Bedford Square

by Anne Perry

“Oh …” Horsfall paled. He licked his lips. Pitt had said nothing threatening, but the look in his eyes was enough to warn of savage dislike. “Well … what is the problem, Mr …. er …?”

  “Where were these children placed?” Pitt repeated the original question.

  Horsfall was clenching and unclenching his hands.

  “I told you … I should have to look it up. I don’t have a good memory for the details of addresses … large numbers of … addresses.”

  “Approximately …” Pitt insisted.

  “Oh … well … Lincolnshire, yes; Spalding. And several … as far north as Durham … yes.”

  “And Nottinghamshire?” Pitt suggested.

  Horsfall’s eyebrows rose. “Why, yes. Nottinghamshire too.”

  “How about Wales?” Pitt went on. “South Wales. Lot of mines in South Wales.”

  Horsfall was white, a sheen of sweat on his face. “M-mines?”

  “Yes. Children are useful in lots of places … in mines, up chimneys, in factories, cleaning out corners adults can’t get into, especially small children, young … thin. Even three- and four-year-olds can be taught to pick rags, pick oakum, send them out into the fields to work. All sorts of crops need taking up … by hand … little hands are as good as big ones and don’t need paying … not if you’ve bought them ….”

  “That’s …” Horsfall swallowed and choked.

  “Slavery,” Pitt finished for him.

  “You can’t … you can’t prove that.…” Horsfall gasped. His face was running with sweat.

  “Oh, I’m sure I can.” Pitt smiled, showing his teeth.

  Horsfall ran his hands over his brow.

  “Do you know a man named Ernest Wallace?” Pitt asked, changing the subject suddenly. “Small, wiry, very bad temper indeed.”

  Horsfall’s deliberation was plain in his expression. He could not judge whether acknowledgment or denial was going to make his situation worse.

  Pitt watched him without the slightest pity.

  Tellman did not move.

  “I … er …” Horsfall hesitated.

  “You can’t afford to lie to me,” Pitt warned.

  “Well …” Horsfall licked his lips. “He may have done the occasional odd job around the … garden … for us. Yes … yes, he did. Wallace … yes.” He stared at Pitt as at some dangerous animal.

  “Where does the money go?” Pitt switched back to the original line of questioning.

  “M-m-money?” Horsfall stammered.

  Pitt moved forward half a step.

  “I don’t know!” Horsfall’s voice rose as if he had been physically threatened. “I only take my pay. I don’t know where it goes.”

  “You know where you send it,” Tellman said bitterly. He was shorter and narrower than Horsfall, but there was such a rage in his voice that the bigger man quailed.

  “Show me!” Pitt commanded.

  “I-I don’t have … books!” Horsfall protested, raising his hands as if to ward off a blow.

  Pitt was unimpressed. “You have accounts of some kind. Either you have a master who takes the money from you one way or another, or else you haven’t, and you are responsible for it all ….” He did not need to continue. Horsfall was shaking his head and waving his hands in denial. “Is this house yours?” Pitt pressed.

  “No. Of course not. It belongs to the orphanage.”

  “And the profits from selling the children?”

  “Well … I wouldn’t use terms like that ….” Horsfall sputtered.

  “Slavery, Mr. Horsfall—the selling of human beings—is illegal in this country. You can be charged as an accomplice or all by yourself, as you like,” Pitt answered. “Where does the money go?”

  “I’ll-I’ll show you.” Horsfall surrendered. “I only do what I’m told.”

  Pitt looked at him with complete disgust and followed him out of the room to find the notes he kept of his transactions. He read them all and added them up. Over the space of eight years it amounted to tens of thousands of pounds. But there were no names to prove in whose pockets it had ended.

  The local police arrested Horsfall and placed someone in temporary charge of the orphanage. Pitt and Tellman set out on their way back to London, traveling on the ferry, glad of the bright air and the sounds of the busy river.

  “He should swing,” Tellman said between his teeth. “That blackmailing swine won’t get him off.”

  “I’ll be damned if he’ll get Wallace off either,” Pitt retorted.

