Bethlehem Road Page 5

“I suppose you have no idea if there’s any rival or enemy who might have wished Sir Lockwood harm? Any threats you know of?”

  Verdun smiled. “I’m sorry. If I did I should have mentioned it, distasteful as it is. After all, you can’t have chaps running around killing people, can you!”

  “No sir.” Pitt stood up. “Thank you for your help. If I may look at those records of yours? The last year or so should be sufficient.”

  “Of course. I’ll have Telford make a copy for you on that awful contraption, if you like. Might as well do something useful on it. Sounds like a hundred urchins in hobnail boots!”

  It was quarter past six when Pitt was finally ushered into the Home Secretary’s office in Whitehall. It was very large and very formal, and the officials in their frock coats and wing collars made it plain that it was a considerable favor granted in extraordinary circumstances that Pitt was even allowed across the threshold, let alone into a Cabinet Minister’s private office. Pitt attempted to straighten his tie, making it worse, and ran his fingers through his hair, which was no improvement either.

  “Yes, Inspector?” the Home Secretary said courteously. “I can give you ten minutes. Lockwood Hamilton was my Parliamentary Private Secretary, and very good at it, efficient and discreet. I am deeply sorrowed by his death.”

  “Was he ambitious, sir?”

  “Naturally. I should not promote a man who was indifferent to his career.”

  “How long had he held the position?”

  “About six months.”

  “And before that?”

  “A backbencher, on various committees. Why?” He frowned. “Surely you don’t think this was political?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Has Sir Lockwood been involved in any issues or legislation that might arouse strong feelings?”

  “He hasn’t proposed anything. For Heaven’s sake, he’s a Parliamentary Private Secretary, not a minister!”

  Pitt realized he had made a tactical error. “Before you appointed him to this position, sir,” he went on, “you must have known a considerable amount about him: his past career, his stand on important issues, his private life, reputation, business and financial affairs ...”

  “Of course,” the Home Secretary agreed somewhat tartly. Then he realized Pitt’s purpose. “I don’t think I can tell you anything of use. I don’t appoint men I consider likely to be murdered for their private lives, and he wasn’t important enough to be a political target.”

  “Probably not, sir,” Pitt was forced to agree. “However, I would be neglecting my duty if I didn’t look at all the possibilities. Someone unbalanced enough to think of murder as a solution to their problems may not be as rational as you or I.”

  The Home Secretary gave him a sharp glance, suspecting sarcasm, and he did not like the impertinence of Pitt’s equating a Cabinet Minister with a policeman in an estimate of rationality, but he met Pitt’s bland blue stare and decided the matter was not worth pursuing.

  “We may be dealing with the irrational,” he said coldly. “I hope so most profoundly. Any society may be subject to the occasional lunatic. A family or business crime would be unpleasant, but it would be a nine-day scandal, forgotten afterwards. Immeasurably worse would be some conspiracy of anarchists or revolutionaries who were not after poor Hamilton in particular but bent on generally destabilizing the government and causing alarm and public outcry.” His hands tightened imperceptibly. “We must clear up this matter as soon as possible. I assume you have all available men on it?”

  Pitt could see his reasoning—and yet there was a coldness in him that Pitt found himself disliking as he stood there in the elegant and well-ordered office, which smelled faintly of beeswax and leather. The Home Secretary would prefer a private tragedy with all its pain and ruined lives to an impersonal plot hatched by hotheads dreaming of power and change in some back room, and he felt no compunction about saying so.

  “Well?” the Home Secretary demanded irritably. “Speak up, man!”

  “Yes sir, we have. You must have considered other men for the position of your Parliamentary Private Secretary, as well as Sir Lockwood?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Perhaps your secretary would give me their names.” It was not a question.

  “If you think it necessary.” He was reluctant, but he took the point. “Hardly a position a sane man kills to achieve.”

  “What sort of position would a sane man kill to achieve, sir?” Pitt asked, his voice as devoid of expression as he could manage.

  The Home Secretary shot him a look of chill dislike. “I think you must look outside Her Majesty’s government for your suspect, Inspector!” he said acidly.

