Traitors Gate

11

NOBBY GUNNE WAS deeply distressed by the death of Susannah Chancellor, not only because she had found her a charming and unique person, but also, with an intense sense of guilt, because she was terrified that Peter Kreisler had some involvement in it. In her worst moments she even feared he might have been directly responsible.

She did not see him for at least three days, and that only added to her anxiety and the hideous ideas that danced in her head. His presence might have been reassuring. She might have looked at his face and seen the ultimate sanity in it, and known her fears were ugly and unjust. She would have been able to speak with him and hear his sorrow for Susannah. Perhaps he might even say where he had been that night and prove his innocence.

But all she received from him was a short note saying how grieved he was, and that business to do with it kept him occupied to the exclusion of all else, at least for the present She could not imagine what business he could have as a result of Susannah’s death, but possibly it concerned African finance and the banking which so involved her family.

When she did see him it was because he had called upon her in the afternoon. It was a most unconventional thing to do, but then convention had never bothered either of them. He found her in the garden picking early roses. Most of them were still in bud, but there were one or two open. She had already chosen some leaves from a copper beech tree which were a deep purply red and set off the pink petals in a way no ordinary green leaf could.

He was walking across the lawn, unannounced, a fact over which she would have words with her maid later on. Now all she could think of was her pleasure in seeing him and the brooding anxiety which made her heart beat faster and tightened her throat.

He did not bother with formal greetings, enquiries for health or remarks about delightful weather. He stopped in front of her, his eyes direct and troubled, but his delight in her company undisguised.

For a moment her fears were swallowed up in the inner surge of happiness at the sight of his face and the confidence in him which she had in part forgotten.

“I’m sorry to intrude on you uninvited,” he said, holding out his hands, palms upwards.

She placed her own in his and felt the warmth of his fingers close over hers. For an instant she forgot her fears. They were absurd. He would never have done anything so appalling. If he had been involved at all, then there would be some innocent explanation of it, whether she ever heard it or not.

She did not reply with the cliché she might have said to anyone else.

“How are you?” She searched his face. “You look very tired.”

He let go of her hands and fell into step beside her, walking very slowly along the herbaceous border. “I suppose I am,” he admitted. “I seem to have slept very little in the last few days, since the death of Mrs. Chancellor.”

Although the subject was at the forefront of her thoughts, yet still she was startled to hear him raise it so soon, too soon for her to have prepared what she meant to say, in spite of having turned it over in her mind through every wakeful hour since it had happened.

She looked away from him, as if to some point on the far side of the garden, although nothing was happening more important than a small bird hopping from one twig to another.

“I had not realized you were so fond of her.” She stopped, afraid that she sounded petulant and he would misunderstand. Or was it misunderstanding? Was she not jealous? How absurd, and worse than that, how ugly. “She was indeed extremely charming.” That sounded trite and flat. “And so very alive. I find it painful to acknowledge that she is gone. I should very much have liked to know her better.”

“I liked her,” he replied, staring at the spires of the delphiniums. They were already in bud heavily enough to tell which were the dark blue, which sky blue, and which either white or pink. “There was an honesty in her which is all too rare. But that is not why I lie awake over her death.” He frowned, turning to face her. “Which I thought you knew. You are less direct than goes with your intelligence. I shall have to remember that. It is most feminine. I think I like it.”

Now she was thoroughly confused, and felt the color burning up her cheeks. She avoided his eyes. “I am not at all sure I know what you mean. Why are you so distressed by her death, if it is not offensive to ask? I cannot believe it is pain for Linus Chancellor. I formed the distinct impression you did not care for him at all.”

“I don’t,” he agreed. “At least, I have no objection to the man himself. In fact I admire him intensely. He has energy, intelligence, talent and the will to harness them to a purpose, which is the key to it all. Many men have all the attributes for success except that. Will and discipline can make a man.” He walked another few steps before continuing, his hands thrust into his pockets. “But I disagree passionately with his beliefs and plans for Africa. But you already know that.”

“So why are you so distraught?” she asked.

“Because I quarreled with her the evening before the night she died.”

Nobby was startled. She had not believed him a man to have such a tender, even superstitious conscience. It sat ill with everything else she knew of him. Of course there were incongruities in people’s characters, sudden traits that seemed quite contradictory, but this caught her completely by surprise.

“That’s foolish,” she said with a smile. “I doubt you were so unpleasant as to give you cause to feel guilty, just because it was not resolved. You differed in view about settlement in Zambezia. It was an honest difference. I am sure she would not—”

“For heaven’s sake!” he interrupted with a laugh of derision. “I will stand by what I said to God himself! Certainly to Susannah Chancellor, dead or alive! No—it was a public place, and I am quite certain I was thoroughly observed, and the matter will have been reported to the police. Your diligent friend Pitt will be very aware of it. He has already been to see me. He was polite, of course, but also, underneath the good manners, very suspicious. It would suit a good many people if I were charged with murdering her. It would …” He stopped, seeing the alarm in her face.

He smiled self-mockingly. “Oh come, Nobby. Don’t pretend you don’t know that. The sooner the matter is settled, the greater honor there will be for the police, the press will leave them alone, and no one will need to look too exhaustively into poor Susannah’s life. Although I am sure it was as pure as most people’s; still it is an unpleasant exercise, and bound to offend a few whose lives touched hers, perhaps less than honorably.”

