by Anne Perry
“Tosher!” he called out, and his voice echoed in all directions. Finally he fell silent and there was no more sound than the incessant dripping, broken by the squeak of rats, and then nothing again.
He walked a dozen more yards, and then shouted again. “Tosher” was the general cant term for the men who made their living scavenging the sewers. He was close to a great sluice that must have spilled water over a drop of a dozen feet onto a lower level. He moved on, and called a third time.
“Yen?”
The voice was so close and so harsh it startled him and he stopped and nearly fell into the channel. Almost at his elbow a man in thigh-high rubber boots came out of a side tunnel, his face grimy, his hair smeared across his forehead.
“Is this your stretch?” Pitt jerked his arm backwards towards the way he had come.
“‘Course it is. What d’yer think I’m doin’ ’ere, lookin’ for the source o’ the Nile?” the man said with contempt. “If yer lookin’ fer a stretch o’ yer own, this ain’t it. It’s not fer sale.”
“Police,” Pitt said succinctly. “Bow Street.”
“Well, yer off yer beat,” the man said dryly. “Watcher want ’ere?”
“A woman’s blue cloak, maybe put down a manhole almost a week ago.”
In the dim light the man’s face had a guarded look, devoid of surprise. Pitt knew he had found it, and felt a sudden breathlessness as the reality of his belief swept over him.
“Maybe,” the man said cautiously. “Why? What’s it werf?”
“Accessory after the fact of murder, if you lie about it,” Pitt replied. “Where is it?”
The man drew in his breath, whistling a little between his teeth, looked at Pitt’s face for several seconds, then changed his mind about prevaricating.
“There weren’t nothing wrong with it at all, not even wet,” he said with regret. “I gave it to me woman.”
“Take it to Bow Street. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get it back after the trial. The most important thing is your evidence. Where did you find it, and when?”
“Tuesd’y. Early mornin’. It were ‘ung up on the stairs up inter Berkeley Square. Someone must a’ dropped it in and not even waited to see if it fell all the way down. Though why the devil anyone’d want ter do that I dunno.”
“Bow Street,” Pitt repeated, and turned to find his way back. A rat scuttered past him and plopped into the channel. “Don’t forget,” he added. “Accessory to murder will get you a long stretch in the Coldbath. Helpfulness will get you an equally long stretch of undisturbed prosperity.”
The man sighed and spat, muttering something under his breath.
Pitt retraced his steps back to the ladder and daylight. The cabby was waiting for him with burning curiosity in his eyes.
“Well?” he demanded.
Pitt replaced the light in its bracket.
“Wait for me outside number fourteen,” he replied, breathing in deeply and looking for his handkerchief to blow his nose. He set out at a brisk walk across the square to Chancellor’s house, mounted the steps and knocked at the door. The lamplighter was busy at the far side and a carriage swept past, harness jingling.
The footman let him in with a look of surprise and distaste, not only at his appearance but also at the distinctive and highly unpleasant odor surrounding him.
“Good evening, Superintendent.” He opened the door wide and Pitt stepped inside. “Mr. Chancellor has just returned from the Colonial Office. I shall tell him you are here. May I say, sir, that I hope you have some good news?” It seemed he had not read the shadows in Pitt’s face.
“I have much further information,” Pitt replied. “It is necessary that I speak with Mr. Chancellor. But perhaps before you bother him, I might have another word with the maid-Lily, I think her name is-who saw Mrs. Chancellor leave.”
“Yes sir, of course.” He hesitated. “Superintendent, should I know … er … should I have Mr. Richards present this time?” Perhaps after all he had seen something of the emotions Pitt felt with such intensity, the sadness, the knowledge that he was in the presence of overwhelming passions of violence and tragedy.
“I think not,” Pitt replied. “But thank you for the thought.” The man had served Chancellor for fifteen years. He would be confused, torn with horror and conflicting loyalties. There was no need to subject him to what was bound to ensue. He would be little likely to be of any use.
“Right sir. I’ll get Lily for you. Would you like to see her in the housekeeper’s sitting room?”
