Bedford Square

12

FIND ALBERT COLE, Pitt had said to Tellman. Alive or dead. If he is alive, find out why he disappeared from his lodgings and from Lincoln’s Inn Fields; and if he is dead, find out how he died, naturally or otherwise. If he was killed, who killed him and why, and also when. And where.

Tellman had made a sarcastic reply, wondering why Pitt had bothered to trail all the way out to Kew and what on earth an orphanage, very satisfactorily run, could have to do with any of it.

Pitt had had no answer for that, and left Tellman to go about his search. He himself had begun with more about Cadell’s movements. Could he have transported Slingsby’s body from Shoreditch himself, and if not, which was probably the case, then who had? He had told Tellman of his intention to visit Cadell’s widow and enquire from the valet and coachman, and see if he could trace Cadell to Shoreditch from that end.

Tellman acknowledged the instruction tersely, but if he were honest, he was not unwilling to obey. He thought that suicide was a frustrating way to conclude a case. Too much was unexplained. They would probably never learn what had made a man like Leo Cadell jeopardize everything he had, which was a vast amount, wealth and happiness beyond Tellman’s dreams … although his dreams had included some happiness lately, and he blushed hot at the thought.

But he did not expect to understand the man, only the facts of the case, the logical, material details. And finding Albert Cole was part of that. He set out with a profound determination.

Pitt addressed himself to the task of learning how Slingsby’s body had been moved from Shoreditch to Bedford Square, and more importantly, by whom. Naturally, he began with Cadell. Since he was dead, the Foreign Office would not protect him in the way it had previously.

Pitt had little trouble in tracing Cadell’s movements on the day before the body had been found. He had worked either in his office or at various meetings with officials from the German embassy. At the time Slingsby and Wallace were fighting in Shoreditch, Cadell had actually been in negotiation with the German ambassador himself.

Like almost anyone else, he could have gone to Shoreditch in the small hours of the morning, presuming someone had moved Slingsby’s body from the street where it had fallen, kept it in a safe place, and Cadell had known where that was. Which would be to assume a great deal, including that Slingsby had been murdered intentionally and that Wallace had conspired with Cadell to that end because Slingsby resembled Albert Cole.

How did Cadell know a ruffian like Wallace?

He quickened his pace, striding along the footpath between the crowds of shoppers, clerks and errand boys and sightseers. He must go and talk to Wallace again, before he stood trial and was in all probability executed. Why had he not said he had moved the body when Tellman questioned him before? It would hardly make any difference to his sentence to plead that it had been a fight rather than a deliberate attack. He would be hanged either way.

Or did he expect to come up before Dunraithe White … and believe he would be acquitted? Was that why White was a victim?

And why kill anyone to have Balantyne suspected? Why was the blackmail over the Abyssinian affair not enough? What extra was wanted from Balantyne more than the others?

Pitt found himself almost running, and he hailed a cab with waving arms, shouting at the driver as he leapt in, “Newgate Prison!” He felt the cab thrust forward, throwing him against the seat.

But by the time he reached Newgate he had changed his mind. He leaned forward and rapped on the cab wall, raising his voice.

“Sorry! Forget about Newgate. Take me to Shoreditch.”

The driver grunted something unintelligible, which, considering its nature, may have been as well, and changed direction abruptly.

Pitt began in the public house where Tellman had said Wallace and Slingsby had started their quarrel, then progressed to the regular denizens of the immediate area. He had to part with a good few coins to assist memory and goodwill, and he ended the day with nothing which would have served as proof in a court, but he was quite certain in his own mind that Wallace could have come back within half an hour of the murder and taken the body of Slingsby. Certainly the body had disappeared within that time. There was no knowledge or indication that anyone else had moved it, and opinion seemed to be that it had been Wallace’s problem and he had dealt with it. They had supposed it would be into the river, but that was only because it was the most obvious thing to do. Taking a cart and carrying the body to Bedford Square would be too outlandish, and utterly pointless, to have occurred to them.

The best and final thing to do was to see if anyone had lent, or had stolen from them, such a vehicle.

With a little more generosity and a certain number of threats and promises, he succeeded in discovering that one Obadiah Smith had indeed had his vegetable cart removed without his permission, so he claimed, and to his great inconvenience. It had been returned in the morning.

