Midnight at Marble Arch

CHAPTER

15

ON THE MORNING OF the second day of Alban Hythe’s trial, Knox sent a message to Pitt to meet him at the home of a Mr. Frederick Townley, on Hunter Street, just off Brunswick Square. The footman had instructions to admit him as soon as he arrived.

It was a damp, hazy day, already warm at half-past nine, with a very fine drizzle falling. As Knox had been promised, a grim-faced footman opened the door so immediately after Pitt’s pulling of the bell that he had to have been waiting for him. He was shown into the morning room, where Knox and a very clearly distressed Frederick Townley were waiting.

Knox introduced Pitt with his full title.

Townley was gaunt, middle-aged, with dark hair receding at the brow. At the moment he was restless, fidgeting, and unable to control his nerves.

“I’ve told you, Mr. Knox, I was in error,” he said urgently, looking at Knox, then at Pitt, then back again. “I do not wish to make any such complaint. You may say anything you please. I withdraw the complaint. I have no idea in the world why you should think to involve Special Branch. It is completely absurd.” He turned to Pitt. “I apologize to you, sir. This is just a domestic matter. In fact, it is no more than a misunderstanding.”

Pitt looked at the man’s face and saw fear and grief, which at this moment were overridden by acute embarrassment.

“I’m sorry.” Townley regarded Pitt with discomfort. “You have been disturbed unnecessarily. Now I must return to my family. I would like to hope you understand, but at this point it really makes no difference to me. Good day to you, gentlemen.”

“Mr. Townley!” Knox said with asperity. “I may not have the authority to require a statement from you, if you choose to let this matter go unreported, but Commander Pitt cannot ignore it if the safety of the realm is in question.”

Townley’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “Don’t be absurd, man! How can my daughter’s … misfortune possibly concern the safety of the realm? I don’t know what it is you want, but I am laying no complaint whatever. You have wasted this gentleman’s time.” He gestured toward Pitt. “Please excuse me.” Again he moved toward the door, lurching a little and regaining his balance with a hand on the jamb. “My footman will be happy to see you out,” he added, as if he thought his meaning might have been unclear.

“If you do not speak the truth, Mr. Townley, whether in the form of a complaint or not, then an innocent man may hang,” Knox said peremptorily.

Townley swung around and glared at him. “Not because of anything I have said, sir!”

“Because of what you know, and have not said,” Knox retorted. “Silence can lead to damnation as much as speech, and still cost a man his life.”

“Or a woman her reputation!” Townley snapped back. “I look after my own, sir, as does any decent man.”

“Have you a son also, Mr. Townley?” Pitt said suddenly.

Townley stared at him with disbelief. “And what is that to you, sir? None of this … this supposed affair has anything to do with him.”

“I have a son and a daughter also,” Pitt told him. “They are children still, but my daughter is fast turning into a woman. It seems to me that she grows more and more like her mother with every few months that pass.”

Townley tried to interrupt him, but Pitt overrode him.

“Because of an incident involving someone she knew, my daughter has asked me, and her mother, very urgent and awkward questions about rape. She wishes to know what it is, and why people are so terribly upset about it. We have tried to answer her both delicately and honestly, bearing in mind that she is only fourteen.”

“I wish you well, sir,” Townley said, succeeding in interrupting this time. His face was gray-white and he seemed to have trouble forming his words coherently. “But that is of no concern to me.”

“And I look at my son,” Pitt went on, disregarding the interruption. “He is nearly twelve, and has no idea what we are talking about. How do I explain it all to him, so that his behavior toward women is never coarse or, worse still, violent? But perhaps more terrible than that, how do I protect him from being accused of something he did not do? What father, what mother, would see their son at the end of the hangman’s rope, jeered at by the crowd, insulted, and abused, for a hideous crime of which he was innocent, but could not prove himself so?”

Townley was trembling where he stood, his fists clenching and unclenching. “Then you will understand, sir, why I make no complaint. You have answered your own question.” He took a shaky step closer to the hallway and his escape.