“No thank you, the hall would be better.”
The footman turned to leave, hesitated for a moment, perhaps wondering if he should offer Pitt some opportunity to wash, or even clean clothes. Then he must have considered the situation too grave for such small amenities.
“Oh-” Pitt said hastily.
“Yes sir?”
“Can you tell me what happened to Bragg’s arm?”
“Our coachman, sir?”
“Yes.”
“He scalded it, sir. Accident, of course.”
“How did it happen, exactly? Were you there?”
“No sir, but I got there just after. In fact we were all there then, trying to clean up, and to help him. It was a pretty right mess.”
“A mess? Did he drop something hot?”
“Not exactly. It was Mr. Chancellor himself who dropped it. It just sort of slipped out of his hands, so Cook said.”
“What did?”
“A mug o’ hot cocoa. Boiling milk is awful hot, makes a terrible scald, it does. Poor George was in a right state.”
“Where did it happen?”
“Withdrawing room. Mr. Chancellor had sent for George to harness up the brougham and come and tell him when it was done. He wanted to know something about one o’ the horses, so he wanted George hisself, like, not just the message. He was having a mug o’ cocoa-”
“Warm weather for cocoa, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. I would sooner have had a lemonade, myself,” the footman agreed. His face was puzzled, but he still obediently answered every question.
“Is Mr. Chancellor fond of cocoa?”
“Never ’eard that he was. But he certainly had cocoa that evening. I’d swear to that. I’ve seen poor George. Anyway, seems Mr. Chancellor’s foot slipped, or summink, and George moved rather sudden like, and got himself scalded. Mr. Chancellor rang the bell immediately, and Mr. Richards came and saw what had happened. Then before you know what’s what, we’re all in the kitchen trying to help poor George, getting his coat off, ripping his shirtsleeves, putting this and that on his arm, Cook and the housekeeper arguing fit to bust whether butter’s best, or flour, maids shrieking and Mr. Richards saying as we should get a doctor. Housemaids is upstairs in bed, in the attic, so they didn’t know a thing, and nobody even thought of them to clean up. And with Mr. Chancellor needing to go out”
“So he drove himself?”
“That’s right.”
“What time did he get home?”
“Don’t know, sir. Late, because we went to bed just before midnight, poor George being in state, and the mistress not home yet….” His face fell as he remembered all that he had learned since the panic of that night.
“Where was Lily during this upheaval?”
“In the kitchen with the rest of us, till Mr. Chancellor sent her to the landing to tear up the old sheets to make bandages for George.”
“I see. Thank you.”
“Shall I get Lily, sir?”
“Yes please.”
Pitt stood in the fine hallway, looking about him, not at the pictures and the sheen on the parquet flooring, but at the stairway and the landing across the top, and then at the chandelier hanging from the ceiling with its dozen or so lights.
Lily came through the green baize door looking anxious and still profoundly shaken.
“Y-you want to see me, sir? I didn’t know anything, I swear, or I’d have told you then. I don’t know where the mistr
ess went. She never said a thing to me. I didn’t even know she was going out!”
“No, I know that, Lily,” he said as gently as he could. “I want you to think back very carefully. Can you remember where you were when you saw her leave? Tell me exactly what you saw … absolutely exactly.”
She stared at him. “I just came along the landing after turning down the beds an’ looked down to the hallway….”
“Why?”
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Why did you look down?”
“Oh-I suppose ’cause I saw someone moving across towards the door….”
“Exactly what did you see?”
“Mrs. Chancellor going to the front door, sir, like I said.”
“Did she speak to you?”
“Oh no, she was on ’er way out.”
“She didn’t say good night, or tell you when she expected to come back? After all, you would have to wait up for her.”
“No sir, she didn’t see me ’cause she didn’t turn ’round. I just saw her back as she went out.”
“But you knew it was her?”
“O’ course I knew it was her. She was wearin’ her best cloak, dark blue velvet, it is, lined with white silk. It’s the most beautiful cloak….” She stopped, her eyes filling with tears. She sniffed hard. “Yer didn’t ever find it, did you, sir?”
