Belgrave Square

7

MICAH DRUMMOND found himself thinking of the Byam case more and more often, at times even when he would normally have left police matters far behind him and begun to enjoy the very considerable pleasures of life. He smiled to himself wryly now. In his mind it was the Byam case, but to Pitt it would almost certainly be the Weems case. After all it was Weems who was dead. Byam was only a possible suspect, Drummond profoundly hoped an “impossible” one. That thought had troubled him like an unacknowledged darkness at the edge of his mind, something he refused to look at but could forget only for short, deliberately engineered moments, always ending when its shadow crossed his thoughts again.

Pitt had told him about the blunderbuss. That meant that in theory at least the means were there for anyone, even the poorest debtor from Clerkenwell. But did Weems leave gold coins lying around in such circumstances? Possibly. Maybe that kind of cruelty would appeal to him-have a desperate person, unable to make his repayments, into the office and face him across a pile of gold coins, then demand of him his last pence. Not only colorfully sadistic, but also surely dangerous? In his years of usury had not Weems learned to be a good enough judge of character to avoid such a thing?

Come to think, why had he received a debtor alone in his office after dark? That could hardly be his practice. But had Pitt asked? He would have been concentrating on finding who killed him, not on exonerating Byam.

Drummond stopped with a start of guilt. That was what he was doing: trying to exonerate Byam. He had given little thought to finding Weems’s murderer if it was someone else-once Byam was cleared. He felt the heat creep up his face at the consciousness of how his judgment had lapsed, his priorities become unbalanced.

It was a summer evening, still broad daylight, and he was at home. It was not the large house in Kensington he had kept when his wife was alive and his daughters were growing up; he had sold that when the loneliness in it became overbearing and the upkeep quite unnecessary. Now he had a spacious flat off Piccadilly. He no longer had any need to keep a carriage. He could always obtain a hansom if he needed one, and one manservant and a woman to do the domestic chores and cook were all that was necessary to see to his comfort. If they employed anyone else from time to time he was only peripherally aware of it. The expense was negligible, and he trusted their judgment.

This room still contained many of his old possessions: the embroidered fire screen with peacocks on it that his mother had given him the first year after he was married; the blue Meissen plates his wife had loved; the hideous brown elephant she had inherited, and they had both laughed over. And he had kept the Chippendale chairs, even though there were too many of them for this room. He had given several of the pictures to his daughters, but there was still the Land-seer and the small Bonnington seascape. He would never willingly part with them.

Now he stood in his large bay window looking towards Green Park and tried to disentangle his thoughts.

What about the other names on the list, the second list? From what Pitt had said, Addison Carswell was almost certainly being blackmailed. And he could not, or would not, account for his time the night Weems was killed. Was the wretched man really so besotted with the Hilliard girl he would rather risk everything he possessed-not just his home and his family, but his very life-by murdering Weems, rather than simply give her up? Thousands of men all over London had mistresses, all over England, for that matter. If one was discreet, it mattered little.

What could Weems have done, at the very worst? Told Mrs. Carswell? What of it? If she did not know, or guess, and if this was the first time he had strayed, she might well be distressed. But if you keep a mistress, a wife’s distress is not an agony to you-certainly not worth risking the hangman’s rope for. His daughters? Grieved, angry perhaps; but they were old enough to have some awareness of the ways of the world, and hardly in a position to do anything worse than cool their affection for him, treat him to some isolation in his own house. That could certainly be unpleasant, but again, the smallest triviality compared with the unpleasantness of murder and its consequences. And as a magistrate, he would be acutely aware of just how fearful those consequences were. He, more than most, would know what a spell in Coldbath Fields or Newgate could do to a man, let alone the rope.

And what had happened to Byam’s letter, and Weems’s record of his payments to him? Byam had been so sure they were there, he had actually called Drummond and confessed his connection with Weems, the blackmail and the death of Laura Anstiss and thus his motive for killing him. Without them he would never have been connected with it at all.

His thoughts were interrupted by the manservant standing in the doorway, coughing discreetly.

“Yes, Goodall, what is it?”

Goodall’s thin face was very nearly expressionless.

“There is a Lady Byam to see you, sir.”

It was ridiculous. Drummond felt his breath catch in his throat and the color rush to his face.

“Lady Byam?” he repeated pointlessly.

“Yes sir.” Goodall’s eyebrows rose so minutely it might have been Drummond’s imagination.

“Ask her to come in.” Drummond swallowed and turned away. What had happened? Why had Eleanor Byam come here to see him, to his house, and in the evening, though it was still daylight, and would be for another two hours. It was an extraordinary thing to do. Something must be wrong.

Goodall opened the door again and Drummond swung around to see Eleanor just inside the room. She was wearing a dark dress of some color between navy and gray, or perhaps it was green. It looked like the sky a little after dusk, and there was a soft bloom to her skin, reminding him that for all the cool colors of her clothes she would be warm to the touch, and very alive.

Of all the idiotic and wildly inappropriate thoughts! The heat he could feel in his face must make him look as if he were running a fever.

“Good evening, Lady Byam,” he said hastily, moving forward to greet her.

Goodall closed the door and they were alone.

“Good evening, Mr. Drummond,” she replied a little hesitantly. “It is very kind of you to see me without notice like this, and at such an hour.” She touched her lips with her tongue, as though her mouth were dry and speech difficult for her. Obviously she too was aware that this was a circumstance requiring some explanation. Women of respectability, let alone quality, did not come alone to visit the houses of single gentlemen, uninvited and at such a time of day. She took a deep breath. He could see the rise of her breast and the tiny pulse beating in her throat. “I came because I felt I must talk to you about the case,” she hurried on, still standing just inside the door, the colors of the carpet between them bright with the low evening sunlight. “I know you promised to tell my husband if there were any new events that touched on us-but I find waiting more than I can bear.” She stopped abruptly and for the first time met his eyes.

Her words were ordinary; the apology he would have expected, the reasons could be understood by anyone, but far more powerful than that he could see the fear in her. Her body was stiff under the soft muslin gown and the shawl around her shoulders, a matter of decorum rather than necessity in this warm evening.

He forgot himself for a moment in his desire to make her feel at ease.

“I understand,” he said quickly. “It is most natural.” He felt nothing ridiculous in saying this, although in all his years in the police force no other woman had called upon him in his house because she could not contain her anxiety. But then he had never been involved in a case like this. “Please don’t feel the need to apologize. I wish there had been more I could have told you so this would not have been necessary.” Then he heard his words in his own ears and was afraid she might think he meant to make her visit avoidable. He fumbled but could think of no way of undoing it without being overful-some, and that might be worse. He would appear such a fool.

She swallowed and looked even more uncomfortable, aware that she was intruding in his home with a matter which was strictly professional. They had no acquaintance other than his attempt to help her husband, for reasons of which she knew nothing. The Inner Circle permitted no women-nor indeed did any secret society of which he had ever heard. Such organizations were a totally masculine preserve.

She opened her mouth to make some apology, and looked as if she was even considering retreating.

“Please,” he said hastily. “Please allow me to take your shawl.” He stepped forward and held his hand ready, thinking that to reach for it would be precipitate.

She took it off slowly and handed it to him, a tiny smile on her lips. “You are very generous. I should not have intruded into your time this way, but I wanted to speak to you so much, and not at the police station…”

For a ridiculous instant his heart leaped. Then he told himself furiously that her eagerness was born solely of her fear-fear for her husband-and was in no way personal.

“What may I do to help you?” he said more stiffly than he had intended, placing the shawl clumsily over the back of the sofa.

She looked down at the floor, still standing, just a few feet from him. He was aware of the very faint perfume of some flower he could not identify, and he knew it was she, her hair and her skin.

“Inspector Pitt is doing all he can,” he began tentatively. “And he is making progress. He has discovered strong evidence against several other suspects.”

