Traitors Gate Read online

  “To the other members of his own ring?” Pitt asked, although he feared he knew what Matthew would reply.

  “No … to anyone who would listen.” Matthew looked up, his eyes questioning. He saw the answer in Pitt’s face. “I think they murdered him,” he said quietly.

  The silence was so intense they could hear the ticking of the walnut clock on the mantelshelf. Outside in the street, beyond the closed windows, someone shouted and the answer came back from farther away, a garden somewhere in the blue twilight.

  Pitt did not dismiss it. The Inner Circle would quite readily do such a thing, if it felt the need great enough. He doubted not its resolve or ability … simply need.

  “What was he saying about them, exactly?”

  “You don’t disbelieve it?” Matthew asked. “You don’t sound shocked that distinguished members of the British aristocracy, the ruling classes, the honorable gentlemen of the country, should indulge in the murder of someone who chose to criticize them in public.”

  “I went through all my emotions of shock and disbelief when I first learned about the Inner Circle and their purposes and codes of conduct,” Pitt replied. “I expect I shall feel anger and outrage all over again sometime, but at the moment I am trying to understand the facts. What was Sir Arthur saying that would make it necessary for the Inner Circle to take the dangerous step of killing him?”

  For the first time Matthew sat back in his chair, crossing his legs, his eyes still on Pitt’s face. “He criticized their general morality,” he said in a steadier voice. “The way they are sworn to favor each other secretly, and at the expense of those who are outside the Circle, which is most of us. They do it in business, banking, politics and socially if they can, although that is harder.” His smile twisted. “There are still the unwritten laws that govern who is accepted and who is not. Nothing can force that. You may impel a gentleman to be civil to you, if he owes you money, but you can never force him to look on you as one of his own, whatever he owes you, up to and including his life.” He did not find it curious, nor did he seek words for the indefinable quality of assurance which made a gentleman. It had nothing to do with intelligence, achievement, money or title. A man might have all these and yet still fail to meet the invisible criteria. Matthew had been born to it; he understood it as some men know how to ride a horse, or to sing in tune.

  “It includes too many gentlemen,” Pitt said sourly, memory returning of past cases and his bitter involvement with the Circle.

  “That is more or less what Father said,” Matthew agreed, his eyes on Pitt’s face with a deepening intensity. “Then he went on quite specifically about Africa and the way they are controlling banking, whose interests control the funds for exploration and settlement. They are hand-and-hand with the politicians who will decide whether we try for a Cape-to-Cairo domination or concede to the Germans and concentrate on the south.” He shrugged with a quick, angry gesture. “As always the Foreign Secretary is hovering around, saying one thing, and meaning another. I work in the Foreign Office, and I don’t know myself what he really wants. There are missionaries, doctors, explorers, profiteers, big game hunters and Germans swarming all over the place.” He bit his lip ruefully. “Not to mention the native kings and warrior princes whose land it is anyway … until we wring treaties out of them for it. Or the Germans do.”

  “And the Inner Circle?” Pitt prompted.

  “Manipulating behind the scenes,” Matthew replied. “Calling in old loyalties secretly, investing quietly and reaping the reward. That’s what Father was saying.” He slid a little farther back in the seat and began to relax fractionally; or perhaps he was just so tired he could no longer sit upright. “What he objected to most intensely was the way the whole thing is secret. To give charity anonymously is fine and a perfectly honorable thing to do.”

  They were both oblivious of the sounds of movement in the passage beyond.

  “That’s what he originally thought the society was for,” he went on. “A group of men banded together to have a better knowledge of where help was needed, and not to do it piecemeal, but with sufficient means to make a real difference. Orphanages, hospitals for the needy, and for research into specific illnesses, almshouses for old soldiers … that sort of thing. Then just recently he discovered the other side to it.” He bit his lip, almost apologetically. “Father was a trifle naive, I think. You or I would have realized there was more to it a lot sooner. He thought the best of many people I would not have.”

