Traitors Gate

by Anne Perry

  Pitt took a hansom. It was a long ride. He went south and east along the river, crossed at London Bridge and then turned east again immediately into Tooley Street.

  “What ezac’ly are yer lookin’ fer?” the cabby asked dubiously. It was not that he objected to a fare that lasted several hours, and was willing to pay him to stand around, but he liked to know what was wanted of him, and this was a most peculiar request.

  “I’m looking for a place where someone could have waited in a carriage until a quiet time just after the tide had turned, and then rowed a body across the river and left it on the slipway at Traitors Gate,” Pitt replied.

  The cabby let out an incredulous blasphemy under his breath. “Sorry, guv,” he apologized the moment after. “But you ain’t ’alf got a nasty turn o’ mind.” He looked nervously around at the quiet bank and the empty stretch of river in the sun.

  Pitt smiled sadly. “The murder of Mr. Chancellor’s wife,” he explained, showing the man his card.

  “Oh! Oh, yeah! That was terrible, poor lady.” The man’s eyes widened. “Yer reckon as she was killed over ’ere, and taken across after, like?”

  “No, I think she was brought over here in a carriage, someone waited until the tide turned, and then rowed across and left her on the slipway at the Tower.”

  “Why? That don’t make no sense! Why not just stick ’er in the water and scarper! Daft ter be seen. ‘Oo cares where she fetches up?”

  “I think he may have cared.”

  “Why wait for the tide to turn? I’d just a’ put ’er in there as quick as possible and got goin’ afore anyone saw me.” He shivered. “You looking for a madman?”

  “A man with an insane hatred, perhaps, but not mad in any general sense.”

  “Then he’d a’ gone ter ‘Orsley Steps and rowed up a fraction on the incoming tide and left ’er there,” the cabby said with decision. “An’ rowed back ter Little Bridge, further up, ter keep goin’ with the tide, like, instead o’ rowin’ agin it.” He looked satisfied with his answer.

  “If he’d left her on the incoming tide,” Pitt reasoned, “she might have been floated off again, and finished up somewhere else.”

  “True,” the cabby agreed. “Still an’ all, I’d a’ taken the chance.”

  “Perhaps. But I’ll see if anyone saw a carriage standing waiting that night. Horsley Down Steps and Little Bridge Stairs, you said?”

  “Yes, guv. Yer want ter go there ter them places?”

  “I do.”

  “It would take an awful long time!”

  “It probably will,” Pitt agreed with a tight smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll take you to lunch. Do you know a good pub close by?”

  The cabby’s face brightened. “‘Course I do! Bin ’ere before, or ’ereabouts. There’s the Black Bull up over London Bridge, bit over the other side. Or the Triple Plea down Queen Elizabeth Street, just over there.” He pointed with a gnarled hand. “Or over the railway line”—he swiveled farther around—“yer could go into Bermondsey and find anything yer like.”

  “We’ll try the Triple Plea,” Pitt promised. “First we’ll go to the Horsley Down Steps.”

  “Right, guv. Right y’are.” And he urged his horse forward with something almost close to anticipation.

  They went down Tooley Street at a brisk trot until it became Queen Elizabeth Street, then the cab turned sharply left towards the river. There was a large building on the right side of the road which looked like a school. The street bore the dismal name of Potters’ Fields. Pitt wondered if it struck the cabby’s macabre sense of humor. They followed it a hundred yards or so until it ended at the road, little more than a path, which ran along the riverbank. There was only a sloping margin between them and the water, and it was deserted, even at this time of day. They passed two more roads leading up towards Queen Elizabeth Street before they came to the Horsley Down Steps, from where it would have been easy enough to get into a boat.

  There was a small open area, less than a square, at the end of Freeman’s Lane. A couple of men stood around idly, watching whoever might pass, mainly the traffic along the water.

  Pitt got out of the hansom and approached them. Several possible opening gambits occurred to him; the one he least favored was admitting who he was. It was one of those occasions when his sartorial inelegance was an advantage.

  “Where would I get a boat around here?” he asked bluntly.