  Pitt was unruffled: it was faintly satisfying that their dislike was mutual. “Can you tell me Sir Lockwood’s views on the most contentious current issues, sir? For example, Home Rule for Ireland?”

  The Home Secretary pushed out his lower lip thoughtfully, his irritation submerged. “I suppose it could be something to do with that, not directed at poor Hamilton so much as at the government in general. Always an issue that raises heated emotions. He was for it, and fairly outspoken. Though if people were going to murder each other because they disagreed over the Irish question, the streets of London would look like the aftermath of Waterloo.”

  “What about other issues, sir? Penal reform, the poor laws, factory conditions, slum clearance, women’s suffrage?”

  “What?”

  “Women’s suffrage,” Pitt repeated.

  “Good God, man, we’ve got some strident and misguided women who don’t know where their best interests lie, but they’d hardly cut a man’s throat just to make a plea for the franchise to be extended!”

  “Probably not. But what were Sir Lockwood’s opinions?”

  The Home Secretary was about to dismiss the subject but seemed grudgingly to realize that it was as valid as any other possibility so far raised. “He wasn’t a reformer,” he replied. “Except in the most moderate terms. He was a very sane man! I wouldn’t have had him as my P.P.S. if I didn’t trust his judgments.”

  “And his reputation in his personal life?”

  “Impeccable.” The briefest of smiles flickered across the Home Secretary’s face. “And that is not a diplomatic answer. He was extremely fond of his wife, a very fine woman, and he was not a man to seek ... diversions. He had little art of flattery or trivial conversation, and I never observed him to admire another woman.”

  Having met Amethyst Hamilton, Pitt did not find it hard to believe. Charles Verdun had said the same.

  “The more I hear of him, the less does he sound like a man to have inspired a personal hatred violent enough to incite murder.” Pitt had a faint satisfaction in seeing the Home Secretary’s appreciation of the turn of his argument, little as he liked it.

  “Then you had better pursue whatever evidence you have and look into all the agitators and political groups we know of,” he said grimly. “Keep me informed.”

  “Yes sir. Thank you.”

  “Good day to you.” He was dismissed.

  The House of Commons was still sitting; it was too early to attempt to retrace Hamilton’s steps the night before. Pitt was cold and hungry and knew little more than when he had left his home that afternoon after a snatched few hours of sleep. He would go back to Bow Street and have a sandwich and a mug of tea and see if there was any news from the constables out pursuing witnesses.

  But when he reached the station the duty sergeant told him that Sir Garnet Royce, M.P., had called to see him.

  “Bring him to my office,” Pitt replied. He doubted it would be a helpful visit, but he owed the man the courtesy of seeing him. He pushed some papers off the second chair to make room for Royce to sit down if he wished and went behind his desk, glancing to see if there were any messages or new reports. There was nothing except the pile of house transactions from Verdun, with a note from one of the officers specializing in fraud, saying that as far as he could see they were exactly what t
hey appeared to be; there was nothing to be deduced from them except that the firm conducted fairly efficient dealings in domestic property in several agreeable suburbs.

  There was a knock on the door, and a constable showed in Garnet Royce. He was smartly dressed in a velvet-collared coat and carried a silk hat, which he put on the table. He was an imposing figure in this very ordinary gaslit office.

  “Good evening, sir,” Pitt said curiously.

  “Evening, Inspector.” He declined the chair. He was still holding a silver-headed cane, and he turned it restlessly in his strong hands as he spoke. “I see the newspapers have made headlines of poor Lockwood. Suppose it was to be expected. Distressing for the family. Makes it hard to manage affairs with any dignity; lot of idle people hanging around like ghouls, people one barely knows trying to scrape an acquaintance. Disgusting! Brings out the best and the worst in people. You’ll understand my distress for my sister.”

  “Of course, sir.” Pitt meant it.

  Royce leaned forward a little. “If it was some random madman, as seems much the likeliest thing, what are your chances of apprehending him, Inspector? Answer me honestly, man to man.”