She looked up quickly and met his eyes.

“It seems terrible to say that I am glad, doesn’t it? Some other poor woman somewhere may be just as afraid as I am, only for her it will end in tragedy.”

Without thinking he reached out his hand and touched her arm.

“You cannot change it for her,” he said gently. “You have no cause to feel oppressed by a grief that you did not create and cannot help.”

“I-” She stopped, her face deeply troubled.

He became aware of his hand still on her arm and removed it quickly. Was that what she had been going to say? That he had trespassed; he was taking advantage of her anxiety to be more familiar than he would have had this been her house, and he the supplicant?

They both began to speak at once, he simply to say her name. He stopped abruptly.

“I’m sorry-”

She smiled fleetingly and then was desperately serious again.

“I know that you told Sholto you will do everything you can, and to begin with that seemed to ease my mind so much that it was almost as if the matter were already over. But now he is so worried he is ill with it.” Her lips tightened for a moment. “He tries to conceal it from me, so as not to frighten me, but I hear him up during the night, pacing the floor, and for long hours the light is on in his study.” She looked at him with a flash of humor so bleak he longed to be able to comfort her. He tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing.

“You will think I intrude into my husband’s affairs,” she went on quickly, looking downward, abashed. “But I don’t. I was simply concerned in case he was ill. I went downstairs to see if there were anything I could do to help…” She stopped and raised her eyes slowly, her voice very soft. “I found him in his study, not working as I had thought, but pacing the floor back and forth.” She bit her lip. “He was angry when he saw me in the doorway, and he denied there was anything wrong. But I know him, Mr. Drummond. He will work late, if there is occasion to. I have seen him stay up till one or two in the morning often. But never before in the eighteen years we have been married has he gone to bed, and then risen at three o’clock to go down and pace the floor of the study, with no papers out, no books, just his thoughts, and all the lights blazing.”

“It would seem there is something that concerns him profoundly,” he said with a chill of fear inside him. He had refused to consider that Byam might actually be guilty. Maybe he was wrong. Perhaps Byam calling him before he was even suspected was a double bluff. Perhaps the letter and the note that Weems was supposed to have kept were only his excuse to call Drummond, and there was something far more damaging yet to come.

He was torn with a dreadful mixture of emotions: dread of discovering irrefutably that it was Byam who had murdered Weems, and sickness inside at having to tell Eleanor-she would feel so betrayed. He was the person she had come to for help. Embarrassment: how could he explain all this to Pitt? He would leave him in a wretched position. And a sudden ease of a gripping weight inside him: if Byam was guilty, then Eleanor would be free.

That was a shameful thought, and the blood burned hot up his face, hot right up to his hair. Free for what? If Byam was hanged she would be a widow. That would not necessarily stop her loving him, and it certainly would not free her from terrible, overwhelming grief.

He did not even think of fear for himself, or his own involvement with the Inner Circle.

“Please-don’t let us stand here,” he said quietly. “Sit, and let us talk of it and learn if there is anything we can do that will resolve this problem.”

She accepted and sank into the chair gratefully. He sat opposite on one of the Chippendales, perched forward on the edge and still staring at her.

“I presume you have asked him what it is that troubles him?”

“Of course, but he will not tell me. He said he simply found it hard to sleep, and came downstairs because he did not wish to disturb me.”

“And is it not possible that that is the truth?”

Her smile was faint and a little twisted. “No. Sholto is not normally troubled by sleeplessness, and if he were he would have found a book from the library and taken it to bed with him, not paced up and down the study. And he looked ashen.” Her eyes met Drummond’s. “No one looks as he did merely because they cannot sleep. His face was haggard-as though he had seen the worst thing he feared.”

He spoke quickly; a question to reach for the last hope, not a dismissal of her fears.

“You are sure it was not the lamplight playing tricks on the features of a man overtired, and perhaps woken from an ill dream?”

“Yes-I am quite sure.” Her voice was very low; there was certainty in it, and pain. “Something terrible has happened, and I do not know what, except it seems inevitable to me that it must have to do with the death of the usurer. Surely if it were anything else he would have told me. He is not ill. We have no family matters, no relatives who might cause us distress.” Her eyes shadowed. “We never had children.” She was speaking more and more rapidly as the tension mounted in her. “My parents are dead and so are his. My brother is quite well, Sholto’s brother is in India but we have had no correspondence from him in the last two weeks. I did think to ask the butler if there had been any overseas letters that perhaps I had not seen, but he said there had not.”

“What about his work at the Treasury?” Drummond suggested it without belief, but he had to exhaust every possibility.

“I can think of nothing that would cause him the dread which I saw in him that night, and the constant fear I can feel at the edge of his mind even through the day.” She was sitting awkwardly on the edge of the chair, her fingers clenched together. “He is nervous, ill at ease. He cannot concentrate on the things which used to give him such pleasure: music, theater, books. He declined an invitation to dine with friends we have known and respected for years.”

“Could it be some friend in trouble?” He knew it was not even as he said it, but still the words spilled out, seeking any solution but the obvious.

“No.” She did not bother to elaborate her answer. It was as if she understood that they were simply making questions to put off the moment. “No,” she said again more softly, but still looking down. “I know him well enough. It is not the way in which he would behave for such a concern.” She bit her lip. “He is not a cold man. I do not mean that he is indifferent to the suffering or distress of friends, but that he is a man of decision. Such a happening would not affect him to such…” She lifted her shoulders very slightly. She was slenderer than he had realized, more fragile. “To such horror and inability to act. You did not see his face.”

“Then we must presume that something has happened that he knows of-and we do not,” he admitted finally. “Or at least he believes that it has. But he will not tell you what it is?” That was only half a question; she had already made the answer plain.

“No.”

“Are you sure you still want to know?”

She closed her eyes. “I’m frightened. I think I can guess what it may be-the least awful guess…”

“What?”

“That someone else has found the letter and the notes that Weems made of Sholto’s payments to him, and the reason. I suppose whoever killed him. Unless someone also was there after he was dead, and before the police found his body. And that person is now trying to blackmail Sholto himself.” She looked up at him suddenly, her eyes full of pain and fear.

He ached to be able to offer her some comfort, anything to take the cutting edge from her distress, or at the very least let her feel that she was not alone. Loneliness lent sharpness to all pains, as he knew only too well. But he knew of no practical comfort, nothing to ease the truth of what she said, and personal comfort would be so appallingly misplaced it would only add a fearful embarrassment to increase her misery, which was the last thing he wished.

“That at least would be proof that he was entirely innocent,” he said, clutching at a shred of hope. “If the worst happens and Pitt cannot find the murderer, then Lord Byam will have to tell what he knows, tell of the further blackmail, and expose the man.” He leaned a little forward. “After all,” he said earnestly, “the most he can do is make public the old matter of Laura Anstiss’s death, which would be most unpleasant, and there are some who may feel he was to blame, but may well also have great sympathy with him. And surely he is keeping the matter silent almost as much for Lord Anstiss’s sake as his own. It would be extremely distasteful for him also.”

“I think that troubles Sholto as much as any scandal attaching to himself,” she admitted. A curious look crossed her face, of confusion and distress, and then it was gone. “He admires Frederick so much. They have been friends since their youth, you know. There is something uniquely precious about an old friendship. One has shared so much, seen the passage of time, how it has marked and changed us, the hopes realized and the hopes dashed, the work to fulfill the dreams, and the dreams that are crumbled and kept secret.” She smiled. “One has laughed at the same things, and developed such an understanding because at times there is no need to speak. The knowledge is there simply because sharing has been so long a habit. One knows the best and the worst, and there is no need to explain.”

He felt a gulf between them with a pain so sharp it stopped him from laughing at himself for the idiocy of it. He was shut out. He had a past she knew nothing of: all his life, everything that had brought him to this day, the values, the loves and the griefs, Catriona’s death, his daughters, everything that mattered. To her he was simply a policeman.