  “What kind of a boat?” one of them asked, removing the clay pipe from between his teeth.

  “Small one, only to cross the river,” Pitt replied.

  “London Bridge, jus’ up there.” The man gestured with his pipe. “Why don’t yer walk?”

  The other one laughed.

  “Because I might meet someone I don’t wish to,” Pitt replied without a flicker of humor. “I might be taking something private with me,” he added for good measure.

  “Might yer, then?” The first man was interested. “Well I daresay as I could rent yer a boat.”

  “Done it before, have you?” Pitt asked casually.

  “Wot’s it ter you?”

  “Nothing.” Pitt affected indifference and turned as if to leave.

  “Yer want a boat, I’ll get yer one!” the man called after him.

  Pitt stopped. “Know the tides, do you?” he enquired.

  “‘Course I know the tides! I live ’ere!”

  “What tide’s best for going across to the Tower?”

  “Geez! Yer planning to rob the Tower? After the crown jools, are yer?”

  Again the second man laughed uproariously.

  “I want to take something, not fetch it back,” Pitt answered, hoping he had not gone too far.

  “Slack water,” the first man replied, watching him closely. “Stands ter reason. No current pullin’ yer.”

  “Is the current strong?”

  “‘Course it’s strong! It’s a tidal river, ain’t it! Geez, w’ere you bin? Yer stupid or summink?”

  “If I got here early, where could I wait?” Pitt ignored the insult.

  “Well not ’ere, if yer don’t want to be seen, that’s fer sure,” the man said dryly, and clasped his pipe between his teeth again.

  “Why? Who’d see me?”

  “Well I would, fer a start!”

  “Slack water’s in the middle of the night,” Pitt argued.

  “I know when slack water is! I come down ’ere middle o’ the night often enough.”

  “Why?”

  “’cause there ain’t much right ’ere, but a hundred yards or so”—he pointed along the bank—“there’s dozens o’ wharfs. There’s Baker’s Wharf, Sufferance, Bovel and Sons, Landells, West Wharf, the Coal Wharf and a lot o’ steps. And that’s before yer gets to Saint Saviour’s Dock. There’s always summink ter be ‘ad down there.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “‘Course in the middle o’ the night. Look, guv, if yer wants to take summink across the river as yer shouldn’t, this in’t the right place for yer. If yer got to get to the Tower, then go upstream, the Little Bridge Stairs. That’s quieter, and there’s often the odd boat moored up there as yer could take fer nuffink, if yer brought it back again. No trouble. I’m surprised yer didn’t see it from London Bridge if yer came over that way. Only a quarter of a mile or so. Yer can see if there’s a boat.”

  “Thank you,” Pitt said with a lift in his voice he could barely control. “That’s excellent advice.” He fished in his pocket and found a shilling. “Have a pint each. I’m obliged to you.”

  “Thanks, guv.” The man took the shilling and it disappeared into his pocket. He shook his head as Pitt turned away. “Nutter,” he said to himself. “Right nutter.”

  “Back to Little Bridge Stairs,” Pitt told the cabby.

  “Right y’are.”

  They went back up to Tooley Street and then down Mill Lane towards the river. This time there was no road beside the water. Mill Lane ended abruptly at the bank and Little Bridge Stair
s. There was a narrow dock a few yards upriver, and nothing else but the water and the bank. Pitt alighted.

  The cabby wiped the side of his nose and looked expectantly at him.

  Pitt looked around him, then down at the ground. Nothing would pass that way, except to go to the steps and the water. A carriage could wait here for hours without necessarily being remarked.

  “Who uses these stairs?” Pitt asked.

  The cabby looked affronted.

  “Y’askin’ me? ’ow the ’ell would I know? Be fair, guv, this ain’t my patch.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pitt apologized. “Let’s have luncheon at the nearest public house, and they may be able to tell us.”

  “Now that sounds like a very sensible idea,” the cabby agreed with alacrity. “I saw one jus’ ’round the corner. Called the Three Ferrets, it were, and looked quite well used, like.”

