The Angel Court Affair

by Anne Perry

  Teague gently urged silence again. He turned to Pitt and offered his hand.

  Pitt could not refuse. He would appear surly and ridiculous. He took it, trying to force a look of happy surprise to his face. He felt like a gargoyle.

  “We must rescue her,” Teague said loudly and clearly. “My men are ready and willing. What do you say, Commander?”

  There was only one possible answer Pitt could give.

  “We will make plans immediately. Thank you.”

  Teague smiled broadly and turned to face the crowd.

  Brundage appeared at Pitt’s elbow, breathless.

  “Castillo escaped, sir,” he said. “Poor devil could be anywhere.”

  Teague turned to Pitt and his face was still inscrutable. But Pitt felt a sudden chill, as if his blood had turned to ice.

  CHAPTER

  14

  PITT TOOK A DEEP breath. Now he had no choice at all. It did not matter whether it was Hall, Teague or circumstances that had outwitted him, he must move tonight; as soon as they could gather the men together and make some sort of plan. Whoever held Sofia would hear of this within an hour or two, if they didn’t know already.

  “Don’t worry about Castillo,” he said to Brundage. “Get Stoker and as many other men as you can find in the next quarter of an hour.” He turned to Teague. “We must plan this carefully. Any mistake could be fatal.”

  He did not bother to ask how Teague had found Sofia. He wouldn’t get a straight answer, he was sure. But he didn’t doubt that the man was telling the truth about locating her—he wouldn’t risk his reputation by announcing it to the crowd if he hadn’t. Pitt didn’t trust the man, but for now he would follow his lead—it might be their best, and only, chance to save Sofia.

  “Of course,” Teague agreed immediately. “There’s got to be somewhere quiet in this place where we can meet. I have half a dozen men I can have here in thirty minutes, once I find a telephone.” He looked at the crowd still milling around, excited, frightened, angry, unintentionally blocking the ways out.

  “One along the street, sir,” Brundage said, pointing to his left. “Couple of hundred yards.”

  Teague thanked him. “I’ll be back,” he said to Pitt, then went quickly down the stage steps and started to pick his way toward the doors.

  Pitt turned back to Brundage. “What happened to Castillo? Is Nazario all right? He took a pretty hard blow. Does anyone know who that lunatic was? I suppose he is dead?”

  “Yes, sir.” Brundage looked a little pale. “Don’t know whether it was just an unlucky blow, or if he meant it. Either way, no one is sure where Castillo went. From what the local police say, Nazario’s assailant was known to them. A bit off his head. Took religious fancies and thought he was an avenging angel, or something of the sort. He’s been in trouble for abusing people before, even attacked one or two, but nothing like this.”

  “And Nazario?”

  “He’ll be damn sore for a while, but at the moment all he can think about is finding Sofia.”

  “Good. Be back in twenty-five minutes at the outside, with whoever you have.”

  Brundage hesitated. “Are we going to rely on Teague’s men, sir?”

  “I was thinking rather more of keeping an eye on them,” Pitt said grimly. “We can’t afford to have them go ahead without us.”

  Brundage looked relieved. “No, sir. I wouldn’t trust that lot half as far as I could throw them. They might make a pig’s breakfast of the whole thing, or if they do get her out alive, next day’s newspapers’ll be full of how they did Special Branch’s job for them!”

  “There’s also the matter of catching whoever has her,” Pitt added.

  “Alive?” Brundage asked.

  “I don’t know that I care,” Pitt replied frankly.

  “As long as it’s not Teague who kills the bastard. Papers would make a big thing of that too,” Brundage said. “ ‘Special Branch arrests hero of the hour.’ That would make us look even worse.”

  Pitt understood exactly how Brundage felt.

  “You think it’s Hall, sir?” Brundage asked.

  “It seems most likely. If he bought this enormous portion of Canadian land after being led to believe there was gold or diamonds there, and then discovered it was a hoax, he’d be desperate enough to do anything. The fact that it was in any way connected to Sofia Delacruz, who had already caused his family considerable embarrassment, would only add to his fury.”

