by Anne Perry
“I don’t believe so” Balantyne answered a trifle ruefully. “I raised the subject when we all met. Cornwallis seemed to think I was mistaken. But then he is used to naval catering, which is hardly the same.” His lips tightened. “Nor is it ideal … especially for children. I thought Cadell at least considered the possibility of examining the situation.”
“I see,” Pitt replied with a sudden and profound sense of disappointment. What had he hoped for? It was never going to be a motive for blackmail, far less murder. “Thank you for giving me your time, General. I really should let this subject go.”
“The orphanage at Kew?” Balantyne asked.
“No … no, I meant the possibility of it being connected with Cadell’s blackmail attempts or his death. Even if you are right, it is hardly a motive.”
Balantyne’s surprise showed in his face. “Had you thought it was?”
“I don’t know. It seemed to be the one thing you all had in common, but I realize now it was membership of the committee, not its purpose, that counted.”
“What happened to the real Albert Cole?” Balantyne asked.
“I don’t know. But we shall go on looking for him.” Pitt held out his hand. “Thank you. I hope I shall not need to disturb you again.”
Balantyne clasped Pitt’s hand warmly, but he said nothing further.
Pitt walked home in the warm twilight, still filled with unease, trivial questions unanswered, pricking his mind, leaving him no sense of completion.
12
Find Albert Cole, Pitt had said to Tellman. Alive or dead. If he is alive, find out why he disappeared from his lodgings and from Lincoln’s Inn Fields; and if he is dead, find out how he died, naturally or otherwise. If he was killed, who killed him and why, and also when. And where.
Tellman had made a sarcastic reply, wondering why Pitt had bothered to trail all the way out to Kew and what on earth an orphanage, very satisfactorily run, could have to do with any of it.
Pitt had had no answer for that, and left Tellman to go about his search. He himself had begun with more about Cadell’s movements. Could he have transported Slingsby’s body from Shoreditch himself, and if not, which was probably the case, then who had? He had told Tellman of his intention to visit Cadell’s widow and enquire from the valet and coachman, and see if he could trace Cadell to Shoreditch from that end.
Tellman acknowledged the instruction tersely, but if he were honest, he was not unwilling to obey. He thought that suicide was a frustrating way to conclude a case. Too much was unexplained. They would probably never learn what had made a man like Leo Cadell jeopardize everything he had, which was a vast amount, wealth and happiness beyond Tellman’s dreams … although his dreams had included some happiness lately, and he blushed hot at the thought.
But he did not expect to understand the man, only the facts of the case, the logical, material details. And finding Albert Cole was part of that. He set out with a profound determination.
Pitt addressed himself to the task of learning how Slingsby’s body had been moved from Shoreditch to Bedford Square, and more importantly, by whom. Naturally, he began with Cadell. Since he was dead, the Foreign Office would not protect him in the way it had previously.
Pitt had little trouble in tracing Cadell’s movements on the day before the body had been found. He had worked either in his office or at various meetings with officials from the German embassy. At the time Slingsby and Wallace were fighting in Shoreditch, Cadell had actually been in negotiation with the German ambassador himself.
Like almost anyone else, he could have gone to Shoreditch in the small hours of the morning, presuming someone had moved Slingsby’s body from the street where it had fallen, kept it in a safe place, and Cadell had known where that was. Which would be to assume a great deal, including that Slingsby had been murdered intentionally and that Wallace had conspired with Cadell to that end because Slingsby resembled Albert Cole.
How did Cadell know a ruffian like Wallace?
He quickened his pace, striding along the footpath between the crowds of shoppers, clerks and errand boys and sightseers. He must go and talk to Wallace again, before he stood trial and was in all probability executed. Why had he not said he had moved the body when Tellman questioned him before? It would hardly make any difference to his sentence to plead that it had been a fight rather than a deliberate attack. He would be hanged either way.
Or did he expect to come up before Dunraithe White … and believe he would be acquitted? Was that why White was a victim?
