Belgrave Square

by Anne Perry

  “Yer thievin’ swine!” She lunged forward at him, but he was taller and heavier than she. He held out his other hand in a loose fist and she met it hard and retreated with ugly surprise in her face. “It’s mine,” she said between closed teeth.

  “It was apparently never sent, so it belongs to Lady Anstiss,” he contradicted. “And since she is dead, presumably to her heirs.”

  Her lip curled in a sneer. “Yer goin’ ter give it ter ’is lordship, are yer? I’ll bet—at a price. The more fool you! D’yer fink if it were that easy I wouldn’t ’a done that meself ? I know ’im. You don’t. ’e’ll never pay yer. ’Orse-whip yer more like.”

  “I’m going to give it to the police,” he said with a tight smile. “Which I am—Inspector Pitt of Bow Street. When the case is finished, if you’d like to come to Bow Street, you can try to claim it back.” And he turned on his heel and marched out, hearing her string of epithets and curses following him.

  He walked briskly, pushing past the now wildly curious crowd. He was glad that the corner of small, open square lay across his way; the sight of the leaves against the sky was a clean and uncomplicated thing after the greed and the rage of the fishmonger’s shop and the woman in it. Reading the letter gave him a much clearer picture of why Byam had paid Weems for over two years. It was not the innocent passion he had implied, at least not in Laura Anstiss’s mind, and would not be read as such by any impartial person now.

  If Frederick Anstiss hated Byam it would not be surprising. It would take a man of superhuman forgiveness not to feel betrayed by such emotions in his wife for his best and most trusted friend, and guest under his roof.

  The square was crossed diagonally by a path and there were two couples strolling along, heads close in conversation, and a third couple standing facing each other in what was unmistakably an angry exchange. The man in a high winged collar was very pink in the face and clutched his cane fiercely, twitching it now and again, jabbing at the air. The woman was equally heated, but there was a certain air of enjoyment in her, and it served only to exacerbate her companion’s rage. After a few moments more he turned on his heel and strode off, and then as he passed a flower bush he lifted the cane high and sliced off a small branch in sheer temper. The action was so sudden and unforeseen it took Pitt by surprise.

  Then startlingly he had a picture in his mind of Lord Anstiss standing in front of Weems’s desk in his office while Weems read that damning letter aloud, jeering, demanding money, and a stick going up in the air without warning, striking Weems on the side of the head, robbing him of his senses long enough for Anstiss to take up the blunderbuss, fill the powder pan and load it with gold coins, and fire it.

  Or it might have been anyone else, any gentleman who quite normally carried a stick or a cane, and any other provocation. But the letter stayed in his mind, and the image of Anstiss’s face.

  Had Weems, after two years of successful blackmail of Byam, tried his hand with Anstiss, and met a very different man; a man not plagued by guilt, but still burning with injury, humiliation and a long-hidden and unsatisfied hatred?

  But why should he hide the hatred, if indeed he felt it? Friends drift apart; it would need no explanation, and Byam of all people would understand. He would never tell anyone the truth, in his own interest if not in Anstiss’s.

  Pitt quickened his step.

  Or was this the first time Anstiss had realized his wife’s guilt? Perhaps until then he had accepted Byam’s word for the innocence of the affaire, that it was simply an unwise friendship into which she alone had imagined love?

  No one had thought to ask where Anstiss was on the night Weems was shot. He had never been a suspect; he was the injured party, not the offender.

  The injured party.

  He slowed down again unconsciously, the spring going out of his step. That was true. Anstiss was the one wronged. He had done nothing whatever to indicate a hatred of Byam or a desire to do anything but forget the whole matter. He did not seem a man to act in rage so uncontrollable as to commit murder.

  No. If it was he who had struck Weems, and then shot him, there must have been a more powerful motive than simply to avoid paying a few guineas in blackmail over a letter which branded his long-dead wife as an adulteress.

  He was well beyond the square now and walking quickly along the street towards the thoroughfare where he could get an omnibus home. It was early, but he wanted to speak to Charlotte.

