by Anne Perry
Odelia changed her point of attack.
“I do admire your gown, Mrs. Pitt; such a—a robust shade! So fashionable. I shall not forget it.”
Charlotte translated in her own mind, knowing precisely what Odelia meant. “Let me warn you, Mrs. Pitt, the color is too loud, verging on the vulgar, and it is so up to the minute that next month it will be out of date, and I, for one, will be acutely aware if I ever see you in it again—and will probably say so at the most inconvenient moment.”
“Why thank you, Miss Morden,” Charlotte said with an even wider smile. “Your own gown is most delicately suitable, both to the occasion and to yourself.” To be translated: “Your gown is insipid and entirely forgettable. If you wear it on every other occasion this entire season no one will notice, or care.”
Odelia’s face froze.
“Most kind,” she muttered between her teeth.
“Not at all.” Charlotte nodded to Fitzherbert, and excused herself, sweeping back into the ballroom to accept an invitation to dance the Highland Reel with Peter Valerius.
At half past one, after the last cotillion, the guests adjourned to take supper, and Charlotte was completely occupied with making sure that the maids were on their toes; that the footmen waited upon everyone; and that there were none but the most civilized of unpleasantnesses.
By half past two the party was still in full swing, and at three people were still dancing, a certain sign that the whole venture was a success.
The first high wing of false dawn was glimmering faintly in the sky above the garden, the ferns and the Chinese lanterns, when Charlotte observed the encounter which gave her the most food for thought of the entire evening. She was leaving the room beyond the ballroom and walking towards the balcony and the garden for a breath of air. She was beginning to feel tired and her attention was less sharp than it had been. She passed a bower of white flowers and hesitated a moment to enjoy the cool perfume of them, when her eyes were caught by a gleam of light on a white shirt front and the scarlet splash of a sash of some order, the sparkle of the star.
She hesitated in case she should intrude on someone; such meetings were often more in the nature of assignations between young couples otherwise unable ever to be alone together.
Then she saw that the second person was not a woman but a man. It took her a moment to focus her gaze and recognize Lord Byam. He was standing well beyond the first man and staring out at the garden, the dark web of the trees across the eastern sky, the fancy lanterns still lit and far above them the faint wing of the reflected light over the horizon where in a short while the true dawn would come. She moved a step forward soundlessly.
The other man half turned. It was Lord Anstiss. His face was set in a most curious expression: his lips smiled as if there were some pleasure involved, and yet his eyes stared into the darkness wide and bright. From the very slight flaring of his nostrils Charlotte could not avoid the sensation that he was angry. His hand rested on the balustrade of the balcony, a short, broad-palmed hand with spatulate, artistic fingers. It was perfectly relaxed, even caressing the marble as if the polished texture of the stone satisfied him. There was no tension in it at all; it was a hand ready to caress, not to strike.
Byam was facing sideways, but his eyes were on the press of guests beyond Charlotte moving towards the head of the staircase on the way down to the waiting carriages. His expression was one of deep thought, a little wistful, but there seemed both eagerness and pain in him, and his face was curiously vulnerable.
“Too early to tell,” Anstiss said quietly. “Radley’s a bit of a wild card, but I like the look of him. A man who knows people, I think.”
“And Fitz?” Byam asked, still looking past Anstiss towards the stair head.
“Lightweight,” Anstiss replied. “No staying power. Too easily molded, I think. What I might make of him, another might as easily unmake. By the way, what about Mrs. Radley? Is she delicate?”
“Don’t think so,” Byam said lightly. “Expecting a child, that’s all. Used to be Lady Ashworth. Always in society then.”
“Sounds acceptable. Who is this Mrs. Pitt, for heaven’s sake?”
“Her sister, I gather.” Still Byam was facing the open door and the stair beyond. “It hardly matters, she’ll be gone soon enough. Just standing in for these few weeks. Seems agreeable, and she’s certainly handsome, and quick witted.”
Anstiss pulled a face of distaste. “Hope she doesn’t have social ambitions. God preserve me from ambitious women.”
