by Seven Dials
Pitt inched a little farther from the fire, which was burning with a brilliant glow and far more heat than was needed on a mild September day. Colonel Woodside seemed to be oblivious to it, and to the hot smell emanating from his boots.
“Did you know the Egyptian woman, Miss Zakhari?” Pitt asked, uncertain whether the colonel would consider that an improper question to a gentleman.
“Of course I didn’t know her!” Woodside said testily. “And if I had, I’d not be likely to own it to the likes of you! But I saw her, certainly. Beautiful creature, quite beautiful. Never seen an Englishwoman walk with a grace like that. Moved like weeds in the water . . . sort of . . . fluid . . .” He held up his hand as if to demonstrate, then stopped abruptly and glared at Pitt. “If you want me to say Lovat pestered her . . . I can’t! I’ve no idea. A man doesn’t do that sort of thing in public.”
Pitt changed direction. “Did Mr. Lovat know Mr. Ryerson?” he asked.
“No idea! Shouldn’t think so. Damn!” Colonel Woodside jerked his feet off the fender, put them down on the floor, then took them up again even more quickly, and with a grimace.
Pitt kept his face perfectly straight, but with difficulty.
“Hardly frequent the same places,” Woodside added, crossing his ankles gingerly to keep the soles of both feet off the floor. “Generation between them, not to mention status, money, and taste. You’re thinking about the woman? For God’s sake, man! Beautiful, but no better than she should be. Neither man’s going to marry her. Of course she’d choose Ryerson.” He looked across at Pitt with a frown. “He’s got wealth, position, reputation, polish. Apart from that, he has a charm young Lovat could never achieve. And heaven knows why he never married after his wife was killed . . . bad business, that . . . but he won’t do now. I daresay an heiress could pick and choose a lot better.” He gave a little grunt. “Still, Egyptian women might not know that. Much wiser to play it safe.”
“You don’t think Ryerson would consider marrying her?” Pitt asked, more to see Woodside’s reaction than because he expected a possible answer in the affirmative. He was so touched by a sense of pity for her that it was not even a real question. She was to be used, enjoyed, but never even considered as belonging. There were millions like that, for all sorts of reasons, money, appearance, things they could not change, but it still made him angry. He knew what it was like to be excluded, even if it had not happened to him very often.
Woodside stared at his feet. “Ryerson never got over the death of his wife. Don’t really know why. Takes some men that way, but I hadn’t thought he was one of them. Never seemed that close, but I suppose you can’t tell. Pretty woman, but restless, always looking for some new taste or experience. Couldn’t be bothered with her, myself. Don’t mind a woman with no brains—easier sometimes—but no patience with one who’s downright silly.”
Pitt was surprised. He had not imagined Saville Ryerson falling in love with a woman who was markedly unintelligent. He tried to visualize her, the kind of beauty or demureness she must have possessed to capture his emotions to the degree that a quarter of a century after her death he was still mourning her too profoundly to marry again.
“Was she so very . . .” he began, then found that he did not know how he intended to finish.
“No idea,” Woodside said unhelpfully. “Never understood Ryerson. Brilliant chap, at times, but devil of a temper when he was young. Only a fool would cross him, I’ll tell you that!”
Again, Pitt was slightly taken aback. This was not the man he had observed a couple of days ago—calm, self-controlled, concerned only for the woman.
Had he lost all his ability to judge? Was it possible that Ryerson had shot Lovat himself, in a fit of jealousy, and the woman was shouldering the blame? Why? For love, or in some mistaken belief that he would, or even could, protect her?
“Changed, of course,” Woodside went on thoughtfully, still looking at his feet as if afraid he might actually have scorched the leather of his boots. “God knows, with the government he’s had enough to test any man’s temper over the years. Lonely thing for a man, command, and politicians are a treacherous lot, if you ask me.” He looked up suddenly. “Sorry I can’t help. No idea who shot Lovat, or why.”
Pitt realized it was a dismissal, and he rose to his feet. “Thank you for giving me your time, sir. I’m much obliged to you.”
