The Angel Court Affair

by Anne Perry

  Charlotte had given him a very tiny smile, and declined to obey. She had dared him to make an issue of it, and he knew it would make him look absurd to insist. Charlotte would understand his reasons, but Jemima would not.

  “She will think you don’t believe her able to face truth, Thomas,” she had said so quietly he had barely caught her words. “She will feel shut out of something that matters very much to her.”

  “I know it does!” he had argued. “That’s why I don’t want her to have to see it, if it becomes ugly.”

  “If it becomes ugly she will have to accept it,” Charlotte had answered. “She is nearly seventeen, Thomas. She is not a baby you can protect from reality. If you do, you won’t ease the pain when the first real disappointment comes, you will just make her the more confused by it, and above all you will send her the message that you don’t think she can face the truth. She won’t forgive you for that.”

  He knew Charlotte was right, and he could see the fear in her too, when he stopped to recognize it.

  “Look after her,” he had replied, knowing that it was a completely unnecessary plea.

  Now he stood in the large hall where Nazario was to speak, and watched as more and more people came in, jostling one another to try to find the seats they wanted. Some of them were excited, some somber, some already spoiling for a fight. Many came in groups of four or five, a whole family together. They kept glaring toward the empty stage, frightened the preaching might start before they were seated and they would miss something.

  Pitt noted where the police were, and where his own men stood, far more discreetly, and obviously without uniforms. They were quite a few, but perhaps not enough when compared with the ever-growing numbers of the crowd.

  He saw some apprehensive-looking clerical men, all recognizable from their collars and robes, all of them in their senior years. He recognized Vespasia easily, not just because the light was on her face and her pale hair, but by the way she stood. One could never mistake her. Narraway was there at her side, pushed up against her by others pressing forward for seats.

  Then he saw Charlotte a step behind and Jemima beside her, just as tall now and in some ways so like her. His chest tightened and he forced himself to breathe in deeply, and look away.

  That was when he saw Teague, half a head taller than those around him. He saw him turn and acknowledge a portly man a few feet away, inclining his head as a gesture of recognition. The man was a senior cabinet minister, like so many others probably a relative of Teague’s. Pitt wondered why the man was here, and who else in the government might have come.

  Why? To hear Nazario Delacruz? Or to observe whether the police and Special Branch were adequate to the situation, if the whole thing got out of control? Was Pitt being judged?

  “Gathering of the vultures,” a voice said beside him, and he turned to find Frank Laurence at his elbow.

  “They’re a little early,” Pitt answered tartly. “There’s no corpse yet.”

  “If you are lucky, they will betray themselves,” Laurence continued. “But I dare say you know that! Did you arrange this little exhibition, or merely allow it?”

  “How would you suggest I stop it?” Pitt could hear the edge of tension in his voice.

  “Point taken,” Laurence replied. “Have you seen Barton Hall yet? He is bound to be here.”

  “Is he? Why?” Pitt turned to face him.

  Laurence was smiling. “To see what Nazario will do, how much you know, and above all perhaps, what Dalton Teague will do. In his place, wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. What is his place?” Pitt looked straight back at Laurence with equal challenge.

  “Oh, a very interesting question,” Laurence said. “Surely you have not ruled him out as a suspect?”

  “Is that why you’re here?” Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Are you hoping that somehow you can manipulate me into putting Teague into the dock? It is Teague you really hate, isn’t it?”

  “Why should I hate Teague? It was Hall who cheated!” The darkness, the bitter anger was there in Laurence’s eyes again.

  “I think more precisely what you said was that he enabled someone else to cheat,” Pitt corrected him. “Hall’s own marks were honestly won. Wasn’t that what you said? He cheated for someone else, because he craved acceptance. A very human weakness. Haven’t we all, at one time or another?” He looked at Laurence candidly, without any softening at all. “Haven’t you?”

  Laurence colored very faintly. It made him seem different, vulnerable.

  “Yes, of course. But I didn’t cheat for it.”

  “I am sure you have never cheated academically,” Pitt agreed. “I would find it hard to believe you needed to. But you’d be lying if you said you have never used your sharper wits to trick someone into telling you far more than they wished or intended to. And then you have gone off and published it.”

  “A bold wager, Mr. Pitt!”

  “Not at all. You’ve done it to me.” Pitt smiled back at him with exactly the same bland good humor that Laurence had used earlier in their acquaintance.

  “Touché,” Laurence said softly. “To answer your question. I could see Teague in hell, with pleasure. From a great height…I hope!”

  Pitt smiled more widely. “Naturally. But if you put him there, you may find that the distance is so very much smaller.”

  “Do you still suspect Barton Hall?” Laurence asked.

  “I have no intention of discussing it with you,” Pitt replied.

  “I think you do suspect him,” Laurence contradicted him. “You found something that interested you greatly when you went to his bank, and came out several hours later.”

  Pitt felt cold inside. He could not prevent Laurence following him, but he had not realized he was in the street near the bank.