  Pitt looked at his face: the power in the sweep of nose and cheek, the wide mouth and sloping brow. It was not a sensitive face, but there was strength and intelligence in it.

  “With luck, sir, quite fair; without a witness of any sort, and if the man doesn’t attack anyone else, not great. But then if he is a madman, he will continue to behave in a way to draw attention to himself, and we will find him.”

  “Yes. Yes of course.” Sir Garnet’s hands closed on the cane. “I suppose you have no ideas as yet?”

  “No sir. We’re working through the obvious possibilities: business rivalry, political enemies.”

  “Lockwood was hardly important enough to earn political enemies.” Royce frowned. “Of course, there were a few people who lost promotions because he gained them, but that’s what one expects, for heaven’s sake. It’s true of anyone in public life.”

  “Was there anyone who might have taken it especially hard?”

  Royce thought for a moment, searching his memory. “Hanbury was pretty upset over the chairmanship of a parliamentary committee several years ago and seems to have held something of a grudge. And they quarreled over Home Rule—Hanbury was very much against it, and Lockwood was in favor. Rather felt he’d let the side down. But one doesn’t commit murder over such things.”

  Pitt regarded the other man’s face in the lamplight. There was no shadow of double-mindedness or deception in it, no irony, no humor. He meant exactly what he said, and Pitt was obliged to agree with him. If the motive for murder was political, it lay in something far deeper than any issue they had touched on yet; it was a rivalry or a betrayal more personal, far more bitter than the question of Irish Home Rule or social reform.

  Royce took his leave, and Pitt went upstairs to see Micah Drummond.

  “Nothing of much use.” Drummond pushed a pile of papers across his desk towards Pitt. He looked tired, and there were dark patches under his eyes where the skin was thin and delicate. This was only the first day, but already he had felt the pressure, the anger of the people as horror turned to fear, and the alarm of those in power who knew the real danger.

  “We’ve narrowed down the time,” he said. “He must have been killed between ten to midnight, when the House rose, and twenty past, when Hetty Milner found him. We ought to be able to cut it down further when we talk to the members when the House rises tonight.”

  “Did we find any street vendors who’d seen him?” Pitt asked. “Or any who’d been around that area and hadn’t seen him, which would narrow things down?”

  Drummond sighed and shuffled through the papers. “Flower seller said she didn’t see him. She knows him, so I presume she’s fairly reliable. Chap who sells hot pies on Westminster steps, Freddie something, but he saw nothing useful: half a dozen men, any one of whom could have been Hamilton, but he can’t swear it. Distinguished-looking fellow in good dark coat and silk hat with a white scarf, average height, gray at the temples—the streets round the bridge are crawling with them when the House rises!”

  “Of course, it may not be Hamilton they were after,” Pitt said quietly.

  Drummond looked up, his eyes hollow and anxious. “Yes, I had thought of that. God help us, if he was after someone else where do we even begin? It could be almost anyone!”

  Pitt sat down on the hard-backed chair in front of the desk. “If it is a random attack against the government, and Hamilton just happened to be the one,” he said, “then it must be anarchists or revolutionaries of some sort. Don’t we have some knowledge of most of these groups?”

  “Yes.” Drummond fished out a sheaf of papers from a drawer in the desk. “And I’ve got men looking into it, trying to trace the activities of known members of all of them. Some want to do away with the monarchy and set up a republic, others want total chaos—they’re fairly easy to spot: usually just hotheaded talk in pubs and on street corners. Some are foreign-inspired, and we’re chasing those as well.” He sighed. “What have you found, Pitt? Is there anything personal?”

  “Not so far, sir. He seems to have been an unremarkable man, successful in business, but I can’t find anything to inspire hatred, much less murder. His partner Verdun is a civilized, moderate man who deals in suburban properties, more for something to do than for profit.”

  Drummond’s face showed imminent criticism.

  “I’ve got the accounts,” Pitt said quickly. “There’s nothing shown except ordinary property transactions in respectable residential areas. If they’re dealing in slum properties as well, they have a perfect set of alternative books.”

  “Likely?” Drummond asked.

  “Not in my opinion.”

