Seven Dials Read online

  “I meant women who have no husbands or families in London,” Pitt corrected. “And who are past the usual age of marrying, possibly who make their way as mistresses.”

  Ragnall took a deep breath, as if reaching a decision that was difficult for him.

  Pitt waited. Perhaps finally he was on the brink of something that did not implicate Ryerson.

  “No,” Ragnall said at last. “I gathered he did not particularly care, and … and he had not the means to support a mistress, not in any style.” He stopped, still reluctant to commit himself any further.

  Pitt stared at him. “Other men’s wives? Their daughters?”

  Ragnall cleared his throat. “Yes … at times.”

  “Who were his friends?” Pitt asked. “What clubs did he belong to? What were his interests, sports? Did he gamble, go to the theater? What did he do in his leisure time?”

  Ragnall hesitated.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know,” Pitt warned. “The man was in the diplomatic service. You could not allow yourself to be unaware of his habits. That would be incompetent. You must know his associates, his problems, his financial status.”

  Ragnall looked down at his hands, spread on the desk, then up at Pitt again. “The man is dead,” he said quietly. “I have no idea whether that was pure misfortune or if he contributed to it in some way himself, greatly, or very little. He was good at his job. I am unaware of him owing anyone money or, as far as I know, favors. He came from a good family, and he kept his word once he had given it. He had an honorable career in the army and he never lacked either physical or moral courage. I never caught him in a lie, nor do I know anyone who did. He was loyal to his friends, and he knew how to conduct himself as a gentleman. He had a certain charm, and there was nothing mean-spirited in him.”

  Pitt felt the wave of regret he always did when investigating a murder. Suddenly the truth of detail was overwhelmed by the loss of a life, the passion, the vulnerability, the virtues and the idiosyncrasies. The vitality of being was ended, not naturally in age, but without warning, and incomplete. The fault or the contributing sins of the person concerned seemed so unimportant as to be forgotten.

  But emotion would cripple his analytical mind, and his job was to find the truth, easy or difficult, complicated and however painful.

  “The names of his friends,” he said aloud. “I may find him innocent of all blame, Mr. Ragnall, but I cannot assume. If Miss Zakhari, or anyone else, is to be hanged for his murder, it will be because we know what happened, and why.”

  “Yes, of course.” Ragnall pulled a piece of paper towards himself and picked up a pen, dipped it in the ink and began to write. He blotted it and pushed it towards Pitt.

  “Thank you.” Pitt took it, glanced at it and read the names, and the clubs at which they might be found, then took his leave.

  PITT SAW ONE or two of the people Ragnall had suggested, and learned very little more. No one was comfortable discussing a colleague who was dead, and unable to defend himself. It was not a matter of affection so much as loyalty to their own ideals, perhaps in the belief that to betray was to invite a similar betrayal yourself, when your own weaknesses were questioned.

  By midafternoon Pitt had given up the hope of finding anything useful this way, and decided to go and see his brother-in-law, Jack Radley, who had now been a Member of Parliament for a number of years, some of it with particular interest in the Foreign Office.

  He was not in the House of Commons, and Pitt caught up with him just after four o’clock, walking in the sun across St. James’s Park, a slight breeze sending a few early yellow leaves fluttering down over the grass.

  Jack stopped and turned when he heard Pitt call his name. He was surprised to see him, but not displeased.

  “The Eden Lodge case?” he said wryly as Pitt fell into step with him.

  “Sorry,” Pitt apologized. They had a genuine liking for each other, but their social circles as well as their professions kept them apart almost all the time. Jack had no money of his own, but he had always managed to live as well as his good birth invited. To begin with, it had been by liberal use of his great personal charm. Since marrying Emily, it was on the fortunes she had inherited from her first husband.

  For the first year or two he had been content to continue merely enjoying himself in society. Then, with Emily’s pushing, and some example of Pitt’s, and possibly the respect he had observed both his wife and her sister had for achievement, he had taken up a vivid interest in politics. That did not alter the fact that he and Pitt met seldom.