“Mr. Townley!” Pitt said as if it were a command.

“You have my answer,” Townley said between his teeth.

“I am not asking that you lay a complaint,” Pitt said, quietly now. “Only that, man to man, you tell me the truth. You can deny it afterward. I will not ask you to sign anything, or to swear anything. I need to know, because the daughter of a foreign ambassador was also a victim recently. That is why Special Branch has become involved.”

Townley hesitated. “I will not testify!” he said, his voice a little shrill.

“I’m not sure that I would if it were my daughter,” Pitt admitted. “I’d do what I thought was best for her.”

“I will not allow you to speak to her,” Townley warned. “Even if I was so inclined, her mother would not. Seeing the doctor … was bad enough.”

Pitt drew in his breath to say he understood, but realized he had no idea. Instead he simply asked what she’d told them had happened.

Townley closed his eyes and said in a flat hesitant voice, “Alice is nearly seventeen. She was at a ball in the house of a friend. I will not tell you her family’s name. There were naturally young gentlemen present also. She enjoys dancing and is particularly skilled. She was flattered when a young man in his early twenties asked her to dance, imagining he thought her older, more sophisticated, which she has a great desire to be. To … to get to the point …” He gulped. “He spoke pleasantly to her, inviting her to see one of the galleries in the house where there were some remarkable paintings. Alice likes … art. She suspected nothing and went with him.”

Pitt felt himself clenching inside.

“He took her first to one gallery with some art as lovely as he had said it would be,” Townley continued. “Then promised more works, even better, but said they were in another part of the house … a private part where they should not trespass, but he said they would touch nothing, merely look at the paintings.”

Pitt almost said it for him, to break the unbearable tension, and to save the man from having to say it himself. Then Knox moved a fraction, no more than shifting his weight from one foot to the other, but reminding Pitt of his presence. Pitt let out his breath without speaking.

“He … violated her,” Townley said hoarsely. “She had not the power to fight him off. He left her bleeding and bruised on the floor. She had hit her head, and was knocked senseless for a while. When she came to she climbed to her feet, and was staggering to the door when a different young man met her. He assumed that she had taken too much wine, and rather than tell him the truth, that she … had lost her virginity, she said it was true, she was inebriated, and she accounted for her bruises and the blood by saying she had fallen down some steps. That was the story she gave her hostess too, and no one pressed her further.” Townley’s chin lifted and he glared at Pitt, then at Knox. “And that is the story I shall tell if I am pressed. I will swear to it under oath.”

“Did she say who the young man was who assaulted her?” Pitt asked.

“It will do you no good,” Townley said bluntly.

“Possibly not, but I wish to know,” Pitt insisted. “It would be very much better if she tells me than if I have to investigate all the balls in London last night to find out who attended which. People will inevitably ask why I need to know.”

“You are a brutal man,” Townley said icily, but his eyes filled with tears.

Pitt was silent for a moment. Would it really help to know? Yes, it would. Not just for Rafael Castelbranco, but for all other young women. He needed to get Neville Forsbrook off the streets—if he could just be certain it was he.

“Please?” he said.

Wordlessly, Townley led them upstairs and across a wide landing, to a door with a porcelain floral handle. Townley knocked, and when his wife answered, he told her that this was unavoidable. At his insistence, she allowed Pitt inside, but not Knox.

The girl propped up in the bed was white-faced, except for the tearstains on her cheeks, and the pink on the rims of her eyes. Her long honey-brown hair was loose around her shoulders. Her features were soft, but in a year or two would also reflect a considerable strength.

Pitt’s step faltered as he walked across the carpet and stood near the bed, but not too close.

“My name is Thomas Pitt,” he said quietly. “I have a daughter who will be your age soon. She looks quite a lot like you. I hope she will be as lovely. I understand you like paintings?”

She nodded.

“Yesterday evening you were shown some particularly beautiful ones, is that correct?”

Again she nodded.

“Were they portraits or landscapes?”

“They were mostly portraits, and some animals, very out of proportion.” She almost smiled. “Horses whose legs looked so thin I don’t know how they could stand on them.”

