The Angel Court Affair

by Anne Perry

  Pitt nodded. “That would make far more sense,” he agreed. “We are assuming that whoever took her did so with a plan. I hope that’s true, but I’m not certain of it.”

  Teague turned it over in his mind.

  Pitt waited, watching him, studying him.

  “I have learned a little about her,” Teague went on. “From past sermons, if you can call them that, and listening to what her colleagues say of her. I imagine you have had reported to you the rather different message that Melville Smith is now giving, as if on her behalf?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very…watered down. I dare say he means well, but in his own way he is betraying her.”

  “I doubt that is how he sees it,” Pitt replied. “But what were you going to say about it?”

  Again Teague’s eyes were fixed on Pitt’s as if he could read his mind in the depth of his gaze.

  “That she forgives indiscriminately, and that God would be more careful,” Teague replied to the question. “Which makes me wonder if perhaps she has formed some alliances that he considers criminal or maybe even politically dangerous.”

  “The same thought has occurred to me,” Pitt said honestly.

  “Then they may be behind the kidnapping,” Teague said. “Although I can’t see why they would take her, if she has given them comfort, or pardon.”

  “Neither can I. But there has been some difference of approach among different groups,” Pitt told him.

  “I see.” Teague did not say whether he had been aware of that or not. “Smith seemed to be certain she had come to England to speak with Barton Hall. Does Smith know what her purpose was?”

  “He says not,” Pitt replied. “Do you have any idea?”

  As if he had seen a flicker of accusation in Pitt’s eyes, Teague responded with a guarded question. “I know we’ve spoken of him before, but how well do you know Frank Laurence?”

  “Not very well. Why?” Pitt asked.

  “He’s a bit irresponsible,” Teague replied. “I raise his name because I think he knows, or suspects, that Hall has something to do with Señora Delacruz’s abduction,” Teague went on. “Hall is profoundly ambitious, you know? Or perhaps you don’t know. He would dearly like to become Governor of the Bank of England one day. A man like Frank Laurence wouldn’t be above guiding the news in a way to help him, if it was to his own profit. Or equally, destroying him, if that was.”

  Pitt drew breath to disagree, then changed his mind, and let it out in silence.

  “A dangerous little man.” Teague was still watching Pitt. “Plenty of ambition, but he hasn’t the power or the nerve to be behind this.”

  “Laurence?” Pitt asked, trying to sound as if he thought it was a real possibility. He didn’t want to openly insult Teague.

  “Yes,” Teague said with a slight shrug. “Paid by someone, I imagine.”

  “Who?” Pitt asked.

  “I don’t know.” Teague stood up slowly, again holding his hand out. “I won’t give up trying to find out, but I admit to feeling disheartened.”

  Pitt took his hand, briefly, felt the firmness of his grip, then let go. “Thank you, Mr. Teague.”

  As Teague left the room Pitt sat back in his chair and thought over what Teague had said. He had been trying to find out how much Pitt knew, how determined he still was to rescue Sofia, if he was beginning to feel defeated. He was always probing. And it was he, not Pitt, who had raised the subject of Laurence, almost as if they had agreed on him as a suspect.

  And Teague seemed as willing to discredit Laurence as Laurence was to discredit him. Was that coincidental? Or could it matter?

  —

  THE EVENING OF THE next day Pitt received a hand-delivered note to say that Narraway and Vespasia were home, and would Pitt accompany the messenger back to Vespasia’s house to meet with them.

  Pitt kept the man waiting no more than ten minutes.

  He rode in silence in the carriage, his mind racing over the possibilities of what they might have to say. As soon as he arrived he thanked the driver and went straight to the front door. It was opened by the maid before he had time to knock.

  Narraway was standing by the fireplace, his face pale with exhaustion. Vespasia sat in her usual chair, and on the sofa was a slender, dark-eyed Spanish man whose haunted expression proclaimed his identity as Nazario Delacruz.

  There was a pot of tea on the table and a plate of freshly cut sandwiches. Narraway introduced Pitt and then stood back.