  “Did you not expect me to investigate every possibility?” he said, keeping his voice light. “I found nothing missing.” He was not about to tell Laurence what he had found regarding the land in Canada.

  Laurence masked his disappointment almost completely. There was only the very slightest shadow across his face.

  They were prevented from further conversation by a sudden hush in the crowd and then a cheer as Nazario appeared on the stage. He looked quite small in the lamplight, although he was of average height. He was dressed in dark clothes and with his black hair his features seemed all the more gaunt. His eyes were so shadowed in their sockets they looked enormous, and his high cheekbones caught the light.

  He bowed very slightly, with just an inclination of the head, then he began to speak. His English was excellent and his accent so slight it was no impediment to understanding.

  He introduced himself by name, then as Sofia’s husband.

  There was silence in the hall, barely even a shifting of position, only the whisper of fabric and a letting out of breath.

  “I have come to speak in my wife’s place,” he went on. “I know that my friend and colleague Melville Smith has been doing this in my wife’s absence…”

  Pitt looked around to see Smith, and it was a moment before he recognized him. He was pale and stiff; his face seemed so expressionless it could have been a clay mask.

  “…keeping the flame alive,” Nazario said. He did not attempt to smile. “It was a brave act, and I thank him for it. He knew, as I know, that Sofia was abducted, and even as we gather here together to speak with one another about faith and honor, and the long journey toward understanding that binds us together, she is somewhere alone with her torturer, who may very well in the end murder her.”

  There was a gasp of indrawn breath right round the room. Someone let out a cry, and immediately stifled it.

  Pitt saw Hall then. He looked terrible. He seemed oblivious of the large woman to his left and the small white-haired man at his right. Laurence was a yard away from Pitt, staring in horror at the stage.

  “I am prepared to say all that she would have said to you,” Nazario went on, his voice carrying right to t
he back of the room. “Melville Smith speaks gently, in part because he is a gentle man, but whatever he truly believes, he moderated it in the desperate hope of saving her life.”

  Pitt stared at Nazario but he could see no dissembling in his face. That was a lie. Surely he must know it.

  “Sofia believes that we are all children of God,” Nazario said now loudly, and more clearly. “From Christ to Satan, we are cut from the same cloth, every one of us. And we have the choice to be in eternity anything we wish. Man or woman. Genius or idiot, and all between. Physical beauty means nothing. God sees the heart. Wealth is only a test of what we would do with it. It is a loan from God, as are our talents, a way to prove whether we will use them well or ill. The judgment is awaiting us.”

  No one fidgeted, but they were waiting for him to say what had happened to Sofia, and what he was going to do about it. They would not wait silently much longer.

  “How have we behaved toward the poor, the lonely, the slow of word or wit?” Nazario demanded. “Have we patronized or condescended to the meek? Have we taken advantage? When you bullied your wife, when you condescended to your servant, when you insulted your employee, did you see Christ in their place? Would you have done the same to Him? Of course you wouldn’t. Neither would I! Do I always trust people as I would were I to remember that God sees what I do? Of course not! But I should!”

  Now there was rustling in the audience. Someone shouted out Sofia’s name and asked where she was. Another took it up, then others.

  “You want drama?” Nazario asked loudly. “You want me to tell you what has happened to Sofia? I don’t know! I know only that she has been abducted, by force, and her two companions butchered, their entrails torn out the way a beast of prey kills what it is about to eat.”

  The audience was appalled. A dozen or so men stood up and cursed Nazario for his crudity in such speech. A thin woman accused Nazario of having killed Sofia himself.

  “You came here to be told how wonderful you are?” Nazario cried out loudly, struggling to be heard. “You are wonderful, and terrible—like all mankind. You are whatever you choose to be! Whatever you want enough to pay what it costs. I think they are torturing Sofia to make her tell them what she has done with a man to whom she offered sanctuary, because he was afraid for his life.”

  Gradually the crowd fell silent again, the noise ebbing slowly.

  “He had committed a crime, not a violent one, but one of which he was ashamed,” Nazario went on. “I don’t know what it was, because Sofia never betrays a confidence, not even to save her own life. She helped him to repent and make right what he had done wrong. The man who abducted her is torturing her to tell him where this man is. She will not. She will die first.”

  Now there was horror in the audience, but this time no one interrupted him. Some women were weeping quietly.

  “I can save her, so I am told,” Nazario struggled to continue, his voice was cracking. “If I tell a lie about her, and say that she is a whore, a loose woman who seduced me, and was the cause of my first wife’s suicide. She was not, and I will not say she was. Should I? To save her life? Should I deny the truth, even to save her? So that he will let her go? Broken, bleeding, tortured to betray the man she tried to save so that her abductor can do to him—God knows what?” He spread his arms wide, beseechingly. “Is there any man or woman here who believes this creature would let her go? She knows him. She has seen and spoken with him. She might even know who he is. Do you imagine for one instant that he can let her go? Even if she forgave him, or I did, the law cannot! He has torn apart two women and left their bleeding bodies on the floor to be found.”