And she had a life he could only imagine. All he knew was this desperate woman whose only concern was to help her husband.

“No,” he said abruptly, and heard his own words pour out while all the time his cooler brain was telling him to hold his tongue. “No-I think it is the quality of friendship which matters, not its length. One can have an acquaintance with people all one’s life, and never share a minute’s total understanding, or meet a stranger and feel with her some tremendous experience so deep you can never afterwards tell anyone else exactly how it was, and yet find, the moment your eyes meet, that she knows it as you do.”

She looked at him with surprise and then increasing wonder as the totally contradicting idea became clearer in her mind and she considered it. For seconds they stared at each other, the street outside forgotten, Weems and his murder, even Byam’s involvement with it. There was only the few square yards of the room in the amber sunlight through the big windows, the sofa and the chair they sat on, and the bright pattern on the carpet between them.

He saw her face as indelibly as if it were painted on his eyelids, the fine brow, the steady dark gray eyes with their shadowing lashes, the tiny lines woven by the years, the light on her hair, the softness of her lips.

“Perhaps you are right,” she said at last. “Maybe I have mistaken familiarity for understanding, and they are not the same.”

Now he was confused. He did not know what else to add. He had almost forgotten why they had spoken of friendship at all. It was something to do with Byam-yes-Byam and Anstiss. The pain of exposing Anstiss’s grief that Laura’s death had been suicide, because she loved another man.

“It is very horrible,” he said aloud. “I expect he would hesitate, whoever it was-an old friend or not. The friendship would simply make it the more painful to himself, it would not alter the other person’s grief.”

“Frederick?” She smiled very slightly and turned away. “No, of course not. Sometimes I think Sholto is overly protective of him-of his interests, I mean. He still feels this gnawing guilt for Laura’s death, and it colors his behavior, I am sure.” She smiled, but it was a sad, worried little gesture, without happiness. “Debts of honor can do strange things to people, can’t they? Especially if they can never be repaid.”

He said nothing, seeing from her expression that she had not completed her thought.

“I wonder at times,” she started again, “if perhaps Frederick is aware of it. He can be so funny, such an excellent companion, and then quite without warning he will say something thoroughly cruel, and I can see that Sholto is deeply hurt. Then it is all over again and they are the best of friends.” She shrugged, as if pushing the thought away as foolishness. “Then again, it is probably just that Frederick is less subtle with words. When people are close, sooner or later they will hurt each other, don’t you think? Simply because we use so many words, so easily, I suppose it is inevitable we should be clumsy, or take a meaning where it was not intended. I do it myself, and then wish I could have bitten my tongue out before being so stupid…”

She stopped, seemed to brace herself, and then began again, not looking at him but at the window and the deepening light on the trees rustling in the sunset wind. “If it is hurting Frederick that fills him with such horror, I can understand it very easily. But perhaps he will have no alternative, in the end, but to expose Weems’s murderer and risk his telling everything, at his trial, if not before. I-” She hunched her shoulders and tightened her hands, her fingers knotted in the soft fabric of her skirt.

Instinctively he leaned even closer to her, then stopped. He had no idea whether she was aware of him or not.

“I wonder whether he knows who it is?” she went on, her voice very low and a thrill of horror in it. “And if it is not a stranger, not some poor debtor from Clerkenwell, but a man he has some acquaintance with, even some sympathy for-and that is why he is so reluctant to expose him? That would explain a great deal.”

She shivered. “It would be easier then to understand why he is in such an agony of mind. Poor Sholto. What a fearful decision to have to make.” She turned back to Drummond, her eyes wide. “And if Weems would blackmail Sholto, then he would as easily blackmail someone else, wouldn’t he?”

“We believe he has,” he agreed quietly, Addison Carswell in his mind, and a new shadow of pity. What a miserable and futile waste of life and all its wealth. Over what? An infatuation with a pretty face, a young body and a few hours of an appetite and a dream that could never last.

She saw the distress in his face and her expression changed from hope to sorrow.

“You know who it is?” she said in little more than a whisper.

“I know who it may be-”

In the beginning she had said “the least awful possibility.” Neither of them spoke the most awful-that Byam had killed Weems and his fear was dreadfully and sickeningly for himself. He would not say it now.

It was getting late. The quality of the light was beginning to change, deepening in color, and already the shadows were across the floor and creeping up the brilliance of the far wall, lighting the peacock fire screen. He did not want her to leave, and yet he was afraid if he offered her refreshment she would realize the hour and excuse herself. But what else could he ask her?

“Mr. Drummond-” She turned around towards him, rearranging her skirt.

“I have not offered you anything by way of refreshment,” he said quickly, his voice louder than he had intended.

“Oh please do not put yourself to inconvenience. It is most kind of you to have spared me your time, and at this hour. You must be tired.”

“Please! Allow me to repair my oversight.”

“It is not necessary, I assure you. You have been most patient.”

He stood up and reached for the bell and rang it furiously.

“I have been very remiss. I would like some refreshment myself, and it is far too early for dinner. Please permit me to redeem myself.”

“No redemption is required,” she said with a smile. “But if it would make you feel more comfortable, then I will be glad to take a little tea.”

“Excellent!” His spirits soared and he rang the bell again and immediately Goodall appeared, his face politely inquiring.

“Tea,” Drummond said quickly. “And something…”

“Yes sir.” Goodall withdrew, his face expressionless.

Drummond sat opposite her again, wondering what to discuss. The formal part of her visit seemed to have exhausted itself and he had no desire at all to pursue the subject. He wanted to know more about her, but it seemed too crass simply to ask. He had not felt so awkward with anyone since before he had been married, when he was a young man raw to the army, and not even having thought of the police force for a career. He could remember balls and soirees then when he had felt this tongue-tied and desperate for something casual and charming to say.

Before the silence grew oppressive she rescued him. No doubt it was easy for her, with a relationship which hardly mattered.

“This is a most pleasing room, Mr. Drummond. Have you always lived here?”

“No-no, I lived in Kensington before my wife died.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I expect you miss her very much.”

“It is some years now, but yes, there are times when it seems very silent, and I imagine what it would be like if she were here,” he replied truthfully. “She was…” He looked at her and saw only interest in her face. He had thought he would not wish to tell her of Catriona, that it would be somehow disloyal, but now that it came to the moment it was not. In fact it seemed a very natural thing to do.

“She was so vivid. She looked at me so directly.” He smiled at the remembrance. “Her father used to criticize her for it and say it was unbecoming in a woman, but I found it honest, as if she were interested in everything and would not stoop to pretending she was not. She liked bright colors, all sorts of reds and glowing blues.” Involuntarily his eyes went to the peacock screen. “I recall once, years ago, she went to dinner in a gown of such a fierce flame color that she was noticed immediately when one entered the room.” His smile broadened. It was all so much easier than he had expected, so much more natural. “Looking back it was rather ostentatious, which was not what she meant at all. She simply loved the color and it made her feel happy to look at it. We laughed about it afterwards. Catriona laughed very easily, she enjoyed so many things.”

“It is a rare gift,” Eleanor said warmly. “And a very precious one. Too much happiness is lost because we spend our time regretting the past and seeking for the future and miss what we are given for the moment at hand. The gift to be happy is a blessing to all around. Do you have a picture of her?”

“She disliked the camera. She felt it caught only the outer person, and she did not care for the way she looked…”

Surprise flickered across Eleanor’s face.

“The person you describe sounds so lovely I had imagined her beautiful.”

“Catriona?” He was a little surprised. “When you knew her, she was. She had lovely eyes, very dark and wide, and shining hair; but she was a very big woman. After our daughters were born she seemed to become bigger, and never lost it again. I think she was more aware of it than anyone else. I certainly was not.”