  “Right, sir. I’ll get everyone I can.” He started to move away.

  “Brundage!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Also get guns for as many as you can. This could turn very nasty.”

  “Yes, sir. May take a little longer.”

  “Make it a very little!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Pitt went to find Nazario. He wanted to see for himself if he was all right, but even if he was not, he had a great many questions to ask him, starting with how much of this fiasco with Castillo he had foreseen, and intended. If he had lied about anything at all, now was the time to admit it.

  The first two side rooms were empty. Nazario Delacruz was sitting in a very old armchair in the third. One of Pitt’s men was with him.

  “Thank you, Hollingsworth,” Pitt said with a nod to the man. “Wait for me outside. We’ve got to get started as soon as I’ve had a talk with Señor Delacruz. Let me know, regardless, when Mr. Teague gets back. Regardless, understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” Hollingsworth stood to attention for an instant, then turned on his heel and went out, closing the door behind him.

  Pitt studied Nazario. He was clearly very shaken and in some pain, but his eyes were clear and there was a gravity and an understanding in them that reassured Pitt he was fully conscious and alert.

  “We’re going as soon as Teague gets back from collecting his men,” Pitt said, pulling up one of the hard-backed chairs and sitting down. The room was sparsely furnished, just a plain table large enough for half a dozen people to sit around, presumably for meetings of some sort, and sufficient chairs.

  “And your men?” Nazario asked, straightening with a wince as the pain caught him from his injured neck and shoulder.

  “Brundage will have them here by then.”

  Nazario nodded, just a brief movement of his head without involving his neck. “I’m coming with you.” It was a statement.

  “If you can keep up.” Pitt smiled very slightly. “But before we get to that, it’s time you tell me the truth about all you know of this. We could make a fatal error through ignorance. And on the assumption that you did not set this up with the intention of martyring your wife, either for the cause or simply to get rid of her, you will want us to succeed.”

  Nazario was startled, and momentarily angry. Then he realized the truth of what Pitt was saying, and set aside his emotions.

  “I did not know she brought Castillo here with her,” he said, speaking rapidly. “I never met him as himself, only as an old woman who had been turned out of her home and needed a place to live, just for a while.”

  “And the hoax?” Pitt went on. “Did you know about that?”

  Nazario looked confused. “What hoax? What are you talking about?” There was a new, stranger edge of fear in his voice. “Sofia would not trick anyone.”

  “The hoax to sell a huge area of relatively useless land in Canada, just empty prairie land, on the false evidence that there were diamonds or gold there.” Pitt put forward his theory, curious to see how Nazario reacted.

  “Diamonds? In Canada? I have no idea what you are talking about. Is that what Castillo said?” Nazario frowned, trying to make sense of it.

  “That was the hoax,” Pitt explained. “Hall paid a fortune for the land, on behalf of the Church of England. He has much of their money to invest.”

  “Ah!” Nazario smiled ruefully. “That is why Sofia was going to see him, to tell him. But he had already committed the money. So he is behind this? He is trying to silence her, but fi
rst he must find out what she has done with Castillo, because Castillo also knows?”

  “Apparently when Castillo’s partner in the hoax was murdered and left as a warning, instead of running away to somewhere he could never be found, he went to Sofia and confessed. She must have told him confession was no use without repentance.”

  “That is what she would do,” Nazario agreed. “She would make him give back the money. So where is it? If Castillo still has it then we will never get it back now.” He shook his head. “But if he had it, Mr. Pitt, I think he would have returned it by now. Why come at all, if he did not mean to give it back?”

  Pitt saw the answer only too clearly. “He didn’t have it,” he said wearily. “Maybe this other man did. Does he have a name?”

  “I know only that he was called Alonso. And if he had it then why would Hall not take it from him and leave it alone? This is too much trouble simply for revenge. Too dangerous, and too bloody.”

  “Yes,” Pitt agreed again. “There is still a piece that does not fit, someone else involved perhaps—”

  He was interrupted by Brundage’s return. He knocked on the door and came straight in.