He left Shoreditch elated. It was hardly worth going to Newgate. Wallace would probably deny it, but Pitt was now convinced that Wallace had murdered Slingsby with the quite deliberate intention of moving his body and placing it on Balantyne’s doorstep, with the snuffbox in his pocket, and the receipt for the socks, perhaps obtained by Wallace himself, pretending to be Cole. And this had been done on Cadell’s instructions. It would be very satisfying to see Wallace’s face when he heard that Cadell was dead and could not possibly rescue him.

But why Slingsby and not the real Cole? Where was Cole now? Was Tellman having any success in finding him?

However, when Tellman reported to Pitt that evening, within twenty minutes of Pitt’s arriving home himself, he had nothing to offer at all. They sat around the kitchen table in deep gloom. Charlotte had made a large pot of tea, and Gracie had abandoned even pretending to be peeling potatoes or cutting the strings off the beans. She was not going to be occupied in such things when there were really important matters to talk about.

“Nobody has any idea,” Tellman said defensively. “He could have gone anywhere. If he had any family, no one heard him mention them. They could be in Wales, for all anyone knew. Or Scotland.”

“Army records would know where he came from,” Pitt pointed out.

Tellman flushed. He was furious with himself because he had not thought of that.

“Well, if someone were arter ’im, ’e wouldn’t go back there, would ’e?” Gracie said defensively. “If we can work that out, mebbe they could too … stands ter reason, don’t it?” She looked from Pitt to Tellman and back again. “ ’E’d a’ gorn somewhere as nob’dy knows ’im. I would.”

“Why would anybody be after him?” Pitt asked. “He didn’t do anything, or know anything, so far as we can tell.”

“Well, w’y else would ’e scarper?” she asked reasonably. “Goin’ by wot you said, ’e ’ad a decent job an’ a good place. Yer don’t jus’ up an’ leave things like that, less yer got summink better or there’s someb’dy arter yer.”

“Bit chancy, wasn’t it?” Tellman said reluctantly, flashing Gracie a look of gratitude, and obviously unwilling to slight the favor by criticizing her logic, but driven to it by necessity. “Someone we don’t know of went after Cole, just the day before poor Slingsby gets done in by someone who wants to pretend he’s Cole?”

“That’s it!” Pitt banged his fist on the table. Suddenly it was obvious. “They went after Cole first. They tried to kill him, but somehow they failed. He got away. Perhaps he was a better soldier than they realized, experienced in hand-to-hand fighting,” he said eagerly. “He escaped, but he knew they’d come after him again, perhaps a knife in the back next time, or a shot. So he took to his heels and disappeared … anywhere. It doesn’t matter where … just out of London, to a place they’d never think of looking.” He turned to Gracie. “As you said, they know his military record, that’s why they wanted him, so the last place he’d go would be back to anywhere he had a connection with.” He stared around the table. “That’s why we can’t find Cole … and I daresay we never will.”

“So they found someone who looked like him,” Charlotte took up the train of reasoning. “They had the snuffbox anyway, and they either stole the sock receipt or had one made up.”

“Had it made up,” Tellman put in. “Easy enough. Go and buy three pairs. Get yourself noticed. Say something about being a soldier, the importance of keeping your feet right. The shop clerk remembered all that, but not much about his face.”

“Who is ’they’?” Charlotte asked with a little shake of her head, a sharp return from logic to emotion. “Cadell … if it has to be … and who else? Ernest Wallace? Why?” She bit her lip, and her expression betrayed her disbelief. “I still can’t accept that.” She looked from Pitt to Tellman. “You haven’t found any reason why he should suddenly need money, or connected him to any plot to invest in Africa or anywhere else. Aunt Vespasia says he just wasn’t that sort of person.”

Pitt sighed. He reached his hand across the table and put it over hers.

“Of course she doesn’t want to think so, but what is the alternative?”

“That someone else is guilty,” she answered, her voice without the certainty she would have liked. “And he killed himself … because … I don’t know. He was so worn down by the blackmail he hadn’t the strength to go on.”

“And confessed,” Pitt said gently, “knowing what that would do to his family? To Theodosia? And they have grownup children, a son and two daughters. Have you seen what Lyndon Remus and the other newspapers have made of the scandal? Poor Gordon-Cumming pales beside it.”

“Then he could never have done it,” she said desperately. “He must have been murdered.”