“Yes, we found it,” Pitt said almost in a whisper. He had never before felt such a complex mixture of grief and anger about any case that he could recall.
She looked at him. “Where was it?”
“I don’t think you need to know that, Lily.” Why hurt her unnecessarily? She had loved her mistress, cared for her in her day-to-day life, been part of it in all its intimacies. Why tell her it had been pushed down into the sewers that wove and interwove under London?
She must have understood his reasons. She accepted the answer.
“You saw the back of Mrs. Chancellor’s head, the cloak, as she went across the hall towards the front door. Did you see her dinner gown beneath it?”
“No sir, it comes to the floor.”
“All you could see would be her face?”
“That’s right.”
“But she had her back to you?”
“If you’re going to say it weren’t her, sir, you’re wrong. There weren’t no other lady her height! Apart from that, there weren’t no other lady here, sir, then nor ever. Mr. Chancellor isn’t like that with other ladies. Devoted, he was, poor man.”
“No, I wasn’t thinking that, Lily.”
“I’m glad….” She looked uncomfortable. Presumably she was thinking of Peter Kreisler, and the ugly suspicions that had crossed their minds with regard to Susannah.
“Thank you, Lily, that’s all.”
“Yes sir.”
As soon as Lily had gone the footman appeared from the recess beyond the stairs. No doubt he had been waiting there in order to conduct Pitt to his master.
“Mr. Chancellor asked me to take you to the study, Superintendent,” he instructed Pitt, leading the way through a large oak door, along a passage into another wing of the house, and knocking on another door. As soon as it was answered, he opened it and stood back for Pitt to enter.
This was very different from the more formal reception rooms leading off the hall where Pitt had seen Chancellor before. The curtains were drawn closed over the deep windows. The room was decorated in yellows and creams, with touches of dark wood, and had an air of both graciousness and practicality. Three walls had bookcases against them, and there was a mahogany desk towards the center, with a large chair behind it. Pitt’s eyes went straight to the humidor on top.
Chancellor looked strained and tired. There were shadows around his eyes, and his hair was not quite as immaculate as when Pitt had first known him, but he was perfectly composed.
“Further news, Mr. Pitt?” he said with a lift of his eyebrows. He only glanced at Pitt’s grimy clothes and completely disregarded the odor. “Surely anything now is academic? Thorne has escaped, which may not be as bad as it first appears. It will save the government the difficulty of coming to a decision as to what to do about him.” He smiled with a slight twist to his mouth. “I hope there is no one else implicated? Apart from Soames, that is.”
“No, no one,” Pitt replied. He hated doing this. It was a cat-and-mouse game, and yet there was no other way of conducting it. But he had no taste for it, no sense of achievement.
“Then what is it, man?” Chancellor frowned. “Quite frankly, I am not in a frame of mind to indulge in lengthy conversation. I commend you for your diligence. Is there anything else?”
“Yes, Mr. Chancellor, there is. I have learned a great deal more about the death of your wife….”
Chancellor’s eyes did not waver. They were bluer than Pitt had remembered them.
“Indeed?” There was a very slight lift in his voice, an unsteadiness, but that was only natural.
Pitt took a deep breath. His own voice sounded strange in his ears when he spoke, almost unreal. The clock on the Pembroke table by the wall ticked so loudly it seemed to echo in the room. The drawn curtains muffled every sound from the garden or the street beyond.
“She was not thrown into the river and washed up by chance of tide at Traitors Gate….”
Chancellor said nothing, but his eyes did not leave Pitt’s.
“She was killed before, early in the evening,” Pitt went on, measuring what he was saying, choosing his words, the order in which he related the facts. “Then taken in a carriage across the river to a place just south of London Bridge, a place called Little Bridge Stairs.”
Chancellor’s hand closed tight above the desk where he was sitting. Pitt was still standing across from him.
“Her murderer kept her there,” Pitt continued, “for a long time, in fact until half past two in the morning, when the tide turned. Then he placed her in the small boat which is often tied up at the steps, the boat he had seen when crossing London Bridge. It is a few hundred yards away.”