“‘Less than honorably’?” She was surprised, and not sure what he meant.

He smiled ruefully. “Mine to begin with,” he confessed. “The quarrel was innocent enough, not personal, a matter of conviction; but viewed by others who did not know what was said, it might look otherwise. I have no doubt there will be other people who would not care to have every word or gesture examined by the prurient and unkind.” He looked at her with a gentleness touched with humor which set her pulses racing. “Have you not been guilty of foolishness now and then which you would rather remained private? Or a word or an act that was hasty, shabbier than you wished?”

“Yes of course I have.” She did not need to add more; the understanding was complete, without the necessity of words.

They walked a few paces farther and then turned along the path towards the stone wall and the early roses spilling over it. The archway was in dappled sunlight, picking out the flat surfaces of the individual stones, and the tiny plants in the crevices low down where it was moist, ferns and mosses with flowers like pinprick stars. Above them there was a faint rustle in the leaves of the elm trees as a breeze moved, laden with the smell of grass and leaf mold.

She looked at his face and knew he was thinking of the pleasures of being home in England, the timeless grace of old gardens. Africa with its savagery, its gaudy vegetation, so often seared and withered by relentless sun, its teeming wildlife, all seemed unreal in this ancient certainty where the seasons had come and gone with the same nurturing pattern for a hundred generations.

But Susannah’s death would not go away. Law was also a thing more certain here, and Nobby knew Pitt well enough to have no doubt that he would pursue it to the end, no matter what that end might be. He did not bow to coercion, expediency or even emotional pain.

If the truth were unbearably ugly, she did not know if he would make public all the evidence. If the answer proved to be too desperately tragic, if it would ruin others for no good cause, if the motive caught his pity hard enough, he might relent. Although she could not imagine a reason that could ever mitigate the murder of someone like Susannah.

But that argument was pointless. It was not Pitt she was afraid of, or prosecution or justice, it was truth. It would be equally terrible to her if Kreisler were guilty, whether he were charged or not.

But why did she even entertain the thought? It was hideous, terrible! She felt guilty that it even entered her mind, let alone that she let it remain there.

As if reading her thoughts, or seeing the confusion in her face, he stopped just beyond the arch in the small shade garden with its primroses and honesty and arching Solomon’s seal.

“What is it, Nobby?”

She was abashed to find an answer that was neither a lie nor too hurtful to both of them.

“Did you learn anything?” She seized upon something useful to ask.

“About Susannah’s death? Not much. It seems to have happened late in the evening and when she was alone in a hansom cab, no one knows where. She had said she was going to visit the Thornes, but never arrived, as far as we know. Unless, of course, the Thornes are lying.”

“Why should the Thornes wish her harm?”

“It probably goes back to the death of Sir Arthur Desmond—at least that is what Pitt has apparently suggested. It makes little sense to me.”

They were standing so still a small, brown bird flew out of one of the trees and stood on the path barely a yard from them, its bright eyes watching curiously.

“Then why?” she said quietly, the fear still large within her. She knew enough of men who traveled the wild places of the earth to understand that they have to have an inner strength in order to survive, a willingness to attack in the need to defend themselves, the resolve to take life if it threatened their own, a single-mindedness that brooked nothing in its way. Gentler people, more circumspect, more civilized at heart, all too often were crushed by the ferocity of an unforgiving land.

He was watching her closely, almost searchingly. Slowly the happiness and the sense of comfort drained out of him, replaced by pain.

“You are not convinced that I did not do it, are you, Nobby?” he said with a catch in his voice. “You think I could have murdered that lovely woman? Just because …” He stopped, the color washing up his face in guilt.

“No,” she said levelly, the words difficult to speak. “Not just because she differed with you over settlement in Africa, of course not. But then we both know that would be absurd. If you had, it would be because of the shares she has in one of the great banking houses and the influence she might have over Francis Standish, and of course because of her husband’s position. She supported him fully, which meant she was against you.”

He was very pale, his features twisted with hurt.

“For God’s sake, Nobby! How would my murdering her help?”

“It is one supporter less….” She trailed off, looking away from him. “I am not supposing you killed her, only that the police might think so. I am afraid for you.” That was the truth, but not the whole truth. “And you were angry with her.”

“If I killed everyone I was angry with, at one time or another, my whole career would be littered with corpses,” he said quietly, and she knew from the tone in his voice that he had believed only the truth she had spoken; the lies and the omissions he understood for what they were.

The bird was still on the path close to them, its head cocked to one side.

He put his hands on her arms and she felt the warmth of him through the thin sleeves of her dress.

“Nobby, I know that you understand Africa as I do, and that at times men are violent in order to survive in a violent and sudden land, where the dangers are largely unknown and there is no law but that of staying alive, but I have not lost my knowledge of the difference between Africa and England. And morality, the underlying knowledge of good and evil, is the same everywhere. You do not kill people simply because they stand in your way, or believe differently over an issue, no matter how big. I argued with Susannah, but I did not hurt her, or cause her to be hurt. You do me an injustice if you do not believe that … and you cause me deep pain. Surely I do not need to explain that to you? Do we not understand each other without the need for speeches and declarations?”