Pitt shook his head. “I’ve seen some like that. I don’t like them very much. I like to see horses with movement in the lines rather than standing still. Who showed you these pictures?”

“He wasn’t going to steal them,” she said quickly. “At least I don’t think. He has lots of money anyway … or his father does. He could just buy them.”

“Maybe he was thinking of offering to buy them,” Pitt said kindly, then, just as soft, “Who was he?”

“Do … do I have to tell you?”

“No, not if you really don’t want to.” The minute the words were out, he regretted them. Narraway wouldn’t have been so weak.

“It was Neville Forsbrook,” she whispered.

He let his breath out in a sigh. “Thank you, Alice. I appreciate knowing. And thank you for letting me visit with you.”

“It’s all right.” She gave him a tiny, uncertain smile.

He thanked Mrs. Townley as well and walked onto the landing, Townley at his heels. The door closed behind them with a faint click.

Townley stood on the landing by the window, surrounded by vases of carefully arranged flowers. His face was ravaged with fear and grief.

“Thank you,” he echoed. “Now that is the end of it.”

Pitt nodded and followed Knox down the stairs.

ALICE TOWNLEY’S FACE HAUNTED Pitt as he walked away from the house. It was as if he had met a ghost of Angeles Castelbranco, and what troubled him like an open wound was the fact that in his own mind he was certain that there would be other girls in the future, perhaps not lucky enough to escape with their lives. Perhaps Pamela O’Keefe had been one of them? They would probably never know.

He could not blame Townley for wanting to protect his daughter. Had it been Jemima, Pitt doubted he would try to prosecute. In fact, if he were honest, he knew he would not. Whatever Forsbrook went on to do, one protected one’s own child first.

Alice Townley had been violated, but not seriously injured, certainly not beaten as Catherine had been. Pamela O’Keefe had been murdered, her neck broken. Why the difference? What injuries had Angeles Castelbranco sustained?

Were there two different men, then? One Neville Forsbrook, the other—Alban Hythe? Perhaps—perhaps not.

Had Pamela O’Keefe’s death been an accident? Had Forsbrook forced himself on her, and in the violence of her struggle snapped her neck? Was he terrified, then? Or exhilarated?

Was the difference in his perception of the woman, or in the way they reacted to him? Did he need their fear to excite him?

Pitt knew he must check on the degree of violence, the bruises of self-defense, and note all the differences and the similarities.

IT WAS NOT DIFFICULT to find Brinsley; he was in the police morgue performing a post-mortem on another body, a man stabbed in a barroom fight. Pitt waited half an hour until he was finished. He came out of the autopsy room cold, his hands still wet. He carried a faint odor of carbolic with him.

“Commander Pitt, Special Branch,” Pitt introduced himself.

“What can I do for you, Commander?” Brinsley asked. “Tea? I’m tired and I’m cold and I’ve still a long evening ahead of me.”

“Thank you,” Pitt accepted. “I’m looking into several rapes, to see if I can compare them to one that concerns me particularly. I need to know if they’re related.”

Brinsley reached his office and put a kettle onto a small burner. It was only moments before it boiled and he made tea for them both in a round-bellied china pot.

“Look for similarities,” Brinsley said with a shrug. “I assume you have no testimony, no description?”

“I have some, but if it is accurate, the man seems to be far more violent with some women than with the others.”

“Interesting,” Brinsley said thoughtfully. “Usually they escalate with time. Are you certain it’s all one man?”

“No, I’m not. Can you describe the injuries to Catherine Quixwood?”

“They were very grave, but not fatal,” Brinsley replied. “She was deeply bruised on her body, upper arms, more so still upon her thighs, and there was tearing of her genital organs by forceful penetration.” His mouth twisted in a grimace. “There was also a fairly deep bite on her left breast. The man’s teeth had torn the skin and left distinct bruise marks, which became more pronounced after her death.”

“Thank you,” Pitt said quietly. “Was there anything about these injuries that would be distinct to the man who inflicted them?”