  Tellman stared straight ahead of him up the river towards the Battersea Bridge. A pleasure boat passed them going the other way, people waving, ribbons and streamers bright in the wind. He did not seem to see it. “If it isn’t Cadell, then it’s got to be White or Tannifer.” He looked at Pitt’s bulging pockets. “We’ve got enough paper there to work out where the money went.”

  It took them a day and a half of painstaking, minute unraveling of buying and selling, of finding the names behind the names, all accomplished with savage deliberation, but by four o’clock in the afternoon, two days after their return from the orphanage, they could prove that the trail led to Sigmund Tannifer.

  Tellman stood with the last piece of paper in his hand and swore viciously. “What’ll he get?” he said fiercely. “He’s sold little children to labor in the mines like they were animals. Some of them’ll never see the light of day again.” His voice caught with his emotion. “But we can’t prove he knew what Horsfall was doing. He’ll deny it. Say it was rents or something, surplus from other properties. He blackmailed innocent men and near drove them mad with fear … enough to make Cadell shoot himself and White resign … but we can’t prove that either. We’d have to show that he threatened to expose them, and that would only ruin them just like he said he would. We’d be doing it for him.” He swore again, his fists clenched white, his eyes blazing. He was demanding an answer from Pitt, expecting him to solve the injustice somehow.

  “It wasn’t even blackmail,” Pitt said with a shrug. “He didn’t ask for anything. He would have … their silence over the orphanage, if they had ever found out … but it never came to that.”

  “We’ve got to get him for something!” Tellman’s voice rose to a shout, his fist gripping the air.

  “Let’s go and arrest him for taking the proceeds of Horsfall’s business,” Pitt answered. “No jury will believe he thought that it was profits from the kitchen garden.”

  “That doesn’t matter a damn,” Tellman said bitterly.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Pitt pulled a face. “I think that officious little newspaper writer, Remus, could make a good story out of it.”

  Tellman stared at him. “He couldn’t know … could he?”

  “He could if I told him,” Pitt responded.

  “We can’t prove that Tannifer knew what Horsfall did.”

  “I don’t think that will bother Remus too much ….”

  Tellman’s eyes widened. “You would tell him?”

  “I don’t know. But I should enjoy letting Tannifer think I would.”

  Tellman laughed, but it was an unhappy, mirthless sound.

  Sigmund Tannifer received them in the ornate withdrawing room without the slightest indication in his smooth features that there was anything amiss or that he could be concerned over any matter but Pitt’s progress in concluding his case. He looked at Parthenope, who was standing beside his chair, her vivid face for once completely at peace, reflecting none of the anxiety that had so disturbed her on Pitt’s previous visits.

  “Good of you to come, Superintendent,” Tannifer said, pointing to the chairs where Pitt and Tellman could be seated. “Miserable end to the matter. I admit, I never imagined Cadell could be so … I am at a loss for words ….”

  “Vicious … cruel … utterly sadistic,” Parthenope supplied for him, her voice shaking and her eyes filled with anger and burning contempt. “I am so sorry for Mrs. Cadell; my heart aches for her. What could be more terrible than to discover the man y
ou have loved, have been married to all your adult life and have given your loyalty and your trust …. is a total blackguard?” Her whole slender body shook with the force of her emotions.

  Tellman glanced at Pitt, and away again.

  “My dear,” Tannifer said soothingly, “you cannot bear the ills of the world. Theodosia Cadell will recover, in time. There is nothing you can do for her.”

  “I know there isn’t,” she said desperately. “That’s what makes it so awful. If I could help …”

  “I was quite shocked when I returned the day after his death and read the news,” Tannifer went on, looking at Pitt. “I admit, I would have believed it of almost anyone before him. Still … he deceived us all.”

  “Returned from where?” Pitt asked, irrationally disappointed. He already knew no one had been to Cadell’s house. What had he hoped for?

  “Paris,” Tannifer replied, leaning back a little in his wide chair, his hands folded comfortably. “I went over in the steamer the day before. Exhausting. But banking is an international business. Why do you ask?”