“Yes.” She answered from the heart, her head ignored, silenced in a deeper, more insistent certainty. “Yes of course we do.” Should she apologize for even having entertained the thought? Did he need her to?

As if he had read it in her eyes, he spoke, smiling a little.

“Good. Now let us leave it. Don’t go back over it. You had to acknowledge what passed through your mind. Don’t let there be dishonesty between us, the need to hide behind deceit and politeness for fear of the truth.”

“No,” she agreed quickly, a ridiculous smile on her face in spite of all that common sense could tell her. “Of course I won’t.”

He leaned forward and kissed her with a gentleness that took her by blissful surprise.

Pitt was sitting at the breakfast table slowly eating toast and marmalade. The toast was crisp and the butter very mildly salted. Altogether it was something to be savored to the last crumb.

And he had been out until nearly midnight the previous evening, so if he were late at Bow Street this morning, it was justifiable. The children had left for school and Gracie was busy upstairs. The daily woman was scrubbing the back steps, and would presently put black lead on the range, after cleaning it out, a job which Gracie was delighted to have got rid of.

Charlotte was making a shopping list.

“Are you going to be late again this evening?” she asked, looking up at him.

“I doubt it,” he replied with his mouth full. “Although we still haven’t found the hansom driver yet….”

“Then he’s involved,” she said with certainty. “If he were innocent he would have come forward by now. If he doesn’t want to be found, how will you get him?”

He finished the rest of his tea. “By the long, slow process of questioning every driver in London,” he assured her. “And proving whether they were where they say. And if we are lucky, by someone informing. But we don’t know where she went into the water. It could have been upriver or down. All we do know is that she seems to have been dragged some distance by her clothes being caught in something.” Charlotte winced. “I’m sorry,” he apologized.

“Have you found her cloak?” she asked.

“No, not yet.”

He ate the last of his toast with satisfaction.

“Thomas …”

He pushed out his chair and stood up. “Yes?”

“Do bodies often wash up at Traitors Gate?”

“No—why?”

She took a deep breath and let it out

“Do you think it is possible that whoever it was intended her to end up there?”

The idea was puzzling, and one which had not occurred to him before.

“Traitors Gate? I should doubt it. Why? It’s more likely that he cared where he put her in, close to where he killed her, and unobserved. It would be chance, tide and the currents which took her to the slipway at the Tower. And, of course, whatever dragged her.”

“But what if it wasn’t?” she insisted. “What if it was intended?”

“It doesn’t honestly make a lot of difference, except that he would have had to find the right place to put her in, which might have meant moving her. But why would anyone care enough to take the risk?”

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “Only because she betrayed someone.”

“Who? Not her husband. She was always loyal to him, not as a matter of course, but because she truly loved him. You told me that yourself.”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed. “I didn’t mean that kind of betrayal. I thought perhaps it might be back to the Inner Circle again.”

“There are no women members anyway, and I’m convinced Chancellor is not a member either.”

“But what about her brother-in-law, Francis Standish?” she pressed. “Could he not be involved in Sir Arthur’s death, and somehow she found out? Susannah was very fond of Sir Arthur. She wouldn’t keep silent, even to protect her own. Perhaps that was what troubled her so much.”

“Family loyalty … and betrayal,” Pitt said slowly, turning the idea over in his mind. Harriet Soames’s face was sharp in his inner eye, in passionate defense of her father, even knowing his guilt. “Possibly …”

“Does it help?”

He looked at her. “Not a lot. Intentional or not, she will have been put in at the same place.” He pushed his chair back in, kissed her cheek before going to the door. His hat was on the rack in the hall. “It’s something I shall search for with more diligence today. I think it is time I forgot the hansom driver and concentrated on finding a witness to her body being put into the water.”

“Nothing except what didn’t happen,” Tellman said with disgust when Pitt asked him to report his progress so far. They were standing in Pitt’s office in the early light, the noise from the street drifting up through the half-open window.

Tellman was tired and frustrated. “No one has seen the damned hansom, either in Berkeley Square or Mount Street, or anywhere else,” he went on. “At least, no one who has it in mind to tell us. Of course all London is crawling with cabs, any one of which could have had Mrs. Chancellor in it!” He leaned against the bookcase behind him. “Two were seen in Mount Street about the right time, but both of them have been accounted for. One was a Mr. Garney going out to dine with his mother. His story is well vouched for by his servants and hers. The other was a Lieutenant Salsby and a Mrs. Latten, going to the West End to dine. At least that is what they said.”

“You disbelieve them?” Pitt sat down behind his desk.

“‘Course I disbelieve them!” Tellman smiled. “Seen his face, and you would have too. Seen hers, and you’d know what they were going to do! She’s no better than she should be, but not party to abducting a cabinet minister’s wife. That’s not how she makes her living!”

“You know her?”

Tellman’s face registered the answer.

“Anything else?” Pitt asked.

“Don’t know what else to look for.” Tellman shrugged. “We’ve spent days trying to find the place she went in. Most likely Limehouse. More discreet than upriver. It’d be eleven or so before he put her into the water, maybe. That’d be four hours before she was found. Don’t really matter whether she hit the slipway on the incoming tide or went past farther into the current and was washed up on the outgoing. Still means she put in somewhere south.” He breathed out slowly and pulled a face. “And that’s a long stretch of river with a dozen wharves and steps, and as many streets that lead to them. And you’ll get no help from the locals. The people that spend their time waiting around there aren’t likely to speak to us if they can help it. Slit your throat for the practice.”