“By whom?” he asked. “No one came or went but the family servants, and the entrances were observed all the time.”

She took her hand away, fists clenched. “Well, I still refuse to believe it. There’s something we don’t know ….”

“There’s a lot of things we don’t know,” he said dryly. He ticked them off on his fingers. “We don’t know why Cadell wanted or needed money, or even if that was the purpose of the blackmail. We don’t know why he chose specifically the other members of the orphanage committee of the Jessop Club. There must have been dozens of other men he knew as well, and could have created a web of fear around, built on imagination and misinterpretation. We certainly don’t know how he ever made the acquaintance of Ernest Wallace or why he trusted him.”

“We don’t know why Wallace lied to protect him and is still lying,” Tellman added.

“Yes, we do,” Pitt answered. “At least, we can deduce it. He is in Newgate and doesn’t know that Cadell is dead. He must be assuming that Cadell will twist the knife in Dunraithe White, and Wallace will be acquitted. He also doesn’t know that White has just resigned from the bench.”

“Then tell him,” Charlotte retorted. “That may concentrate his mind wonderfully. Show him he is completely alone. He has been let down on every side. Cadell has escaped, in a fashion, and left him to hang … alone.”

“Don’t make no difference whether you ’ang alone or together,” Gracie said with disgust. “Don’t suppose it feels no different. ’e killed Slingsby, so ’e’ll ’ang any which way.”

Pitt rose to his feet. “I’ll still go and see him.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Now? It’s half past six.”

“I’ll be back by nine,” he promised, walking to the door. “I have to speak to him.”

Pitt hated visiting prisons. The walls closed in on him with the cold gray misery of countless angry and wasted lives. Hopelessness seemed to seep from the stones, and his footsteps echoed behind the warder’s like multiple treads, as if he were preceded and followed by unseen inmates, ghosts who would never escape.

Ernest Wallace would be tried in a week or two. He was brought into the small room where Pitt waited for him. He looked small and tight, and beneath his smug expression there remained a lifelong anger that was bone-deep. He glanced at Pitt, but there was no visible fear in his eyes. It seemed to amuse him that Pitt had come all the way to Newgate to see him. He sat down at the other side of the bare wooden table without being asked. The warder, a barrel-chested man with a disinterested face, stood by the door. Whatever these two were going to say, he had heard it all before.

“Where did you go after you had fought with Slingsby?” Pitt began, almost conversationally.

If Wallace was surprised he hid it well. “Don’ remember,” he answered. “Wot’s it matter nah?”

“What did you fight about?”

“I told yer, least I told the other rozzer, ’baht summink wot ’e took orff me as e’d no right ter. I tried ter get it back orff ’im, an ’e laid inter me. I fought ’im … natural. I’ve a right ter save me own life.” He said that with some satisfaction, meeting Pitt’s eyes squarely.

Pitt had thought he expected the blackmailer to influence the trial and get him acquitted, at least of murder. Now, in the fetid room with its smell of despair, he was certain of it.

“And when you saw that you had killed him, you just fled?” Pitt said aloud.

“Wot?”

“You ran away.”

“Yeah. Well, I didn’t think as any rozzer’d believe me. An’ I were right, weren’t I? Or I wouldn’t be here now, lookin’ at a charge o’ murder.” He said it with considerable self-justification. “Yer’d a’ seen as I were defendin’ meself from a geezer wot were bigger’n me, an’ got a right temper on ’im.” He almost smiled.

“Is Albert Cole dead too?” Pitt said suddenly.

Wallace kept his face straight, but he could not prevent the ebb of color from his skin, and his hands twitched involuntarily where he had laid them with a deliberate show of ease on the tabletop.

“Oo?”

“Albert Cole.” Pitt smiled. “The man Slingsby looked like and was mistaken for when we found him. He had a receipt belonging to Cole in his pocket.”

Wallace grinned. “Oh, yeah! Yer made a right mess o’ that, din’t yer.”

“It was the receipt that did it,” Pitt explained. “And the lawyer from Lincoln’s Inn who identified him. And of course Cole is missing.”

Wallace affected surprise. “Is ’e? Well, I never. Life’s full o’ funny little things like that … i’n’t it?” He was enjoying himself, and he wanted Pitt to know it.

Pitt waited patiently.

