Belgrave Square Page 2

  Drummond opened his mouth, perhaps to ask why anyone should suppose Byam to be interested in the death of Weems, or to suggest he leave the forensic facts, which would be better expounded in Clerkenwell, and continue with his own connection. In the event Byam was standing with his back half to them, staring at the sunlight on the spines of the leather-bound, gold-tooled books on the shelf, and Drummond said nothing.

  “Normally it would be a sordid crime which would have no interest to me, except to deplore it,” Byam went on with obvious effort, turning again and beginning his way back to the far table. “But in this case I am acquainted with Weems in the most unpleasant circumstances. Through a servant, with whom he had some relationship—” he stopped and touched an ornament as if straightening it “—he learned of a tragedy in the past in which I played a regrettable part, and he was blackmailing me over it.” He stood rigid, his back to them, the light so bright it shone on his hair and picked out the fabric of his jacket, making it look faintly dusty in the brilliant room.

  Drummond was obviously stunned. He sat motionless in the green leather sofa, his face stiff with amazement. Pitt guessed he had been expecting a quarrel, or at worst a debt, and this both startled and embarrassed him.

  “For money?” he asked quietly.

  “Of course,” Byam replied, then immediately seemed to recollect himself. “I’m sorry, yes indeed for money. Thank God he did not want favors of any other kind.” He hesitated, and neither Pitt nor Drummond interrupted the prickling silence. Byam kept his back to them.

  “I presume you are going to ask me what the matter was for which I was willing to pay a man like Weems to keep his silence. You have a right to know, if you are to help me.” He took a deep breath; Pitt saw his slender shoulders rise and fall. “Twenty years ago, before I was married, I spent some time at the country home of Lord Frederick Anstiss, and his wife, Laura.” His beautiful, well-modulated voice was husky. “Anstiss and I were good friends, indeed I may say we still are.” He swallowed. “But at that time we were almost as close as brothers. We had many interests in common, both in pursuits of the mind and in such physical pleasures as shooting, riding to hounds, and the raising of good horses.”

  No one in the room moved. The clock on the mantel chimed the quarter hour, its intrusion making Pitt start.

  “Laura, Lady Anstiss, was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” Byam went on. “She had skin as pale as a lily, indeed an artist painting her portrait entitled it The Moonflower. I’ve never seen a woman move with such grace as she had.” He hesitated again, obviously finding the words with which to tear open so old and private a wound difficult. “I was very foolish. Anstiss was my friend, and my host, and I betrayed him—only in word, you understand, never deed!” His voice was urgent, as though he cared intensely that they believe him, and there was a ring of candor in it that surpassed even his present anxiety and self-conscious discomfort.

  Drummond murmured something inaudible.

  “I suppose I paid court to her,” Byam continued, staring out of the window at the trees and the rhododendrons beyond. “I can hardly remember now, but I must have spent more time with her than was appropriate, and certainly I told her she was beautiful—she was, quite incredibly so.” He hesitated. “Only when it was too late did I realize she returned what she thought was my feeling for her, with a passion quite out of proportion to anything I had encouraged.”

  He began to speak more rapidly, his voice a little breathless. “I had been foolish, extremely foolish, and far worse than that, I was betraying my friend and my host. I was horrified by what I had done, quite thoughtlessly. I had been flattered because she liked me, what young man would not be? I had allowed her to think I meant far more by my attentions than a slight romance, a few rather silly dreams. She was in love, and expected something dramatic to come of it.” He still had his back to them. “I told her it was not only hopeless, but quite morally wrong. I imagined she had accepted it—I suppose because I knew it so surely myself.” He stopped again, and even in the motionless aspect of his body his distress in the subject was obvious.

  Pitt and Drummond glanced at each other, but it would be pointless and intrusive to interrupt. To offer sympathy now would be to misunderstand.