Woodside waved his hand and turned his feet back to the fire.
Pitt went to Ryerson’s office in Westminster and requested permission to speak to him for a few minutes. He had waited rather less than half an hour when a secretary in a high wing collar and pin-striped trousers came to collect him and show him in. Pitt was surprised it had taken so short a time.
Ryerson received him in a room of somber opulence, leather-covered furniture, old wood with a polish so deep it seemed like satin beneath glass. There were shelves of morocco-bound books with gold lettering and windows looking out onto the slowly fading leaves of a lime tree.
Ryerson looked tired, dark smudges around his eyes, and his hands constantly fiddled with an unlit cigar.
“What have you found?” he said as soon as Pitt had closed the door, and even before he sat down in the chair Ryerson gestured towards, although remaining standing himself.
Pitt sat down obediently. “Only that Lovat apparently had affairs with many women and no loyalty to any,” he replied. “He seems to have hurt many people, some deeply. There is a trail of unhappiness behind him.” He watched Ryerson quite openly, but he saw no flicker of either anger or surprise in his face. It was as if Lovat personally did not matter to him.
“Unpleasant,” he said with a frown. “But regrettably not unique. What are you suggesting? That some wronged husband could have shot him?” He bit his lip, as if to stop himself from laughing, however bitterly. “That’s absurd, Pitt. I wish I could believe it, but what was this wronged man doing at Eden Lodge at three in the morning? What kind of women did Lovat pursue? Ladies? Parlor maids? Prostitutes?”
“Ladies, so far as I have heard,” Pitt replied. “Young and unmarried.” He did not take his eyes from Ryerson’s face and saw the distaste in it. “The sort of women whom scandal would ruin,” he added unnecessarily. His remark was driven by anger, not reason.
Ryerson finally threw his cigar into the fireplace, just missing and hearing it strike the brass surround with a thud. He ignored it. “And are you suggesting that the father of one of these women spent the night following Lovat until he caught up with him in the shrubbery of Eden Lodge, and then shot him? You have conducted many investigations of murder which have sooner or later led you to the withdrawing rooms of the aristocracy. You know better than to make such a preposterous suggestion.” He looked closely at Pitt, as if to read some motive beyond the apparent absurdity. There was no contempt in his stare, only puzzlement and, very close beneath it, fear, real and biting deep.
Pitt realized something else also, with a sudden lurch of surprise, then instantly knew that he should have expected it.
“You have been enquiring about me!”
Ryerson shrugged very slightly. “Of course. I cannot afford less than the best. Cornwallis tells me you are the best.” He did not make it a question, but there was a very slight lift in his voice as if he wanted Pitt to confirm it for him, assure him he had done everything he could.
Pitt was disconcerted to find himself embarrassed. He was angry with Cornwallis, although he knew he would have spoken only with honesty; Cornwallis had probably never lied in his life. His transparency was both his greatest virtue, along with his moral and physical courage, and at the same time his most acute disadvantage in the politics of police administration.
He was utterly unlike Victor Narraway, who was the ultimate sophisticate in subtlety, the art of deceiving without lies, and of keeping his own counsel in everything. If he had any vulnerabilities at all, Pitt had not seen them. He understood emotion in others, but Pitt had no feeling that it was other than with the brilli
ance of his intellect, his power of observation and deduction. He could not even guess at what Narraway felt himself, or if he felt anything at all, if he had unfilled dreams anywhere in the secret recesses of his heart, wounds unhealed or fears that drowned his solitary moments awake in the night.
Ryerson was watching Pitt now, waiting for some reply.
“Yes, I have investigated in many places,” he answered aloud. “Enough to know that some things are just as simple as they appear, and some are not. It seems as if Miss Zakhari had an assignation of some kind with Mr. Lovat, or why did she go out to meet him, and why did she take the gun with her? Had she simply heard an intruder she would have sent her manservant, not gone out herself. And why would Lovat make a noise, if he was walking on grass?”
“Yes,” Ryerson conceded tersely. “You have justification for your reasoning. Possibly someone followed him, and killed him at Eden Lodge in order to lay the blame on someone else. Which they seem to have done with great success.”