  “I don’t know Ryerson,” Jack said regretfully. “Bit above my political reach … for the time being.” He saw Pitt’s face. “I mean I intend to climb,” he corrected quickly, “not that I think he is going to fall. Is he?” Now his expression was suddenly very serious.

  “Too early to say,” Pitt replied. “No, I’m not being discreet. I really don’t know.” He pushed his hands into his pockets, a dramatic contrast to Jack, who would never have dreamed of doing so. It would ruin the line of his clothes, and he was far too innately elegant to do that.

  “I wish I could help,” Jack said with implied apology. “It all seems ridiculous, from what I’ve heard.”

  A small black-and-white dog was charging around, wagging its tail with excitement. It did not seem to belong to the courting couple near the trees, or to the nursemaid in starched uniform, the sun shining on the fair hair escaping her white cap as she pushed a perambulator along the path.

  Pitt bent and picked up a piece of stick and threw it as far as he could. The dog hared after it, barking with excitement.

  “Did you know Lovat?” he asked.

  Jack glanced sideways at him, unhappiness in his eyes. “Not well.”

  Pitt could not afford to let him escape so lightly. “He’s been murdered, Jack. If it were not important I wouldn’t ask.”

  Jack looked startled. “Special Branch?” he said with disbelief. “Why? Is there something in the Ryerson speculation? I thought it was just the newspapers.”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Pitt retorted. “And I need to know, preferably before they do. Did you know Lovat? Without the censorship of decency toward the dead.”

  Jack’s mouth tightened and he stared into the distance.

  The dog came galloping up to Pitt and dropped the stick, dancing backwards in anticipation, gazing up at him.

  He bent, picked up the stick and pitched it far again. The dog hurtled after it, ears and tail flying.

  “A difficult man,” Jack said at last. “An ideal candidate for murder, I suppose, in a way. Actually, I’m damned sorry it happened.” He turned to look at Pitt. “Tread softly, Thomas, if you can. There are a lot of people who could be hurt, and they don’t deserve it. The man was a bastard where women were concerned. If he’d stayed with the sort of married women who’ve had their children and now play the field a bit, no one would have minded a lot, but he courted women as if he loved them, young women expecting marriage, needing it, and then once he had them, he suddenly cried off. Left everyone wondering what was the matter with them. The conclusion was usually that they had lost their virtue. Then, of course, nobody else wanted them either.” He did not need to paint a further picture. They both knew what lay ahead for an unmarriageable woman.

  “Why?” Pitt said miserably. “Why court a decent woman you have no intention of marrying? It’s cruel … and dangerous. I’d—” He stopped, but in his mind he thought for a moment of Jemima, trusting, eager, so easy to hurt. If a man had done that to her, Pitt would have wanted to kill him, but not shoot him cleanly in someone else’s garden in the middle of the night. He would have wanted to beat him to a pulp first, feel the crack of bone on bone, the impact of his fist on flesh, see the pain, and the understanding of why it was happening. It was probably primitive, and would be of no help at all to Jemima, except to let her know she was of infinite value to someone and that she was not alone in her pain. And it would serve the point at l
east that the man would be a great deal less inclined to do it again.

  He looked sideways at Jack, and saw something of the same raw anger in his face. Perhaps he was thinking of his own daughter, barely more than a baby.

  “You know it for certain?” Pitt asked quietly.

  “Yes. I suppose you want names?”

  “No. I don’t want them,” Pitt replied. “I would far rather let the poor devils keep their pain secret, but I have to. If we don’t get the right person, then the wrong man … or woman, will be hanged.”

  “I suppose so.” Jack listed off four names, and what he knew of where they might be found.

  Pitt did not need to write them down. He wished he did not even need to hear them or make enquiries; he could understand their emotions too easily. Imagination was necessary to his job, but it was also a curse.

  The dog came back, quivering with excitement and delight, dropping the stick at Pitt’s feet and dancing around waiting for him to throw it again. It did not often meet people so willing to play, and who obviously understood the game.