  “She couldn’t,” Byam went on, his voice dropped very low. “She had never been denied before. Every man for whom she had had any regard, and many for whom she had not, had been clay in her hands. To her it was the uttermost rejection. We can only guess at what was in her thoughts, but it seemed to have destroyed everything she believed of herself.” He hunched his shoulders a little higher, as if withdrawing into some warmer, safer place. “I cannot believe she loved me so much. I did nothing to invite it. It was foolish, a flirtation, no more than that. No grand declarations of love, no promises … only”—he sighed—“only a liking for her company, and an enchantment with her marvelous beauty—as any man might have felt.”

  This time the silence stretched for so long they could hear the sounds of footsteps across the hall and a murmur of voices as the butler spoke to one of the maids. Finally Drummond broke it.

  “What happened?”

  “She threw herself off the parapet,” Byam replied so softly they both strained to hear him. “She died immediately.” He put his hands up to his face and stood with his head bent, his body rigid and unmoving, his features hidden not only from them, but from the light.

  “I’m sorry,” Drummond said huskily. “Really very sorry.”

  Slowly Byam raised his head, but still his face was invisible to them.

  “Thank you.” His words caught in his throat. “It was appalling. I would have understood it if Anstiss had thrown me out and never forgiven me as long as he lived.” He pulled himself straighter and reasserted his control. “I had betrayed him in the worst possible way,” he went on. “Albeit through blindness and stupidity rather than any intent, but Laura was dead, and no innocence or remorse of mine could heal that.” He took a deep breath and let it out with an inaudible sigh. He continued in a tone far less emotional, as if the feeling had drained out of him. “But he made the greatest effort a man can and he forgave me. He let his grief for her be sweet and untainted by rage or hatred. He chose to view it as an accident, a simple tragedy. He gave it out that she had gone onto the balcony of her room at night, and in the dark had slipped and fallen. No one questioned it, whatever they might have guessed. Laura Anstiss was deemed to have died by mischance. She was buried in the family crypt.”

  “And William Weems?” Drummond asked. There was no way to be tactful.

  Byam turned at last and faced them, his expression bleak and the faintest shadow of a smile touching his lips.

  “He came to me about two years ago and told me he was related to someone who had been a servant in the hall at the time, and knew that Lady Anstiss and I had been lovers, and that she had taken her own life when I ended the affaire.” He came over towards the sofa opposite them. “I was taken aback that anyone should know anything about it, beyond what was public”—he shrugged very slightly—“that she had died tragically. I suppose my face reflected the feeling of guilt I still have, and he fastened onto it.”

  At last he sat down. “Of course I denied that I was her lover, and he may have believed me or not, but he affected not to.” His smile became broader and more bitter. “No doubt to illustrate to me how unlikely it was that society would either. The general assumption would be that no woman as lovely and charming as Laura Anstiss would take her own life over something so trivial as the ending of a flirtation.” He crossed his legs. “It must have been a great passion to affect her so.” His face was filled with a dark, self-mocking humor. “It wasn’t, I assure you. It was so very far from it it is ridiculous! But who would believe that now?” He looked at Drummond. “I should be ruined, and I cannot bear to think what it would do to my wife—the pitying looks, the whispers, the quiet amusement and the doors that would be so very discreetly closed. And naturally my career
would be ended, and in time I should be relieved of my position.” He moved one hand dismissively. “No reasons would be given, except a quiet murmur and an expectation that I should understand; but it would all be as relentless as the incoming tide, and as useless to fight against.”

  “But it would be his word against yours,” Drummond pointed out. “And who would accept, or even listen to, such a man?”

  Byam was very pale. “He had a letter, or part of a letter to be more precise. I had not seen it before, but it was from Laura to me, and very—very outspoken.” He colored painfully as he said it and momentarily looked downward and away from Drummond.

  “So you paid him.” Drummond did not frame it as a question, the answer had already been given.

  “Yes,” Byam agreed. “He didn’t ask a lot, twenty pounds a month.”