And why kill anyone to have Balantyne suspected? Why was the blackmail over the Abyssinian affair not enough? What extra was wanted from Balantyne more than the others?
Pitt found himself almost running, and he hailed a cab with waving arms, shouting at the driver as he leapt in, “Newgate Prison!” He felt the cab thrust forward, throwing him against the seat.
But by the time he reached Newgate he had changed his mind. He leaned forward and rapped on the cab wall, raising his voice.
“Sorry! Forget about Newgate. Take me to Shoreditch.”
The driver grunted something unintelligible, which, considering its nature, may have been as well, and changed direction abruptly.
Pitt began in the public house where Tellman had said Wallace and Slingsby had started their quarrel, then progressed to the regular denizens of the immediate area. He had to part with a good few coins to assist memory and goodwill, and he ended the day with nothing which would have served as proof in a court, but he was quite certain in his own mind that Wallace could have come back within half an hour of the murder and taken the body of Slingsby. Certainly the body had disappeared within that time. There was no knowledge or indication that anyone else had moved it, and opinion seemed to be that it had been Wallace’s problem and he had dealt with it. They had supposed it would be into the river, but that was only because it was the most obvious thing to do. Taking a cart and carrying the body to Bedford Square would be too outlandish, and utterly pointless, to have occurred to them.
The best and final thing to do was to see if anyone had lent, or had stolen from them, such a vehicle.
With a little more generosity and a certain number of threats and promises, he succeeded in discovering that one Obadiah Smith had indeed had his vegetable cart removed without his permission, so he claimed, and to his great inconvenience. It had been returned in the morning.
He left Shoreditch elated. It was hardly worth going to Newgate. Wallace would probably deny it, but Pitt was now convinced that Wallace had murdered Slingsby with the quite deliberate intention of moving his body and placing it on Balantyne’s doorstep, with the snuffbox in his pocket, and the receipt for the socks, perhaps obtained by Wallace himself, pretending to be Cole. And this had been done on Cadell’s instructions. It would be very satisfying to see Wallace’s face when he heard that Cadell was dead and could not possibly rescue him.
But why Slingsby and not the real Cole? Where was Cole now? Was Tellman having any success in finding him?
However, when Tellman reported to Pitt that evening, within twenty minutes of Pitt’s arriving home himself, he had nothing to offer at all. They sat around the kitchen table in deep gloom. Charlotte had made a large pot of tea, and Gracie had abandoned even pretending to be peeling potatoes or cutting the strings off the beans. She was not going to be occupied in such things when there were really important matters to talk about.
“Nobody has any idea,” Tellman said defensively. “He could have gone anywhere. If he had any family, no one heard him mention them. They could be in Wales, for all anyone knew. Or Scotland.”
“Army records would know where he came from,” Pitt pointed out.
Tellman flushed. He was furious with himself because he had not thought of that.
“Well, if someone were arter ’im, ’e wouldn’t go back there, would ’e?” Gracie said defensively. “If we can work that out, mebbe they could too … stands ter reason, don’t it?” She looked from
Pitt to Tellman and back again. “ ’E’d a’ gorn somewhere as nob’dy knows ’im. I would.”
“Why would anybody be after him?” Pitt asked. “He didn’t do anything, or know anything, so far as we can tell.”
“Well, w’y else would ’e scarper?” she asked reasonably. “Goin’ by wot you said, ’e ’ad a decent job an’ a good place. Yer don’t jus’ up an’ leave things like that, less yer got summink better or there’s someb’dy arter yer.”
“Bit chancy, wasn’t it?” Tellman said reluctantly, flashing Gracie a look of gratitude, and obviously unwilling to slight the favor by criticizing her logic, but driven to it by necessity. “Someone we don’t know of went after Cole, just the day before poor Slingsby gets done in by someone who wants to pretend he’s Cole?”