“If it was the same man, I’d say he was more deeply sunk in his state of … depravity … with Catherine. I can’t imagine any victim beaten more terribly than she was.”

“But that crime happened first,” Pitt said unhappily.

“Then it seems you have at least two rapists.” Brinsley shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you anyway.” Pitt turned to leave, his tea only half-drunk. His throat felt too tight to swallow.

Brinsley took a breath.

Pitt turned back. “Yes?”

“Was there anything particularly different about the victims? Or about the places of attack, or the circumstances?”

“Would that account for it being two men?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible.” There was no lift in Brinsley’s voice, no brightness in his face. “But you should look.”

“Thank you,” Pitt said again.

HE DID NOT TELL Charlotte what Brinsley had said when they sat alone in the parlor late into the evening. There was no need for her to hear the details Brinsley had told him. He could spare her that much. She sat in one of the big armchairs. Pitt was too restless to sit, and too angry. The sense of helplessness burned inside him like acid, eating away at his belief in himself.

“He’ll go on,” he said bitterly, staring out at the familiar garden. This was where his children had grown up. They had played here with hoops, a skipping rope, had built castles with piles of colored bricks, ridden imaginary horses, used as make-believe swords the garden canes that now held up the delphiniums in bloom.

What good was he if he could not protect Jemima from such hideous violation of all her future promise? Or Daniel from turning into a monster? Would they ask of him one day, “Papa, why did you let it happen?” Charlotte wouldn’t accuse him, but it would be in her mind, it would have to be. Try as she wished, she would never again see him as the man she trusted always, the man he wanted to be.

And what was he doing? Advising Townley and Castelbranco to do nothing, admitting that the law, his law, was helpless to protect them or to find any justice. The legal system too would look the other way and pretend nothing had happened: timid, circumspect, afraid of making a fuss.

Neville Forsbrook, and anyone else like him, would go on without someone standing in their way or calling them to account. He reached to pull the curtain closed and it stuck. He yanked it harder and it tore.

“Thomas …” Charlotte began.

“Don’t tell me to sit down!” he shouted, yanking harder at the curtain and pulling the whole thing down off the wall to lie in a heap.

“I wasn’t going to,” she replied, standing up herself and walking over to join him at the glass, completely ignoring the pile of velvet on the floor. “You are sure Forsbrook will go on and rape other people?”

“Yes. I’d stop him if I could, Charlotte!” He felt his hands clench. He was behaving like a fool and he knew it. It was not her fault, but every word seemed like criticism, because he blamed himself. It was his responsibility to do better than this.

She took a deep breath and held it a moment or two. She was controlling her own temper, and he was sharply aware of it. There was no point in apologizing because he knew he would do it again, probably within moments.

“I was going to say …” She was choosing her words carefully, still ignoring the curtain. “I was going to say that if this pattern of violence stretches into the future, how do we know that it does not also stretch into the past?”

“I imagine it does,” he said slowly.

“Then might there not be something there that you could find, and prosecute, without mentioning Angeles, or this new poor girl?” she asked. “Perhaps it was something less serious, but still enough to bring a charge?”

He let the idea take form slowly, testing every step of it. “Anyone who did not accuse him then would be unlikely to do so now,” he pointed out. “The disgrace would be the same, and the proof even harder to find.”

“But if you know the pattern of the past, then you can predict the future more accurately, maybe even prevent him next time he tries?” She would not give up. “One woman alone can’t do anything to him, but several might be able to. Or at least the fathers of several, if they know they are not alone.”

He turned to look at her. In the evening light the tiny lines of her face were invisible. To him she was more beautiful at forty than she had been in her twenties, though the softness of youth was gone. She still looked at life bravely and honestly with her steady eyes, but was better able to deal with it in a measured way.

“And do what?” he asked quietly, but he was not dismissing it. “It still may not be possible; Pelham Forsbrook will defend Neville to the very last ditch. It is not only his son’s reputation on the line, but his own.”

