by Anne Perry
It was pointless expecting to find Byam at home before the early evening. Accordingly it was after six when Pitt arrived at Belgrave Square and the footman let him in. Byam received him within a few minutes; there was no pretense that he had better or more important things to take his time.
They stood together in the library, Pitt by the window with his back to the light, Byam against the mantel facing him. Even the golden glow of early evening could not entirely soften the lines of fear and sleeplessness and the shadows around his eyes.
“What have you learned?” he asked, still with the same courtesy in his voice, although it was strained and his body was stiff under his immaculate clothes. He looked thinner.
“A great deal, sir.” He felt sorry for the man because his suffering was so plainly visible in spite of all his efforts to appear normal, and even though he knew Byam might well be guilty of bringing most of it upon himself, indeed he might even have caused it directly. “But there are still facts missing before we can fit it all together to make sense of it,” he went on.
“You don’t know who killed Weems?” There was a flicker of hope in Byam, but it died almost before he had finished speaking.
“I’m not sure, but I think I am far closer than before.”
Byam’s face tightened but he did not ask again.
“What can I do to help?” he said instead.
“You told me in the beginning, or at least you told Mr. Drummond, that Weems’s original weapon against you was a letter written by Lady Anstiss to you, which unfortunately had fallen into the hands of a maid, who was related to Weems.”
“That’s right. Presumably she showed it to him, or told him of it, and he saw the financial possibilities for himself.”
“And Weems took it from her, because presumably you knew he had it or you would not have paid him?” Pitt went on.
Byam was very pale. “Yes. He had half of it. He showed it to me.”
“We didn’t find it.”
“No. I assume if you had you would not be asking me these questions. What can I tell you that is of any purpose now?”
“Do you know the name of this servant?”
Byam was quite motionless, but his eyes widened. “No—can it matter?”
“It may.”
“For heaven’s sake why?”
“Do you believe that whoever stole the letter did so by chance, sir?”
Byam’s face drained of every last vestige of blood. He swayed on his feet so that for a moment it seemed almost as if he might fall. He put his tongue over dry lips and made no sound.
Pitt waited, wondering if he would say something, anything at all to reveal what terrible thought had come to him. But the seconds ticked by and still he said nothing.
“The maid?” Pitt prompted at last. “She may have told someone else. Perhaps if she married, her husband might be a greedy or ruthless man?”
“I—I have—I have no idea,” Byam said at last. “It was twenty years ago. You will have to ask in Lord Anstiss’s house. Perhaps his butler has some record of past servants—or the housekeeper? Do you really think it could be that? It seems … farfetched.”
“It is farfetched that a man like Weems should have the means to blackmail a person of your position and standing,” Pitt pointed out. It was somewhat less than honest, but he did not wish Byam to have any idea that he suspected Anstiss, even as a remote possibility.
Byam smiled bitterly, but he seemed to accept it as an answer.
“Then you’d better go and see Lord Anstiss’s butler,” he said, as if weariness had suddenly overcome him and he were exhausted with it all. “I presume you know his address?”
“Not of the country house, sir, which is where I suppose I will find the appropriate butler?”
“No, not at this time of the year. Some domestic staff stay in the country, housekeepers probably, and maids, and so on, and a cook of sorts, and naturally all the outside staff, but the butler and valet travel with his lordship. You’ll find the butler in London.”
“Thank you. I shall call upon him and see if he has any record.”
“Please God you find something useful! This matter is—” he stopped, either not wanting to put words to it, or not finding any powerful enough to express his emotions.
“Thank you, sir,” Pitt said quietly.
“Is that all?”
“Yes, thank you sir, for the time being.” And Pitt excused himself and left Byam standing by the cold grate, staring outside at the garden and the fading light.
He preferred to visit Anstiss’s house during the day, when his lordship would more probably be out. He was not an easy man to bluff, or a man who would accept a partial explanation.