“That’s it!” Pitt banged his fist on the table. Suddenly it was obvious. “They went after Cole first. They tried to kill him, but somehow they failed. He got away. Perhaps he was a better soldier than they realized, experienced in hand-to-hand fighting,” he said eagerly. “He escaped, but he knew they’d come after him again, perhaps a knife in the back next time, or a shot. So he took to his heels and disappeared … anywhere. It doesn’t matter where … just out of London, to a place they’d never think of looking.” He turned to Gracie. “As you said, they know his military record, that’s why they wanted him, so the last place he’d go would be back to anywhere he had a connection with.” He stared around the table. “That’s why we can’t find Cole … and I daresay we never will.”
“So they found someone who looked like him,” Charlotte took up the train of reasoning. “They had the snuffbox anyway, and they either stole the sock receipt or had one made up.”
“Had it made up,” Tellman put in. “Easy enough. Go and buy three pairs. Get yourself noticed. Say something about being a soldier, the importance of keeping your feet right. The shop clerk remembered all that, but not much about his face.”
“Who is ’they’?” Charlotte asked with a little shake of her head, a sharp return from logic to emotion. “Cadell … if it has to be … and who else? Ernest Wallace? Why?” She bit her lip, and her expression betrayed her disbelief. “I still can’t accept that.” She looked from Pitt to Tellman. “You haven’t found any reason why he should suddenly need money, or connected him to any plot to invest in Africa or anywhere else. Aunt Vespasia says he just wasn’t that sort of person.”
Pitt sighed. He reached his hand across the table and put it over hers.
“Of course she doesn’t want to think so, but what is the alternative?”
“That someone else is guilty,” she answered, her voice without the certainty she would have liked. “And he killed himself … because … I don’t know. He was so worn down by the blackmail he hadn’t the strength to go on.”
“And confessed,” Pitt said gently, “knowing what that would do to his family? To Theodosia? And they have grownup children, a son and two daughters. Have you seen what Lyndon Remus and the other newspapers have made of the scandal? Poor Gordon-Cumming pales beside it.”
“Then he could never have done it,” she said desperately. “He must have been murdered.”
“By whom?” he asked. “No one came or went but the family servants, and the entrances were observed all the time.”
She took her hand away, fists clenched. “Well, I still refuse to believe it. There’s something we don’t know ….”
“There’s a lot of things we don’t know,” he said dryly. He ticked them off on his fingers. “We don’t know why Cadell wanted or needed money, or even if that was the purpose of the blackmail. We don’t know why he chose specifically the other members of the orphanage committee of the Jessop Club. There must have been dozens of other men he knew as well, and could have created a web of fear around, built on imagination and misinterpretation. We certainly don’t know how he ever made the acquaintance of Ernest Wallace or why he trusted him.”
“We don’t know why Wallace lied to protect him and is still lying,” Tellman added.
“Yes, we do,” Pitt answered. “At least, we can deduce it. He is in Newgate and doesn’t know that Cadell is dead. He must be assuming that Cadell will twist the knife in Dunraithe White, and Wallace will be acquitted. He also doesn’t know that White has just resigned from the bench.”
“Then tell him,” Charlotte retorted. “That may concentrate his mind wonderfully. Show him he is completely alone. He has been let down on every side. Cadell has escaped, in a fashion, and left him to hang … alone.”
“Don’t make no difference whether you ’ang alone or together,” Gracie said with disgust. “Don’t suppose it feels no different. ’e killed Slingsby, so ’e’ll ’ang any which way.”
Pitt rose to his feet. “I’ll still go and see him.”
Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Now? It’s half past six.”
“I’ll be back by nine,” he promised, walking to the door. “I have to speak to him.”
Pitt hated visiting prisons. The walls closed in on him with the cold gray misery of countless angry and wasted lives. Hopelessness seemed to seep from the stones, and his footsteps echoed behind the warder’s like multiple treads, as if he were preceded and followed by unseen inmates, ghosts who would never escape.
Ernest Wallace would be tried in a week or two. He was brought into the small room where Pitt waited for him. He looked small and tight, and beneath his smug expression there remained a lifelong anger that was bone-deep. He glanced at Pitt, but there was no visible fear in his eyes. It seemed to amuse him that Pitt had come all the way to Newgate to see him. He sat down at the other side of the bare wooden table without being asked. The warder, a barrel-chested man with a disinterested face, stood by the door. Whatever these two were going to say, he had heard it all before.