“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “You see, I think you can’t tell me where you went after you killed Slingsby because you came back, within minutes, and loaded his body into a vegetable cart you’d ’borrowed’ after dark. You took it to Bedford Square and left it on General Balantyne’s doorstep, exactly as you were told to do.”

Wallace was tense, his shoulder muscles locked, the sinews in his thin neck standing out, but his eyes did not waver from Pitt’s.

“Do yer? Well, yer can’t prove it, so it don’ make no difference. I says as I killed ’im ’cos ’e came at me, an’ scarpered arterwards ’cos I were scared as no rozzer’d believe me.” His voice descended into mockery. “An’ I’m real sorry abaht that, me lud. I won’t never make a mistake like that again.”

“Talking about judges,” Pitt observed steadily, “Mr. Dunraithe White has resigned from the bench.”

Wallace looked mystified.

“Am I supposed ter know wot yer talkin’ abaht?”

Pitt was shaken, but he concealed it. “Perhaps not. I thought you might come up before him.”

“Well if ’e i’n’t a judge no more, I won’t, will I? Stands ter reason.”

Pitt dropped the blow he had been waiting for.

“And another thing you might not have heard, being in here … Leo Cadell is dead.”

Wallace sat motionless.

“Committed suicide,” Pitt added, “after confessing to blackmail.”

Wallace’s eyes widened. “Blackmail?” he said with what Pitt would have sworn was surprise.

“Yes. He’s dead.”

“Yeah … yer said. So is that all?” He looked at Pitt with wide eyes, untroubled, his lips still smiling, not the fixed and awful grin of a man whose last hope has slipped away, but the satisfaction of someone supremely confident, even if he had heard some news which he did not completely understand.

It was Pitt who was thrown into confusion. Reason and hope disappeared from his grasp.

Wallace saw it, and his smile widened, reaching his eyes.

Pitt was suddenly furious, aching to be able to hit him. He rose to his feet and told the warder he was finished before he betrayed his defeat even more. He walked out of the gray suffocation of Newgate totally perplexed.

He arrived home in Keppel Street still just as confused, and if possible even angrier, but now with himself rather than only with Wallace.

“What’s wrong?” Charlotte demanded as soon as he was in the kitchen. They must all have heard his footsteps coming down the passage from the front door, and were sitting around the table staring at him expectantly. He had not even bothered to take his boots off. He sat down, and automatically Gracie poured him a mug of tea.

“I told him I believed he had come back and moved the body to Bedford Square,” he answered. “And I could see it shook him.”

Tellman nodded with satisfaction.

“And I told him Dunraithe White had resigned,” Pitt went on. “And it meant nothing to him at all.”

“I don’t suppose he knew his name,” Charlotte explained. “Just that there was a judge in the blackmailer’s power.”

“And then I told him Cadell was dead,” Pitt finished, looking at their expectant faces. “He didn’t give a damn.”

“What?” Tellman was incredulous, his jaw dropping.

“He must have,” Charlotte said abruptly. “He must have known Cadell. It can’t have been all done by letter.” Her eyes widened. “Or are you saying it wasn’t Cadell after all?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” he admitted. “Except that I still don’t understand it.”

There were several minutes of silence. The kettle whistled on the hob, gathering shrillness, and Gracie got up to move it over.

Pitt sipped his tea gratefully. He had not realized how thirsty he was, or how keen to get the taste of prison air out of his mouth.

Charlotte looked apologetic, and very faintly pink.

“General Balantyne was worried about the funds for the orphanage at Kew …” she said tentatively.

“I’ve been out there,” Pitt answered wearily. “I’ve been over the books with a fine-toothed comb. Every penny is accounted for, and I’ve seen the children. They are healthy, well clothed and well fed. Anyway, Balantyne thought there was too little money given them, not too much.”

“That’s a turn up,” Gracie said dryly. “I never ’eard of an orphanage afore wot ’ad enough money, let alone too much. An’ come ter that, I never ’eard o’ one wot fed an’ clothed its kids proper. Beggin’ yer pardon, Mr. Pitt, but I think you was took in. It were likely the master’s own kids as yer saw, not the orphans.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Pitt said wearily. “I saw upwards of twenty children.”

“Twenty?” Gracie was incredulous.

“At least. More like twenty-five,” he assured her.

“In an orphanage?”

“Yes.”