Pitt said nothing. He was thinking of Ayesha Zakhari’s gun, lying next to Lovat on the damp ground in the darkness. He looked up at Ryerson, and saw in an instant that exactly the same thought was in his mind. He knew it from the faint flush on his cheeks and the way the understanding flashed between them, and then Ryerson lowered his glance.
“Did you know Lovat?” Pitt asked.
Ryerson moved towards the window and looked out at the leaves turning in the wind. “No. I never met him. The first time I saw him was on the ground at Eden Lodge, at least as far as I know.”
“Did Miss Zakhari ever mention him?”
“Not by name. She was a little upset one afternoon when we met, and she said a past acquaintance was being a nuisance. That could have been Lovat, but I suppose not necessarily.” He moved his hands restlessly. He stood with his shoulders and neck stiff. “Find out the truth,” he said quietly, his voice so soft it was as if he were speaking to himself, and yet the intensity in him made it obvious that he was begging Pitt, he simply did not use the words.
“Yes, sir, if I can.” Pitt rose to his feet. There was a great deal more he wanted to know, but it was too ephemeral to put into words. It was ideas, emotions, things for which he had no name, and he needed to find Narraway before the end of the day.
“Thank you,” Ryerson answered, and Pitt hesitated, wondering if it would be fair to warn him that the truth could be painful, and not at all what he was now forcing himself to believe. But there was no point. Time enough for that if it had to be. Instead, he simply excused himself and went out.
“WHAT HAVE YOU?” Narraway looked up from the papers he was studying and regarded Pitt with challenge. He too looked tired, his eyes red rimmed, his cheeks a little sunken.
Pitt sat down uninvited and tried to make himself comfortable, but it was impossible; the tension inside him made his back ache and his hands stiff.
“Nothing in which I can see any hope of a more satisfactory answer,” Pitt replied, deliberately using words sharp enough to hurt Narraway, and himself. “Lovat was a womanizer, and careless enough to use young, unmarried and respectable women who could be ruined by his attentions, and then moving from one to another, leaving society wondering what sin he had discovered in them.”
Narraway’s mouth pulled tight, lips thin in disgust. “Don’t be so squeamish, Pitt. You know damned well what sins society attributed to them . . . rightly or not. They don’t care who or what you are, only what other people think you are. A woman’s purity is worth more than her courage, warmth, pity, laughter, or honesty. Her chastity means that she belongs to you. It’s a matter of ownership.” There was a bitterness in his voice that was more than cynicism; Pitt would have sworn it was also pain.
Then he thought of how he would feel if Charlotte were to allow herself to be touched intimately by anyone else, let alone that she should return the passion, and any reason in the argument was overwhelmed.
“It matters.” He made it a statement, too hot and sharp to be taken as debate.
Narraway smiled, but he did not meet Pitt’s eyes. “Are you speaking generally, or do you know the names of any of these women, and more to the point, their fathers, brothers, or other lovers who might feel like following Lovat around London and shooting him?”
“Of course I do,” Pitt responded, glad to be on safer ground, and yet feeling he had left something unsaid which mattered. Was it only his feelings, too powerful to be expressed in so few and simple words, or was there something of reason there also, a fact that momentarily escaped him?
“And from the expression in your face,” Narraway observed, “it was all of no use to you.”
“To us,” Pitt corrected tartly. “None at all.”
He was amazed and a little hurt to see the hope die out of Narraway’s eyes, as if he had held it as more than a thing of the mind.
Sensing Pitt’s gaze on him, Narraway turned half away, shielding something in himself. “So you have learned nothing, except that Lovat was a man courting disaster.”
That was a cutting way to have worded it, but it was essentially true. “Yes.”
Narraway drew in his breath to say something else, then let it out without speaking.
“I saw Ryerson,” Pitt volunteered. “He’s still convinced Miss Zakhari is innocent.”
Narraway looked back at him, his eyebrows raised.