“Then it hardly matters, does it?” Eleanor said, dismissing it. “Catriona. That is an unusual name. Was she Scottish?”

“Yes-as my father was, although I was born here in England.”

Goodall returned with a tray of tea and sandwiches and their conversation was interrupted while it was set down.

Goodall poured and passed the cups and the plates, then withdrew again.

“We have talked enough about me,” Drummond said, dismissing himself as a further topic. He was keen to hear something of her, even if it proved to be oddly painful: a whole world in which she knew and cared for other people and into which he could never intrude once this wretched case was over. “Please tell me of yourself.”

He half expected her to make the usual demur that modesty dictated. It was an automatic reaction of women, required by society, to be self-effacing, and he was delighted when she began a trifle awkwardly, but without excuse, as though she wished him to know.

She sipped her tea then set the cup down and began.

“My father was a man of letters, a student, but I barely remember him.” Her lips curled with a faint smile, but of far-off memories, not self-pity. “He died when I was nine, and I am afraid I can bring back to mind only the faintest recollections of him. He always seemed to have a book open in his hand, and he was very absentminded. I recall him as thin and dark, and he spoke very softly. But I am not sure if that is true memory, or the mind of my adult knowledge painting it for me from a late picture my mother had.”

Drummond thought of the privation of a new widow with a child to raise. His tea sat forgotten.

“What happened to you?” he asked with concern. “Had your mother family?”

“Oh yes. My grandfather was an archdeacon and he had a very good living. We went to live with him, my mother, my brother, my sister and myself. It was a large country house outside Bath, and very agreeable, with a garden full of flowers and an orchard where I remember playing.” Again she sipped her tea and took one of the small sandwiches. “My grandmother was rather strict, but she indulged us when she chose. I was a touch afraid of her, because I never learned precisely what pleased her and what did not, so I could never judge what her temper would be. I think now, looking back, that perhaps it had nothing to do with me at all.” She smiled and met his eye with sudden clarity. “I think children imagine themselves far more important than they are, and take the blame for a great deal that has no connection with them at all. Don’t you?”

It had never occurred to him. His own daughters were grown up and married, and he could not remember ever having spoken with them of such things. “I am sure you are right,” he lied without a flicker. “You seem to remember it very clearly.”

“I do, it was a happy time. I think I knew that even then.” She smiled as she thought of it, and he could see in her eyes that her thoughts were far away. “I think that was one of the things I liked best about Sholto when I first met him,” she said quite naturally, as if Drummond were an old friend and easy to talk to.

At last Drummond picked up his cup, as much to avoid staring as from any taste for it.

“He saw the beauty of land,” she continued. “The sunlight in the silent orchard, dappling all the tree trunks, the boughs of blossom so low they tangled in the long grass. Grandpapa was always telling the gardener to tend the vegetables so the poor man never got time to prune the trees. We had far too many apples and plums, but they were never very large. Geoffrey hated the place. He said it was a waste.”

“Who was Geoffrey?” he asked.

“I was betrothed to him when I was twenty-one. He was a dragoon. I thought he was so dashing.” She laughed a little at herself. “Though looking back, I think he was probably pompous and very self-important. But it was a long time ago.”

“And you left him for Lord Byam?” He should not have asked-it was indelicate-but he realized it only after the words were out.

“Oh no!” she said quickly. “Grandpapa heard that Geoffrey had been paying attention to a young lady of”-she colored-“of questionable reputation, and Grandpapa said I could not possibly marry him. He broke off the engagement. I heard later that Geoffrey married a viscount’s daughter.” She laughed as she said it, and he knew it had long ago ceased to hurt.

“Then Mama died and I found myself running the household and caring for Grandpapa,” she went on. “He was a bishop by then. My sister died in childbirth and my brother lost a leg in the Indian mutiny in ’fifty-eight. It was shortly after that when I met Sholto, and we became betrothed very quickly. Grandpapa liked him, which made it all so much easier. And Sholto’s conduct was irreproachable and his reputation spotless. Grandpapa inquired into it exhaustively. I was mortified, but poor Sholto bore it all with excellent temper. I could have loved him for that alone. But he was also possessed of a greater sense of humor, and that made him so agreeable to be with. People who can laugh at themselves are seldom insufferable, don’t you think? I have often considered if a sense of humor is not closely allied to a sense of proportion in things. Have you?”

“You are right,” he agreed quickly. “It is when one’s sense of proportion is offended that one can see the absurd. And when it is not ugly it is funny, but either way, we know that it cannot be overlooked. One can never be intimidated in the same way by what one perceives as ridiculous, so perhaps it has a kind of relationship to courage as well.”

“Courage?” Her eyebrows rose. “I had not thought of that. And speaking of courage, Mr. Drummond, I am most grateful for your kindness to us, and your endless patience. Now I must not exhaust it by overstaying. It is growing dusk and I must return home before I cause comment by the uninformed. It would be an ill way to repay your generosity.”

“Please do not worry,” he said urgently. “I will do everything I can…”

“I know.”

“And-and Pitt is an excellent man, even brilliant at times.”

She smiled, a wide, generous gesture as if for a moment all her fears had been lifted, although he knew it could not be so.

“Thank you. I know it is in the best possible hands.” She rose to her feet and he stood quickly, reaching for her shawl to wrap around her shoulders. She accepted it graciously. Then after a second’s hesitation, she went to the door and he stepped ahead to open it for her. She gave him her hand for an instant, then withdrew it. After only the briefest words, she was gone, and he was left in the hall doorway, with Goodall looking as surprised as his position and training would allow.

“A very distinguished lady,” Drummond said unnecessarily.

“Indeed sir,” Goodall said without expression.

“I’ll take dinner late this evening,” Drummond said sharply, irritated with Goodall and with himself.

“Very good, sir.”

In the morning Drummond set out for Bow Street with an unaccountable feeling of good cheer which he did not examine, for fear it would prove foolish if he discovered its reason and the little singing bubble of well-being inside him would burst. He strode along in the sun, swinging his cane, his hat at a rather more jaunty angle than customarily. He disregarded the newsboy shouting out the latest scandal in order to sell his papers, and the two dray drivers swearing at each other as they maneuvered their great horses, one around a corner, the other backing into a yard to unload. Even the barrel organist’s hurdy-gurdy sounded tuneful in the open air.

He caught a hansom in Piccadilly and dismounted at Bow Street. His good humor was met with a poor reward when he saw the desk sergeant’s face. He knew he was late, but that was his prerogative, and should not cause any comment, let alone alarm. His first thought was that something ugly had broken in the Weems case.

“What is it?” he asked sharply.

“Mr. Urban wants ter see yer, sir,” the sergeant replied. “I don’ rightly know what for.”

“Is Mr. Pitt in?”

“No sir, not that I knows of. If you want ’im we can send a message. I spec’s ’e’s ’round Clerkenwell way. Far as I know ’e’s workin’ out o’ there lately.”

“No-no, I don’t want him. I just wondered. You’d better send Mr. Urban up.”

“Yessir, right away sir.”

Drummond had barely sat behind his desk when there was a sharp knock on the door, and as soon as he spoke, Urban came in. He looked pale and angry, more tense than Drummond could remember seeing him in the short time since he moved from Rotherhithe.

“What is it?”

Urban stood stiffly, his face strained, his hair untidy as if he had recently pushed his fingers through it.

“I’ve just been informed, sir, that the director of public prosecutions has written to the commissioner of police to inquire if Constables Crombie and Allardyce were committing perjury when they gave testimony against Mr. Horatio Osmar in the matter of his being accused of public indecency-sir!”

“What?” Drummond was stunned. He had been half expecting something unpleasant on the Weems case, some other public figure involved, or worse still, another member of the police. This was totally unforeseen, and ridiculous. “That’s absurd!”