  “I’ve got six men, sir: Mr. Narraway; Stoker; yourself, sir; Hollingsworth and me. And Mr. Delacruz, if he’s well enough?”

  “I am,” Nazario said, rising to his feet, almost succeeding in masking a degree of pain. “I am easily well enough.”

  “Guns?” Pitt asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Brundage replied. “And Mr. Teague is just back too, sir. He has eight men with him, and he didn’t say so, but they’re all armed. Can see it, sir. Man behaves different when he’s got a gun. And it makes a coat hang a little different too.”

  “Thank you.” He stood up also. “Where is Teague?”

  “Just outside the door, sir. And I got us a wagon to go in. Looks like a furniture wagon.”

  “Thank you. Take Señor Delacruz and look after him, and send Teague in here.”

  “Yes, sir.” Brundage offered Nazario his arm, but Nazario declined it, straightening himself up to walk out.

  Brundage smiled and followed him, holding the door open as Teague came in, closing it behind him.

  “Ready?” Teague asked. He was standing across the room from Pitt and staring at him with odd clarity. Now there was no pretense anymore, no affectation of alliance. Teague led Pitt along because he had not yet found any way to do this without him. Then an uglier thought came to Pitt’s mind.

  Teague knew exactly how he was going to emerge from this the hero, the man who rescued a woman whose beliefs he espoused, when Special Branch could not do it!

  For an instant, staring at Teague’s handsome, chiseled face, Pitt doubted himself. It was his own dismissive attitude that had likely driven Sofia to go to Inkerman Road. She didn’t think Pitt and his men would protect her. If she had, then perhaps Hall would not have dared take her. She would never have been beaten, tortured or now facing death, if they did not succeed in getting to her before Hall finally killed her.

  “Of course I’m ready,” Pitt said with perfect calm. “I was waiting for you. We’d best go. I assume you have transport for your men? Food? I have for mine.”

  Teague’s eyes widened slightly. “Do you have no intention of discussing some form of plan first? You have no idea where you’re even going, man!”

  Pitt looked back at him innocently, also with slight surprise.

  “Is it so close we won’t have time to speak before we get there?”

  In an instant Teague understood. Anger and appreciation flickered in his face for a second, and then were gone.

  “I’m not sure there is room for you in my vehicle,” he said with a slow smile.

  “Not if there are nine of you,” Pitt agreed, matching his smile exactly. “But there is room for you in mine. Come on!”

  Teague was too skilled to show irritation. He fell in step with Pitt and they walked side by side down the corridor to the outside door away from the hall itself.

  Stoker was waiting for them on the pavement. It was still just daylight. The air was balmy and a little damp, the smell of the river discernible.

  “Mr. Teague is coming with us,” Pitt said loudly enough for all the assembled men to hear. “We’ll not travel too closely, so we don’t look like an invading army. Just deliverymen, starting the day a little early, or maybe catching up on yesterday.”

  “Someone who can’t pay the rent doing a flit!” Stoker said under his breath.

  Pitt did not bother to answer, but it was not so rare an occurrence.

  In the wagon Pitt made room for Teague to sit opposite him and as the back was latched he settled as comfortably as possible and invited Teague to give them all the information he had. He saw an expression of cold acknowledgment pass between Narraway and Teague.

  “We’ve tracked her down to an old factory backing on to the river,” Teague began. “Not far by water, but you can’t approach it that way without giving them at least fifteen minutes’ warning, by the time you’ve landed and got up the steps, and that would have to be two at a time, at best. We have to go around the land side, which means going to the south first.”

  “Disused factory?” Pitt asked, trying to recall which one that must be, but there were too many to take a guess.

  “Falling to bits,” Teague replied. “Dangerous. Too dangerous for even the homeless to settle in. Bits of it falling off, rotting, rusting. Whole demon lots sinking into the mud.”

  Pitt did not take his eyes off Teague’s face. He could imagine Stoker’s expression upon hearing about such a place. He was a seaman. Storms at sea did not frighten him, although he respected their power, but the slow, sucking, stinking mud of the river appalled him.