  Pitt concealed his smile. Twenty pounds a month would have beggared him, and any other policeman except those like Drummond with private means. He wondered what Drummond thought of the yawning difference between Byam’s world and most men’s, or if he was even aware of it.

  “And do you believe Weems might have kept this letter, and record of your payments in some way traceable to you?” Drummond said with slight puzzlement.

  Byam bit his lip. “I know he did. He took some pains to tell me so, as a safeguard to himself. He said he had records of every payment I had made him. Whatever I said, no one would be likely to believe it was interest upon a debt—I am not in a position to require loans from usurers. If I wished further capital I should go to a bank, like any other gentleman. I don’t gamble and I have more than sufficient means to live according to my taste. No—” For the first time he looked at Pitt. “Weems made it very plain he had written out a clear record of precisely what I had paid him, the letter itself, together with all the details he knew of Laura Anstiss’s death and my part in it—or what he chose to interpret as my part. That is why I come to you for your help.” His eyes were very direct. “I did not kill Weems, indeed I have done him no harm whatever, nor ever threatened to. But I should be surprised if the local police do not feel compelled to investigate me for themselves, and I have no proof that I was elsewhere at the time. I don’t know precisely what hour he was killed, but there are at least ninety minutes yesterday late evening when I was alone here in the library. No servant came or went.” He glanced briefly at the window. “And as you may observe it would be no difficulty to climb out of this bay window into the garden, and hence the street, and take a hansom to wherever I wished.”

  “I see,” Drummond agreed, and indeed it was perfectly obvious. The windows were wide and high, and not more than three feet above the ground. Any reasonably agile man, or woman for that matter, could have climbed out, and back in again, without difficulty, or rousing attention. It would be simple to look out far enough to make sure no one was passing outside, and the whole exercise could be accomplished in a matter of seconds.

  Byam was watching them. “You see, Drummond, I am in a predicament. In the name of fellowship”—he invested the word with a fractionally heavier intonation than usual—“I ask you to come to my aid in this matter, and use your good offices to further my cause.” It was a curious way of phrasing it, almost as if he were using a previously prescribed formula.

  “Yes,” Drummond said slowly. “Of course. I—I’ll do all I can. Pitt will take over the investigation from the Clerkenwell police. That can be arranged.”

  Byam looked up quickly. “You know through whom?”

  “Of course I do,” Drummond said a trifle sharply, and Pitt had a momentary flash of being excluded from some understanding between them, as if the words had more meaning than the surface exchange.

  Byam relaxed fractionally. “I am in your debt.” He looked at Pitt directly again. “If there is anything further I can tell you, Inspector, please call upon me at any time. If it has to be in my office in the Treasury, I would be obliged if you exercised discretion.”

  “Of course,” Pitt agreed. “I shall simply leave my name. Perhaps you could answer a few questions now, sir, and save the necessity of disturbing you again?”

  Byam’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly as if the immediacy took him aback, but he did not argue.

  “If you wish.”

  Pitt sat forward a little. “Did you pay Weems on request, or on a regular and prearranged basis?”

  “On a regular basis. Why?”

  Beside Pitt, Drummond shifted position a fraction, sitting back into the cushions.

  “If Weems was a blackmailer, you may not have been the only victim,” Pitt pointed out courteously. “He might have used the same pattern for others as well.”

  A flicker of annoyance crossed Byam’s face at his own stupidity.

  “I see. Yes, I paid him on the first day of the month, in gold coin.”

  “How?”

  “How?” Byam repeated with a frown. “I told you, in gold coin!”

  “In person, or by messenger?” Pitt clarified.

  “In person, of course. I have no wish to raise my servants’ curiosity by dispatching them with a bag of gold to a usurer!”

  “To Clerkenwell?”

  “Yes.” Byam’s fine eyes widened. “To his house in Cyrus Street.”

  “Interesting—”

  “Is it? I fail to see how.”