“Yes sir, I know.” Urban’s expression did not change. “There was no explanation, simply a formal letter; the director of public prosecutions seems to be taking it all quite seriously. We have to make a proper response, sir, a formal answer, and then I presume there will be an investigation and possibly charges.”

Drummond put his hands up to his face. “If this wasn’t happening I would find difficulty believing it. What on earth is the man dreaming of?” He looked up at Urban. “I suppose you are quite sure? There’s no possibility Crombie and Allardyce were mistaken, saw something a bit odd and leaped to a conclusion without grounds?”

“No sir,” Urban replied without hesitation. “I asked them that. They are quite sure he had his trousers undone and she had her blouse open at the front and they were struggling around with each other in a way likely to cause offense to anyone passing. Whatever they were actually doing, there is no doubt what it looked like to an average person close enough to see them at all.”

“What a damned nuisance no one thought to ask the fellow who brought in the case. He might have corroborated it.”

“Or not,” Urban pointed out.

“Well if he hadn’t we’d have dropped the charges in the first place,” Drummond said testily. “All right. I’ll deal with it. You were involved from the beginning, you’d better leave it alone now. I’ll see they send someone from another station.”

“Yes sir.” Urban still sounded angry, but he accepted the inevitable.

“Damn!” Drummond said softly when he had gone. Why were they wasting good men’s time on such idiotic things when there were real and dreadful crimes to solve, and even rising violence to try to prevent. Although thank heaven there had been nothing this year to equal the horror and subsequent panic of the Trafalgar Square riots two years ago which had come to be known as Bloody Sunday. But the ugly rumors of anarchists and other fomenters of treason were still there just under the surface.

Drummond tried to think of anything he knew about Horatio Osmar. There was little enough, an undistinguished government career. His name had seldom been mentioned in connection with any major legislation, and even when it had it was only as a supporter or opponent, never as having innovated anything. He was a rather self-important little bon viveur.

What on earth made him think he could get away with it? Why was he now having questions asked in the House, and the Home Secretary upsetting the director of public prosecutions and the police commissioner and trying to raise a scandal about police perjury? Why did anyone take any notice of him? Many people protested innocence; it was instinctive. Others were not able to pursue it this far. Why Osmar?

What would Eleanor Byam think if she knew he was spending his time not pursuing the murderer of William Weems as he had promised her, but trying to find out beyond doubt whether two of his young constables had witnessed an ex-junior minister behaving indecently on a park bench, or if they had perhaps overreacted to a rather silly scene of scuffling around trying to open a locket around a young woman’s neck?

Byam had brought Drummond in to help him in case he were accused of murder. Osmar had brought the D.P.P. in for a case of public indecency. But had it been done in the same fashion, in the name of the same brotherhood? It was a thought which brought a chill to his body and a rising feeling that was not unlike sickness. What was he, or any of them, being used for? He had assumed that Osmar was guilty. He had equally assumed that Byam was not. In his own mind Osmar’s use of influence was corrupt. He had considered himself to be helping a brother in extreme difficulty.

But what else did the Inner Circle do? These were only two very dissimilar instances. What were all the others? Who judged what was corrupt and what was honorable? And who was at the heart of it?

A little before three in the afternoon there was another knock on his door. As soon as he spoke, it opened to admit a youngish man, perhaps in his late thirties, handsome in a most unusual fashion. His face in repose might have been considered very ordinary, nose much too bony and prominent, eyes wide set and very fine, thick hair waving back from a good brow, cheeks very lean. It was his mouth which was remarkable, delicate lipped, sensuous, and when he smiled possessed of extraordinary, illuminating charm. It was a face about which Drummond instinctively had profound reservations, and yet he wanted to like it. It should have been a strong face, with those remarkable bones, and yet there was something in the balance of it that made him doubt.

“Superintendent Latimer,” the man introduced himself. “I have been sent over from the Yard to look into this miserable matter of the two constables who say they saw Horatio Osmar misbehaving on a park bench.”

“Latimer?” Drummond said with a chill passing through him like a sudden shiver. “Clarence Latimer?”

The man’s face remained perfectly bright. “Yes. Do you know me?”

Drummond swallowed and forced himself to smile. “Heard your name.” He shrugged. He was stung by the man’s imputation that the constables’ word was doubtful, but he kept his voice level.

“If they say they saw him, then I accept that they did,” he said with only a hint of sharpness. “They are both reliable men who have never previously overstated their case.”

“Oh personally I don’t doubt it,” Latimer agreed easily. “But officially I have to look into it. I’ll begin by speaking to them. Are they around the station, or should I send to have them come in?”

“No need.” Drummond’s mind was still racing with thoughts to tell Pitt. It was his worst fear about the list realized. “We were expecting you. They are on duties around the station, and you can see them as you wish. I’ll be surprised if they tell you anything beyond what they have said all along.”

“So shall I, but I have to ask.” Latimer shrugged. “Never know, they might come up with some detail that pushes it a little one way, or the other. Then I’ll find this wretched girl, what’s her name?”

“Beulah Giles.”

“Right. May I send someone to bring her here?”

“Certainly.”

“Good. From what I’ve heard, nobody has really questioned her so far. Is that really so?”

Drummond kept his mind on the subject with difficulty. “Yes. The magistrate threw the case out before she was called to the stand.”

“Well, well. Pity. She might have cleared up the whole matter.”

“Quite. That is very possibly why she was not called,” Drummond said acidly.

Latimer flashed him a broad, beautiful smile. “No doubt.” And he excused himself and left.

Drummond took a piece of paper and wrote a brief note to Pitt with Clarence Latimer’s name, rank and whereabouts. He left it sealed, with the desk sergeant, to be given to Pitt the first moment he set foot in the station.

At four o’clock the hansom arrived carrying Miss Beulah Giles, this afternoon dressed in a cotton print gown considerably lower at the bosom than the one she wore on her visit to the courtroom. By then, the Bow Street station was more than fully occupied with three recently arrested street robbers, with violence, a pickpocket caught in the act with his accomplice, and a man who had been charged with setting up an illegal cock fight. There was no room in which Latimer could interview Miss Giles, and he declined to keep her waiting for an indefinite period until there should be a suitable space. He considered the best alternative was to get back into another hansom and take her to Scotland Yard where his own office would be available, and he could be assured of quiet and suitable surroundings. At the time no one thought anything further about the matter.

When Pitt arrived at Bow Street after having spent a miserable morning at Clerkenwell, he was immediately handed Drummond’s note. He read it with a sinking in the bottom of his stomach, but no surprise. He knew there was a Latimer at the Yard, he had not known his given name. Now he had no alternative but to begin his investigation of him.

As with the others, he started with his home. He already knew from the list where he lived; the difficulty was to think of an acceptable excuse for calling. Latimer was his senior. If he was clumsy or offensive he could very well find himself in a very unpleasant situation. Duplicity would inevitably be discovered unless he were extremely fortunate, and could find evidence to clear Latimer almost straightaway. The only alternative he could think of was to tell a great deal of the truth, simply to twist his own part in it a little.

Accordingly he arrived at Beaufort Gardens in Knights-bridge. It was a discreet residential area, quiet in the patchy afternoon sun, parlormaids in stuff dresses and crisp aprons making ready to receive callers, children out walking with nursemaids, little girls very pretty and sedate in white, lace-trimmed pinafores over their dresses, little boys in sailor suits, hopping up and down, itching to be allowed to run.

A fishmonger’s boy pushed a cart along the roadway, whistling cheerfully. A postman came past with the third delivery of mail. Pitt crossed the street just before an open landau came around the corner, its mistress on her way to pay a visit to some even more elegant address. The coachman and footmen wore livery of frock coats, striped waistcoats, shining top hats with black leather cockades, and brilliantly polished boots. A spotted Dalmation dog trotted in step behind, its brass collar and insignia shining in the sun.