“No idea.” Byam moved in the direction of the far doorway. “I must go—considerable amount to do tomorrow—”
“Of course,” Anstiss agreed with a shadow of amusement in his voice. “Good night.”
“Good night,” Byam replied, and then without turning back he disappeared between the banks of flowers towards the stair head.
Anstiss turned to the false dawn again, now a white fin above the treetops.
3
CHARLOTTE NATURALLY SLEPT at Ashworth House for what little remained of the night, so Pitt had not seen her when he left for the Clerkenwell police station the following morning. Nor, of course, had he mentioned the murder of William Weems to her. Not that he would have. Apart from the connection with Lord Byam, which was highly confidential, it was a singularly uninteresting case. Charlotte cared why people did things, not how. The fact that the hackbut did not work, or that no other weapon had been found, would be incidental to her. She might well wonder how a person, especially of Lord Byam’s standing, could wander around unnoticed with a gun large enough to cause such destruction to Weems’s head, but it would be quickly forgotten, because she would not find Weems sympathetic, and his debtors would engage her feelings only too much.
As well as an occasional laundress and a woman who came in twice a week to do the heavy work, the Pitts had a maid, Gracie, who lived in the house, and she cared for the children. Jemima was now a bright and extremely talkative seven-year-old of an endlessly inquiring mind and rather disturbing logic. Her brother Daniel, two years younger, was less voluble and far more patient, but very nearly as determined in his own way.
Gracie made breakfast for Pitt, busying herself discreetly about the kitchen, which seemed oddly empty without Charlotte, even though everything else was there as usual. The cooking range was blacked and cleaned and stoked, but in this summer weather damped down to do no more than boil a kettle and heat one pan to fry Pitt’s eggs. Promotion to handling the more sensitive cases had brought its rewards, a new winter coat for Charlotte, new boots for the children, eggs every day if they wished them, and mutton for dinner two or three times a week, fires stoked higher in the winter, and a small raise for Gracie, with which she was delighted, not only for the money but as a matter of pride. She regarded herself as a cut above other housemaids in the area because she worked for such interesting people, and from time to time had a hand in affairs of mighty importance. Only a few months ago she had herself actually gone with Charlotte in pursuit of a murderer and seen some sights she could never forget for their pathos and their fear. Other girls scrubbed and swept and dusted and carried coal buckets and ran errands. She did all of these, but she also had adventures. That made her the equal of any woman in the land, and she never forgot it.
She placed Pitt’s breakfast before him, without meeting his eyes. She was acutely conscious that she was standing in for her mistress, and she did not want to spoil it by presuming.
He thanked her, began to eat, and thanked her again. She really was quite a good cook and she had obviously tried very hard. The kitchen was warm in the sun, the light reflected off the china on the dresser and winked on the polished surfaces of the pans. The room smelled of bread, hot coals and clean linen.
When he had finished he rose, thanked Gracie again, and went out into the passage and to the front door. He put his boots on and collected his jacket. A button came off in his hand as he fastened it. He put it in his pocket along with a small penknife, a ball of st
ring, a piece of sealing wax, several coins, two handkerchiefs and a box of matches, and went outside into the sun.
At the Clerkenwell station he was met by Innes, looking bright and very keen, which surprised him since he knew of nothing to pursue today but the people whose names appeared on Weems’s list of debtors. Perhaps Innes thought he was going to work on the men like the magistrate Addison Carswell, or Mr. Latimer, whoever he was, and the policeman Samuel Urban. He could not have looked forward with anything but dread to investigating Urban, but the other two might be more interesting. If that were so, Pitt would have to disabuse him very quickly. Handling such delicate areas was presumably also why Drummond had taken Pitt from his fraud case and put him onto this. There were not only Lord Byam’s feelings to be considered, but other people’s, especially if a member of the force was involved.
However before Pitt could approach the subject Innes made it unnecessary.
“Mornin’ sir,” he said, straightening to attention, his eyes wide, his face keen. “Doctor sent a message for us to come to the morgue. ’e’s found something as ’e’s never seen in ’is life before. Says it makes this a poetic kind of a murder.”