  The omnibus seemed ages in coming, and when it did, was hot and crowded. He sat squashed between two large ladies with shopping baskets, but he was unaware of them as he thought more and more of Anstiss and the terrible wound to his pride of his wife so obsessed with Byam. It was a passionate, immodest letter. There was something willful, almost commanding about it. It changed his view of Laura Anstiss entirely. He had imagined her as fragile, utterly feminine with a haunting beauty, and her suicide as a solitary grief, hugged to herself, a terrible loneliness. But the letter sounded far more robust, almost domineering, as though she expected to be obeyed, in fact had little doubt of it. Was she really such a spoilt beauty? Pitt thought he would not have liked her.

  Perhaps Byam had been secretly nonplussed and had rejected her fairly roughly after once succumbing to physical temptation. That would explain his guilt even after so many years. He had betrayed Anstiss by making love to Laura, and then when he discovered her nature more fully, had rejected her pretty abruptly.

  He reached home still preoccupied with his thoughts, and threw the door open. He called Charlotte’s name, and there was no answer. He went down the corridor and through the kitchen out into the garden.

  “Thomas!” Charlotte swung around from the roses where she was snapping off the dead flower heads. “What has happened? Are you all right?”

  He looked around. “Where are the children?”

  “At school, of course. It’s only three o’clock. What is it?”

  “Oh—yes, of course it is. I want to talk to you.”

  She passed him the raffia trug for the flower heads and he took it obediently, holding it for her to continue.

  “What about?” she asked, clipping off another head.

  “Lord Anstiss.”

  She must have caught the urgency in his voice. She stopped what she was doing, her hands motionless above the next rose. She looked at him.

  “You think he is behind your secret society?” She put the secateurs in the basket and abandoned the task. “I think you are probably right. We had better go inside and talk about it.”

  “No,” he said honestly, although even as he said it it ceased to be true. “I think he might have murdered Weems, but I am not totally sure why. I have bits of motives, but they none of them seem quite strong enough.”

  She frowned, standing still by the rose bed. “Well, he surely wouldn’t kill someone just so the police would find the notes incriminating Mr. Carswell, and the police officers, even if he did want to take away the references to Lord Byam, who was his friend—and presumably in good favor with the society. He must be clever enough to think of a better way of doing that.” She shook her head. “One that wouldn’t be so dangerous to himself, or so extreme. It seems rather hysterical to me—and he certainly is not a panicky man, I am as sure of that as I am of anything about anyone. I would say he is cold-blooded, and quite in control of himself at all times. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes—but we could be mistaken. Sometimes very deep emotions lie under an outwardly calm face and manner.” He followed as she led the way inside and set the trug down on the kitchen table. Without asking she put the kettle on the hob and reached for cups and the teapot.

  “Lord Byam might panic,” she replied. “I still don’t think Anstiss would. But I know that is not proof of anything. And he would need a very good reason indeed to do something so dangerous.”

  “I know.” He sat down at the table.

  “Have you had luncheon?” she asked.

  “No.”

  Automaticall
y she took bread, butter, cheese and rich, fruity pickle from the cupboard.

  “Byam is still being blackmailed,” he went on thoughtfully.

  “For money?” she asked, spreading the bread.

  “Not directly, so far as I can see. According to Lady Byam he has changed his mind very radically over the government policy in lending moneys to certain small countries in the empire, in Africa. One of his longtime friends and colleagues called recently and they had a fearful quarrel. He accused Byam of having betrayed his principles. Byam is in a very poor state, sleeping badly and looks like a ghost.”

  She stopped what she was doing, her hands in the air.

  “Peter Valerius—” she said.

  “Peter Valerius is blackmailing him?” Pitt asked with disbelief.

  “No, no! He told me about venture capital.”

  “What are you talking about? Why are you interested in venture capital, and what is it?”