Pitt smiled briefly, but without pleasure.

Superintendent Latimer was doing very well for himself to live in such an area. There was the possibility, of course, that he had either inherited money or married a woman of substantial means. Both were circumstances Pitt would have to inquire into. Preliminary questions in Bow Street had elicited nothing, but he had not expected they might since Latimer was based at the Yard.

He rang the front doorbell at number 43, and after a moment the door was opened by a housemaid in a smart uniform. At least, Pitt judged her to be a housemaid; he noticed a feather duster tucked discreetly behind the hall table, as if she had put it down so she might change roles to answer the door. It was a small thing, but a sign that Mrs. Latimer cared very much about appearances. She lived in a street where most people could afford a separate parlormaid, and she could not.

“Yes sir?” the maid said politely. She looked no more than seventeen or eighteen, but of course she had probably been in service for four or five years and was well used to her job.

“Good morning,” Pitt replied in a businesslike manner. “My name is Pitt. I apologize for disturbing Mrs. Latimer so early, but certain matters have arisen which it is necessary I discuss with her. Will you be kind enough to inform her that I am here?” He produced his card, on which he had added by hand his police rank.

The girl colored in annoyance at herself for not having remembered to bring the silver tray on which visitors could place their cards, but she had been caught by surprise. She had not been expecting social calls for at least another thirty minutes. There were exact times for the well-bred to do such things, and Mrs. Latimer’s acquaintances knew what to do, and what not to do. She took the card in her hand.

“Yes sir. If you’ll wait here I’ll ask if Mrs. Latimer will see you,” she said with disapproval.

“Of course,” he agreed. Either there was no morning room, or else it was not available.

She scurried away and he looked around the hall. Architecturally it was spacious, but it was filled by its furniture and pictures, a stag’s head on the wall, a stuffed stoat in a glass case on a table to the right, and two stuffed birds in another case to the left, a large hat and umbrella stand and a magnificent carved table with a mirror behind it. The carpets were also excellent and in very fine condition. They could not have been more than a year or two old. They were all signs of affluence.

Was the rest of the house so richly furnished? Or was this the part which visitors saw, and had been dressed accordingly, at the expense of the private rooms? He knew from long experience that hallways and reception rooms were indications of aspiration, of how people wished to be perceived, not of reality.

Mrs. Latimer came down the staircase and he was aware of her long before she had reached the bottom. She was a remarkably striking woman, slender, of average height but with hair so very fair it seemed almost luminous as it caught the light from the chandeliers. Her skin was unusually pale, and as flawless as a child’s. Indeed her wide eyes and light brows gave her face a look of innocence astounding in a grown woman, and Pitt found his planned words fleeing from him as too brusque and worldly for this ethereal creature.

She came down the last steps and stopped some distance from him. She was dressed in a muslin gown of lilacs and blues on white. It was extremely elegant, but he found it jarring on his taste because it seemed so impractical, so designed merely to be gazed at rather than for any physical or purposeful use, as if the being within it were not entirely human. He preferred a woman more immediately flesh and blood, like himself.

“Good morning, Mrs. Latimer. I apologize for disturbing you so early, and without seeking your permission first,” he began with the prepared apology, having nothing else thought of. “But the matter about which I come is urgent, and must be handled with discretion.”

“Indeed?” she said with polite interest. He thought her voice deliberately softer in pitch than nature had intended it. There was a brightness in her eyes and he tried to assess whether it was a flash of hard intelligence or simply the light from the chandeliers, and could not decide.

“Please come into the withdrawing room and tell me of it,” she offered. “My maid said you are of the police, is that correct?”

“Yes ma’am, from Bow Street.”

“I cannot think why you come to us.” She led the way, walking gracefully and with complete assurance. If she had the slightest apprehension or uncertainty she hid it superbly. “We are hardly in your area, and my husband, as you will no doubt be aware, is a superintendent in Scotland Yard.”

“Yes ma’am, I am aware; and it is not to do with any crime in your area that I have come.”

She opened the double doors into the withdrawing room and swept in, her skirts wide behind her, leaving him to follow. The room was as impressive as the hallway: opulent curtains draped well over the floor around Georgian windows looking onto a small, tree-filled garden, its size disguised by the abundance of leaves so the light and shadows were constantly dancing. She allowed him a moment to appreciate the rest of the room, then she invited him to be seated. The furniture was a little ostentatious for his taste, but extremely comfortable. The carpets had no worn patches that he could see, nor indeed did any of the fabric covering the chairs, nor the embroidered antimacassars on their backs. Again there were dried flower ornaments, glass cases with stuffed birds and silver-framed photographs. The pictures on the walls were large and ornately gilded, but a glance told him they were of little intrinsic value as works of art.

She seemed quite happy that he should be so interested in her home, no doubt admiring it, and she made no move to hurry him.

He felt compelled to say something civil; he had stared long enough to make some remark necessary.

“A very handsome room, Mrs. Latimer.”

She smiled, taking it for admiration not untouched by envy. She knew from his card that his rank was merely inspector.

“Thank you, Mr. Pitt. Now what is this matter in which you believe I may help you?”

She was being more businesslike than he had expected. The childlike air would seem to be part a trick of coloring, part an art she wished to enhance, but in no way marking an indecisive or timorous nature.

He began the story he had prepared. “A most unpleasant person has endeavored to impugn the reputations of several men of importance in London.” That was certainly true, whether it had been Weems or not.

Her gaze remained wide and uncommunicative. It did not touch her yet, and she was unconcerned with others.

“He has suggested financial matters of a dubious nature,” he continued. “Debt, usury, and a certain degree of dishonesty.”

“How unpleasant,” she conceded. “Can you not charge him with slander and silence him? It is a criminal offense to speak ill of people in the way you suggest.”

“Unfortunately he is beyond our reach.” Pitt hid the smile that came naturally to his lips.

“If he has slandered people of importance, Mr. Pitt, he is not beyond the law, whoever he is,” she said with slightly condescending patience.

“He is dead, ma’am,” Pitt answered with satisfaction. “Therefore he cannot be made either to explain his charges or to deny them and make apology.”

Her fair face registered confusion.

“Is that not surely the most effective silencer of all?”

“Most certainly. But the charges have been made, and unless they are proved groundless the smear remains. As discreetly as possible, and without spreading them by the very act of proving them wrong, I must find a way to show that they are groundless and malicious.”

Her blue eyes opened very wide. “But why, if he is dead?”

“Because others know of the charges, and the rumors and whispers may still spread. I am sure you see how damaging that would be-to the innocent.”

“I suppose so. Although I cannot imagine why you come to me. I shall certainly not repeat malicious gossip, even assuming I had heard it.”

“One of the names mentioned by this man is that of your husband.” He watched her closely to see even the faintest, most concealed of responses.

There was nothing whatever visible in her face but incomprehension.

“My husband’s? Are you quite sure?”

“There can be no doubt,” he replied. “The address is given as well.”

“But my husband is a member of the police-you know that.” She looked at him as if she doubted his intelligence.

“Not everyone believes the police to be beyond temptation or weakness, Mrs. Latimer. It is against those people we must guard. Which is what I am attempting to do. Does your husband have private income, an inheritance, perhaps?”

“No.” Her face pinched with distaste at the question. “Senior officers earn a considerable amount, Mr. Pitt. Perhaps you are not aware…” She trailed off; the intrusion of such questions offended her, and confused her. She did not deal in financial matters; it was not a woman’s place.

Pitt had originally intended asking her if she knew of Latimer’s ever having borrowed money, even for a short time to meet some unexpected expense, but looking at her smooth, humorless face he abandoned the idea. Had he been Latimer he would not have told her of anything so mundane or displeasing as financial difficulty, he would simply have handled the matter himself in whatever way he thought best, and presented her with the result. He had seen the glint of purpose in her eye. He doubted she was a stupid woman, for all the carefully cultivated extreme femininity. She was probably capable of intense determination, and acute social judgment; but she seemed to be without any breadth of imagination. The very predictability of the room evidenced that, as did her responses to his statements now.