“Poetic,” Pitt said incredulously. “A grubby little usurer has his head shot off in Clerkenwell, and he thinks it’s poetic! Probably some poor debtor driven to despair couldn’t take it any more and his mind snapped, nothing more to lose. I don’t think I could face a doctor who sees poetry in that.”
Innes’s face fell.
“Oh I’m coming,” Pitt assured him quickly. “Then we’ll have to start going through the list and finding these poor devils. At least we can weed out those who can prove they were elsewhere.” As he was speaking he turned around and went out into the street again, Innes matching him pace for pace, stretching his legs to keep up.
“Would you take family’s word for it, sir?” he said doubtfully. “They’d stick together, natural. Wife’s word’s not much good. Any woman worth anythin’d say ’er man were at ’ome. an’ that’s where ’e’s most likely to be at that time o’ night. Unless ’E ’as night work.”
“Well that’d be something,” Pitt conceded. He knew he was going to hate this. It was painful enough to see the despair of poverty, the thin faces, the cramped, ill-drained houses, the undersized, sickly children, without having to pry into their fears and embarrassment, and maybe leave them terrified of a yet worse evil. “We’ll exclude some of them.”
“What about the big debtors, sir?” Innes asked, skipping off the pavement onto the roadway, dodging a dray cart and making a leap back onto the curb at the far side. “Are you goin’ ter see them?”
Pitt ducked under the huge dray horse’s head as it shied upward, and made a dive at the curb himself.
“Yes, when we’ve got a start on the others,” he replied, out of breath.
Innes grinned. “I guess as you in’t lookin’ forward to that much, askin’ nobs if they’re in debt ter a back street usurer, an’ please sir did yer shoot ’is ’ead orf?”
Pitt smiled in spite of himself. “No,” he said wryly. “I’m still hoping it won’t be necessary.”
Innes was saved from replying by the fact that they had reached the steps of the morgue. He fell behind Pitt and followed him up and inside. Again the smell of carbolic, wet stone and death met them, and involuntarily they both tightened their muscles and flared their nostrils very slightly, as if somehow one could close one’s nose against it, stop it from reaching the back of the throat.
The doctor was in a small room off the main hall, sitting behind a wooden table which was covered with odd sheets of paper.
“Ah!” he said as soon as he saw them. “You on the Clerkenwell shooting? Got something for you. Very rummy, this corpse of yours. Most poetic thing I ever saw, I swear.”
Innes pulled a face.
“Shot,” the doctor said unnecessarily. He was wearing a scruffy coat splashed with blood and acid, and his shirt was obviously laundered, but no one had bothered trying to remove the deep ingrained stains from it. Apparently he had recently left some more grisly work for this meeting. He was sitting facing them, a goose-quill pen in his hand.
“I know.” Pitt was confused. “We know he was shot. What we don’t know is with what gun. The only gun in his office was a hackbut, and it was broken.”
“Ah!” The doctor was increasingly pleased with himself. “What kind of bullets though—you don’t know that, now do you, eh?”
“We didn’t see any,” Pitt conceded. “Whatever it was made a terrible mess of him. But it was pretty close range. The hackbut could have done it, only the pin was filed down.”
“Wouldn’t have recognized it if you had,” the doctor said, now positively oozing satisfaction. “Wouldn’t have thought a thing of it. Most natural event in the world.”
“Would you be good enough to explain yourself?” Pitt said very levelly, sounding each word. “What have you got?”
“Oh—” The doctor caught his exaggerated patience and realized he had tempted them long enough. “This!” He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his handkerchief, and very carefully unfolded it to show a bright gold guinea.
For a moment Pitt did not understand.
“So you have a gold guinea—”
“I found it in your Mr. Weems’s brain,” the doctor said with relish. “Got another, pretty bent. That one must have hit a lot of bone. Gold isn’t very hard, you know. But this one’s in good shape. Queen Victoria, 1876, thirteen years old.” He pulled a face. “Your usurer, gentleman, was shot by a gun loaded with gold coin. Someone has a nice sense of irony.”