  It proved to be more than adequate, and after a meal of tripe and onions, followed by steamed spotted dick pudding and a glass of cider, they returned to the stairs armed with even more information than Pitt had dared hope for. It seemed very few people used the stairs, but one Frederick Lee had passed by that way on the night in question and had seen a carriage waiting sometime before midnight, the coachman sitting on his box, smoking a cigar, the carriage doors closed. On his way home, more than an hour later, the man had seen it again. He had thought it odd, but none of his business, and the coachman had been a big fellow, and Lee was not inclined to make trouble for no good reason. He believed in minding his own business. He despised nosiness; it was uncivil and unhealthy.

  Pitt had thanked him heartily, treated him to a glass of cider, then taken his leave.

  But at the narrow, riverside end of Mill Lane, overlooking the water and the stairs down, Pitt walked back and forth slowly, eyes downcast, searching the ground just in case there were any signs of the carriage that had waited there so long, while the tide reached its height, hung slack, and then began the ebb. The surface of the road bore no trace; it was rutted stone sloping away to gutters at the side.

  But it was summer. There had been only a brief shower or two of rain in the last week, nothing to wash away debris. He walked slowly up one side, and was partway down the other, about twenty yards from the water, when he saw a cigar butt, and then another. He bent down and picked them up, holding them in the palm of his hand. They were both coming unraveled from the leaf at the charred end, the tobacco loose and thready. He pulled it gently. It was distinctive, aromatic, certainly costly, not the sort of a cigar a cabdriver or waterside laborer would smoke. He turned it over carefully, examining the other end. It was curiously cut, not by a knife but by a specifically designed cigar clipper, the blades meeting equidistantly from either side. There was a very slight twist to it, and the mark of an uneven front tooth where someone had clenched a jaw on it in a moment of emotional tension.

  He took out his handkerchief and wrapped them both carefully and placed them in his pocket, then continued on his way.

  But he found nothing else of interest, and returned to the hansom, where the cabby was sitting on the box, watching every move he made.

  “Got summink?” he asked with excitement, waiting to be told what it was and what it meant.

  “I think so,” Pitt replied.

  “Well?” The man was not going to be shut out of the explanation.

  “A cigar butt,” Pitt said with a smile. “An expensive one.

  “Gawd …” The cabby let out his breath in a sigh. “’er murderer sat an’ smoked, with ’er corpse in his carriage, awaiting to take ’er across the river. ’e’s a cool bastard, in’t ’e?”

  “I doubt it.” Pitt climbed into the cab. “I rather think he was in the grip of a passion possibly greater than ever before in his life. Take me to Belgravia please, Ebury Street.”

  “Belgravia! Yer never thinking ’im what done it lives in Belgravia, are yer?”

  “Yes I am. Now get started will you!”

  It was a long ride back across the river and westwards, and in places the traffic was heavy. Pitt had plenty of time to think. If Susannah’s murderer had thought of her as a traitor, and felt it so passionately he had killed her for it, then it could only be someone to whom she could be considered to owe an intense loyalty. That must be either her family, represented by Francis Standish, or her husband.

  What betrayal could that be? Had she believed Arthur Desmond and Peter Kreisler, after all? Had she questioned Standish’s investment with Cecil Rhodes, the whole manner in which the Inner Circle was involved? If Standish were a member, possibly a prominent one, could he even be the executioner? And had Susannah known, or guessed that? Was that why she had to be killed, for her knowledge, and because she was bent on sharing it rather than remaining loyal to her family, her class, and its interests?

  That made a hideous sense. Standish could have met her in Mount Street. She would have expected a quarrel, a plea, but not violence. She would have been quite unafraid of anything but unpleasantness, and climbed into his carriage without more than a little coercion on his part. It satisfied all the facts he knew.

  Except for what had happened to her cloak. Now that he was sure she had not been put in the river at all, simply made to look as if the receding tide had left her there by chance, it was no longer a reasonable explanation that her cloak had become lost as the current took her one way and then another.