  Pitt recalled what he knew of the Inner Circle.

  “Didn’t they warn him very quickly that they do not take criticism kindly, in fact they don’t take it at all?”

  “Yes! Yes they did. They warned him in gentlemanly and discreet terms, which he misread completely. It never occurred to him that they really meant it.” Matthew’s eyebrows rose and his hazel eyes looked at once amused and bitterly hurt. Pitt had a curious sensation of respect for him, and realized the depth of his resolve, not only to clear his father of any suggestion of weakness, but perhaps also to avenge him.

  “Matthew,” he began, leaning forward spontaneously.

  “If you are going to warn me to leave it alone, you are wasting your time,” Matthew said stubbornly.

  “I …” That was precisely what Pitt had been going to do. It was disconcerting to be read so easily. “You don’t even know who they are,” he pointed out. “At least stop and think very hard before you do anything.” It sounded feeble, desperately predictable.

  Matthew smiled. “Poor Thomas, so much the elder brother. We are not children now, and one year doesn’t make your seniority worth anything. It hasn’t since we were ten! Of course I shall think carefully. That’s why I’ve come to you. I know perfectly well I can’t wound the Circle. It’s a Hydra. Cut off one head and two more will grow.” His face hardened again and all the light vanished out of it. “But I’m going to prove Father was not senile, or get killed in the attempt myself.” He looked at Pitt very levelly, meeting his eyes without a flicker. “If we allow them to say such things about a man like Father, to silence him with murder, and then discredit him by saying he had lost his wits, then apart from anything else, what have we left? What have we made of ourselves? What honor can we claim?”

  “None,” Pitt said sadly. “But we need more than honor to win that battle; we need a great deal of tactical skill as well, and some sharp weapons.” Pitt grimaced. “Or perhaps a long spoon will be more appropriate.”

  Matthew’s eyebrows rose. “To sup with the devil? Yes, well put. Have you a long spoon, Thomas? Are you willing to join me in the battle?”

  “Yes of course I am.” He spoke without even thinking about it. Only the moment after did all the dangers and the responsibilities come closing in on his mind, but it was too late. And even if he had thought about it and weighed every one, he would still have made the same decision. The only difference would have been the sense of anguishing over it, the fear and the understanding of risk, and the margin of success that could be hoped for. Perhaps that would have been only so much time wasted anyway.

  Matthew relaxed at last, allowing his head to rest against the antimacassar behind him. He smiled. Something of the tiredness and the look of defeat had been ironed out of his features. At a glance he almost resembled the youth Pitt had known so long ago, with whom he had shared adventures and dreams. They seemed both immensely wild, full of impossibilities—journeys up the Amazon, discoveries of the tombs of Pharaohs—and at the same time boyishly tame, still with the gentle, domestic ideas of right and wrong, children’s notions of wickedness: theft of goods and simple violence the worst they knew. They had not imagined corruption, disillusion, manipulation and betrayal. It all seemed very innocent now, the boys they had been long ago.

  “There were warnings,” Matthew said suddenly. “I can see that now, although at the time I didn’t. I was up here in London when they happened, and he made light of it each time.”

  “What were they?” Pitt asked.


  Matthew screwed up his face. “Well, the first I cannot be sure about. As Father told it to me, he was traveling on the underground railway, at least he was intending to. He went down the steps to the platform and was waiting for the train—” He stopped abruptly and looked at Pitt. “Have you ever been on one of those things?”

  “Yes, frequently.” Pitt pictured the cavernous passages, the long stations where the tunnel widened to allow a platform alongside the train, the dark curved roof, the glaring gaslights, the incredible noise as the engine rattled and roared out of the black hole into the light and came to a halt. Doors flew open and people poured out. Others waiting took their opportunity and pressed in before the doors should close and the wormlike contraption be on its way back into the darkness again.