“I know that, Tellman. Have you a better idea?”

“No. I tried them all and they don’t work, but I’m known ’round there. Used to be at that station. You might do better.” His expression and his voice both denied it.

But Pitt was not satisfied. According to the river police, if she had been put into the water within an hour or so of having been killed, which the medical examiner had said could be no later than eleven, or at a stretch half past, then the incoming tide could only have carried her from the Limehouse area, at the farthest It was more likely to have been closer, except that that made it Wapping, right on the Pool of London.

Tellman had already tried the Thames police, whose station was on the river’s edge. They were extremely helpful, in an utterly negative way. Their patrols were excellent. They knew every yard of the waterfront, and they were sure no woman of Susannah Chancellor’s description and status had been put into the river there that night. It was an extravagant claim, but Pitt was inclined to believe them. The Port of London was always busy, even as late as midnight. Why should anyone take such a risk?

Which always brought him back to the question as to why anyone should murder Susannah Chancellor anyway. Was it an abduction that had gone tragically wrong?

Then was it simply greed, imagining Chancellor would pay a fine ransom? Or was the motive political … which brought him back to Peter Kreisler again.

Tellman had already spent fruitless days in Limehouse and learned nothing of use. If anyone had seen a body put into the water, they were not saying so. If they had seen a hansom, and a man carrying a woman, they were not saying that either. He had even been south of the river to Rotherhithe, but that yielded no conclusion, except that it was not impossible that someone could have taken a small boat from one of the hundred wharves or stairs and carried a body in it. He had even considered if Tellman could be part of the conspiracy, a subtle and brilliant Inner Circle member. But looking at the anger in his face, hearing the brittle edge in his voice, he could not believe his own judgment to be so wrong.

“What now?” Tellman said cynically, interrupting Pitt’s thoughts. “You want me to try the Surrey Docks?”

“No, there’s no point.” An idea was forming in Pitt’s mind from what Charlotte had said about betrayals and Traitors Gate. “Go and see what you can find out about her brother-in-law.”

Tellman’s eyebrows rose. “Mrs. Chancellor’s brother-in-law—Francis Standish? Why? Why in the name of Hell would he want to murder her? I still think it was Kreisler.”

“Possibly. But look at Standish anyway.”

“Yes sir. And what will you be doing?”

“I shall try upriver, somewhere like the stretch between Westminster and Southwark.”

“But that would mean someone’d waited with her after she was dead and before they put her into the water,” Tellman pointed out incredulously. “Why would anyone do that? Why take that risk?”

“Less chance of being seen, closer to midnight,” Pitt suggested.

Tellman gave him a look of total scorn. “There’s people up and down the river all the time. Anything after that’d be as good. Better get rid of it as soon as possible. Easier to travel about in a hansom when they’re all over the streets,” he said reasonably. “Who’d notice one in the many? Notice one at one o’clock in the morning. Too late for theaters. People who go to late parties and balls have their own carriages.”

Pitt was uncertain whether to share Charlotte’s idea with Tellman or not. On the face of it, it sounded absurd, and yet the more he thought of it, the more it seemed possible.

“What if he intended her to be washed ashore at Traitors Gate?”

Tellman stared at him. “Another warning to anyone minded to betray the Circle?” he said with a spark of fire in his eyes. “Maybe. But that’d take some doing! No reason why she should come ashore at all. Often they don’t. And even if he knew the tides, she could have been dragged; as it happens, she was! He’d have to wait for the ebb, in case she washed off again.” His voice was gathering enthusiasm. “So he waits somewhere, and puts her in at high water, then he’d be certain positive she’d not go off again.”

Then his face darkened. “But there’s no way, even if he put her in above the Tower, that she’d be sure to go ashore there. She could have gone all the way down to the next big curve, around Wapping, or further, to the Surrey Docks.” He shook his head. “He’d have to put her there himself, by boat, most likely. Only a madman would risk carrying her there down at Queen’s Steps, the way we went to find her.”

“Well he wouldn’t come from the north bank upriver,” Pitt thought aloud. “That’s Custom House Quay, and then the Billingsgate Fish Market. He’d have been seen for sure.”

“Other side of the river,” Tellman said instantly, standing upright, his thin body tense. “Horsley Down. Nobody ’round there! He could have put her in a small boat and ferried her across. Just left her more or less where we found her. Outgoing tide wouldn’t touch her.”

“Then I’m going to the south bank,” Pitt said decisively, standing up and moving away from the desk.

Tellman looked doubtful. “Sounds like a lot of trouble, not to say danger, just to make sure she fetched up at the Tower. Can’t see it, myself.”

“It’s worth trying,” Pitt answered, undeterred.

“The medical examiner said she was dragged,” Tellman pointed out, the last shreds of reluctance still clinging. “Clothes caught on something! He couldn’t have just put her there!”

“If he brought her from the other side, perhaps he dragged her?” Pitt replied. “Behind his boat, to make it look as if she’d been in the water some time.”

