by Anne Perry
“Of course,” Theodosia agreed, her face filled with gratitude. “I … thank you!”
In the event, Vespasia did find Pitt in his office in Bow Street. As far as anyone could tell, the case was closed, and he was now obliged to deal with a great many other matters that had arisen while he was wholly occupied with the Bedford Square murder and the blackmail. He was delighted to see her and welcomed her with enthusiasm.
She regarded his piled desk critically.
“I can see that I am interrupting you,” she said with very gentle sarcasm. “Perhaps I should wait, and call upon you at home?”
“Please!” He readjusted the chair he was holding for her. “There could be nothing more urgent than seeing you.”
“It looks extremely urgent,” she observed with a dry smile, sitting carefully in the chair. “But perhaps also rather arduous. I shall not keep you for very long.”
“Never mind.” He smiled back at her, his eyes alight for the first time in weeks. He returned to his own seat. “I shall have to make do with what time you can spare. What is it?”
She sighed, her humor vanishing. “Almost certainly nothing. But in going through Leo Cadell’s papers I have discovered one thing which all the blackmail victims had in common and which was a cause of concern to at least one among them … the one who was most viciously accused, by implication.”
“Balantyne?” He looked surprised. “What is it?”
She took the letter and the memorandum on the Jessop Club paper from her reticule and passed them both over to him.
He read them carefully and then looked up. “An orphanage? What about those other two people, Bairstow and Cameron? Are they victims as well?”
“I have no reason to suppose so; in fact, every reason to believe they are not, and could not be,” she replied. “Bairstow is senile, according to Theodosia, and Cameron has left England to live abroad. That leaves of the committee members only those we know.” She watched his face closely. She saw the lift of interest and the slight change in his expression. “Will you do me the favor of investigating it, Thomas, for Theodosia’s sake? I appreciate that it is extremely unlikely to be anything other than what it seems, a worthy cause assisted by a group of gentlemen who happen to belong to the same club. But I am extremely fond of Theodosia, and I, too, find it difficult and painful to believe that Leo was guilty of blackmail and of suicide. I am compelled to explore any possibility that it is not so, however remote.”
She hated asking favors, and she saw the understanding of that in his face.
“Of course,” he agreed. “I shall go out to Kew tomorrow and require to see their books, and send men to check on Bairstow and Cameron. Cornwallis will give me all the excuse I need.”
“Thank you, Thomas. I am most grateful.” She rose to leave. It had been an exhausting two days, and now suddenly the grief overtook her and she found it difficult to muster the strength to face returning to Theodosia and staying awake long into the night to offer her what comfort and companionship she could. She could not lessen Theodosia’s pain, only share it. But she could hardly love her and do less.
The next day was beautiful. The heat wave continued, bright and hot, but there was a clarity to the air and every now and then a breeze. People were out in the streets and parks, and on the river were scores of little boats, pleasure steamers, ferries, barges and every other kind of vessel that could take to the water. The sounds of singing, barrel organs and penny-whistles drifted on the air. Children shouted to one another, and every so often there was a burst of laughter.
Pitt took the boat up the river to Kew. It seemed not only the pleasantest way to travel but also probably the fastest.
As he stood on the deck between a fat woman in a striped blouse and a man with a red face, he wondered if he should really be doing this at all. It was an escape from the paperwork that had piled up while he was occupied with the blackmail case, and he did not want to refuse Vespasia. She had looked unusually tired. Grief had taken none of her spirit or her determination, but there was an acceptance of defeat in her which was the profoundest change he could have imagined. It troubled him enough to justify this trip up the river with the sun and the breeze on his face as the steamer made its way up past Battersea and turned south towards Wandsworth. There was another complete S bend before Kew. He would enjoy it.
He found himself smiling as he watched the rowing boats plying back and forth, narrowly avoiding getting in everyone’s way. Little boys in sailor suits stood up precariously and anxious women held them by the britches. Little girls with ribboned straw hats waved excitedly. Fathers bent their backs to the oars with proprietorial satisfaction.
On the shore people picnicked on stretches of grass. He thought idly that a few of them were going to be burned by this evening. At the water’s edge they did not realize how strong the sun was.
He was wasting his time going to an orphanage. Even if there had been petty pilfering, and Balantyne had suspected it, it was not the same degree of crime as the sort of blackmail they had been dealing with. It could only be a few hundred pounds at the very most, and that would have to have been over years or it would have been noticed long before now.
Why had Balantyne questioned it instead of requiring an audit of the books? He had written to Cadell about his concerns. Cadell would hardly be blackmailing him with something as extreme as a murdered man on the doorstep in order to stop him from pursuing such a request.
But that did raise a genuine question to which Pitt had seen no satisfactory answer … who had moved the body of Josiah Slingsby from Shoreditch to Bedford Square? Who had put Albert Cole’s receipt for socks in Slingsby’s pocket? How had he had it in the first place?
For that matter, where was Albert Cole now? If he was alive, where had he gone and why? And if he was dead, why had Slingsby’s body been left on Balantyne’s step and not Cole’s body? Had he coincidentally died of natural causes?