  “We’d better send someone round by the water anyway,” he said. “Whoever’s there might escape that way. We’d look damn stupid if they fled by boat and we couldn’t stop them.”

  Teague nodded. “We can have two of my men take a boat, just to be safe.”

  Pitt raised his eyebrows, not that Teague could see him either.

  “Can’t wait for you to send your men back to do that. We’ll send two of mine. They’re just as capable of borrowing a boat, and just as willing.”

  Teague hesitated only a second. It gave Pitt control of the river escape, but it also greatly increased his numerical disadvantage inside the factory. Pitt knew that too, but he had no alternative.

  “Any idea how many men we are facing?” he asked.

  “Not many,” Teague replied. “Unless he knows we’re coming, which he might, after tonight’s fiasco.”

  “How did you find out all of this, sir?” Stoker asked, with an unusual amount of deference in his voice. Pitt hoped it was assumed! He wished he could see Teague’s face in the shadows to read it.

  There was a long moment’s silence, then Teague spoke.

  “Many questions, and then a stroke of good fortune,” he replied, slowly, as if choosing his words with care. “I have friends, people who admired my career in cricket…supporters, you understand?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” Stoker replied quickly.

  “One of them came forward,” Teague went on more easily. “He had seen a woman resembling Sofia Delacruz. He said she seemed to be in some difficulty, quarreling with the man who was with her. She wished to leave but he would not let her. My…supporter tried to help, and was told that she was emotionally disturbed. She needed restraint, or she would hurt herself. He believed it at the time. Afterward he was less sure.”

  “And you put the pieces together,” Stoker concluded.

  “Precisely.”

  “I see.” Stoker said, apparently satisfied. He made no mention of the pieces of the story that didn’t fit, and Pitt was glad. Now was not the time to put Teague on edge.

  They stopped at a wharf at Teague’s instruction, and Hollingsworth and Brundage got out.

  Teague directed them toward the wreck of the factory, less than a hundred yards away. Nothing else wa
s said.

  Teague returned to his seat in the wagon and they moved forward the last short distance and stopped again, in the deep shadow of the factory ruin.

  Pitt got out, followed by Teague, Stoker, Narraway and Nazario. They nodded to one another, and Pitt led the way down the alley toward the wharf and the warehouse steps where Teague’s men were waiting.

  The night was clear and there was a three-quarter moon. It gave more light than Pitt would have wished, but there was a bank of cloud coming in from the east, and in quarter of an hour the moon would be shrouded.

  They moved along the wharf but remained in the shadows of a huge crane and several stacks of timber.

  There was no one else in sight. There was no sound except the continual murmur of the river below them, the ripples of the water swishing around the huge supporting beams, the suck and slurp now and then as a wave broke against the stones along the shore. It was an ebb tide, just before the turn.

  Moonlight made silver patterns on the surface. It was oily, broken here and there with driftwood and patches of spume. There was no sign of anyone on watch at the factory, no silhouette of anything like a human form.

  A ferry pulled away from the wharf where they had left Brundage and Hollingsworth, a hundred yards away. A boat was making its way out into the river, oars dipping silently in and out.

  It was a moment of decision. They had no idea if Hall was ahead of them or behind. The question was really whether Hall knew that the man who had killed Nazario’s attacker was Castillo. If not, he might be making one desperate last attempt to force Sofia to tell him where Castillo was.

  But if he had already identified Castillo, then they might be too late.

  Pitt turned to Teague. “Now,” he said.

  “No, wait!” Teague replied sharply. “If he comes from the far side, we need to stop him before he gets to her, or warns his men.”

  “He could be in there now,” Pitt pointed out. “Come on!” He turned to signal his men forward, and Teague grasped him by the arm, bringing Pitt up abruptly.

  “I had men watching,” Teague hissed. “He’s not here yet. He’ll come the land way. Wait for that cloud bank. It’s only a few minutes away. That’s probably what he’s waiting for. Come!” He started forward, picking his step through the debris on the path toward the street.