“The victims won’t accuse him because to do so would ruin them socially for the rest of their lives,” she began.

He almost interrupted her, but bit back the words.

“Surely the accusation from many people, all prepared to stand together, whether it was proven in a court of law or not, would also ruin him?” she asked. “Reputation doesn’t require legal proof. If it did there’d be thousands of people still in Society who are not here now, because ill is believed of them, although never more than whispers. They do not fight because there is nothing said plainly enough for slander.”

He blinked. “You mean we should spread a rumor?”

“No!” Now she was angry too. “You don’t need to do it! Just prove you could, so Pelham Forsbrook knows it is true, and that you mean to stop his son because he has to be stopped.”

He turned it over in his mind, carefully, uncertain.

“Thomas?” She put her hand on his arm. He felt the strength of her fingers as well as the warmth.

He waited.

“How would you feel if it were not Alice Townley, but Jemima?”

“The same as Townley, exactly,” he answered. “I would see Neville in hell, if I could, but more than anything else I would want to protect my daughter.”

“And if it were me, instead of Catherine Quixwood?”

He felt cold to the bone. “I would want to kill him,” he said honestly. “I might even do it.”

“So isn’t this worth at least trying?” She smiled very slightly, pleased at his anger, as if it were a shield for her, at least in her mind.

“Perhaps,” he said. “A little unorthodox, but then the orthodox isn’t working. But don’t do anything yourself, Charlotte. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, of course,” she said obediently. “If I were clumsy, it would warn him. Give me credit for a little sense, Thomas.”

He had several answers for that, but he forbore from giving them. Fifteen years of marriage had taught him something at least.

“I WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING that might be interesting,” he told Stoker the next morning. The door was closed and he had given orders that he was not to be interrupted. “The man’s a rapist. He may have started years ago.” He explained Charlotte’s reasoning, without mentioning her name.

Stoker looked a little puzzled. “What am I looking for, sir?”

“I don’t know,” Pitt admitted. “Why does a young man have this kind of rage inside him? He barely knows the young women concerned. Who does he really hate? Could he help himself if he wanted to? Who else did he hurt in the past, who also dared not accuse him? Does his father know? Does he care? Has he ever disciplined him himself, or paid off anyone to keep their silence?”

“Pelham Forsbrook?” Stoker said in surprise. “Why would he need to? He’s one of the most influential bankers in London. If he grants you a loan for business venture capital, you’re made. If he puts word out against you, then no one else’ll back you either. Although whisper has it that he’ll lose pretty badly if the British South Africa Company has to pay damages to the Boers after the Jameson Raid.”

Pitt was suddenly interested. “Really? Has he partners in the venture, or is he all on his own?”

“No idea. Do you want me to find out?”

“Not unless it has anything to do with his son.”

Stoker shrugged. “If I had a son like that I’d keep an eye on him, and definitely want him where I had enough influence to protect him.”

“Would you? Would you protect him?” Pitt thought for several moments. “I’m not sure what I’d do if it were Daniel. Maybe I’d ship him off to Australia, and let him take what’s coming to him if he didn’t straighten himself out. I’ve no idea. I need to make damned sure it doesn’t happen, so I won’t ever have to find out. I like to think I’d have the strength to deal with it, but maybe in the end I’d see the child in him that I’d loved, and I wouldn’t be able to. God knows.”

“I’ll bring you all I get, sir. It’ll take a day or two.”

“Good. And do be discreet, Stoker!”

“Yes, sir. Believe me, I don’t want to get caught at it.”

“Neither do I,” Pitt said with feeling. “We can’t afford to. Oh, and Stoker?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Find out where young Forsbrook was the night before last. And if a girl called Alice Townley was at the same place. And for God’s sake, be doubly discreet about that!”

“Yes, sir.”

PITT FOLLOWED A DIFFERENT path himself. If there was something in the past with which they could trap Neville Forsbrook, then the home in Bryanston Mews, where he had grown up, would be the place to find it.