“I am aware, ma’am,” he answered her half question. “But this man has left written claims that Superintendent Latimer borrowed considerable amounts of money from him. It is my task to disprove that.”

She blinked. “What is wrong with borrowing money, if you repay it?”

“Nothing. It only becomes wrong if you cannot repay-which is what this man has suggested, among other things.”

“What things, Mr. Pitt?”

She had surprised him. He had not expected her to pursue that, only to deny debt. He had been right; it was a flash of steel under all the fair hair and pink-and-white skin.

“Blackmail, Mrs. Latimer.”

That jolted her. She had not flinched with distaste in the outward show she had given earlier, but now her eyes widened a little, and beneath the mannerisms her concentration sharpened.

“Indeed. I think perhaps you had better speak to my husband about this. It appears to involve crime as well as malicious charges.”

“The crime is also being investigated,” he assured her. “It is the charges I am personally concerned with disproving. The reputation of the police force has suffered very gravely in the last year. It is most important we protect it now. I would greatly appreciate your assistance.”

“I don’t see what I can do.”

“May I speak with your servants?” He wanted to see the rest of the house. It would give him the best opportunity he could desire to estimate their financial standing.

“If you believe it will help,” she conceded reluctantly. “Although I cannot imagine how it could.”

“Thank you, that is most generous of you.” He rose to his feet and she did also, reaching for the bell.

When the parlormaid arrived she gave the necessary instructions and bade him good-day.

He spent a further hour asking all the servants pointless questions about callers, which enabled him to see most of the rest of the house. His ugliest fears were realized. The money had been spent on the front rooms. All the more private areas where no visitor would pass were furnished in castoffs, wood was scratched or blemished, carpets were faded in the sun, worn where feet had passed over them in constant tread, fringes on lamps and chairs were patched and missing tassels, the wallpaper was faded where the light fell on it, curtains were barely to the floor, and unlined. The domestic staff was only the barest number necessary to run such an establishment. When dinner parties were given, as they were quite often, then extra servants were hired in for that occasion, as were the required plates, glasses and silver.

He left late in the afternoon with a heavy feeling of depression. Mrs. Latimer was apparently a woman with considerable social ambition and a driving will to achieve, indeed he was obliged to leave through the servants’ entrance to avoid the guests arriving at the front.

Latimer might well have felt the same ambition, but whatever his own desires he appeared determined to drive himself to the limit, and perhaps beyond. It would be very easy to believe he had borrowed from Weems in order to throw the extra party, feed his guests with the best, serve the best wines and impress all the right people. But how had he expected to repay? His salary was set.

Pitt had taken the very obvious step of learning a superintendent’s salary. He could imagine no way in which it could have maintained the establishment in Beaufort Gardens, even with the stringent economies practiced in the kitchens, the family bedrooms and the servants’ quarters. Thinking of it in the hansom on the way back to Bow Street he felt oppressed by the anxiety of it, the constant worry, the fear of the letter, the knock on the door, the feeling that everything was temporary, nothing safe, robbing one pocket to pay another, always juggling, thinking, deceiving, covering one lie with a second, spoken or implied.

There was little point in speaking to Latimer directly. If it were untrue he could not prove it; if it were true he would deny it. Neither would mean anything. Proof was all that would stand. He might not have killed Weems, but that was only part of the question, and now not the part that troubled Pitt the most. Whatever the truth of Weems’s murder, he needed to know where Latimer had hoped to acquire the money to repay the loans. He needed to know it was an honest way, although he could think of none.

He would have to have Micah Drummond’s authorization to inquire into Latimer’s cases. They were not in Bow Street but in Scotland Yard, and it would need a very strong explanation before an officer from another station would be permitted to examine them.

It took him many days of close, unhappy reading in a little room off a long corridor, sitting on a hard-backed chair in front of a wooden table piled with papers. He followed case after case of human violence, greed and deceit. Latimer had worked on a wide variety of evils, from murder and arson through to organized fraud and large-scale embezzlement. It was an unhappy catalogue of behavior, probably much the same as would have been found in the records of any other officer of similar rank in a city the size of London, the largest city in the world, the hub of an empire that circled the earth, the financial capital, the industrial and commercial heart, the busiest port, the center for transport and communication, as well as the social pinnacle.

He put aside all those where Latimer had worked closely with other officers and the results were precisely what anyone with experience would have expected. He also took out those where the trail of evidence was obvious and had culminated in arrest and conviction of a known felon.

He read and reread any that ended in an acquittal, but found little that was unusual, and nothing that was unaccountable.

Lastly, tired, eyes aching and fed up with spending his days inside poring over papers instead of out dealing with people, he turned to the cases unsolved. There were three murders over the last five years, and he read them carefully. From the evidence, the statements recorded, he would have done precisely what Latimer had done. His spirits lifted a little. Perhaps after all he was going to find it was simply a case of a man in love with a beautiful and socially ambitious wife who had overextended his means to satisfy her.

But there was no reason to suppose Carswell had borrowed money, and every reason to believe he was being blackmailed. There was sufficient reason to believe that Latimer also was blackmailed. Lord Byam had admitted it from the first. Was Latimer, the third name on the list, really only an innocent observer?

Was he a member of the secret brotherhood, the Inner Circle? He was just the sort of man who would join: young, ambitious, desirous of social status and preferment. Pitt would need not proof that he was, but proof that he was not before he would alter his belief.

He went outside in the hot, close midday to find himself some luncheon. In a noisy public house with a thick sandwich and a glass of cider he sat and watched the faces of the men coming and going, recognizing each other, exchanging whispers and nods, doing quick, secretive business, making acquaintances.

Was it any use trying his underworld sources? If Latimer were assisting the Inner Circle, they would not be the petty thieves and forgers, the pickpockets, fences and pimps of the criminal world, but the practitioners of fraud in business, the corrupt lawyers, the men who gave and took bribes, the financial deceivers and embezzlers of thousands.

He looked at the narrow, foxy face of the man at the table next to his. He was dirty and his teeth were stained, his hands cracked and nails black. He very possibly stole to make his life a little more comfortable. He would almost certainly not be above taking advantage of those weaker or slower-witted than himself, and might well have abused his wife, if he had one, or his children.

Still Pitt found him less of an offense against his code than the rich men who stole indirectly from strangers in order to become richer still, and who corrupted others to escape the consequences.

He returned to Scotland Yard and his poky little room with the pile of papers, and resumed his study, concentrating on the crimes that involved men he thought likely to be members of the Inner Circle, or to be of interest to its members.

Here at last he found what he had dreaded: lines of inquiry dropped for no accountable reason, prosecutions not proceeded with even though they might well have succeeded, curious omissions of diligence for a man otherwise exacting in his standards. Any individual one might have been explained easily enough as simple misjudgment. Latimer was no more infallible than any other man and it would be unreasonable to expect him to be right every time. He, like anyone else, could guess wrongly, be overtired, miss a connection, a link in the chain of evidence, leap to a wrong conclusion, have his prejudices and his blind sides. But taken all together they formed a very faint pattern, and the more he looked at them the more definite the pattern became. There was no way he could find out; the society was secret and the punishment for betraying a brother was severe. So Urban had said, and if he was right, Weems’s list proved it. But Pitt believed all the unaccountable omissions and strange misjudgments were with cases where the interests of the Inner Circle were concerned, and Latimer had been an instrument to their ends.

Had there been one he had refused to hide, one crime that had offended him more than he could bear, and he had at last refused? And the brotherhood had punished him by putting his name on Weems’s list, so he would eventually be discovered, and ruined? It was a heavy price to pay, and he would then be of no further use to them. Pitt shivered, cold in the stuffy room. But the other brothers would know, the waverers would be brought up sharply against the reality of what it meant to betray the Inner Circle, and every other brother would be strengthened in his loyalty.