“Geez!” Tellman sucked his breath in between his teeth. “Then we’re dealing with a madman!” He caught sight of Pitt’s face. “All right—even madder than we thought.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I think he may have cared.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I do.”

“It would take an awful long time!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The other one laughed.

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

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

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

“Wot’s it ter you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again the second man laughed uproariously.

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

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

“Is the current strong?”

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

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

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

“Why? Who’d see me?”

“Well I would, fer a start!”

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

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

“Why?”

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

“In the middle of the night?”

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

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

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

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

“Right y’are.”

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

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

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

“Who uses these stairs?” Pitt asked.

The cabby looked affronted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I think so,” Pitt replied.

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes I am. Now get started will you!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Twelve,” Pitt replied with a start.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He reached for the bell rope and pulled it.

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

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

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

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

“Yes please.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes sir.” The footman backed away a step. He regarded Pitt with considerable apprehension. “It shows itself with a sudden, sharp pain in the thumbs, and loss of strength.”

“Enough to lose grip upon whatever he is holding, for example, the reins of the carriage?”

“Precisely. That is why Mr. Standish does not drive. I thought I had explained that, sir.”

“You have, indeed you have.” Pitt looked towards the door. “I shall not now have to bother Mr. Standish. If you feel it necessary to say I called, tell him you were able to answer my questions. There is no cause for alarm.”

“Alarm?”

“That’s right. None at all,” Pitt replied, and walked past him to the hallway and the front door.

It was not Standish. He did not believe it was Kreisler—he had no cause for the passion in it—but he had to make certain. He found the cabdriver waiting for him, surprised to see him back so soon. He offered no explanation, but gave him Kreisler’s address and asked him to hurry.

“Mr. Kreisler is out,” the manservant informed him.

“Does he have any cigars?” Pitt asked.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Does he have any cigars?” Pitt repeated tartly. “Surely the question is plain enough?”

The man’s face stiffened. “No he does not. He does not smoke, sir. He finds the smell of tobacco offensive.”

“You are quite sure?”

“Of course I am sure. I have worked for Mr. Kreisler for several years, both here and in Africa.”

“Thank you, that is all I needed to know. Good day.”

The manservant muttered something under his breath along the general lines of a parting, but less polite than he would have wished to be heard.

It was now early evening. Pitt got back into the hansom. “Berkeley Square,” he ordered.

“Right y’are, guv.”

It was not far, and Pitt rode deep in thought. There was one more thing he wanted to find, and if it was as he now expected, then there was only one conclusion that fitted all he knew, all the material evidence. And yet emotionally it was a tragedy out of proportion to anything he had foreseen or imagined. The thought of it saddened him, even touched him with a dark fear of the mind, a confusion of ideas and beliefs, as well as a very immediate apprehension about his own actions and the course that lay before him now.

The cabby peered in. “What number, guv?”

“No number. Just stop by the nearest manhole down into the sewers.”

“What did yer say? I didn’t ’ear yer right. Sounds like yer said the sewers!”

“I did. Find me a manhole,” Pitt agreed.

The cab moved forward thirty or forty yards and stopped again.

“Thank you.” Pitt climbed out and looked back at the hansom. “This time I definitely want you to wait. I may be a little while.”

“I wouldn’t leave yer now if yer paid me to go,” the cabby said vehemently. “I never ‘ad a day like this in me life before! I can get free dinners on this fer a year or more. Yer’ll want a light, guv?” He scrambled down and detached one of his carriage lamps, lit it and gave it to Pitt.

Pitt took it and thanked him, then pulled up the manhole lid and very carefully climbed into the hole down the rungs into the bowels of the sewer system. The daylight decreased to a small round hole above him, and he was glad of the lamp and its pool of light. He turned to make his way along through the round brick-lined tunnel, moisture dripping onto the path and echoing eerily as it struck the rancid waterway between. Tunnel led off tunnel, down steps and over sluices and falls. Everywhere was a sound of water and the sour smell of waste.

“Tosher!” he called out, and his voice echoed in all directions. Finally he fell silent and there was no more sound than the incessant dripping, broken by the squeak of rats, and then nothing again.

He walked a dozen more yards, and then shouted again. “Tosher” was the general cant term for the men who made their living scavenging the sewers. He was close to a great sluice that must have spilled water over a drop of a dozen feet onto a lower level. He moved on, and called a third time.

“Yen?”

The voice was so close and so harsh it startled him and he stopped and nearly fell into the channel. Almost at his elbow a man in thigh-high rubber boots came out of a side tunnel, his face grimy, his hair smeared across his forehead.

“Is this your stretch?” Pitt jerked his arm backwards towards the way he had come.

“‘Course it is. What d’yer think I’m doin’ ’ere, lookin’ for the source o’ the Nile?” the man said with contempt. “If yer lookin’ fer a stretch o’ yer own, this ain’t it. It’s not fer sale.”

“Police,” Pitt said succinctly. “Bow Street.”

“Well, yer off yer beat,” the man said dryly. “Watcher want ’ere?”

“A woman’s blue cloak, maybe put down a manhole almost a week ago.”

In the dim light the man’s face had a guarded look, devoid of surprise. Pitt knew he had found it, and felt a sudden breathlessness as the reality of his belief swept over him.