  “Then I don’t need to explain the noise and the crowds pushing and shoving each other,” Matthew continued. “Well, Father was fairly well towards the front and just as he heard the train coming, he felt a violent weight in the middle of his back and was propelled forward almost over the edge of the platform onto the lines, where of course he would have been killed.” Matthew’s voice hardened and there was a harsh edge to it. “He was grasped and hauled back just as the train appeared and came hurtling in. He said he turned to thank whomever it was, but there was no longer any person there he could distinguish as his helper—or his assailant. Everyone seemed to be about the business of boarding the train, and no one took the least notice of him.”

  “But he was sure he was pushed?”

  “Quite sure.” Matthew waited for Pitt to express some skepticism.

  Pitt nodded barely perceptibly. With someone else, someone he knew less closely, he might have doubted; but unless he had changed beyond recognition, Arthur Desmond was the last man on earth to believe he was being persecuted. He viewed all men as basically good until he was forced to do otherwise, and then it came to him as a shock and a sadness, and he was still ready to find himself mistaken, and delighted to be so.

  “And the second?” Pitt asked.

  “That was something to do with a horse,” Matthew replied. “He never told me the details.” He sat forward again, his brow creasing. “I only knew about it at all because the groom told me when I was home. It seems Father was riding down in the village when some unexpected idiot came down the road at a full gallop, completely out of control of his animal. He was careering all over the place, one side of the road to the other, arms flying, whip in his hand, and he just about drove Father into the stone wall alongside the vicarage. Caught his horse a terrible blow about the head with his whip. Terrified the poor beast, and of course Father was thrown.” He let out his breath slowly, without moving his eyes from Pitt’s face. “It could conceivably have been an accident; the man was either drunken out of his senses or a complete imbecile, but Father didn’t think so, and I certainly don’t.”

  “No,” Pitt said grimly. “Neither do I. He was a damn good horseman, and not the sort of man to imagine things of anyone.”

  Suddenly Matthew smiled, a wide, generous smile that made him look years younger. “That’s the best thing I have heard anyone say in weeks. Dear God, I wish his friends could hear you. Everyone is so afraid to praise him, even to acknowledge his sanity, never mind that he might have been right.” There was sudden hurt in his voice. “Thomas, he was sane, wasn’t he? The sanest and most honorable and innately decent man ever to walk the land.”

  “Yes he was,” Pitt agreed quietly and with total honesty. “But apart from that, it doesn’t rest on his sanity. I know the Inner Circle punishes those who betray it. I’ve seen it before. Sometimes it is social or financial ruin—not often death, but it is not unknown. If they couldn’t frighten him, and they obviously couldn’t, then there was nothing else for them to do. They couldn’t ruin him financially because he didn’t gamble or speculate. They couldn’t socially because he didn’t curry favor with anyone, or seek any office or alliances, and he couldn’t have cared less about being accepted at court, or in the social circles of London. Where he lived his standing was unassailable, even by the Inner Circle. So there was only death left to them, to silence him permanently.”

  “And then to nullify all he said by dishonoring his memory.” Matthew’s voice was filled with anger, and pain flooded back into his face. “I can’t bear that, Thomas. I won’t!”

  There was a knock on the parlor door. Pitt suddenly became aware again of where he was, and that it was nearly dark outside. He had not eaten, and Charlotte must be wondering who his visitor was and why he had gone into the parlor and closed the door without introducing her, or inviting the visitor to dine.

  Matthew looked at him expectantly, and Pitt was surprised to see there was a flicker of nervousness across his face, as if he were uncertain how he should behave.

  “Come in.” Pitt rose to his feet and reached to open the door. Charlotte was standing outside looking curious and a little anxious. She had finished reading to the children and from the faint flush in her cheeks and the stray hair poked into a misplaced pin, he knew she had been in the kitchen. He had even forgotten he was hungry. “Charlotte, this is Matthew Desmond.” It was ridiculous that they had never met before. Matthew had been closer to him than anyone else except his mother, at times closer than even she. And Charlotte was closer to him now than he had imagined anyone could be. And he had never taken her back to Brackley, never introduced her to his home, or to those who had been more than family to him before she was. His mother had died when he was eighteen, but that should not have cut the ties.

