. At last she understood the icy politeness, the tension between them, and the honor which kept them apart, their terrible loyalty to the man who had been her husband and his father. And his death had brought no freedom to them, the ban on such a love was not dissolved—it was forever.

  Pitt attended the funeral without hope that he would learn anything of value. During the service he stood at the back and watched each person arrive. He saw Charlotte with Vespasia and a woman of striking appearance and much more fashionable than Charlotte had led him to expect, but he presumed she must be Zenobia Gunne. Perhaps he was more ignorant of the niceties of fichus and sleeves and bustles than he had thought.

  Then he saw Lady Mary Carfax sweep in in a gown so nearly identical as to look like a copy, and he knew he had been right the first time.

  He also saw the new, inner calmness in Helen Carfax, and the self-assurance that had deserted James, and recalled what Charlotte had told him about Zenobia’s visit. One day, if it were possible without social awkwardness, he would like to meet Zenobia Gunne.

  He had noticed Charles Verdun as one of the first to arrive, and remembered how much he had liked him. Yet a business rivalry between Verdun and Hamilton was not impossible. Heaven knew, nothing yet made any real pattern; there were only isolated elements, passions, injustices, terrible loss and hatred, possibilities of error in the
dark, and always in the background the murmur of anarchy in the ugly, teeming back streets beyond Limehouse and Whitechapel and St. Giles. Or madness—which could be anywhere.

  Hamilton and Etheridge were physically similar, of the same height and general build under an evening coat, both with longish, pale, clean-shaven faces and thick silver hair. Sheridan had been younger, and fair-haired, but within an inch of the height. And on the bridge, between the small spheres of light in the vast darkness of the sky and river, what difference was there to the eye between gray hair and blond?

  Was it some grotesque, lunatic mistake? Or was the murderer totally sane in its purpose, and there a key to it which he had not even guessed at yet?

  He watched the players as they sat in outward devotion through the tedious service. He noticed Somerset Carlisle, and remembered his strange, passionate morality which had held to such bizarre behavior when they had first met, years ago. He saw the widow and felt churlish to question her grief. He watched Jasper and Garnet Royce, and Amethyst Hamilton. He saw Barclay Hamilton deliberately sit as far from them as he could without drawing attention to himself by asking others to move.

  When the service was over he did not follow them to the graveside. He would be too conspicuous; no one would take him for family or associate. It would be a pointless intrusion.

  Instead he hung back near the entrance to the vestry and watched. He saw Charlotte return and then look in her reticule and hurry back again out into the rain.

  Micah Drummond stepped in a moment later, shaking the water off his hat and coat. He looked cold, and there was an increasing anxiety stamped in his face. Pitt could imagine the accusing stares his superior had endured from Members of Parliament, the asides from those in the Cabinet, the comments on police inefficiency.

  Pitt caught his eye and smiled bleakly. They were no further forward, and they both knew it.

  There was no time to talk, and to do so would compromise Pitt’s “invisibility” as an apparent usher. A moment later Garnet Royce came in, heedless of the rain running down his face and dripping from the skirts of his coat onto the floor. He did not observe Pitt in the shadows but immediately approached Micah Drummond, his brow furrowed in earnestness.

  “Poor Sheridan,” he said briefly. “Tragedy—for everyone. Dreadful for his widow. Such a—a violent way to die. My sister is still suffering very much over poor Hamilton. Natural.”

  “Of course,” Drummond agreed, his voice strained with the guilt he felt over his helplessness to do anything about it, to show that the investigation had taken a single step forward. He could offer nothing, and he would not lie.

  It was not difficult for Royce to ask the next question. The silence invited it.

  “Do you really think it is anarchists and revolutionaries? God knows, there are enough of them around! I have never heard so many rumors and whisperings of the collapse of the throne, and of new orders of violence. I know Her Majesty is not young and has undoubtedly taken her widowhood hard, but the people expect certain duties of a sovereign regardless of personal misfortune. And the Prince of Wales’s behavior scarcely adds to the luster of the crown! And now the Duke of Clarence is causing gossip with his dissipation and irresponsibility. It seems everything we have taken half a millennium to build is in jeopardy, and we seem unable to stop wild murders in the heart of our capital city!” He looked frightened, not the panic of a hysterical or cowardly man, but the realization of one who sees clearly and is resolved to fight, knowing his anger immense and the prospect of victory uncertain.

  Micah Drummond gave the only reply he could, but there was no pleasure in his thin face as he spoke. “We have investigated all the known sources of unrest, the insurrectionists and would-be revolutionaries of one sort and another, and we do have our agents and informers. But there is not a whisper that any of them ally themselves to the Westminster Cutthroat—in fact they seem little pleased by it! They want to win the common people, the little man whom society rejects or abuses, the man oppressed too far by overwork or underpayment. These lunatic murders improve no one’s cause, not even the Fenians’.”

  Royce’s face tightened as if some bleak fear had become reality.

  “So you do not believe it is anarchists suddenly burst into open violence?”

  “No, Sir Garnet, everything points away from it.” Drummond looked down at his sodden boots, then up again. “But what it is, I don’t know.”