“Maybe,” the man said cautiously. “Why? What’s it werf?”

“Accessory after the fact of murder, if you lie about it,” Pitt replied. “Where is it?”

The man drew in his breath, whistling a little between his teeth, looked at Pitt’s face for several seconds, then changed his mind about prevaricating.

“There weren’t nothing wrong with it at all, not even wet,” he said with regret. “I gave it to me woman.”

“Take it to Bow Street. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get it back after the trial. The most important thing is your evidence. Where did you find it, and when?”

“Tuesd’y. Early mornin’. It were ‘ung up on the stairs up inter Berkeley Square. Someone must a’ dropped it in and not even waited to see if it fell all the way down. Though why the devil anyone’d want ter do that I dunno.”

“Bow Street,” Pitt repeated, and turned to find his way back. A rat scuttered past him and plopped into the channel. “Don’t forget,” he added. “Accessory to murder will get you a long stretch in the Coldbath. Helpfulness will get you an equally long stretch of undisturbed prosperity.”

The man sighed and spat, muttering something under his breath.

Pitt retraced his steps back to the ladder and daylight. The cabby was waiting for him with burning curiosity in his eyes.

“Well?” he demanded.

Pitt replaced the light in its bracket.

“Wait for me outside number fourteen,” he replied, breathing in deeply and looking for his handkerchief to blow his nose. He set out at a brisk walk across the square to Chancellor’s house, mounted the steps and knocked at the door. The lamplighter was busy at the far side and a carriage swept past, harness jingling.

The footman let him in with a look of surprise and distaste, not only at his appearance but also at the distinctive and highly unpleasant odor surrounding him.

“Good evening, Superintendent.” He opened the door wide and Pitt stepped inside. “Mr. Chancellor has just returned from the Colonial Office. I shall tell him you are here. May I say, sir, that I hope you have some good news?” It seemed he had not read the shadows in Pitt’s face.

“I have much further information,” Pitt replied. “It is necessary that I speak with Mr. Chancellor. But perhaps before you bother him, I might have another word with the maid—Lily, I think her name is—who saw Mrs. Chancellor leave.”

“Yes sir, of course.” He hesitated. “Superintendent, should I know … er … should I have Mr. Richards present this time?” Perhaps after all he had seen something of the emotions Pitt felt with such intensity, the sadness, the knowledge that he was in the presence of overwhelming passions of violence and tragedy.

“I think not,” Pitt replied. “But thank you for the thought.” The man had served Chancellor for fifteen years. He would be confused, torn with horror and conflicting loyalties. There was no need to subject him to what was bound to ensue. He would be little likely to be of any use.

“Right sir. I’ll get Lily for you. Would you like to see her in the housekeeper’s sitting room?”

“No thank you, the hall would be better.”

The footman turned to leave, hesitated for a moment, perhaps wondering if he should offer Pitt some opportunity to wash, or even clean clothes. Then he must have considered the situation too grave for such small amenities.

“Oh—” Pitt said hastily.

“Yes sir?”

“Can you tell me what happened to Bragg’s arm?”

“Our coachman, sir?”

“Yes.”

“He scalded it, sir. Accident, of course.”

“How did it happen, exactly? Were you there?”

“No sir, but I got there just after. In fact we were all there then, trying to clean up, and to help him. It was a pretty right mess.”

“A mess? Did he drop something hot?”

“Not exactly. It was Mr. Chancellor himself who dropped it. It just sort of slipped out of his hands, so Cook said.”

“What did?”

“A mug o’ hot cocoa. Boiling milk is awful hot, makes a terrible scald, it does. Poor George was in a right state.”

“Where did it happen?”

“Withdrawing room. Mr. Chancellor had sent for George to harness up the brougham and come and tell him when it was done. He wanted to know something about one o’ the horses, so he wanted George hisself, like, not just the message. He was having a mug o’ cocoa—”

“Warm weather for cocoa, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. I would sooner have had a lemonade, myself,” the footman agreed. His face was puzzled, but he still obediently answered every question.

“Is Mr. Chancellor fond of cocoa?”

“Never ’eard that he was. But he certainly had cocoa that evening. I’d swear to that. I’ve seen poor George. Anyway, seems Mr. Chancellor’s foot slipped, or summink, and George moved rather sudden like, and got himself scalded. Mr. Chancellor rang the bell immediately, and Mr. Richards came and saw what had happened. Then before you know what’s what, we’re all in the kitchen trying to help poor George, getting his coat off, ripping his shirtsleeves, putting this and that on his arm, Cook and the housekeeper arguing fit to bust whether butter’s best, or flour, maids shrieking and Mr. Richards saying as we should get a doctor. Housemaids is upstairs in bed, in the attic, so they didn’t know a thing, and nobody even thought of them to clean up. And with Mr. Chancellor needing to go out”

“So he drove himself?”

“That’s right.”

“What time did he get home?”

“Don’t know, sir. Late, because we went to bed just before midnight, poor George being in state, and the mistress not home yet….” His face fell as he remembered all that he had learned since the panic of that night.

“Where was Lily during this upheaval?”

“In the kitchen with the rest of us, till Mr. Chancellor sent her to the landing to tear up the old sheets to make bandages for George.”

“I see. Thank you.”