However on this occasion, although it was ten o’clock in the morning, Anstiss was at home, and he received Pitt in the morning room of his very elegant and imposing house. The style was Queen Anne, gracious and substantial, but with all the clean brilliance of that period. The curtains were forest-green velvet, the wood mahogany, and the one ornament Pitt had time to observe was an Irish silver chalice of utter simplicity and a beauty so exceptional he found it hard to refrain from staring at it, in spite of the urgency of his business and the fact that Anstiss made him less sure of himself than usual.
Anstiss stood beside a mahogany table with a large bronze of horses and surveyed Pitt with mild curiosity.
“What can I do for you, Inspector?” His blue-gray eyes were unflinching and he seemed vaguely amused. Certainly there was no apprehension in him at all. He was a spectator of this petty tragedy, no more.
Pitt had to treat him as if he knew nothing whatever about any part of the affair, except what anyone might know from the headlines in the newspapers.
“I am investigating the murder of a blackmailer, my lord,” Pitt began.
“How unpleasant. But I imagine such people frequently come to an untimely end.” Anstiss was still only very superficially interested. He was being polite, but it would be safe to assume that his courtesy would last only briefly if there were not something a great deal more relevant following soon.
“They don’t often press their fortune far enough to endanger their own lives,” Pitt answered. Ridiculously he found his mouth dry. “This one was successful for quite a long time. He obtained his information from servants who had chanced to learn something personal about their employers, and chosen to try to take advantage of it.”
Anstiss’s face darkened with contempt.
“If you expect my pity, you will be disappointed, Inspector. Such people deserve to be hoist on their own petard.”
“No sir.” Pitt shook his head. “I find it hard to care who killed him myself. But it is my duty, and we cannot permit private persons to become executioners, no matter how hardly tempted. This judgment may be one we concur with, but what about the next?”
“I take your point, Inspector, you do not need to labor it. What has all this to do with me?”
“One of the servants in question once worked in your country house.” He watched closely to see if there was a flicker in Anstiss’s face, anything that would tell him he had caught a nerve.
There was nothing.
“Indeed? Are you sure? I am not being blackmailed, Inspector.” He made no protestations and there was humor in his face, not anxiety.
“I’m very glad.” Pitt smiled back. “It is someone who was a guest in your home some time ago.”
“Oh? Who is that?”
It was Anstiss’s first error, and not a serious one.
“I am sure, my lord, you will understand if I do not answer that,” Pitt said smoothly. “I must treat such information in confidence.”
“Of course.” Anstiss shrugged. “Foolish of me to have asked. I was not thinking. It was a sense of guilt. I feel responsible that a guest of mine should suffer such an offense.” He shifted his weight a little and relaxed, but he did not invite Pitt to sit. One did not entertain policemen as if they were social acquaintances. “How can I
help? You said it was some time ago?”
“Yes. Several years. If I could speak to your butler he may have either records, or if not, then some memory of past servants. He may even know where they may be found now.”
“It’s possible,” Anstiss agreed. “But don’t hold much hope, Inspector Pitt. Some servants stay a long time, of course, indeed all their lives, but many others move position often, and this one sounds most unsatisfactory. The sort of person you are speaking of may well have passed from one place to another, always downward, and in quite a short space have ended up on the streets, or by this time dead. Still, by all means speak to Waterson if you like. I’ll call him.” And without waiting for any better instruction he moved to the bell rope and rang it.
Waterson proved a dignified man with a dry and individual humor in his face, and Pitt liked him immediately. On Anstiss’s instruction he conducted Pitt to his pantry, where he offered him a cup of tea with biscuits, an unusually civilized concern to a policeman. Then he recalled as well as he was able all the upstairs servants in the country house approximately twenty years previously.
He was tall and lean with a fine head of white hair. Were it not for his deferential and unobtrusive manner, one might have taken him for the aristocratic owner of the house. His features had a refinement Anstiss’s lacked, but neither the strength nor the blazing intelligence. Seeing them side by side one would never have failed to see that Anstiss was the leader designed by nature as well as by society.