  Had he dropped it in the river for that purpose? Why? It proved nothing. And if he had, why had it not been washed up somewhere, or tangled in some rudder or oar? It would not have sunk with no body in it to carry it down. Anyway, it was a stupid thing to do; simply one more article for the police to search for, and meaning nothing one way or the other.

  Unless, of course, the cloak did mean something! Could it be in some way marked, which would incriminate Standish?

  Pitt could think of nothing. No one was pretending it was suicide or accident. The method and means were plain enough, even the motive was plain. He had defiantly and unnecessarily drawn attention to it!

  The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. Sitting in the hansom, in spite of the mildness of the day, he shivered as he felt the power of the Inner Circle everywhere around him, not only making threats of financial and political ruin, but when betrayed, ruthlessly murdering its own, even a woman.

  “Ebury Street, guv!” the cabby called out. “What number do you want?”

  “Twelve,” Pitt replied with a start.

  “’ere y’are then, twelve it is. D’yer want me to wait for yer?”

  “No thank you,” Pitt replied, climbing out and closing the door. “I could be some time.” He looked in his pocket for the very large sum he now owed for having had the cab out most of the day.

  The cabby took it and counted it. “No offense,” he apologized before putting it into his pocket. “That don’t matter,” he said, referring back to the time. “I’d kinda like to see this to the end, if yer don’t mind, like?”

  “As you please.” Pitt gave a slight smile, then turned and went up the steps.

  The door was opened by a tall footman in livery. “Yes sir?”

  “Superintendent Pitt, from Bow Street. Is Mr. Standish at home?”

  “Yes sir, but he has a gentleman with him. If you care to wait, I will ask if he is able to see you.” He stood aside to allow Pitt in, and then showed him to the study. Apparently Standish and his visitor were in the withdrawing room.

  The study was a small room by the standards of houses in Belgravia, but graciously proportioned and furnished in walnut wood with a red Turkey carpet and red curtains, giving it an air of warmth. It was obviously a room in which work was carried out. The desk was functional as well as handsome; and there were inkwells, pens, knives, blotting powder and seals neatly placed ready for use. And there was paper splayed out, as if only recently left. Perhaps Standish had been interrupted by the arrival of his present visitor. A large red jasper ashtray sat on one corner of the desk, a h
eavy coil of ash lying in the center, and one cigar stub, burned right down to within half an inch of the end.

  Gingerly Pitt picked it up and put it to his nose. It was quite unlike the one from Little Bridge Stairs, both in aroma and texture of tobacco. Even the end was different—cut with a knife—and the faint teeth marks were very even.

  He reached for the bell rope and pulled it.

  The footman came, looking a little startled at being summoned by a guest whom he knew to be a mere policeman. “Yes sir?”

  “Does Mr. Standish have any cigars other than these?” Pitt asked, holding up the butt for the man to see.

  The footman hid his distaste for such a display of peculiar manners as well as he was able, but some shadow of it was visible in his eyes.

  “Yes sir, I believe he does keep some others for guests. If you care to have one, sir, I shall see if I can find them.”

  “Yes please.”

  With raised eyebrows the footman went to a drawer in the desk, opened it and produced a box of cigars which he offered to Pitt.

  Pitt took one, although he knew before smelling it that it was not like the butt in his pocket. It was narrower, darker in color and of a bland, unremarkable odor.

  “Thank you.” He replaced it in its box. “Does Mr. Standish ever drive his own carriage, say a four-in-hand?”

  The footman’s eyebrows were so high they furrowed his brow. “No sir. He has a touch of rheumatism in his hands, which makes it most uncomfortable, indeed extremely dangerous, when trying to control horses.”

  “I see. What are the symptoms of the rheumatism?”

  “I think he is better placed to tell you such things, sir, than I. And I am sure that he will not be above an hour or so with his present business.”

  “What are the symptoms?” Pitt persisted, and with such urgency in his voice that the footman looked taken aback. “If you can tell me, I may not need to bother Mr. Standish.”

  “I’m sure, sir, it would be much better if you were to consult a physician….”

  “I don’t want a general answer,” Pitt snapped. “I want to know precisely how it affects Mr. Standish. Can you tell me or not?”