“ ’ow big’s this orphanage, then? Couple o’ cottages, is it?”

“No, of course not. It’s a very large house, dozen bedrooms or more, originally, I should think.”

Gracie looked at him with weary patience. “Then you was took proper. ’Ouse that size they’d ’ave an ’undred kids at least. Ten to a room, countin’ little ones. Big ones ter look arter ’em.”

“There were nothing like that many.” He thought back on the clear, light rooms he had seen, admittedly only two or three of them, but he had chosen them at random, and Horsfall had been willing enough to show him everywhere he wished to go.

“Then w’ere was the rest o’ them?” Gracie asked.

“There were no more,” Pitt replied, frowning. “And the money was about right for that number, to feed and clothe and pay for the fuel and keeping of the house.”

“Can’t a’ bin much, then,” Gracie said dismissively. “Yer can feed an orphan kid, fer a few pence a day, on bread an’ taters and gravy. Clothe ’em in ’and-me-downs and stuff wot’s bin unpicked an’ remade. Get a pile fer a shillin’ down Seven Dials way. Same wif boots. An’ w’en yer places kids, which in’t often, like as not they leave their clothes be’ind. An o’ course w’en they grows out o’ them, someone else grows inter ’em.”

“What are you suggesting?” Charlotte turned to her, her eyes wide and dark in the dying light. The gas was flickering yellow on the wall.

“Maybe they are good at placing children?” Tellman said. “If they give them a little education they could go into trades, be useful?”

“You live in a dream, you do,” Gracie said, shaking her head. “Nobody places orphans that fast. “Oo wants extra mouths ter feed these days? ’Less they’re workin’.”

“They were little children,” Pitt put in. “Those ones I saw were as young as three or four years old, most of them.”

Gracie’s eyes were full of pity and anger. “Yer think kids o’ three or four can’t work? ’Course they can. Work ’ard, some o’ them poor little bleeders. An’ don’t answer back ner run away. Too scared. Nothin’ ter run ter. Work ’em till they either grow up or die.”

“They weren’t working,” Pitt said slowly. “They were happy, and healthy, playing.”

“Till they get placed,” Gracie answered him. “There’s good money in that. Sell an ’ealthy kid fer quite a bit … specially if yer got a reg’lar supply, like.”

Charlotte used a word that would have appalled her mother, breathing it out in a sigh of horror.

Tellman regarded Gracie with dismay.

“How do you know that?” he demanded.

“I know wot ’appens ter kids wot’s got no one ter take ’em in,” she said bleakly. “ ’ Appened ter one o’ me friends, down the street. ’Er ma got killed an’ ’er Pa got topped. ’Er an’ ’er bruvvers got sent ter an orphanage. I went ter see ’er, year arter. She were gorn ter pick oakum, an “er bruvvers gorn up north ter the mines.”

Charlotte put her hands up to her face. “Does Aunt Vespasia have to know, Thomas? She couldn’t bear it. It would break her heart to know that Cadell did such a thing.”

“I don’t even know if it’s true yet,” he answered. But it was a prevarication. In his heart he was certain. This was a secret worth committing blackmail to hide. This was why Brandon Balantyne had been singled out for the most powerful threat, even destruction, if possible. He had been asking too many questions. After the Devil’s Acre, he was one man who might be very difficult to silence. This was why all the members of the orphanage committee were victims. There was nothing random or opportunistic about it.

Charlotte did not bother to argue; she knew Pitt too well. Tellman and Gracie both sat silently.

“Tomorrow,” Pitt said. “Tomorrow we’ll go out to Kew.”

Pitt and Tellman reached the orphanage at mid-morning. It was a hot, still day, already oppressive at ten o’clock as they climbed the slight hill towards the large house.

Tellman screwed up his face against the light and stared at it, unconsciously thinning his lips. Pitt knew Gracie’s words were sharp and hurting in the sergeant’s mind. He drew in his breath as if to speak, and then said nothing after all. They approached the front door in silence.

It was opened by a girl of about eleven, plain-faced and straight-haired.

“Yes sir?” she asked.

“We would like to see Mr. Horsfall,” Pitt said bluntly, allowing no opportunity for refusal.

A small boy ran down the hall, making a noise in imitation of a galloping horse, and another followed him, laughing. They both disappeared into a passageway at right angles to the one that led from the door, and there was a squeal from somewhere beyond.