“Probably a housemaid or a ladies’ maid,” Pitt prompted, sipping his tea. It was hot and delicately flavored and was served in porcelain cups.
“That would be about the time of Lady Anstiss’s death,” Waterson said slowly, his eyes on the ceiling as he leaned back in his chair. “Not a time easily forgotten. Let me see … we had young Daisy Cotterill then, she’s still with us—head laundress now. And Bessie Markham. She married a footman from somewhere or other. Left us, of course. We’ve got one of her daughters as tweeny now.” He frowned in concentration. “The other one I can recall would be Liza Cobb. Yes, she left shortly after that. Said it was something to do with family. Happens sometimes, of course, but not often a girl can afford to give up a good place just because her family has difficulties.” He looked up at Pitt. “Usually her job is the more important then—a little guaranteed money. Not a particularly satisfactory girl, not got her mind on her duty. Sights set on something better. Yes, Liza Cobb could be your girl.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Waterson. Have you any idea how I might find her?”
Waterson’s blue eyes opened wider. “Now?”
“If you please?” Pitt took the last biscuit. They were remarkably good.
“Well, let me see …” Waterson looked up at the ceiling again and concentrated for several minutes. “I don’t know myself, but it is possible Mrs. Fothergill, the housekeeper at number twenty-five, may know. I believe she was some sort of cousin. If you wish, I will write you a note of introduction.”
“That is very civil of you,” Pitt said with surprise and gratitude. “Really very civil.”
He spent another quarter of an hour sharing a little harmless gossip with Waterson, who seemed to have an ungentlemanly interest in detection, about which he was embarrassed, but it did little to dim his delight. Then Pitt took his leave and visited the house across the street Waterson had indicated. There he found Mrs. Fothergill, who was able with much shaking of her head and tutting to redirect him to yet another possible source of information as to Liza Cobb’s present whereabouts.
Actually it took him till the following noon before he found her behind the counter in an insalubrious fishmonger’s off Billingsgate. She was a large woman with raw hands and a coarse face which might have been handsome twenty years ago, but was now rough-skinned, fleshy and arrogant. He knew instantly that he had the right person. There was a look about her that reminded him sickeningly of the half of Weems’s face which the gold coins had left more or less intact.
He stood in front of the counter between the scales and the wooden slab and knife on which the fish were cut, and wondered how to approach her. If he were too direct she would simply leave. The door to the interior of the shop was behind her, and the counter between her and Pitt.
Perhaps she was as greedy as her relative.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said with a courtesy that came hard to him.
“Arternoon,” she said with slight suspicion. People did not customarily address her so.
“I represent the law,” he said more or less truthfully. Then as he saw the dislike in her pale eyes, “It is a matter of finding the heir, or heiress, to a gentleman recently deceased,” he went on. Yes, it was the eyes that were like Weems. “And if I may say so, ma’am, you bear such a resemblance to the gentleman in question, I think my search ends right here.”
“I ain’t lorst anyone,” she said, but the edge was gone from her voice. “ ’Oo’s dead?”
“A Mr. William Weems, of Clerkenwell.”
Her face hardened again and she glanced angrily at the queue of women beginning to form behind Pitt, faces curious. “ ’E were murdered,” she said accusingly. “ ’ere! ’Oo are yer? I don’t know nuffin’ abaht it. I don’t get nuffin’ ’cause ’e’s dead.”
“There’s his house,” Pitt said truthfully. “It seems you may be his only relative, Miss—er, Miss Cobb?”
She thought for several seconds, then eventually the vision of the house became too strong.
“Yeah, I’m Liza Cobb.”
“Naturally I have one or two questions to ask you,” Pitt continued.
“I don’t know nuffin’ abaht ’is death.” She glared not at him but at the women behind him. “ ’ere—you keep your ears to yerself,” she said loudly.