  Pitt obliged and the animal went racing off again. He really would like to have a dog. He would tell Charlotte the cats would just have to accommodate it.

  “You could ask Emily,” Jack said suddenly, looking at Pitt and biting his lip. He looked slightly abashed to be saying it. “She notices things about people …” He left it hanging. They were both aware of past cases where Charlotte and Emily had interfered, sometimes dangerously, but their acute discretion and understanding of nuances of meaning had been key to the solution.

  “Yes,” Pitt agreed, surprised that he had not thought of it for himself. “Yes, I’ll do that. Will she be at home?”

  Jack smiled suddenly. “I’ve no idea!”

  ACTUALLY, IT TOOK PITT two hours to catch up with Emily. Her butler told him that she had gone to a newly opened art exhibition, and after that she expected to return home only for the time it took her to change for the evening, and dinner at Lady Mansfield’s home in Belgravia. Tomorrow morning she would be riding in the park, and then visiting her dressmaker before taking an early luncheon and making the usual afternoon calls. The evening would be spent at the opera.

  Pitt thanked the butler, asked for directions to the exhibition, and took himself there immediately.

  The gallery was crowded with women in beautiful gowns, and a few men escorting them, flirting a little, and passing grave and wordy comments on the paintings.

  Pitt looked at them only briefly, which he regretted. He thought them not only beautiful but of great interest. The style was impressionist in a manner he had not seen before, blurred and hazy, and yet creating a feeling of light which pleased him enormously.

  But he was not here for interest. He must find Emily before she left, and that would require concentration, and even considerable physical effort merely to keep on excusing himself and pushing between groups of chattering people, women with skirts which brushed up against each other and blocked the way for several feet in every direction.

  He received several angry and imperious glances and heard mutters of “Well, really!” on more than one occasion, but he could not afford the time to wait until they moved on and allowed him to pass of their own accord.

  He found Emily in the third room, in idle conversation with a young woman in a cornflower-blue dress and an extravagant hat which he thought was most becoming. It lent her a drama which she did not otherwise possess.

  He was wondering how to attract Emily’s attention without being rude when she noticed him, perhaps because he was conspicuously out of place in the rest of the crowd. Her face filled with consternation. She excused herself urgently from the woman in blue, and came straight over to Pitt.

  “There is nothing wrong,” he assured her.

  “I had not thought there was,” she said, without altering her expression in the slightest. “My fear was of being so bored I fell asleep and lost my balance. There is nothing whatever here to hold me up.”

  “Don’t you like the pictures?” he asked.

  “Thomas, don’t be so pedestrian. Nobody comes to look at the paintings, not really look. They only glance at them in order to make remarks they think are fearfully deep, and hope someone will repeat. Why have you come? They’re not stolen, are they?”

  “No, they’re not.” He smiled in spite of himself. “Jack suggested that you might be able to help me.”

  Her face quickened with interest. “Of course!” she said eagerly. “What can I do?”

  “All I want is information, and perhaps your opinion.”

  “About whom?” She linked her arm in his and turned towards one of the pictures as if she were studying it intently.

  It was not really the situation in which to hold a hotly discreet conversation, but if he spoke softly it would probably be neither overheard nor remarked by anyone.

  “About Lieutenant Edwin Lovat,” he replied, also staring at the picture.

  She stiffened, although not a flicker crossed her face. “Are you dealing with that case?” Her voice was sharp with excitement. She did not mention Special Branch, she was far too aware of putting even a word out of place to say that aloud, but he knew the thoughts and possibilities racing through her imagination.

  “Yes, I am,” he answered almost under his breath. “What do you know about him, Emily? Or what have you heard … and make plain the difference.”

  She kept her eyes fixed on the painting. It was a scene of light shining through trees onto a patch of water. It had an extraordinarily restful beauty, as of solitude on a windless, summer day. One expected to see the shimmer of dragonfly wings.