What about Micah Drummond? His name had not appeared on the list. Did that mean he had never defied them, never refused their orders? Certainly he had responded quickly enough to help Sholto Byam, and the case was murder.

The thought was so intensely ugly Pitt found himself feeling sick. He liked Drummond as much as any man he knew, and a week ago he would have staked his own career that Drummond was utterly honest.

Perhaps Latimer’s juniors felt like that about him too.

He tidied up the piles of papers and left the office, locking the door behind him and returning the key to the sergeant who had given it to him.

“You all right, sir?” the man asked tentatively, his face screwed up in concern. “Yer don’t look all that sharp, if yer don’t mind me sayin’ so, sir.”

“Probably need a little air,” Pitt lied automatically. He needed to protect his information; he could trust no one. “Hate all that reading.”

“Find what you wanted, sir?”

“No-no, I didn’t. It seems it was a wrong trail. Have to try somewhere else.”

“S’ppose there’s no shortcut to bein’ a detective, sir,” the sergeant said philosophically. “Used ter think it was what I wanted, now I’m not so sure. Mebbe find out a lot o’ things I’d a bin ’appier not knowin’.”

“Yes,” Pitt agreed, then changed his mind. “Or find out nothing at all.”

“Bad day, sir? Mebbe termorrer’ll be better.”

“Maybe.” Pitt forced a smile at the man, and thanked him again before leaving and going out into the rapidly cooling evening air. It smelled like rain. The faint wind was easterly, off the Channel, and it carried the sounds of the river up from the Pool of London and the docks. It would still be light for several hours yet, and on the Embankment there were carriages clipping along as people took the air. A pleasure boat with bright little flags fluttering made its way upstream, towards Windsor or Richmond. He could hear the laughter drifting across the water. Somewhere out of sight, also towards Westminster Bridge, a hurdy-gurdy played a popular tune and a cart was propped up on the opposite side of the Embankment, selling winkles and eel pies.

It was six o’clock, and he was ready to go home and forget Weems and his list, and all the misery and corruption it had shown him. He would have supper in his own kitchen, with Charlotte, then go outside and do a little work in the garden, perhaps cut the grass and tidy up some of the bigger weeds which Charlotte did not get to.

He would make a decision what to tell Drummond tomorrow. Perhaps in the morning it would seem clearer.

It did not really rain, just a light drizzle, so fine it lay on top of the grass, barely bending the petals of the flowers or the long light stems of leaves. Pitt stayed outside in it because he wanted the cool feel of it on his face and the sight of the slowly dimming light across the sky. He had been inside all day, and hated it. And it was a satisfaction to work manually and see the garden begin to look cared for, manicured and husbanded. Charlotte did the small chores like taking the dead heads off the roses and pansies, lifting the tiny weeds, and Gracie swept the path, but they had too many other chores to attend to it every day, and the grass cutter was too heavy for them anyway.

He came in at last a little after nine o’clock when the overcast was bringing the dusk early. He took off his wet jacket and boots and sat down in his chair in the parlor, ignoring the fact that his trouser legs were damp also.

Charlotte was mending a dress of Jemima’s. She put it down, poking the needle in carefully where she could find it again.

“What is it?” she asked, her face grave, her eyes on his.

He thought for a moment of evading the question and giving some trivial answer, but he wanted to share it. He did not want to make the decision alone, and she at least he could trust absolutely. With brief, painful words he told her.

She sat listening without moving her eyes from his face and her hands in her lap for once were completely motionless. She did not reach again for the needle or to wind wool or skein silks.

“What are you going to tell Mr. Drummond?” she said at last when he was finished.

“I don’t know.” He looked at her, trying to see any certainty in her face, if she had a vision of judgment he had not. “I don’t know how deep he is in this brotherhood himself.”

She thought for only an instant.

“If you don’t tell him, you are making the judgment that you do not trust him.”

“No,” he said, denying it immediately. “No,” he said again. “I am simply not placing him in a position where he has to defy the Inner Circle if he is to continue with the Weems case as it is at the moment. Latimer may not be guilty of killing Weems.”

“Only of corruption,” she said bluntly, still sitting without moving.

“I don’t even know that,” he argued. “I only believe it from the case notes. They could all be misjudgments, or simply errors. If anyone went through all my cases they would find a lot that is open to criticism, and perhaps worse, if they wished to see it that way.”

Charlotte seldom thought of things like means and opportunity, weapons, forensic evidence, but she understood motive, emotions, lies, all that was concerned purely with people.

“Rubbish,” she said with a smile full of gentleness, her eyes so soft he could not take hurt. “Superintendent Latimer is corrupt, and you are afraid that Micah Drummond is too, or may become so. But you cannot make the choice for him, Thomas, you must give him the chance to do the right thing, whatever the consequences.”

“The consequences may be very ugly.” He shifted a little, sitting lower in his chair. “The Inner Circle is secret, powerful and ruthless. They have no forgiveness.”

“Do you admire them?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I despise them more than almost anything else. They are worse than a simple garroter who kills people in the street; they seduce and corrupt minds and turn ambitious and foolish men into liars and corrupters of others.” He stopped; his voice had become harsh and his hands were clenched on his knees with the violence of his feelings. He stared at Charlotte and saw her face intensely clearly in the lamplight, its high cheekbones and soft mouth, her eyes steady on his.

“Do you not think that Micah Drummond might hate them too, if he understood what they are?” she asked him. “Perhaps even more strongly than you do, since they have tried to soil him too.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed slowly.

“Then you must give him the opportunity to fight them.” She leaned forward a little. “You cannot protect him from it, and I don’t believe you should try. I should not thank you if you removed from me the chance to redeem myself from a terrible mistake of judgment.”

He took her hand in his and held it gently.

“All right. You don’t need to argue any further. I understand. I shall tell him tomorrow.”

She lifted her other hand and touched his face very softly, smiling, her eyes bright. It was not necessary that she should speak.

However the following morning Pitt’s intention was balked by a furore of excitement when he reached Bow Street. There were newspapers being passed from one person to another and cries of indignation and anger all around the entrance and the desk and the corridors.

“It’s downright dishonest!” the desk sergeant said, his face bright pink.

“It’s monstrous, that’s what it is!” a constable said heatedly, holding the offending newspaper out in front of him. “It’s lies! How do they get away with printing such things?”

“It’s a conspiracy!” another constable agreed with outrage in his voice. “Ever since the Whitechapel murders they’ve been out to get us!”

“I wouldn’t wonder if there’s anarchists behind it,” the desk sergeant added.

“What is it?” Pitt demanded, snatching one of the newspapers from a constable.

“There.” The constable pointed with a rigid forefinger. “Look at that.”

Pitt looked.

“ ‘Police brutality’!” he read. “ ‘Miss Beulah Giles, a victim of police harassment and brutal interrogation, was yesterday taken forcibly from her home to Scotland Yard where she was secretly interrogated by Superintendent Latimer in police attempts to defend themselves against charges of perjury on the park bench case.’ ” And it went on in the same vein about the shock and dismay to an innocent girl’s feelings as she was removed from her home and family and subjected to insult and degradation in a desperate effort to force her to change her testimony and incriminate her friend.

Pitt pushed the paper back at the constable and reached for one of the others. The words were a trifle different, but the meaning was essentially the same. Beulah Giles had been the victim of police insult and intimidation. Everywhere people would rise to avenge the outrage. What was this new police force coming to when an English maiden was not safe from their assaults and abuse? Their entire existence must be questioned forthwith. Pitt swore, quietly and bitterly-an extraordinary circumstance for him; he very seldom lost his temper, and even more rarely did he use unseemly language.