The room they were in was bare and functional. Their voices echoed slightly.
“Poetry,” Pitt agreed with a humor that had a dark chill to it, a crawling on the skin, and a clamminess.
“Shot with ’is own money?” Innes said with amazement. “Oh that’s black, that’s very black.”
“Wouldn’t have thought any of those poor beggars would have that much imagination,” the doctor said with a shrug. “But there it is. Straight out of his brain—with a pair of forceps. Swear to it on the Bible.”
Pitt imagined it with a shiver: the quiet room above Cyrus Street, the lamps burning, gas hissing gently in the brackets, the sound of hooves from the street below, Weems sitting at his desk implacable, yielding nothing, the shadowy figure with a huge barreled weapon loading it with gold—and the explosion of the shot, the side of Weems’s head blown apart.
“What happened to the other pieces?” he asked. “You aren’t saying two gold coins did all that damage, are you?”
“No—not possible,” the doctor agreed. “Must have been four or five at least. I can only think the man, whoever he was, picked up those that weren’t embedded too deep in flesh—if you can imagine that. Cold-blooded devil.”
Innes shuddered, and swore under his breath.
“But the gun,” Pitt persisted, forcing the picture out of his mind. “It would take a wide-barreled gun, a big gun, to shoot gold pieces like that.”
“Well it couldn’t ’ave bin the ’ackbut,” Innes reasoned. “There was no way the devil ’imself could’ve fired that. ’E must ’ave brought it with ’im—and taken it away again. Although ’ow no one noticed a feller carryin’ a great thing like that I don’t know.” He pushed out his lip. “O’ course maybe they did notice it, and no one’s sayin’. Could be a sort o’ silent conspiracy. No one loves a usurer, especially not Weems. ’E were ’ard, very ’ard.”
“Even if the entire neighborhood was against him,” Pitt agreed, “that doesn’t account for why he himself sat there while this maniac scooped up the gold, filled the pan with powder, put the coin into the barrel, rammed it, leveled it and fired. Why did Weems remain sitting in his seat staring at him all the time?”
“I don’t know,” Innes said candidly. “It don’t make sense.”
“Only the facts.” The doctor shrugged expansively. “I just find the facts for you, gentlemen.
You have to put them together. I can tell you he was shot with a terrible blast, close to his head, not more than four or five feet away—but maybe you know that from the size of the room anyway. And I picked two gold guinea pieces out of his brains—or what was left of them.”
“Thank you,” Pitt answered. “If there’s anything else please let us know immediately.”
“Can’t imagine what else there could be. But of course I’ll tell you.”
“I’m obliged. Good day.” And Pitt turned around and left, Innes close behind him.
Out in the street in the sun Innes sniffed hard and shook his head. “What now, sir? The list?”
“Yes,” Pitt said grimly. “I’m afraid so—poor devils.”
And it was even harder and more painful than he had foreseen. They spent the next three days going from one sparse uncarpeted worn-out house to another where frightened women answered the door, children clinging to their skirts, pale faced and barefooted.
“Yes?” the first woman said nervously. She was frightened of him because she was frightened of everyone who came to the door.
“Mrs. Colley?” he asked quietly, aware of the passersby, already curious, turning to stare.
She hesitated, then saw no way of escape, and she accepted defeat.
“Yes.” Her voice was flat and without hope. She still stood on the step, apparently it was better to her in spite of her neighbors’ stares. To allow him inside would leave her even more vulnerable, and her desperate poverty more exposed.
He did not know how to tell her who he was without frightening her even more.
“I’m Inspector Pitt, from Bow Street. This is Sergeant Innes—”
“I ’aven’t done nuffink!” Her voice shook. “Wot’s ’appened? W’y are you ’ere?”
The quickest answer was the least cruel.
“Someone your husband knows has been killed. You may be able to help us learn something about it…”
“I dunno nuffink.” Her white face and dull eyes held no guilt, no duplicity, only resignation to misery.