  “I’m not.” She took the kettle off the hob and poured the water over the tea, letting it steep. “He told me because honestly I think he’d tell anyone who would have the good manners to listen, or the inability to escape. It is a sort of money you can get, at a terrible usury, when no one else will lend you money and you are desperate. I mean industries and countries and the like, not little personal debtors.” She turned around to face him. It was not easy to explain because she understood it only very little herself. “If you have a big industry and you have run out of money, perhaps your costs have gone up and your profits have gone down, and your ordinary banker won’t help—that is someone like Byam—then you may go to someone who will lend you venture capital, at a very high rate of interest, and the price of a third of your company, forever—which may be where Anstiss comes in—maybe? But if you are desperate and will lose everything—perhaps you are a small country and your whole trade is tied up in one export—your people are starving …”

  “All right,” he said quickly. “I understand. But I have no idea if Anstiss has anything to do with venture capital.”

  “Well if that is what Byam is being blackmailed for, then it seems someone has.”

  He bit into the bread and pickle, hungry in spite of the thoughts running faster and faster in his brain.

  “I need to know a great deal more about Anstiss,” he said with his mouth full.

  “Well where was he when Weems was killed?” she began, With one hand she poured his tea and passed him the mug.

  “I don’t know—but I think it is past time I found out.” He ate the rest of his bread and held out his hand for the tea. As soon as he was finished he meant to go and find this Peter Valerius. He needed to know if Anstiss had profited from Byam’s Treasury decision. “Where does Valerius work?” he asked her. “He does work, I suppose?”

  “I haven’t any idea. But Jack probably knows. You could ask him.”

  Pitt stood up. “I will.” He kissed her quickly. “Thank you.”

  He took a hansom to Emily’s house and was fortunate that Jack was at home. From him he learned where to find Peter Valerius, and by quarter to five he was striding along Piccadilly with him, dodging around slower pedestrians, leaping off the pavement over the gutter and back again, avoiding hooves and carriage wheels with considerable skill, coattails flying.

  “Of course that is off the top of my head,” Valerius warned cheerfully. “You will want some sort of documentary proof.”

  “If I’m right, I will,” Pitt replied, increasing his pace to keep up.

  Valerius jumped back onto the curb with alacrity. A horse swerved sideways and the coachman shouted a string of ungentlemanly imprecations at him.

  “My apologies!” Valerius called over his shoulder. He grinned at Pitt. “Anstiss is the prime mover behind a lot of financial dealings, and the major shareholder in a few merchant banking interests. He, and his associates, stand to make a fortune, and not a small one, if certain African interests have to go to venture capital. A single year’s interest repayments alone would keep most of us for life, let alone a third share in the company and all its profits in perpetuity.” His face tightened and a look of anger close to hatred came into his eyes. “Never mind they are robbing blind a small country of people caught in a vise of borrowing, price fixing, and trade wars, and not sophisticated or powerful enough to fight.”

  Pitt caught him by the arm and pulled him back as he was about to launch off the pavement into a cross street almost under the hooves of a hansom.

  “Thank you,” Valerius said absently. “It’s one of the most monstrous damned crimes going on, but no one seems to care.”

  Pitt had no argument to offer and no comfort. He refused to make some polite platitude.

  The hansom passed and they crossed the street, Pitt watching both ways for traffic, and just reaching the far side as an open carriage swept by at a reckless speed.

  “Idiot,” Pitt said between his teeth at the driver.

  “It will be traceable.” Valerius went on with his own train of thought. “I’ll get you the proof.” He lengthened his step yet again, his coat flying. Meandering pedestrians who were simply taking the air and showing off moved aside with more haste than dignity, a dandy with a monocle muttering under his breath and two pretty women stopping to stare with interest.

  “Thank you,” Pitt said with appreciation. “Can you bring it to me in Bow Street?”

  “Of course I can. How long will you be there?”

  “Tonight?”

  Valerius grinned. “Of course tonight. In a hurry, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent. Then I’ll see you in Bow Street.” And with a wave he swung around and raced off down Half Moon Street and disappeared.