He knew from experience in his police days that servants were almost always loyal, so instead of going to the Forsbrook house, where failure was certain, he went to the servants of neighbors, beginning with inquiries that were completely fictitious.

He was very careful to start with, perhaps too much so. He had concocted an imaginary story, of which the Forsbrooks, father and son, could have been the heroes. He thought it necessary, in case any whisper of it should leak back to them, and thus to the Home Secretary. He was quite open about who he was, though. To be caught in an evasion could be damning, and make him seem ridiculous.

He had been to a dozen houses without learning anything more than a general impression that the Forsbrooks were feared but not liked. He was growing a bit desperate when he found in Bryanston Mews an elderly groom, busy brushing down horses.

The smells of leather polish, dung, hay, and horse sweat brought back a sudden and very sharp memory of childhood on the big estate where he had grown up. His father had been the gamekeeper and his mother had worked in the house, before tragedy struck them and his father was deported.

Reminder of that childhood bewilderment and pain made the present injustice burn the more intensely. He had tried everything he could then to help his father, and been helpless. He had been a country boy, educated alongside the son of the manor house, as companionship and competition for him, but still a nobody, dependent upon Sir Arthur Desmond’s patronage even to survive. Now he was a man in his late forties, and head of Britain’s Special Branch. He would not allow himself to be helpless this time.

He smiled at the groom. “Good animal you have there,” he remarked, looking at the horse.

“Aye, sir, she is that,” the man agreed. “Can I ’elp yer?”

“Unlikely,” Pitt said with a slight shrug. “I grew up in the country. I miss the friendship of horses, the strength … the patience.” Memory flashed back again. “I used to clean the harness for the groom sometimes. There’s a satisfaction in working the leather, in making the brass shine.”

“There is that, sir,” the man agreed. He was thin and strong, a little bow-legged. His hair stuck out in wisps from under the cap he was wearing. “But if I can say so, you don’t look like a country boy, sir.” He regarded Pitt’s well-cut city suit. For once there was very little stuffed in his pockets and his cravat was almost straight. The only detail familiar from the past was the fact that his hair was too long and curled in no particular shape.

“Ambition,” Pitt admitted. He found himself wanting to be completely honest with this man. He was tired of evasions that achieved nothing. “My father was a gamekeeper, accused of poaching, a serious crime back then. I always believed him innocent, still do, but it didn’t save him. Injustice cuts deep.”

The man stopped working for a moment and stared at Pitt with sudden interest deeper than mere politeness. “Ye’re right about that, sir,” he said with feeling. “Yer got summink as yer workin’ on right now, then?”

“Yes.” Pitt knew well enough to stop far short of the truth this time. “Looking for a bit of understanding of the past, to get the present right, if you know what I mean. See that blame doesn’t fall where it shouldn’t.”

The man nodded. “So wot d’yer want to know?” The horse swung its head round and nudged him. He patted it and began to brush again. “All right, girl,” he said with a smile. “I ain’t forgot yer.” He smiled at Pitt. “Like women, ’orses are. Don’t like yer to put yer mind to someone else when it’s their turn.”

“I know,” Pitt agreed. “But horses don’t ask much.”

“Ye’re right,” the man said happily. “Give yer their ’ole ’earts, they do. Don’t yer, girl?” He patted the horse’s smooth neck without altering the pace of the brush. “What d’yer want ter know, sir?”

Pitt gestured behind him, toward the back of the Forsbrook house. “Do you know Sir Pelham Forsbrook and his family?”

The man’s face tightened so very slightly that had Pitt not been watching closely he would have missed it. “Yeah, some,” he said. “Knew Lady Forsbrook—Miss Eleanor, as she used to be.” His face softened with memory. “Wild, she was, but so alive. Couldn’t ’elp but like ’er in the end. Wot they call ironic, in’t it?”

“Is it?” Pitt said curiously. “I heard she died in an accident. How was it ironic?” He sensed something further, something unsaid that the man half seemed to expect him to know.