  “Only interest,” Pitt replied. Suddenly all his anger returned in a wave, almost choking him. “And did you deposit money in a French bank?”

  Tannifer’s eyes widened. “I did, as a matter of fact. Is it of interest to you, Superintendent?” He was at ease, bland, sure of himself.

  “Is that where the money ends up from the orphanage, in a French bank?” Pitt said icily.

  Tannifer did not move. His expression did not change, but his voice was oddly different in timbre.

  “Money from the orphanage? I don’t understand you.”

  “The orphanage at Kew which is supported by the committee of the Jessop Club,” Pitt explained elaborately. “All of whose members were victims of the blackmailer.”

  Tannifer stared back at him. “Were they? You never mentioned the names of the other victims.”

  “Yes … Cornwallis, Stanley, White, Cadell, Balantyne and you,” Pitt answered him gravely, ice in his voice. “Balantyne especially. That’s why the corpse was left on his doorstep, to terrify him, possibly have him arrested for murder. Of course, that is why Wallace tried to kill Albert Cole to begin with, only Cole fought back and escaped.” His eyes did not move from Tannifer’s. “Then he thought of the excellent idea of using Slingsby, whom he knew, and who resembled Cole so much. He bought the socks himself, spinning a yarn so the clerk would remember him and identify him as Cole, and put the receipt on Slingsby’s body. And Balantyne’s snuffbox too, of course.”

  “Ingenious …” Tannifer was watching Pitt closely He opened his mouth as if to lick his lips, then changed his mind.

  “Wasn’t it,” Pitt agreed, not even allowing his eyes to flicker. “If any of the committee had taken up Balantyne’s anxiety over the amount of money put into the orphanage, for what was actually very few children indeed, then the blackmail threat would have silenced them.”

  Parthenope was staring at Pitt, her fair brows drawn into a frown, her mouth pinched.

  “Why did it matter that there was too much money and very few children, Superintendent?” she asked. “Surely only too little would be cause for concern? Why would Mr. Cadell want that kept silent? I don’t understand.”

  “The answer was not easy to find.” He spoke now to her, not to Tannifer. “You see, the committee put money into the orphanage, and a great many orphans were sent there from all over London. But it also made a huge profit, tens of thousands of pounds, over the years because the children didn’t stay there very long.” He looked at her puzzled face, the wild emotions in it, and felt a moment’s misgiving. But his anger was white-hot. “You see, they were sold to work in factories and mills and mines, especially mines, where they can crawl into spaces grown men cannot ….”

  She gasped, her face bloodless, her voice choking.

  “I’m sorry,” Pitt apologized. “I’m sorry you had to know that, Mrs. Tannifer. But the proceeds from this trade are what has finished this beautiful house and bought the silk gown you are wearing.”

  “It can’t be!” Her words were torn from her in a kind of shout.

  Pitt took the papers from the orphanage out of his pockets and held them up.

  Parthenope swung around to Tannifer, her eyes beseeching, filled with terror.

  “My dear, they were East End orphans for the most part,” he said reasonably. “Perfectly used to hard conditions. They were not children of people like us. They would have had to work wherever they were. At least this way they won’t starve.”

  She stood frozen.

  “Parthenope!” There was impatience in his tone. “Please have a sense of proportion, my dear, and of the realities of life. This situation is something you know nothing about. You really have no idea—”

  Her voice was harsh, a travesty of its previous beauty.

  “Leo Cadell was innocent!” There was agony in her cry.

  “He was innocent of blackmail, yes,” he conceded. “But nothing was ever asked for, except worthless trinkets.” He looked at her with exasperation. “But I presume he must have been guilty of using his wife’s beauty to advance his career, which is pretty disturbing, because he shot himself when he feared exposure. Guilt does some strange things.”

  Her face was racked with emotions so deep it was a white, contorted mask, terrible, painful to see. “You know what he was accused of.”

  “You had better go and lie down,” Tannifer said more gently, his cheeks a little red. “I’ll call your maid. I’ll be up to see you as soon as I have dealt with Pitt and …” He gestured at Tellman. “Whatever his name is.”