“I have nothing to ask you about Mr. Weems’s death,” Pitt replied soothingly. “What I want to ask you goes back long before that. May we speak somewhere a little more private?”
“Yeah, we better ’ad. Too many ’round ’ere can’t mind their own business.”
“Well I’m sure I don’t care if you got relations wot was murdered,” the first woman said with a sniff. “But you keep a civil tongue in yer ’ead, Liza Cobb, or I’ll get me fish elsewhere. I will.”
“Yer comes ’ere ’cause I give yer tick when no one else will, Maisie Stillwell, an’ don’t yer ferget it neither!” Liza Cobb spat back at her. She turned and cried out shrilly for someone to come and take her place at the counter, then led him into a hot, stale-smelling back room.
“Well?”
“Twenty years ago you were in service in Lord Anstiss’s country house?”
“Yeah—must’a bin abaht then. Why?”
“You found a letter from Lady Anstiss to Lord Byam, who was a guest there?”
“Not exactly,” she said guardedly. “But what if I ’ad?”
“Then what did happen—exactly?”
“W’en Lady Anstiss died, Rose, ’er ladies’ maid, took some of ’er things, they gave ’em ’er, there weren’t nuffin’ wrong in it,” she answered. “Well w’en Rose died, abaht three year ago, them things passed ter me. All rolled up inside them, like, were this letter. Love letter, summink fierce.” Her broad lip curled in a sneer. “Din’t know decent folk wrote letters like that to each other.”
“How did you come to give it to Weems?”
Her eyes were sharp and clever. “I din’t give it ter ’im. Least not all of it. It were in two pages, like. I sold ’im one, an’ kept the other.”
Pitt felt a prickle of excitement.
“You kept the other one yourself?”
She was watching him closely.
“Yeah—why? Yer want ter see it? It’ll corst yer—yer can take a copy, fer five guineas.”
“Is that what Weems paid you?”
“Why?”
“Curious. It’s a fair price. Let me see it. If I think it’s worth it, I’ll pay you five guineas.”
“Let’s see the co
lor o’ yer money. Yer don’t look like yer got five guineas.”
Pitt had come prepared to buy information, although he had not expected to spend it all on one person. But he was increasingly certain that this letter was at the heart of the case. He fished in his pocket and found a gold guinea, six half guineas and a handful of crowns, shillings and six-pences. He held his hand half open so she could see them but not reach them.
“I’ll get it for yer,” she said, her eyes keen, and she disappeared into the back room. Several minutes later she returned with a piece of paper in her hand. She held out her other hand for the money.
Pitt gave it to her, counting it out carefully, and then quickly took the paper. He unfolded it and saw written in a strong, emotionally charged hand:
Sholto, my love,
We have shared a rare and high passion which most of the world will never know as we do. It must never be lost, or denied us. When I look back on our hours together, they hold all that is most exquisite to the body, and the soul. I will permit no one to tear it from me.
Have courage! Fear nothing, and keep our secret in your heart. Turn it over and over, as I do, in the long hours alone. Dream of times past, and times to come.
There was no more, no signature. Apparently there had been at least one other page, and it was missing.
Pitt kept it in his hand. It was a passionate letter, nothing modest in it or waiting to be wooed. Indeed it seemed Laura Anstiss had been a woman of violent emotions, self-assured, willful, not even considering that her love might not be equally returned.
He began to see how indeed she might have been so stunned by rejection that it temporarily unbalanced her mind and threw her into a state of melancholia. If Byam had ever received that letter, he would have been far less surprised at her suicide.
“ ’ere—gimme it back!” Liza Cobb said sharply. “Yer read it.”
Had Laura Anstiss lived in a world of her own fantasy? The letter implied they had been lovers in a very physical sense. Anyone reading it would assume so. Had Anstiss seen either this, or some other like it?
“No,” he said levelly. “It is evidence in a murder case. I’ll keep it for now.”