Pitt felt the anger boil up inside him, perhaps pointlessly. Maybe Gracie was wrong? There was far too much money for the few children he had seen, but perhaps there were more somewhere else? Perhaps Horsfall really did find homes for them? Perhaps there was a dearth of orphans at the moment, and many childless families?

“Now, if you please,” he added as the girl looked doubtful.

“Yes sir,” she said obediently, and pulled the door wider. “If yer’ll wait in the sittin’ room I’ll fetch ’im for yer.” She showed them to the same homely room Pitt had seen before, and they heard her feet clatter along the wooden corridor as she went about her errand. They remained standing, too tense to sit.

“Don’t suppose he’ll run, do you?” Tellman said dubiously.

Pitt had thought of it, but Horsfall had no reason to fear anything now. “If he were going to, he’d have gone when Cadell shot himself,” he said aloud.

“Suppose he knows?” Tellman pursed his lips, frowning. “If he does, why is he still here? Does he inherit the orphanage? Where does the money go anyway? Why share it with Cadell in the first place? Do you suppose this is Cadell’s house?”

Those thoughts had occurred to Pitt also, and others that troubled him even more. At the back of his mind was the complacent expression in Wallace’s face when Pitt had told him Dunraithe White had resigned from the bench, and even when he had said that Cadell was dead.

Wallace’s impassivity about White could have either of two explanations. He did not know of White’s involvement, and therefore his resignation held no meaning for Wallace, or he knew the blackmailer would not allow White to resign. He would let him know that if he did, he would exercise his threat and ruin him anyway.

Then why had he not been shattered to learn of Cadell’s death? That removed every chance for him of escape from the noose.

There could be only one answer … it was not Cadell he was depending upon.

Either Cadell had an accomplice … which would explain why Horsfall was still there, or it was not Cadell who was the blackmailer, but someone else.

Tellman was watching Pitt, waiting for him to speak.

It could not be Guy Stanley. He would not have ruined himself, not so completely. Neither did Pitt believe it was Balantyne. He had never even considered that it could be Cornwallis. That left White and Tannifer.

He looked up at Tellman. “Where was Dunraithe White when Cadell was shot?”

“You mean, you don’t think he shot himself?” Tellman seized on the change of wording instantly.

“I don’t know,” Pitt replied. He shoved his hands hard into his pockets, leaning against the wall and staring back at Tellman.

“No one else was there,” Tellman pointed out. “You said so yourself.”

“Wallace believes the blackmailer is still alive, and he knows Cadell is dead,” Pitt argued. “What about Tannifer?”

“I don’t know.” Tellman shook his head. He moved restlessly about the room. “But he can’t have been at Cadell’s house, or he’d have been seen.”

There was no further time to pursue it because at that moment the door opened and Horsfall came in looking blankly from one to the other of them.

“Good morning, gentlemen. What can I do for you this time?”

His smug unconcern infuriated Pitt, the more so for his own inner confusion. Something essential was still eluding him, and he was bitterly aware of it.

“Good morning,” he said grimly, his body tight and his jaw clenched. “How many children have you here at present, Mr. Horsfall?”

Horsfall looked startled. “Why … about fifteen, I think.” He shot a look at Tellman, and then swallowed. “We have been very fortunate in placing several … lately.”

“Good!” Pitt said. “Where?”

“What?”

“Where?” Pitt repeated a little more loudly.

“I don’t understand ….” He was still only mildly uncomfortable.

“Where have you placed them, Mr. Horsfall?”

Tellman moved to the door, as if to cut off Horsfall’s retreat.

“Er … you mean the exact addresses? I should have to look it up. Is there something amiss? Has someone proved unsatisfactory?”

“Unsatisfactory? What an odd word to use of a child,” Pitt said coldly. “Sounds more like placing a servant.”

Horsfall swallowed again. He eased his shoulders up and down, as if to relax tense muscles.

“Yes … silly of me,” he agreed. “But I feel responsible for our children. Sometimes people expect better behavior than … than young people are capable of. New surroundings … strange … new people … not all children respond well. They become used to us here, of course, used to our ways.” He was talking a little too quickly. “Don’t always understand change … even if it is change for their good ….”

“I know.” Pitt’s voice was like ice. “I have children myself, Mr. Horsfall.”

“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 you 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.

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.