  “Weems felt no fear of you, or he would not have allowed you to know both his name and his whereabouts,” Pitt explained. “He could perfectly easily have acted through an intermediary. Blackmailers are not usually so forthright.”

  The irritation smoothed out of Byam’s expression.

  “No, I suppose it is remarkable,” he conceded. “I had not considered it. It does seem unnecessarily rash. Perhaps some other victim was not so restrained as I?” There was a lift of hope in his voice and he regarded Pitt with something close to appreciation.

  “Was that the only time you went to Cyrus Street, sir?” Pitt pursued.

  Drummond drew in his breath, but then changed his mind and said nothing.

  “Certainly,” Byam replied crisply. “I had no desire to see the man except when it was forced upon me.”

  “Did you ever have any conversation with him that you can recall?” Pitt went on, disregarding his tone and its implications. “Anything at all that might bear on where he obtained information about you, or anyone else? Any other notable people he might have had dealings with, either usurious or extortionate?”

  A shadow of a smile hovered over Byam’s lips, but whether at the thought or at Pitt’s use of words it was impossible to tell.

  “I am afraid not. I simply gave him the money and left as soon as I could. The man was a leech, despicable in every way. I refused to indulge in conversation with him.” His face creased with contempt—Pitt thought not only for Weems, but for himself also. “Now I suppose it might have been an advantage if I had. I’m sorry to be of so little use.”

  Pitt rose to his feet. “It was hardly foreseeable,” he said with equally dry humor. “Thank you, my lord.”

  “What are you going to do?” Byam asked, then instantly his features reflected annoyance, but it was too late to withdraw the question; his weakness was apparent.

  “Go to the Clerkenwell police station,” Pitt replied without looking at Drummond.

  Slowly Drummond stood up also. He and Byam faced each other in silence for a moment, both seemed on the verge of speech which did not come. Perhaps the understanding was sufficient without it. Then Byam simply said thank you and held out his hand. Drummond accepted it, and with Byam giving Pitt only the acknowledgment required by civility, they took their leave. They were shown out by the same footman, who was now considerably more courteous.

  In another hansom clopping along out of the quiet avenues of Belgravia towards the teeming, noisy streets of Clerkenwell, Pitt asked the blunt questions he would have to have answered if there was to be any chance of success.

  “Who do you know, sir, that you can have a murder case tak
en away from the local Clerkenwell station without questions asked?”

  Drummond looked acutely uncomfortable.

  “There are things I cannot answer you, Pitt.” He looked straight ahead at the blank inside wall of the cab. “You will have to accept my assurance that it can be done.”

  “Is that the same acquaintance who will have informed Lord Byam of Weems’s death?” Pitt asked.

  Drummond hesitated. “No, not the same person; but another with the same interests—which I assure you are beneficent.”

  “Who do I report to?”

  “Me—to me.”

  “If this usurer was blackmailing Lord Byam, I assume there may be other men of importance he was also blackmailing.”

  Drummond stiffened. Apparently the thought had not occurred to him.

  “I suppose so,” he said quickly. “For God’s sake be discreet, Pitt!”

  Pitt smiled with self-mockery. “It’s the most discreet job of all, isn’t it—tidying up after their lordships’ indiscretions?”

  “That’s unfair, Pitt,” Drummond said quietly. “The man was a victim of circumstance. He complimented a beautiful woman, and she became infatuated with him. She must have been of a fragile and melancholy disposition to begin with, poor creature, and could not cope with a refusal. One can understand his wanting to keep the matter private, not only for himself but for Lord Anstiss’s sake as well. It can benefit no one to have the whole tragedy raked over again after twenty years.”

  Pitt did not argue. He had considerable pity for Byam, but he was uneasy about the certainty with which Byam had called on Drummond and had manipulated the placing of a police inspector sympathetic to him to take charge of the case. It was a mere few hours since the body had been found and already Drummond had removed Pitt from his current case, called upon Byam at his home, and now they were going to Clerkenwell to override the local man and take over the case themselves.