  “I know that he was a dangerously unhappy man,” she answered him. “He seemed to keep falling half in love, and then, the moment he had won someone’s commitment, to run away as if he were terrified of allowing anyone to know him. He caused a great deal of pain, and he never regretted it enough not to go and do it again straightaway. If it was not the Egyptian woman who murdered him, then you have plenty of other possibilities to look at.”

  “Dangerously unhappy?” He repeated her phrase curiously.

  “Well, you don’t behave like that unless something is corroding inside you, do you?” she challenged, still without more than glancing up at him. “If you are merely selfish, or greedy, you might marry for money, for title, or for beauty, but what he was doing gained him nothing except enemies. And he was apparently not so stupid as to be unaware of that. Nobody could be. He was quite as intelligent as most people, and yet he behaved in a way which any fool could see would bring him nothing but grief.”

  He thought about it in silence for a while, turning it over in his mind. It was a concept he had not considered.

  She waited.

  “Do you believe he had thought as deeply as that?” he said at length.

  “You didn’t ask me to be logical, Thomas, you asked me what I thought of Lieutenant Lovat.”

  “You are quite right. Thank you. Can you give me the names of these people?”

  “Naturally!” she said, raising her hand to indicate the light in the picture, as if she were remarking on it, then she reeled off half a dozen names, and he wrote them down, with at least a general idea of their addresses and a rough guide to their social pastimes. It was an ugly catalogue of hope and humiliation, embarrassment and hurt feelings, some lighter, others profound.

  Pitt thanked her and left the gallery.

  THAT EVENING and all the next day Pitt enquired discreetly into the whereabouts of the people whose names Emily had given him, but all of them could account for their whereabouts, or else the moral or emotional injury was too old, or too delicate, for revenge now to hurt Lovat any more than it would also hurt them. Every rational thought led Pitt back to Ryerson and Ayesha Zakhari.

  The day after that he went to the records of Lovat’s time in the army in Egypt, just in case they shed any new light on his character or his relationships with other soldiers, or offered an avenue to pu
rsue another Egyptian connection that could lead back to Ayesha Zakhari and make more sense of what had happened at Eden Lodge. He realized with something of a jolt how much he wanted to discover something that would justify what he could not avoid believing … that Ayesha had shot Lovat, and Ryerson was so inextricably involved with her that he had been prepared to help conceal the crime.

  But the records yielded nothing. Lovat seemed to have been more than adequate at his profession. He had had a natural ease with people and knew how to conduct himself in society.

  His military service had been without serious blemish, and he had been honorably discharged when his health was broken after a bout of fever while stationed in Alexandria. There was no suggestion of cowardice or shirking his duty in any way. He had been a good soldier and well liked.

  Was it an honest summary, or one carefully censored of any facts that would prejudice a subsequent career? It would not be the first time Pitt had come across a tacit agreement to place loyalty before truth in the concept that the highest honor lay in protecting the reputation of the service.

  He had no way of knowing from the printed word, and the clerks he saw knew nothing personally and were far too well trained to speculate. They looked at him blandly and gave away nothing.

  It seemed to be in Lovat’s personal life that he had incurred enemies. According to those who had known him, he had been a pleasant-looking man, not traditionally handsome, but with a good physique, a fine head of hair, and a smile of great charm. He could dance well and found conversation easy. He liked music, and sang with enthusiasm, carrying a tune and remembering the words of all the sentimental ballads of the day.

  “Don’t know what was wrong with him,” an elderly gentleman said sadly, shaking his head as he sat opposite Pitt in the Army and Navy Club in Pall Mall that evening, sipping a Napoleon brandy, his feet stretched out against the fender, scorching the soles of his boots. “Any amount of agreeable young women who would have made a decent wife. But the moment he looked as if he’d a chance of their hand, he got bored, or dissatisfied, or whatever it was … cold feet, I daresay … and went after someone else.” He pushed out his lower lip in a grimace. “None too particular about who he chose either. Morals of an alley cat, sorry to say.”