  Pitt could just see Brundage at the far side of the hall turning to signal to one of the police on duty. More police appeared at the doors, but Pitt did not wait for them. He started forward, pushing through the crowd himself, forcing his way forward.

  Nazario was still talking, his voice barely audible above the struggling, the moans and accusations from the audience at him and at one another.

  “Where is she?” a white-haired man shouted above the others. “What have you done with her?”

  Someone else shouted back at him, words inaudible.

  A tall man hurled his heavy, black walking cane at Nazario. It caught Nazario on the shoulder and clattered to the floor. Nazario took a step back.

  Melville Smith appeared from the wings and moved into the center of the stage, trying to protect Nazario, who evaded him and came farther forward.

  “Is this what Englishmen do?” he demanded. “Is this how you ‘Christians’ behave?”

  There was a sudden hush. It caught everyone by surprise.

  Pitt looked around and saw Teague, his fair head visible above the mass. For an instant he too looked taken aback. Then he turned and spoke to those close around him, his arms held up in a gesture of calm.

  Not far from him Barton Hall stared directly at Teague, ashen-faced, hatred in every line of his features. Teague did not appear to have seen him, although he was not more than ten feet away.

  Nazario was still speaking, but half his words were drowned out.

  “Let’s go find her!” someone shouted. “Search for her!”

  Half a dozen allies took up the cry and pushed toward the exits.

  “Stop it!” Nazario shouted, and then the noise obliterated his next words. He spread his arms beseechingly. “Please! You can’t help like this…”

  “You want her to die!” someone else yelled furiously. “You’re behind this!”

  Nazario’s answer was lost.

  More people changed their minds about leaving and started to swarm up toward the stage again.

  Police were beginning to come in from all the doorways, slowly clearing the hall. Even from where Pitt stood now, almost at the steps up to the stage, he could see scuffles here and there, the occasional hat knocked off, or deliberately thrown. One man was trying to clear a way by lashing out with his walking stick.

  More people were surging up to the steps on the far side. Someone had already reached them and was starting to climb up.

  At the back of the hall a woman began to scream, a high, thin wail rising in pitch.

  There were two men on the steps up to the stage at the far side. One of them reached the level and lunged toward Nazario, shouting abuse.

  Nazario turned to defend himself a moment too late. He was struck on the side of the head and collapsed to the floor. The man who had attacked him raised his arm high. Pitt saw the gleam of light on a blade. He started up the steps two at a time, but before he could reach the man an old woman flew forward out of the wings and launched herself at him, hands around his throat. They both crashed to the floor as Nazario began to haul himself up onto his hands and knees, dizzy, unable to get his balance.

  The woman lashed out at the man with the knife, hitting him so hard he let the knife fall, grabbing the woman by the hair, which came off in his hand. He tore at her clothes, and they too came apart.

  Pitt reached them and put his hand on the woman’s shoulder and felt the iron-hard muscles beneath the cloth. This close, he recognized her. It was the old woman who swept the yard at Angel Court, except that it was now quite obviously a man.

  Castillo! Of course. Hidden where everybody looked at him, and nobody saw.

  Pitt threw all his weight and strength into dragging him off the man who had attacked Nazario. As he finally pulled him up, he saw the attacker lay motionless on the boards of the stage, his neck at a crooked, broken angle.

  Castillo suddenly went limp in his arms, no longer resisting.

  Nazario clambered to his feet, still dazed.

  The knife lay gleaming on the floor, the stage lights angled upward, making it almost invisible.

  Teague was on the stage now too. He was staring not at Pitt or Nazario, or the dead man on the floor, but at Castillo, who was wigless, still clad in the remnants of the dress.

  Castillo stared back at him for a frozen second, then wrenched himself fr
ee from Pitt and fled the stage, disappearing into the wings as if somehow they would have closed behind him.

  Teague made as if to pursue him, and then gazed for a moment at Pitt, and with a half smile waved one of the police forward to do it instead. Brundage went to the outside to catch Castillo should he reach the back door.

  Teague stood facing Pitt, then turned to Nazario, his face utterly wiped clear of expression.

  “What the devil are you doing, Pitt? This is a complete fiasco.” He glared at the dead man on the floor. “Who the hell is he?” Finally he turned to Nazario. “Do you know him?”

  Nazario smiled bitterly, and did not answer. He was still shaking.

  There was silence in the audience. They were stunned, embarrassed, some even ashamed.

  Teague turned toward them, holding up his hands for attention. Instantly even the faintest stir of movement stopped. They faced him expectantly.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said gravely. “This terrible tragedy must come to an end. I have done everything I can, with all the time, money and influence I can offer. I had intended to tell Commander Pitt of Special Branch first, as a courtesy, but these circumstances tonight have changed all that. I must tell you all, and send you home in some peace and assurance.”

  He glanced at Pitt, but his expression was unreadable. He looked back at the audience.

  “I am certain that I know where Sofia Delacruz is being held prisoner.”

  He was obliged to stop by the cries and cheers. Several people waved their arms.