  “Dear God, this is terrible.” Royce closed his eyes in a moment of deep distress. “Here are we, you and I, the government and the law of the land, and we cannot protect ordinary people going about their lawful business at the heart of our city! Who will be next?” He looked up and stared at Drummond with brilliant eyes, almost silver in the light, now the rain had stopped outside. “You? Me? I tell you, nothing on earth would persuade me to walk home alone across Westminster Bridge after dark! And I feel a guilt, Mr. Drummond! All my life I have striven to make wise decisions, to develop strength of will and judgment, so that I might protect those weaker than myself, those it is given me both by God and by nature to care for. And here I am, incapable of exercising my own privileges and obligations because some lunatic is loose committing murder, apparently whenever he pleases!”

  Drummond looked as if he had been struck, but he did not flinch. He opened his mouth to speak, but Royce cut in before he could find words.

  “Good heavens, man, I’m not blaming you! How on earth does one find a random madman? It could be anybody! I daresay by daylight he looks the same as you or I. Or he may be any half clad beggar hunched in any doorway from here to Mile End or Woolwich or anywhere else. There are nearly four million people in the city. But we’ve got to find him! Do you know anything? Anything at all?”

  Drummond let out his breath softly. “We know that he chooses his time with great care, because in spite of all the people around the Embankment and the entrance to the Houses of Parliament, the street vendors, prostitutes, and cabdrivers, no one has seen him.”

  “Or someone is lying!” Royce said quickly. “Perhaps he has an accomplice.”

  Drummond looked at him thoughtfully. “That supposes a kind of sanity—at least, on the part of one of them. Why should anyone aid in such a grotesque and profitless act unless they were paid?”

  “I don’t know,” Royce admitted. “Perhaps the accomplice is really the instigator? He keeps a madman to commit his crimes for him?”

  Drummond shivered. “It is grotesque, but I suppose it is possible. Someone driving a cab across the bridge, by night, with a madman inside, whom he lets loose just long enough to commit murder, then removes him from the scene before the body is discovered? At a good pace he could be along the Embankment, or going south up the Waterloo Road, and indistinguishable from a thousand others in a matter of moments—before the body is discovered or crime known. It’s hideous.”

  “Indeed it is,” Royce said huskily.

  They stood in silence for a moment or two. Outside, the eaves dripped steadily and the shadows of mourners leaving passed across the doorway.

  “If there is anything I can do,” Royce said at last, “anything at all that will help, call on me. I mean it, Drummond—I will go to any lengths to catch this monster before he kills again.”

  “Thank you,” Drummond accepted quietly. “If there is any way, I shall call on you.”

  11

  PITT LEFT THE FUNERAL and walked in the rain all the way down to the Albert Embankment. He was halfway across the Lambeth Bridge before he finally caught a cab back to the police station at Bow Street. It gave him time to think before he should see Micah Drummond again. What Garnet Royce had said was fearful—but it could not be discarded. It was possible some conspiracy existed, some person was using a madman to achieve his ends, taking him to the bridge, directing him to his victim, and then driving him away again afterwards. They had long ago questioned every cabby with a license to drive a carriage of any sort in London, and learned nothing of value. In the beginning
it was conceivable one might have lied, for bribe or out of fear, but with three murders it was no longer a serious thought.

  Every effort to discover a sane motive for all three crimes had failed. No battle for money or power, no motive of revenge, love, or hate tied all three victims, nothing that he or Drummond had been able even to imagine, still less to find. Even Charlotte, usually so perceptive, had nothing to offer, except that she feared Florence Ivory had a passion of hatred strong enough to have moved her to murder, and the courage to act once her mind was set.

  Yet with Etheridge dead, what reason had she to kill Sheridan? Except precisely that reason—that there was none—and perhaps by that means to establish her innocence. Could she have killed Hamilton by mistake, believing him to be Etheridge, and then killed Sheridan simply because it was senseless, to remove herself from suspicion? She would have to be a woman not only of passion but of terrifying coldness. He did not want to think so. In his mind sharp and unfeigned, unmarked by pretense or guilt, was an understanding of the pain of a woman who had lost all she valued, her last child.

  There was nothing to do but return to the most basic, prosaic police work, rechecking everything, looking for the inconsistency, for the person who had seen something, recalled something.

  Micah Drummond was already in his office when Pitt came up the stairs and knocked.

  “Come in,” Drummond said quietly. He was standing by the fire waiting, warming himself and drying his wet clothes. His boots were dark with water and his trousers steamed gently. He moved sideways so Pitt might receive some of the fire’s warmth. It was a small gesture, but Pitt was touched by the graciousness of it more than by any words of praise or sympathy Drummond might have offered.

  “Well?” Drummond asked.

  “Back to the beginning,” Pitt replied. “Interview the witnesses again, the constables on the beat closest to the bridge, find the cabbies again, everyone who crossed the bridge or passed along either embankment within an hour of the crime, before or after. I’ll speak to all the M.P.s in the House on any of the three nights. We’ll question all the street vendors again.”