That seemed to be stretching unlikelihood too far.
And it did not answer the questions about Slingsby’s body and how Cadell had even heard of it, let alone how he’d moved it to Bedford Square.
Did any of it matter now, except that it was a puzzle?
A pleasure steamer went by, its passengers shouting and waving, its wake setting the ferry rocking. The sun was dazzlingly bright on the water.
Was he being self-indulgent, expecting every case to have a complete solution, wanting to understand exactly what had happened? Or was he being diligent, making sure of the truth?
What he was really doing was taking a trip up the river instead of sitting in Bow Street doing his paperwork, and trying to help Vespasia a little … although she would have to accept in the end that Leo Cadell was the blackmailer. He had confessed it … in a letter exactly like all the others. Possibly he had gained his knowledge of the lives of the other victims through knowing them in the Jessop Club. One could learn a great deal about people from casual conversation, expanded by a little questioning as if from interest or admiration. The rest he could have gleaned from public records; army and navy details he could easily have asked for on the pretext of having some need to know in his position at the Foreign Office.
But the question remained, how did he know Slingsby at all, let alone remark his resemblance to Cole?
Pitt put it out of his mind for a while and enjoyed the river and the brilliance of the day. All around him people were having fun.
The orphanage at Kew Green was a large, rambling old house with a garden walled around and overhung with trees. It looked spacious enough to house fifty or sixty children, at the very least, and the appropriate number of staff to look after them.
He walked up to the front door, noticing the clean scrubbed step, and pulled the bell. It was answered within minutes by a girl of about seventeen. She was wearing a dark blue cotton dress, starched apron and cap.
“Yes sir?” she said helpfully.
Pitt explained who he was and asked if he might speak to w
hoever was in charge. He conveyed in his manner that refusal was not to be tolerated.
She conducted him to a very pleasant room facing the front entrance and invited him to sit in one of the threadbare but surprisingly comfortable seats while she went for Mr. Horsfall.
When he arrived, closing the door behind him with a snap, he was taller even than Pitt, very rotund around the middle, and with a genial face, as if he smiled often and easily.
“Yes sir,” he said agreeably. “What can we do for you? Dolly said something about the police. I hope none of our charges have been creating a nuisance? We do the best we can to see they are well behaved, and if I say so myself, I think we more than succeed, most times. But children will be children.”
“I have no reason to doubt it,” Pitt replied honestly. “I am from Bow Street, not Kew.” He ignored the surprise in Horsfall’s face. “And it is regarding financial matters I have come. The recent suicide of one of the committee of beneficiaries who donate a large amount to your establishment had raised some questions as to possible irregularities.”
Horsfall looked suitably saddened. “Oh, dear. How painful. Well, sir, of course you may examine our books, with pleasure. But I do assure you, if there has been anything amiss, it has not been after any funds have reached us. We are very careful.” He nodded. “We have to be. We mustn’t lose sight of the fact that we are dealing with other people’s money. If they cannot trust us, then there will be no more.” He looked at Pitt with wide eyes.
What he said was transparently true, and Pitt felt foolish for wasting both Horsfall’s time and his own. But he could hardly say so now.
“Thank you,” he replied. “It is merely to complete the matter. I would be negligent to overlook it.”
“Of course. Of course.” Horsfall nodded again, hooking his thumbs in his waistcoat. “Shall I bring them to you here, or would you prefer to come through to my office, where you can sit at a desk?”
“That would be very courteous of you,” Pitt accepted. He was aware that there was always the possibility of two sets of books, but he acknowledged to himself that he had never really expected anything from his visit beyond being able to tell Vespasia he had tried.
He spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon, apart from a brief respite for luncheon at the local public house, going over endless receipts both for money and for goods, food, fuel, clothes, wages, and found everything in the most meticulous order. Had Horsfall not explained his need for exactness, he might have found the perfection suspicious. But there was not a farthing unaccounted for, and he did not doubt for a moment that if he went equally carefully through the Jessop Club’s donations, he would find a faultless match.
He was barely aware of the children who must fill the building. As Horsfall had said, they were remarkably well behaved. He did see two little girls, walking hand in hand, aged about five and six, respectively, and suddenly one of them began to run, pulling the other along. They were followed a moment later by a girl of ten or so, carrying a boy not more than two. Other movements caught the corner of his vision, and he heard voices.
He closed the books, thanked Horsfall and apologized for troubling him, then took his leave of the orphanage, feeling a trifle foolish. There seemed no reason whatever why Balantyne—or Cadell, for that matter—should have been concerned. Perhaps it was a matter of raising funds, rather than their use, which had worried him.
He could ask Balantyne, but it hardly seemed worth it.
The question of how Cadell had known of Slingsby’s death, and how he had moved the body, seemed far more important. And where was Albert Cole? If he was dead, they should know if it had been a result of natural causes, and if not, then what had happened to him? He would put Tellman onto that as soon as he returned to Bow Street … tomorrow. Tonight he would write to Vespasia and tell her that the orphanage books were immaculate.