  Very quietly, with many halts, Nazario recounted how Sofia had taken in penitents, including Juan Castillo, the one who was so terrified after the murder of the man left eviscerated in the road, in a manner hideously like that in which Cleo and Elfrida had also been killed.

  “She took him in and agreed to protect him,” Narraway added quietly. “She hid him, on condition of his repentance for the crime he had committed, and that he should do all he could to redeem the effect of it.”

  “What was the crime?” Pitt asked, looking at Nazario.

  “I do not know,” Nazario answered. “Those things she never told me. But I do know that he was very frightened that he would be murdered next. He came to Sofia because he did not want to die without making a confession. He feared hell. She was determined that he should make amends for the crime, but she never mentioned what it was.”

  “It was straight after that when Señora Delacruz said that she had to come to London and meet with Barton Hall,” Narraway said.

  “It all circles back to Barton Hall,” Pitt said quietly.

  “Yes,” Narraway agreed.

  Pitt turned to Nazario, but before he could speak, Nazario answered the question.

  “I will go straight to Angel Court, and think, weigh it in my mind, and pray. Tomorrow I will answer you as to what choice I will make.”

  Pitt bowed his acknowledgment and no one else argued.

  CHAPTER

  13

  PITT WAS STILL TIRED from the late evening and the rapid pace of events when he arrived at Lisson Grove next morning. He felt bleary-eyed and a trifle stiff as he sat at his desk.

  Stoker came in with a mug of tea for him.

  “For heaven’s sake, sit down,” Pitt told him, accepting the mug of tea gratefully. He took the first sip before he started to tell Stoker about Nazario Delacruz, briefly and without sparing the horror of the situation. Nor did he have to warn Stoker that Nazario might be erratic, mistrustful of them and possibly even seek his own answer.

  “Poor devil,” Stoker said when Pitt had told him all that he needed to know.

  “Indeed,” Pitt said quietly. “I should have taken the whole threat issue a great deal more seriously from the beginning.”

  Stoker did not argue. “I did look into Barton Hall’s Canadian investments, as you asked.” He shook his head. “I can’t find any trace of his using the money himself. He lives in the house he was born in. Belongs to a few gentlemen’s clubs, some for years. Pretty frugal with his general expenses. Good tailor, but you’d expect that in his position. You don’t bank with someone who looks like he can’t afford a decent coat. Doesn’t own a carriage, doesn’t give expensive gifts to people. In fact, as far as I can see, he doesn’t have any lady friends. His wife died, and he hasn’t courted anyone since.

  “And I checked gambling in just about every form it exists, and any payments that could be past debts, or even blackmail. There wasn’t anything.” Stoker looked earnest and frustrated. “I really don’t know what he’s done with the money, sir. But it’s nothing I’ve seen before. I asked Darlington, he’s an expert in financial matters, and he couldn’t suggest anything else.”

  “Thank you,” Pitt said bleakly. “The investment in Canadian land seems to be paying well, so why is it secret, and what is he so desperate about, and needing more money for?

  “Yes, sir. He’s the reason she says she came to England at all. But why? Could she be blackmailing him over this cheating business so long ago? Even if she is, I still can’t
see him murdering these women like that. He looks so…like a banker! With the imagination of a dish of custard!”

  Pitt smiled in spite of himself. He agreed that on the surface, everything seemed predictable about Barton Hall. “An excellent way to look, if you wish to be invisible for what you are.”

  “I suppose so. Something I did turn up, sir. He travels quite a lot. Mostly Europe, Paris especially, and of course he could go anywhere else from there.”

  “Interesting,” Pitt agreed. It was, but he found himself unable to keep his mind on anything other than Nazario Delacruz, and the moments in the streetlights when he and Brundage had stood in the chandler’s shop and saw that hansom go by, with Sofia’s bruised face staring at him out of the window.

  “Put somebody on finding out where else Barton traveled, especially if it was Spain. But we can’t afford to wait for him to get back to us. Sofia may not have more than a day or two, if she’s even still alive now. Nazario has to make up his mind in the next few hours.”