“Shall I get Lily, sir?”

“Yes please.”

Pitt stood in the fine hallway, looking about him, not at the pictures and the sheen on the parquet flooring, but at the stairway and the landing across the top, and then at the chandelier hanging from the ceiling with its dozen or so lights.

Lily came through the green baize door looking anxious and still profoundly shaken.

“Y-you want to see me, sir? I didn’t know anything, I swear, or I’d have told you then. I don’t know where the mistress went. She never said a thing to me. I didn’t even know she was going out!”

“No, I know that, Lily,” he said as gently as he could. “I want you to think back very carefully. Can you remember where you were when you saw her leave? Tell me exactly what you saw … absolutely exactly.”

She stared at him. “I just came along the landing after turning down the beds an’ looked down to the hallway….”

“Why?”

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“Why did you look down?”

“Oh—I suppose ’cause I saw someone moving across towards the door….”

“Exactly what did you see?”

“Mrs. Chancellor going to the front door, sir, like I said.”

“Did she speak to you?”

“Oh no, she was on ’er way out.”

“She didn’t say good night, or tell you when she expected to come back? After all, you would have to wait up for her.”

“No sir, she didn’t see me ’cause she didn’t turn ’round. I just saw her back as she went out.”

“But you knew it was her?”

“O’ course I knew it was her. She was wearin’ her best cloak, dark blue velvet, it is, lined with white silk. It’s the most beautiful cloak….” She stopped, her eyes filling with tears. She sniffed hard. “Yer didn’t ever find it, did you, sir?”

“Yes, we found it,” Pitt said almost in a whisper. He had never before felt such a complex mixture of grief and anger about any case that he could recall.

She looked at him. “Where was it?”

“I don’t think you need to know that, Lily.” Why hurt her unnecessarily? She had loved her mistress, cared for her in her day-to-day life, been part of it in all its intimacies. Why tell her it had been pushed down into the sewers that wove and interwove under London?

She must have understood his reasons. She accepted the answer.

“You saw the back of Mrs. Chancellor’s head, the cloak, as she went across the hall towards the front door. Did you see her dinner gown beneath it?”

“No sir, it comes to the floor.”

“All you could see would be her face?”

“That’s right.”

“But she had her back to you?”

“If you’re going to say it weren’t her, sir, you’re wrong. There weren’t no other lady her height! Apart from that, there weren’t no other lady here, sir, then nor ever. Mr. Chancellor isn’t like that with other ladies. Devoted, he was, poor man.”

“No, I wasn’t thinking that, Lily.”

“I’m glad….” She looked uncomfortable. Presumably she was thinking of Peter Kreisler, and the ugly suspicions that had crossed their minds with regard to Susannah.

“Thank you, Lily, that’s all.”

“Yes sir.”

As soon as Lily had gone the footman appeared from the recess beyond the stairs. No doubt he had been waiting there in order to conduct Pitt to his master.

“Mr. Chancellor asked me to take you to the study, Superintendent,” he instructed Pitt, leading the way through a large oak door, along a passage into another wing of the house, and knocking on another door. As soon as it was answered, he opened it and stood back for Pitt to enter.

This was very different from the more formal reception rooms leading off the hall where Pitt had seen Chancellor before. The curtains were drawn closed over the deep windows. The room was decorated in yellows and creams, with touches of dark wood, and had an air of both graciousness and practicality. Three walls had bookcases against them, and there was a mahogany desk towards the center, with a large chair behind it. Pitt’s eyes went straight to the humidor on top.

Chancellor looked strained and tired. There were shadows around his eyes, and his hair was not quite as immaculate as when Pitt had first known him, but he was perfectly composed.

“Further news, Mr. Pitt?” he said with a lift of his eyebrows. He only glanced at Pitt’s grimy clothes and completely disregarded the odor. “Surely anything now is academic? Thorne has escaped, which may not be as bad as it first appears. It will save the government the difficulty of coming to a decision as to what to do about him.” He smiled with a slight twist to his mouth. “I hope there is no one else implicated? Apart from Soames, that is.”

“No, no one,” Pitt replied. He hated doing this. It was a cat-and-mouse game, and yet there was no other way of conducting it. But he had no taste for it, no sense of achievement.

“Then what is it, man?” Chancellor frowned. “Quite frankly, I am not in a frame of mind to indulge in lengthy conversation. I commend you for your diligence. Is there anything else?”

“Yes, Mr. Chancellor, there is. I have learned a great deal more about the death of your wife….”

Chancellor’s eyes did not waver. They were bluer than Pitt had remembered them.

“Indeed?” There was a very slight lift in his voice, an unsteadiness, but that was only natural.

Pitt took a deep breath. His own voice sounded strange in his ears when he spoke, almost unreal. The clock on the Pembroke table by the wall ticked so loudly it seemed to echo in the room. The drawn curtains muffled every sound from the garden or the street beyond.

“She was not thrown into the river and washed up by chance of tide at Traitors Gate….”

Chancellor said nothing, but his eyes did not leave Pitt’s.

“She was killed before, early in the evening,” Pitt went on, measuring what he was saying, choosing his words, the order in which he related the facts. “Then taken in a carriage across the river to a place just south of London Bridge, a place called Little Bridge Stairs.”