  “How do you do, Mr. Desmond,” Charlotte said with a calm and confidence Pitt knew was the product of her birth, not of any inner emotion. He saw the uncertainty in her eyes and knew why she moved a step closer to him.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Pitt,” Matthew replied, and his voice lifted very slightly with surprise because she answered his look squarely. In that brief second, with no more than a sentence and a meeting of glances, they had taken a certain measure of each other, understood the precise niche in society which they filled. “I am sorry to intrude, Mrs. Pitt,” Matthew went on. “I am afraid it was most selfish of me. I came to tell Thomas of my father’s death, and I regret that all consideration for anyone else went straight out of my head. I apologize.”

  Charlotte looked across at Pitt this time, her face full of shock and sympathy, then back to Matthew. “I am sorry, Mr. Desmond. You must be feeling quite terrible. Is there anything we can do to be of practical assistance? Would you like Thomas to go back to Brackley with you?”

  Matthew smiled. “Actually, Mrs. Pitt, I wanted Thomas to find out precisely what happened, and that he has already promised to do.”

  Charlotte took breath to say something else, then realized perhaps it was inappropriate, and changed her mind.

  “Would you like some supper, Mr. Desmond? I imagine you do not feel like eating, but you may feel worse if you leave it too long.”

  “You are quite right,” he agreed. “On all counts.”

  She looked at him closely, at the distress and the weariness in his face. She hesitated on the edge of decision for a moment, then made her judgment.

  “Would you like to stay here overnight, Mr. Desmond? It will be no inconvenience whatever. In fact you would be our first guest since moving here, and we should like that very much. If there is anything you need, and have not with you, Thomas could lend it to you.”

  He did not need to consider it. “Thank you,” he said immediately. “I would far rather that than return to my rooms.”

  “Thomas will show you upstairs and have Gracie prepare the bedroom for you. Supper will be served in ten minutes.” And she turned, with only a glance at Pitt, and retreated towards the kitchen.

  Matthew stood for a moment in the hallway looking at Pitt. All sorts of half thoughts were plain in his face: surprise, understanding, memories of the past, of long talks and even longer dreams when they were boys, and some of all the distance between then and now. No
explanations were necessary.

  Supper was a light meal anyway: cold roast chicken and vegetables, and a fruit sorbet afterwards. It was hardly a time when it mattered, but Pitt was glad Matthew had come after his promotion, and it had not been during the time when mutton stew and potatoes, or whiting and bread and butter, were all they could have offered.

  They spoke little, and that merely of unemotional subjects such as plans for the garden, what they hoped to grow in the future, whether all the fruit trees were likely to bear, or how badly they were in need of pruning. It was only to fill the silence, not any attempt to pretend that all was well. Charlotte knew as well as Pitt that grief must be allowed its time. To prevent it by constant diversion only increased the pain, like a denial of the importance of the event, as if the loss did not matter.

  Matthew retired early, leaving Charlotte in the green-and-white sitting room with Pitt. To have called it a withdrawing room would have been pretentious, but it had all the charm and cool ease that would serve such a purpose.

  “What did he mean?” she asked as soon as Matthew had had time to be up the stairs beyond hearing. “What was wrong with Sir Arthur’s death?”

  Slowly, finding words harder than he had expected to, he told her all that Matthew had said about Sir Arthur and the Inner Circle, the warnings he felt they had given him, and finally his death from laudanum at the Morton Club.

  She listened without taking her eyes from his, and without interruption. He wondered if she could see in his face, as transparently as he felt them, both his grief and his sense of guilt. He was not even sure if he wanted her to know it. It was a bitterly lonely thing to hide, and yet he did not wish her to see him as the thoughtless man he felt, careless of so many years of past kindness that he had not been back, and now all he could do was repay a fraction of the debt by trying to redeem Sir Arthur’s name from a dishonor he knew it did not deserve.