“Where did you go after you had fought with Slingsby?” Pitt began, almost conversationally.
If Wallace was surprised he hid it well. “Don’ remember,” he answered. “Wot’s it matter nah?”
“What did you fight about?”
“I told yer, least I told the other rozzer, ’baht summink wot ’e took orff me as e’d no right ter. I tried ter get it back orff ’im, an ’e laid inter me. I fought ’im … natural. I’ve a right ter save me own life.” He said that with some satisfaction, meeting Pitt’s eyes squarely.
Pitt had thought he expected the blackmailer to influence the trial and get him acquitted, at least of murder. Now, in the fetid room with its smell of despair, he was certain of it.
“And when you saw that you had killed him, you just fled?” Pitt said aloud.
“Wot?”
“You ran away.”
“Yeah. Well, I didn’t think as any rozzer’d believe me. An’ I were right, weren’t I? Or I wouldn’t be here now, lookin’ at a charge o’ murder.” He said it with considerable self-justification. “Yer’d a’ seen as I were defendin’ meself from a geezer wot were bigger’n me, an’ got a right temper on ’im.” He almost smiled.
“Is Albert Cole dead too?” Pitt said suddenly.
Wallace kept his face straight, but he could not prevent the ebb of color from his skin, and his hands twitched involuntarily where he had laid them with a deliberate show of ease on the tabletop.
“Oo?”
“Albert Cole.” Pitt smiled. “The man Slingsby looked like and was mistaken for when we found him. He had a receipt belonging to Cole in his pocket.”
Wallace grinned. “Oh, yeah! Yer made a right mess o’ that, din’t yer.”
“It was the receipt that did it,” Pitt explained. “And the lawyer from Lincoln’s Inn who identified him. And of course Cole is missing.”
Wallace affected surprise. “Is ’e? Well, I never. Life’s full o’ funny little things like that … i’n’t it?” He was enjoying himself, and he wanted Pitt to know it.
Pitt waited patiently.
“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “You see, I think you can’t tell me where you went after you killed Sl
ingsby because you came back, within minutes, and loaded his body into a vegetable cart you’d ’borrowed’ after dark. You took it to Bedford Square and left it on General Balantyne’s doorstep, exactly as you were told to do.”
Wallace was tense, his shoulder muscles locked, the sinews in his thin neck standing out, but his eyes did not waver from Pitt’s.
“Do yer? Well, yer can’t prove it, so it don’ make no difference. I says as I killed ’im ’cos ’e came at me, an’ scarpered arterwards ’cos I were scared as no rozzer’d believe me.” His voice descended into mockery. “An’ I’m real sorry abaht that, me lud. I won’t never make a mistake like that again.”
“Talking about judges,” Pitt observed steadily, “Mr. Dunraithe White has resigned from the bench.”
Wallace looked mystified.
“Am I supposed ter know wot yer talkin’ abaht?”
Pitt was shaken, but he concealed it. “Perhaps not. I thought you might come up before him.”
“Well if ’e i’n’t a judge no more, I won’t, will I? Stands ter reason.”
Pitt dropped the blow he had been waiting for.
“And another thing you might not have heard, being in here … Leo Cadell is dead.”
Wallace sat motionless.
“Committed suicide,” Pitt added, “after confessing to blackmail.”
Wallace’s eyes widened. “Blackmail?” he said with what Pitt would have sworn was surprise.
“Yes. He’s dead.”
“Yeah … yer said. So is that all?” He looked at Pitt with wide eyes, untroubled, his lips still smiling, not the fixed and awful grin of a man whose last hope has slipped away, but the satisfaction of someone supremely confident, even if he had heard some news which he did not completely understand.
It was Pitt who was thrown into confusion. Reason and hope disappeared from his grasp.
Wallace saw it, and his smile widened, reaching his eyes.