  With a new sense of hope Pitt made his way to Bow Street.

  Once there he went straight up to Micah Drummond’s office and knocked on the door. As soon as he was inside he knew something was wrong. Drummond looked profoundly unhappy. His face was pale, his features drawn, and there was fury in every angle of his body.

  “What is it?” Pitt said immediately. “Byam?”

  “No, Latimer, the swine. The man is a complete outsider!”

  From a man like Drummond that was the ultimate condemnation. To be an outsider was to be lost beyond recall. Pitt was taken aback.

  “What has he done?” His mind raced through possibilities and came up with nothing damning enough to warrant such contempt.

  Drummond was staring at him.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded.

  “I think I may be close to the end of the Weems case,” Pitt replied. “It’s nothing to do with Latimer.”

  “I didn’t think it was.” Drummond turned back to the window. “Damn him!”

  “Is it about the bare-knuckle fighting?”

  Drummond turned around, his face lifting with hope. “What bare-knuckle fighting?”

  “He gambles on it. That’s where his money comes from—not from Weems. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “No you didn’t! Don’t be this ingenuous, Pitt. Nor did you tell me about Urban’s moonlighting at a music hall in Stepney, and having possible stolen works of art.”

  Pitt felt a sudden coldness inside him. “Then how do you know?”

  “Because Latimer told me, of course!”

  “About Urban? Why, for—” But before he could finish the questions, he understood. The Inner Circle. Latimer had showed his ultimate obedience by betraying Urban, becoming his executioner for the brotherhood. Drummond knew it, and this was the reason for his rage. “I see,” Pitt said aloud.

  “Do you?” Drummond demanded, his face white, his eyes blazing. “Do you? It’s that hellish Inner Circle.”

  “I know.”

  For moments they stood staring at each other, then Drummond’s eyes dulled into misery again and the fire went out of him.

  “Yes—of course you do.” He sat down behind the desk and waved towards the chair opposite. “There’s one good thing. That self-important idiot
Osmar has done it again, and been caught beyond question this time—in a public railway carriage on the Waterloo line, of all things.” His eyes held a flash of humor. “And by an elderly lady of unquestionable reputation and veracity. No one will doubt the Dowager Lady Webber when she says his behavior was unpardonable and his dress inadequate for public wear. And the young woman likewise, and her profession only too apparent. He’ll have no defense this time.” In other circumstances Pitt would have laughed. Now all he could raise was a hard smile.

  “What did you come for?” Drummond asked.

  Pitt told him all he either knew or believed about Lord Anstiss, his suppositions about Weems and the letter, Charlotte’s information concerning venture capital and his subsequent meeting with Peter Valerius.

  “Do you have this letter?” Drummond asked, frowning.

  Pitt drew it out of his pocket and passed it to him.

  Drummond took it and read it slowly, his brows drawing down, his face darkening as he came to the end. He looked up, puzzled and oddly disappointed.

  “Somehow this is not how I imagined Laura Anstiss.” He smiled very briefly. “Which is foolish. It hardly matters, but I…” He seemed unable to find the words, or else was embarrassed by his emotion and its irrelevance.

  “Nor I,” Pitt agreed. “It’s a forceful letter, and perhaps even a little indelicate.”

  “That’s it,” Drummond agreed quickly. “And it seems Byam was a good deal less than honest with us. From this it sounds as if they were indisputably lovers, which he said they were not. I’m not surprised he still feels guilt over her.”

  Pitt looked at Drummond’s face, the letter lying on the desk between them. He knew Drummond was faintly repelled by it, as he had been himself, and had not wished to say so.

  “I think Weems may have decided to try his hand with Anstiss as well,” Pitt said. “After all, it had worked successfully for him with Byam. For two years he had had a nice little addition to his income.”

  Drummond regarded him steadily without interruption.

  “But this time he found a very different mettle of man,” Pitt went on. “Anstiss lost his temper and struck him with his stick. If we go to Anstiss’s house and find his cane, I think there may well be blood or hair on it.”