  “They gave us longer than that, sir.”

  “That doesn’t matter. They might torture her to death before then, even if they don’t mean to!” Pitt said with a sharp note of desperation in his voice.

  “Yes, sir,” Stoker agreed grimly, his face pale. “But I’ll put someone on it anyway.”

  —

  PITT WENT TO ANGEL Court early in the afternoon. There was no more time for delay. With Sofia missing and none of them knowing for certain if she was alive, let alone how much she may have been tortured, they were all deeply distressed. And they were still mourning the fearful deaths of Cleo and Elfrida. Neither shock nor grief is so quickly recovered from, let alone the constant struggle to keep faith in such disaster.

  Pitt had warned Nazario the previous evening that Smith had continued to preach, but that he had considerably moderated the power of Sofia’s message. Nazario had not appeared surprised.

  No two people saw issues or leadership in exactly the same way. Pitt was not leading Special Branch exactly as Narraway had. And even if he could have done the same, judgment for judgment, would he have? No, the loyalty was always to the job, not to the predecessor, regardless of admiration for them, or friendship.

  Melville Smith should have done what he thought the faith required, not copy Sofia, if he believed her judgments were flawed.

  Pitt turned in at the entrance to the court, passing the stone angel with its huge wings. He crossed the cobbles toward the door and saw the old woman watering the tubs of herbs. She glanced at him curiously, then as soon as she recognized him, turned away again. She looked even more haggard than before, her skin dark, eyes hollow. Her hands on the watering can were embedded with dirt.

  Pitt felt a moment’s compassion for her. Perhaps she mourned over Sofia’s loss as deeply as anyone else, but she seemed excluded from the fellowship of the others remaining. Pitt was not sure if she spoke much English. He thought of saying something to her now, but if she did not understand him it would only embarrass her. And she had her back to him, bending over the tubs, pinching off leaves here and there and holding them in her other hand, the watering can beside her on the stones.

  The door opened just as Pitt raised his hand to knock. Henrietta stared at him and wordlessly beckoned him in.

  She led him back inside after closing the door firmly. Her face was gaunt, as if she had slept little. Her thick hair was pulled back severely, showing the bones of her cheek and jaw. Her eyes were hollow, as if with illness, but it was still possible to see that she had been beautiful once, perhaps not so long ago. She walked ahead of him from one room to another, leading him to the same place where he had spoken to Melville Smith before. Her feet were silent on the ancient boards, and she did not turn back to see if he was following her. She walked stiffly, as if her joints hurt, but he could not say whether her pain were entirely physical, or if most of it lay in the burden of grief in her mind.

  Melville Smith and Ramon were waiting for Pitt, with Nazario Delacruz standing between them. They all looked ill at ease. Nazario was tense and pale, the marks of exhaustion plain on his face and in the way his shoulders were hunched forward, without energy, yet without comfort.

  He nodded to Pitt, as an acknowledgment rather than a greeting.

  Ramon Aguilar was clearly afraid, but Pitt believed it was for Sofia, not for himself. He glanced at Pitt, gave the ghost of a smile and then turned back to Nazario, waiting for him to lead.

  Melville Smith avoided Pitt’s eyes. He looked strained, even guilty, but that could have been no more than the bitter awareness that Sofia had gone missing while he considered himself in charge. Pitt felt sorry for him. It was a delusion. No one, probably not even Nazario, had been in charge of Sofia.

  Nazario cleared his throat.

  “I will speak this evening.” He made it a statement, and instantly Pitt saw both Smith and Ramon Aguilar stiffen. The disagreement was unmistakable, but neither said anything. Clearly they had already made their views plain.

  Smith looked at Pitt, waiting for his reaction.

  “I think, Señor Delacruz, that we should discuss this privately,” Pitt said. “You may repeat to anyone whatever you wish, or ask counsel as you think right. But there are certain facts I would like to make sure you are aware of.” He turned to Smith. “May we use your office?”

  Smith hesitated, surely not because there was any decision for him to make, but but because he was reluctant to let go of the shred of control he still had.