Chancellor was staring at him, his face curiously devoid of expression, as if his mind were on the verge of something terrible, hovering on the brink.
“When he had rowed out a short way,” Pitt went on, “he put her over the stem, tied across her back and under her arms with a rope, and rowed the rest of the way, dragging her behind, so her body would look as if it had been in the water a long time. When he got to the far side, he laid her on the slipway at Traitors Gate, because that was where he wished her to be found.”
Chancellor’s eyes widened so imperceptibly it could have been a trick of the light.
“How do you know this? Do you have him?”
“Yes, I have him,” Pitt said softly. “But I know it because the carriage was seen.”
Chancellor did not move.
“And during the long wait, he smoked at least two cigars,” Pitt went on, his eyes going for a moment to the humidor a few inches from Chancellor’s hand, “of a curiously aromatic, pungent brand.”
Chancellor coughed and caught his breath. “And you … worked all this out?”
“With difficulty.”
“Was …” Chancellor was watching Pitt very closely, measuring him. “Was she killed in the hansom cab? Was she ever really going to Christabel Thorne’s?”
“No, she was never going to Christabel Thorne’s,” Pitt replied. “There was no hansom cab. She was murdered here in this house.”
Chancellor’s face tightened, but he did not move. His hand on the desk opened and closed, but he did not touch the cigar box.
“Her maid saw her leave,” he said, swallowing with difficulty.
“No, Mr. Chancellor, she saw you leave, wearing Mrs. Chancellor’s cloak,” Pitt corrected him. “She was a very tall woman, as tall as you are. You walked along the street to the manhole at the corner of the square, then you opened it and pushed the cloak down. You returned here and went upstairs saying you had put her in the hansom. You rang the bell and ordered yo
ur own carriage. Shortly after that you contrived an accident in which you scalded your coachman’s arm, and while everyone was attending to that, you carried Mrs. Chancellor’s body downstairs and put it into your own carriage, which you drove east and south until you crossed the river, as I have already said, and waited until the tide turned, so you could leave her at Traitors Gate, when the water would not rise any further and take her away again.”
Pitt reached forward and opened the cigar box, taking out one of the rich cigars. The aroma of it was sickeningly familiar. He held it to his nose, and looked over it at Chancellor.
Suddenly the pretense was gone. A passion flooded Chancellor’s face that was so savage and so violent it altered him utterly. The assurance, the urbanity, were vanished, his lips drawn back revealing his teeth, his cheeks white; there was a burning outrage in his eyes.
“She betrayed me,” he said harshly, his voice still high with the incredulity of it. “I loved her absolutely. We were everything to each other. She was more than just my wife, she was my companion, my partner in all my dreams. She was part of everything I did, everything I’ve admired. She always believed exactly as I did … she understood … and then she betrayed me! That’s the worst sin of all, Pitt … to betray love, to betray trust! She fell away, she couldn’t trust me to be right. A few rambling, ill-informed, hysterical conversations with Arthur Desmond, and she began to doubt! To doubt me! As if I didn’t know more about Africa than he did, than all of them! Then Kreisler came along, and she listened to him!” His voice was rising with the fury which consumed him till it was close to a shriek.
Pitt moved a step forward but Chancellor ignored him. The wound he felt engrossed him so he was barely aware of Pitt as anything more than an audience.
“After all I had told her, all I had explained,” he went on, risen to his feet now behind the desk, staring at Pitt, “she didn’t trust me, she listened to Kreisler-Peter Kreisler! A mere adventurer! He sowed a few seeds of doubt in her, and she lost her faith! She told me she was going to have Standish remove his backing from Rhodes’s venture. That in itself wouldn’t have mattered….”
He laughed savagely, a wild note of hysteria rising in it. “But when people knew about it … that my own wife no longer supported me! Dozens would have withdrawn-hundreds! Soon everyone would have doubted. Salisbury’s only looking for an excuse. I would have looked a complete fool, betrayed by my own wife!”