Chancellor’s hand closed tight above the desk where he was sitting. Pitt was still standing across from him.

“Her murderer kept her there,” Pitt continued, “for a long time, in fact until half past two in the morning, when the tide turned. Then he placed her in the small boat which is often tied up at the steps, the boat he had seen when crossing London Bridge. It is a few hundred yards away.”

Chancellor was staring at him, his face curiously devoid of expression, as if his mind were on the verge of something terrible, hovering on the brink.

“When he had rowed out a short way,” Pitt went on, “he put her over the stem, tied across her back and under her arms with a rope, and rowed the rest of the way, dragging her behind, so her body would look as if it had been in the water a long time. When he got to the far side, he laid her on the slipway at Traitors Gate, because that was where he wished her to be found.”

Chancellor’s eyes widened so imperceptibly it could have been a trick of the light.

“How do you know this? Do you have him?”

“Yes, I have him,” Pitt said softly. “But I know it because the carriage was seen.”

Chancellor did not move.

“And during the long wait, he smoked at least two cigars,” Pitt went on, his eyes going for a moment to the humidor a few inches from Chancellor’s hand, “of a curiously aromatic, pungent brand.”

Chancellor coughed and caught his breath. “And you … worked all this out?”

“With difficulty.”

“Was …” Chancellor was watching Pitt very closely, measuring him. “Was she killed in the hansom cab? Was she ever really going to Christabel Thorne’s?”

“No, she was never going to Christabel Thorne’s,” Pitt replied. “There was no hansom cab. She was murdered here in this house.”

Chancellor’s face tightened, but he did not move. His hand on the desk opened and closed, but he did not touch the cigar box.

“Her maid saw her leave,” he said, swallowing with difficulty.

“No, Mr. Chancellor, she saw you leave, wearing Mrs. Chancellor’s cloak,” Pitt corrected him. “She was a very tall woman, as tall as you are. You walked along the street to the manhole at the corner of the square, then you opened it and pushed the cloak down. You returned here and went upstairs saying you had put her in the hansom. You rang the bell and ordered your own carriage. Shortly after that you contrived an accident in which you scalded your coachman’s arm, and while everyone was attending to that, you carried Mrs. Chancellor’s body downstairs and put it into your own carriage, which you drove east and south until you crossed the river, as I have already said, and waited until the tide turned, so you could leave her at Traitors Gate, when the water would not rise any further and take her away again.”

Pitt reached forward and opened the cigar box, taking out one of the rich cigars. The aroma of it was sickeningly familiar. He held it to his nose, and looked over it at Chancellor.

Suddenly the pretense was gone. A passion flooded Chancellor’s face that was so savage and so violent it altered him utterly. The assurance, the urbanity, were vanished, his lips drawn back revealing his teeth, his cheeks white; there was a burning outrage in his eyes.

“She betrayed me,” he said harshly, his voice still high with the incredulity of it. “I loved her absolutely. We were everything to each other. She was more than just my wife, she was my companion, my partner in all my dreams. She was part of everything I did, everything I’ve admired. She always believed exactly as I did … she understood … and then she betrayed me! That’s the worst sin of all, Pitt … to betray love, to betray trust! She fell away, she couldn’t trust me to be right. A few rambling, ill-informed, hysterical conversations with Arthur Desmond, and she began to doubt! To doubt me! As if I didn’t know more about Africa than he did, than all of them! Then Kreisler came along, and she listened to him!” His voice was rising with the fury which consumed him till it was close to a shriek.

Pitt moved a step forward but Chancellor ignored him. The wound he felt engrossed him so he was barely aware of Pitt as anything more than an audience.

“After all I had told her, all I had explained,” he went on, risen to his feet now behind the desk, staring at Pitt, “she didn’t trust me, she listened to Kreisler—Peter Kreisler! A mere adventurer! He sowed a few seeds of doubt in her, and she lost her faith! She told me she was going to have Standish remove his backing from Rhodes’s venture. That in itself wouldn’t have mattered….”

He laughed savagely, a wild note of hysteria rising in it. “But when people knew about it … that my own wife no longer supported me! Dozens would have withdrawn—hundreds! Soon everyone would have doubted. Salisbury’s only looking for an excuse. I would have looked a complete fool, betrayed by my own wife!”

He threw himself back into the chair and pulled the desk drawer open, still staring at Pitt. “I never thought you’d work it out! You liked her … you admired her! I didn’t think you’d ever believe she was a traitor to her husband, to all we had both believed, even though I left her at Traitors Gate. It was the perfect place … she deserved that.”

Pitt wanted to say that if he had not, he might never have found the truth, but it was pointless now.

“Linus Chancellor—”

Chancellor pulled his hand out of the desk drawer. There was a small black pistol in it. He turned the barrel on himself and pulled the trigger. The shot was like a whip crack in the room and exploded in his head, splattering blood and bone everywhere.

Pitt was numb with horror. The room rocked like a ship at sea; the light from the chandelier seemed to splinter and break. There was a terrible smell in the air, and he felt sick.

He heard a running of feet outside. A servant threw open the door and someone screamed, but he did not know if it was a man or a woman. He stumbled over the other chair, bruising himself violently as he made his way out, and heard his own voice like a stranger’s sending someone for help.