  “Well, have someone look up Verdun and see if he is what he says. See if he gambles, or keeps women.”

  Pitt smiled grimly. “I will, but I’ll lay any odds you like that he doesn’t.”

  Drummond’s eyebrows rose. “How about your job? Would you lay that? And mine, if we don’t clear this up.”

  “I don’t think we’ll do it through Charles Verdun, sir.”

  “What about political motive? What did the Home Secretary say?”

  Pitt summed up what he’d learned from Hamilton’s superior, watching Drummond’s face gradually fall.

  “A random victim?” he mused unhappily. “Mistaken for someone else, someone more important? God, I hope not; that would mean the murderer might try again!”

  “Back to anarchists,” Pitt said, rising. “I’d better go and see what I can find out as the members leave the House of Commons—who spoke to Hamilton last, what time, and if they saw anyone approach him.”

  Drummond pulled out a gold watch from his waistcoat. “You might have a long wait.”

  Pitt stood in the cold at the north end of Westminster Bridge for over an hour and a half before he saw the first figures coming out of the House of Commons and turning towards the river. By then he had eaten two hot pies and a plum duff, watched innumerable courting couples walk arm in arm along the embankment and two drunks singing “Champagne Charlie” out of time with each other, and his fingers were numb.

  “Excuse me, sir?” He stepped forward.

  Two members stopped, scowling at being accosted by a stranger. They noted his bulging pockets and woolen muffler and made to walk on.

  “Bow Street Police, sir,” Pitt said sharply. “Inquiring into the murder of Sir Lockwood Hamilton.”

  They were shaken, reminded forcibly of something they had preferred not to consider. “Fearful business,” one said. “Fearful!” the other echoed him.

  “Did you see him yesterday evening, sir?”

  “Ah, yes, yes I did. Didn’t you, Arbuthnot?” The taller turned to his companion. “Don’t know what time it was. As we were leaving.”

  “I believe the House rose at about twenty minutes past eleven o’clock,” Pitt offere
d.

  “Ah yes,” the stockier and fairer man agreed. “Probably so. Saw Hamilton as I was leaving. Poor devil. Shocking!”

  “Was he alone, sir?”

  “More or less; just finished speaking to someone.” The man’s eyes looked blank, benign. “Sorry, don’t know who. One of the other members. Said good night, or something of the sort, and walked off towards the bridge. Lives on the south side, you know.”

  “Did you see whether anyone followed him?” Pitt asked.

  The man’s face looked suddenly pinched as the reality hit him. It ceased to be an exercise in memory. A vivid picture forced itself on his inner mind; he realized he had witnessed what was about to become a murder. His years of composure and self-confidence fled, and he saw the vulnerability of the lone man on the bridge, stalked by death, as if it were his own. “Poor devil!” he said again, his throat tight, his voice constricted. “I rather think someone did, but I haven’t the slightest idea who. It was just the impression of a figure, a shadow as Hamilton started off across the bridge past the first light. I’m afraid rather a lot of us walk home on a decent night, if we live close by. Some took carriages or cabs, of course. Late sitting, rather a bore. I wanted to get home and go to bed. I’m sorry.”

  “Any impression of the shadow, sir? Size, manner of walking?”

  “I’m sorry—I’m not even sure I saw it. Just a sort of movement across the light.... How frightful!”

  “And you, sir?” Pitt turned to the other man. “Did you see Sir Lockwood with anyone?”

  “No—no, I wish I could help, but it was all rather more an impression than anything. Don’t see a chap’s face under the light and you don’t really know—just an idea—pretty dark between the lamps, you know. I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you for your help, sir.” Pitt inclined his head in a salute and passed on to the next group of men, already beginning to leave either in carriages or on foot.

  He stopped half a dozen others, but learned nothing which enabled him to do more than narrow the time more exactly. Lockwood Hamilton had set off across Westminster Bridge at between ten and twelve minutes past midnight. At twenty-one minutes past, Hetty Milner had screamed. In those nine or eleven minutes someone had cut Hamilton’s throat, tied him to the lamppost, and disappeared.