The groom concentrated on brushing the horse’s gleaming flanks for several seconds before he replied. “Accident, right enough,” he said at last. “ ’Ad her cases with ’er, an’ all. Knew that from Appley, ’e were the groom there then. Runnin’ away, she were. Some said it were to go with the feller she was ’avin’ an affair with. Others said it were just that she couldn’t take the beatin’ no more. Dunno the truth of it, but beat black and blue that night she were. Face all swole up.”

Pitt held his breath, afraid even to acknowledge that he had heard.

“Accident, all right,” the man was almost talking to himself as memory filled his mind. “In an ’ansom, an’ the ’orse got spooked by summink. Some said it were a dog went fer it. Dunno. Terrible thing. Poor driver got killed too.”

“How long ago was that?” Pitt asked, trying to keep his voice level, the razor-sharp interest at least half-concealed.

“Four years, maybe?” The man turned back to the horse. “There y’are, girl. That’s yer lot for now. Got other things ter do but talk ter you all day. Spoiled rotten, you are, an’ all.” He picked up his brushes and patted her gently with his free hand.

“Going to clean the harness?” Pitt asked.

“Gotter,” the man replied. “Not as I mind, like. It’s a good job.” He led the way to the tack room and Pitt followed.

“May I help?” Pitt asked, mostly to keep the man in conversation, but also because it would be a physical job with good memories attached, something with assured purpose. He found he wanted very much to do it.

The man looked Pitt up and down. “Get yourself dirty, ’ands and cuffs all messed.”

Pitt answered by taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves.

A few minutes later they were both working hard. It took one or two fumbles before Pitt had the art back, but the rhythm of it returned quickly, to his intense satisfaction.

“That must have been very hard for Sir Pelham,” Pitt said, returning their conversation to the main subject

“Took it bad,” the man agreed, nodding as he watched Pitt work. “Strange one, that. Never know wot ’e’s thinkin’. Mind, that’s true of a lot o’ the gentry. Never knew whether ’e loved ’er, or was just angry ’cos she were leavin’. Not as I s’pose she’d ’a got away very far, poor soul.”

“Unless there was somebody else?” Pitt made it half a question.

“If there were, they were so bleedin’ careful no one ever knew of it.” The man looked sad, as if he had wished there had been. Pitt could see it through his eyes; Eleanor Forsbrook had belonged to another world: one he served, and caught glimpses of in unguarded moments, one whose inner life he could only imagine—still, he had liked her. In a sense she was a prisoner of her circumstances also, but with less freedom than he, a neighbor’s groom.

Pitt worked on the leather silently for a few more minutes before pursuing the thought.

“I suppose young Neville found it hard too. Was he close to his mother?” he asked casually. Pitt had been close to his own mother. They were survivors together after his father was sent away. His education, equal with that of Sir Arthur Desmond’s son, had separated them in mind, and in language, but the affection, although hardly ever put into words, had never been doubted. When she had died it had been the end of a part of his life.

Perhaps that had been at least in part why he had found it easy to love Charlotte. He had trusted women all his life. He had seen too closely their loyalty, sacrifice, and stoicism for it not to be part of his belief system.

“Did it change him?” he asked aloud, referring again to Neville Forsbrook.

“No,” the man said, shaking his head. “More’s the pity. Always was a cruel little bastard. Sorry, sir. Shouldn’t ’a said that.” But there was not a shred of regret in his weathered face.

“Said what?” Pitt asked with a smile.

“That’s right, sir. Thank you,” the man agreed, his eyes bright.

“Fancy a glass of cider when this is done?” Pitt invited him.

The man surveyed the harnesses a little doubtfully.

“It’ll take less time with two of us,” Pitt pointed out.

“In’t yer got nothin’ else ter do, important gent like yerself?”

“Probably, but it’ll wait. Everybody has to have an hour or two off sometime. And a glass of cider and a sandwich. Cheese and pickle?”

“Done,” the man agreed instantly. “You’re a rum one, an’ no mistake. Maybe we’ll be all right after all!”

Pitt bent to the harness again to hide the pleasure he felt at the compliment, and the hope that he would live up to the trust.