“Is that an oblique way of saying that he isn’t going to help himself by stepping back and admitting that he arrived to find Lovat already dead?” Narraway asked.
“I don’t know what he’s going to say. The police know he was there, so he can’t deny it.”
“Too late anyway,” Narraway retorted with sudden bitterness. “The Egyptian embassy knew he was there. I’ve moved everything I can to find out who told them, and learned nothing, except that they have no intention of telling me.”
Very slowly Pitt sat up straighter. He had not even been thinking about what Narraway had been doing, but with a charge like electricity shooting through him, he realized the import of what he had said.
Narraway smiled with a downward twist of his mouth. “Exactly,” he agreed. “Ryerson may be making a fool of himself, but someone is giving him some discreet and powerful assistance. What I am not yet certain of is what part Ayesha Zakhari is playing, and whether she is aware of it herself. Is she the queen or the pawn?”
“Why?” Pitt asked, leaning forward now. “Cotton?”
“It would seem the obvious answer,” Narraway replied. “But obvious is not necessarily true.”
Pitt stared at him, waiting for him to continue.
Narraway relaxed back into his chair, but it seemed more a resignation than a matter of ease. “Go home and sleep,” he said. “Come back tomorrow morning.”
“That’s all?”
“What else do you want?” Narraway snapped. “Take it while you can. It won’t last.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
CHARLOTTE GAVE A GREAT DEAL of thought to Martin Garvie and what could have happened to him. She was aware of many of the ugly or tragic things that could overtake servants, and of the misfortunes they could bring upon themselves. She also knew that Tilda was his sister, and Tilda’s opinion of him was bound to be colored by her affections, and a certain innocence of the world inevitable in any girl of her lack of experience. Charlotte would not have wished it to be otherwise for Tilda’s own sake. She must be of a similar age to Gracie, but she had nothing like the same spirit or the curiosity, and perhaps not the bitter experience of the streets either. Perhaps Martin had protected her from that?
They were in the kitchen, and Pitt had not been gone more than an hour.
“Wot are we gonna do?” Gracie asked with an awkward mixture of deference and determination. Nothing would persuade her to stop, and yet she knew she needed Charlotte’s help. She was ashamed of having alienated Tellman, and she was confused by it, and for the first time, a little afraid of her own feelings.
Charlotte was
busy removing a grease stain from Pitt’s jacket. She had already made a fine powder of ground sheep’s trotters. It was something she naturally kept in store, along with other ingredients for cleaning agents, such as sorrel juice, chalk, horse hoof parings—clean, of course—candle ends, and lemon or onion juice. She concentrated on what she was doing, dabbing at the stain with a cloth soaked in turpentine, and avoiding looking at Gracie so as not to give any emotional value to what she was saying.
“We should probably begin by speaking with Tilda again,” she continued, reaching out and taking the powder from Gracie’s hand. She shook a little onto the damp patch and looked at it critically. “A description of Martin might be helpful.”
“We gonna look for ’im?” Gracie asked with surprise. “Where’d we start? ’E could be anywhere! ’E could ’a gorn . . . ’e could be . . .” She stopped.
Charlotte knew she had been going to say that he could be dead. It was the thought at the edge of her own mind too. “It’s difficult to ask people questions about seeing someone if we can’t say what he looks like,” she replied, using a small, stiff brush to take the powder away. The stain was a lot better. One more time and it would be clean. She smiled very slightly. “It also makes it sound as if we don’t know him,” she added. “We don’t . . . but the truth doesn’t sound very believable.”
“I can fetch Tilda ter tell us,” Gracie said quickly. “She does ’er errands the same time most days.”
“I’ll come with you,” Charlotte said.
Gracie’s eyes widened. It was a mark of Charlotte’s seriousness that she would come out into the street to wander around waiting for someone else’s housemaid to pass. It was extraordinary friendship. It also made it clear that she believed he could be in very real danger. Gracie looked at Pitt’s jacket, then up at Charlotte, the question in her eyes.
“I’ll finish it when we get back,” Charlotte said. “What time does Tilda go out?”
“ ’Bout now,” Gracie replied.