  Nazario answered for him.

  “Of course. Come.” He turned and led the way without looking to see if Pitt was following him.

  Once in the office he closed the door and took one of the two chairs away from the desk, leaving the other for Pitt.

  “What is it you wish to say, Commander?” he asked.

  “Have you discussed your reason for wanting to speak this evening with them yet?” Pitt needed to know that before he went any further.

  Nazario’s black eyebrows rose. “No. I do not want them to hear from anyone what the kidnapper is saying of Sofia. It is untrue, as I told Señor Narraway. Melville Smith might not care, but Ramon would be deeply distressed to hear such things and know that anyone else might hear them and imagine them true.” His face filled with gentleness. “He is a simple man, tender. He had a sister he loved, and she fell from grace for a very human passion, which the Catholic Church does not forgive in women. He still grieves over it and this would hurt him unnecessarily, and perhaps make his judgment less balanced than he would afterward wish. I will not allow anyone else to carry the blame for what I do.”

  “Admirable,” Pitt said as gently as he could. “But is it wise?”

  “Wise?” Nazario’s voice cracked a little. “What is wise, Mr. Pitt? What would you do in my place? Have you reached a wise decision?”

  “You have a right to blame me for not having prevented this in the first place,” Pitt said miserably. “However, you and I arguing now is an indulgence we can’t afford. I want us to do the right thing. I don’t care whose idea it is, or how we reach it, only that afterward we are still sure it was the best we could.”

  Nazario leaned back a little in the chair, as if his body had lost the strength to be angry anymore.

  “You want to know what I have decided. Time is short. I understand that. So I will preach this evening. Not Mr. Smith’s new, softer philosophy, but the beautiful, burning truth Sofia speaks. I know why I do it, so there is no use in trying to persuade me not to. I know Sofia, Mr. Pitt. That is what she would do, what she would live or die to defend.”

  Pitt looked at him steadily, remembering the bruised face he had seen in the cab, for a moment in the lamplight.

  “Are you sure? I have not lied to you that they will kill her brutally and without hesitation.”

  Nazario shuddered and seemed to shrink further into himself, as if he had become a smaller man.

  “I know that. Whatever happens, I shall not accuse you of misleading me.
Now let us make certain I do not mislead you. I imagine you love your wife? Yes, I see by the look on your face that you find the question less than real, as if there were no more than one answer possible.”

  “There is only one answer,” Pitt agreed. He did not say that he also loved his children. He thought of Jemima and Daniel, a rush of memories from all ages in their lives. And he remembered that this man’s children were lost to him forever. He could not imagine it, the ceaseless pain that he would not see them grow up. They would never be young men, young women, have lives and loves of their own, perhaps children of their own. Thousands of people dealt with such loss, but each one was an individual loss, irreplaceable by any other.

  As if Nazario could see the thoughts naked in Pitt’s face, he smiled very slightly. “I love my wife too, Mr. Pitt. But I love her for who she is, not just for what she gives to me. For myself, I wish her home safely, and what the world thinks of her is little to me.” He leaned forward with a sudden urgency. “But what she thinks of herself is of infinite importance. Do I value my desires at the expense of destroying what she is? Is that love? Yes, love of my own momentary comfort, not of her.”

  Pitt stared at him, trying to decide if he agreed with Nazario’s reasoning.

  “Do you believe in God, Mr. Pitt?” Nazario asked suddenly, throwing Pitt off balance.

  “Not one that is going to step in and save your wife,” Pitt answered. He said the next words with pain, but Nazario had to hear and believe the truth. “They have already tortured her! I have seen her, briefly, but it was perfectly clear. She was horribly bruised about the face. What I could not see might have been worse. The way she sat was as if her arm and her back both gave her more than discomfort. God is not going to help her!” He heard the anger and fear in his own voice. He knew he was seeing not only Sofia’s face swollen and blackened with bruises, but his mother’s pale face, strained with the losing fight against illness, which as a child he had not understood. Had she imagined the God she believed in, that she worshipped every Sunday, was going to save her?