  “No!” She staggered back, then turned and fled from the room, leaving the door swinging behind her.

  Tannifer looked back at Pitt. “You really are unnecessarily clumsy, Superintendent. You might have spared my wife that sort of description.” He glanced down at the papers in Pitt’s hand. “If you think you have something with which to charge me, come back when I have my legal representative present, and we’ll discuss the matter. Now, I must go to my wife and see if I can help her to understand this business. She is rather naive as to worldly things, idealistic, as women sometimes are.” And without waiting for Pitt to answer, he strode from the room and into the hall.

  Tellman glanced at Pitt, all his fury and frustration in his eyes, challenging, demanding some justice.

  Pitt moved towards the door.

  Before he reached it a shot rang out, a single sharp explosion, and then a thud.

  Pitt lurched forward and almost tripped into the hall, Tellman at his shoulder.

  Parthenope stood on the stairs with a dueling pistol in her hands, her arms rigid out in front of her, her back straight, her head high.

  Sigmund Tannifer lay on the tiled floor below her, blood oozing from the hole in his forehead between his wide-open eyes, his face filled with amazement and disbelief.

  Tellman went over to him, but examination was pointless. He had to be dead.

  Parthenope dropped the pistol, and it clattered down the steps. She stared at Pitt.

  “I loved him,” she said quite steadily. “I would have done anything to defend him. I did … anything … everything. I dressed up as the gardener’s boy and killed Leo Cadell be cause I thought he was blackmailing Sigmund and would ruin him for something he didn’t do. I knew where to find him. I wrote the suicide note on our own stationery, just like the blackmail letters Sigmund received … wrote himself.” She started to laugh, and then to choke, gasping for breath.

  Pitt took a step towards her.

  She unfroze. Her whole body was shaking in agonizing grief for love and life and honor lost. She reached behind her waist to the back of her skirt, and her hand came forward holding the other pistol, the pair to the one on the floor at Pitt’s feet.

  “No!” Pitt shouted, stumbling forward.

  But quite calmly now, as if his cry had steadied her, she put both hands on the pistol, lifted it to her mouth and pulled the trigger.<
br />
  The shot rang out.

  He caught her as she pitched forward, holding her in his arms. She was so slight there seemed hardly any weight to her for so much passion. There was nothing he could do. She was already dead. The betrayal, the grief and the unbearable guilt were ended.

  He bent and picked her up to carry her, unheeding of the blood, or the pointlessness of being gentle now. She had been a woman who had loved fiercely and blindly, giving her whole heart to a man who had defiled her dreams, and she had broken herself to protect something which had never existed.

  He held her tenderly, as if she had been able to know what he felt, as if some kind of pity mattered even now.

  He stepped over Tannifer, and Tellman held open the withdrawing room door for him, his face white, his head bowed.

  A CONVERSATION WITH ANNE PERRY

  Q. Anne, why did you decide, when you first began writing the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series, to set your novels in Victorian England?

  A. I did not choose the Victorian period with intent. I had been writing nonmystery novels set in many periods, without success. My first mystery, and first book which sold, was The Cater Street Hangman. Believe me, nothing makes you love a period like acceptance!

  Now I love it for its atmosphere, contrasts between wealth and poverty, what seems to be and what is, for its glamour and squalor, and for the fact that it is largely before the use of science in detection. It is also a mirror of our own time close enough to be valid, and far enough away to be bearable. I get immense pleasure from the manners which are so much subtler than ours, and therefore fun to write about. Romance can legitimately go on for ages.

  Q. How much research have you had to do—in the past and on a continuing basis—to ensure that your novels are historically accurate? Do you enjoy the research?

  A. To begin with I had to research a great deal. Now I hope I know the period well enough to write most of the book with only minor checking, except for whichever subject I have chosen that is unusual to that book. For example, photography, the workings of the Victorian theatre, 1890s spiritualism, and so on.

  Q. Now that you have two long-running series—the Pitt mysteries as well as the more recent William Monk novels—you write two complete books a year. How do you organize your writing time?