Charlotte was grieved by the news of Leo Cadell’s death, largely for Aunt Vespasia, but her imagination extended to how his widow must feel. However, she was relieved of an immense weight of anxiety, even of fear, regarding both General Balantyne and Cornwallis. She liked Cornwallis profoundly, and she knew also how deep was Pitt’s affection for him.
She knew Balantyne must have read of Cadell’s death in the newspapers. He could hardly have missed it. It was sprawled across the front page, along with Lyndon Remus’s speculations as to what sort of long and tragic story might be behind Cadell’s fall from brilliant diplomat to blackmailer, extortionist and, ultimately, suicide.
Half of her mind could understand the necessity for freedom to question and investigate the lives of all public figures. Without such liberty, secrecy begot oppression and ended in tyranny. But with freedom came responsibility, and the immense power of the written word could so easily be abused. There was a sense in which Lyndon Remus was doing exactly the same thing as Cadell had attempted. The fact that Cadell and his family were now the victims did not leave her with any sense of satisfaction or poetic justice, just an awareness of the vulnerability of reputation and the thought of how Theodosia Cadell must feel.
An errand boy delivered a note from General Balantyne, and she gave him the answer that she would be happy to meet him, again in the Royal Botanical Gardens, at three o’clock in the afternoon.
The day was less oppressively hot, and a considerable crowd was taking the air for one sort of pleasure or another. She marveled at how many people seemed to have no other call upon their time and were free from the necessity of any form of work. Before she had met Pitt such a thought would never have crossed her mind. Young ladies of her social class then had far too much time and too little to fill it that gave anything but the most momentary satisfaction. Then she seemed always to have been looking forward to tomorrow for something that might happen.
She saw Balantyne as soon as she was through the gates. He was standing alone, facing the parade of soldiers in uniform, couples arm in arm, girls with parasols accompanied by their mothers, parasols swinging dangerously as they glanced at the young men and pretended they weren’t. He appeared to be watching them, but the stillness of his head betrayed that his thoughts were elsewhere.
Charlotte walked over to him and was almost beside him before he noticed her.
“Mrs. Pitt!” He looked at her gravely, searching her eyes. “How are you?” He paid not the slightest regard to her appearance; he was concerned entirely with her feelings.
“I am quite well,” she answered, equally concerned for him. Looking at his face, she could see little of the relief she would have expected, considering that the threat of ruin that had dogged him for weeks was now lifted. “And you?”
He smiled very slightly. “I had expected to feel better,” he admitted. “Perhaps I am still bemused. I liked Cadell.” He offered her his arm. “Isn’t that ridiculous? But I cannot rid myself of the emotion in a single day, in spite of knowing now what he was really planning. I suppose I am not the judge of men’s characters that I thought I was.” He gave a very slight, rueful shrug.
“I’m sorry,” she said simply. “I don’t think Great-Aunt Vespasia has ever been so fearfully mistaken either. Mrs. Cadell is her goddaughter, you know.”
“I didn’t.” He walked in silence a few yards. “Poor woman. I can imagine the devastation she must be feeling now, the confusion and loss.”
Charlotte thought of Christina. Perhaps he was remembering her when he spoke. Time might have blunted the edge of his own pain, but nothing could remove it. Looking sideways at him now, she would not intrude, it would be inexcusable, but she imagined him thinking of Theodosia Cadell with a pity that could only spring from his own knowledge. His mouth was tugged tight at the corners, the muscles in his neck tense.
“We are all relieved of our fears,” he said after a little while, moving between the banks of roses heavy with perfume in the sun. “We need no longer dread the delivery of mail. We can encounter our friends in the street and meet their eyes without wondering what the
y are thinking, what double meaning may lie behind the simplest remark. I feel guilty for the people I doubted. I hope to heaven they will never know it. Oddly, in all my suspicions, I never thought of Cadell.”
She wanted to answer with something intelligent, but she could think of nothing.
He did not seem to be waiting for her to say anything, merely glad of her companionship and grateful for the presence of someone to whom he could speak his thoughts as they came to him.
“It is terrible that our relief, the end of our ordeal, has to be the beginning of someone else’s,” he went on. “How will Mrs. Cadell endure this? The knowledge will destroy everything of the past as well as the future. Does she have children, do you know?”
“No … I don’t. I think Aunt Vespasia said something about daughters; I’m not sure. I wasn’t really listening. How shatteringly life can change from one day to another.” She looked at the people passing by them, all seeming so carefree, as if there were nothing on their minds more serious than whether their gowns were fashionable or not, whether a young man had smiled at them, or the girl behind them. And yet underneath, their hearts could be breaking too. Every one of them must succeed in some way, or fail, and the price of that was heavy, perhaps poverty, perhaps loneliness. She had been as young, and as desperate in her own way, once.
“What I don’t understand,” Balantyne went on, frowning, “is why Cadell put the body of Slingsby on my doorstep with Albert Cole’s receipt on him and the snuffbox in his pocket. What was he trying to do? Have me arrested for his murder?” He turned and looked at her, his eyes full of confusion. “Did he hate me so much? Why? I liked him ….”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “What is more difficult to understand for me is how he got the body. Slingsby was killed in Shoreditch.”