Seven Dials Page 5

  “And what are you doing to help her?” Pitt asked unblinkingly.

  Suddenly desperation filled Ryerson’s eyes and terror flooded up inside him for a moment beyond control. “Trying to think what the devil really happened!” he said hoarsely. “Who did kill him, and why? Why at Eden Lodge, and why in the middle of the night?” He spread his hands slightly, strong but finely sculpted for so large a man. “What was he doing there at all? Did someone follow him? Did someone meet him there? For what? That makes no sense either. You don’t arrange a quarrel in someone else’s back garden in the middle of the night!” He was staring at Pitt, willing him to believe. “Ayesha wouldn’t have opened the door to him. Was he planning to break in? Or create a scene and waken the neighbors?” His face was now ashen pale. “I know she would not have killed him, but for the life of me I can’t imagine any credible answer as to what did happen.” He did not even pretend to mask his feelings.

  Narraway had told Pitt to keep Ryerson out of it if it were humanly possible. Given Ryerson’s emotions, perhaps the only way to do that would be to learn the truth, in the hope that it proved Ayesha Zakhari less guilty than she looked now.

  “I’ll try to find the answers,” Pitt said aloud. “But it will require a certain cooperation from you, sir.”

  “As far as I am able,” Ryerson replied. He was not so desperate he would play into anyone’s hands with an open promise. Pitt found that faintly comforting. At least the man had some balance and judgment left. “But I will not see her blamed for my acts, nor will I swear falsely to protect my reputation. It would serve me ill anyway, and Mr. Gladstone knows it. A man who would lie to serve his own ends will eventually lie for anything.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pitt agreed. “I had no intention of asking you to lie, rather that you tell me all the truth you know, and keep silent as to your being at Eden Lodge unless it is inescapable that you answer the police. But I think they will refrain from asking you for as long as they can.”

  Ryerson’s smile was bittersweet. “I imagine they will,” he agreed. “What will Victor Narraway ask you to do, Mr. Pitt?” There was a change in his expression so minute Pitt could not have described it, but he knew without question it reflected a darkness inside.

  “Find the truth,” he answered with a slight grimace, knowing both that he had set himself a huge task, perhaps an impossible one, and that even if he succeeded the truth he found would very probably be one he would hate—and might not be able to conceal without even worse pain.

  Ryerson did not answer him, but rose to his feet to show him to the front door himself, ignoring the services of the waiting footman.

  IT TOOK PITT the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon to find the police surgeon and obtain his attention. He was a large man with heavy shoulders and quivering chins that settled into his neck without noticeable distinction. He had an apron tied around his vast girth, and his hands were scrubbed pink, presumably to get rid of the evidence of his day’s work, if not the smell of carbolic and vinegar. He greeted Pitt with indignant good humor.

  “Thought I’d got rid of you when you left Bow Street,” he observed in a remarkably attractive voice. It was the only physically pleasing quality about him, apart from his hair, which was thick and curling and so clean as to shine in the gaslight from the lamps above him as they stood in his office. His eyebrows rose. “What do you want now? I don’t know any bombers or anarchists. My ignorance of such things is precious to me, and I intend to keep it until I die peacefully of old age, sitting in the sun on some park bench. I can’t help you—but I suppose I can try, if you insist.”

  “Lieutenant Edwin Lovat,” Pitt replied. He liked McDade and he had nothing pleasanter or more useful to do than extract information from him a piece at a time.

  “Dead,” McDade said simply. “Shot through the chest—heart, actually. Small handgun, close range. Very neat.”

  “Great skill required?” Pitt asked.

  “Only for a blind man with a moving target!” McDade looked at Pitt sideways. “Haven’t seen the body, have you.” That was a statement, not a question.

  “Not yet,” Pitt agreed. “Should I?”

  McDade shrugged his massive shoulders, setting his chins quivering. “Not unless you need to know what he looked like, which is much the same as any other well-built young English soldier with a comfortable style of living, plenty of good food, and not much exercise lately. He’d have run to fat in another ten years, when the muscle went soft.” His expression became rueful. “Handsome, I should think, when he was alive. Good features, good head of hair, all his teeth, which in his early forties isn’t bad. Mind, it’s intelligence and humor that make you like a man, and it’s hard to tell that when you’ve only seen him dead.” He looked away from Pitt as he spoke those words, and there was the very faintest shred of self-consciousness in him. Was he excusing his own massive size, defending himself from critical thought even though nothing had been said?

  “Exactly,” Pitt agreed. He had never considered himself handsome either. He smiled suddenly.

  McDade colored. “Well, what else do you want?” he demanded, swinging around. “He was shot! Through the heart. I’ve no idea whether that was luck or skill. Killed him on the spot—it would do!”

  “Thank you. I suppose there’s nothing else you can tell me?”

  “Like what?” McDade’s voice rose incredulously. “That he was shot by a left-handed man with a walleye and a limp? No, I can’t! Shot by somebody a couple of yards away who could hold a gun steady and see what they were doing. Is that any help?”

  “None at all. Thank you for your time. May I see him?”

  McDade waved a short, fat arm indicating the general area beyond the door. “Help yourself. He’s on the third table along. But you shouldn’t have any trouble finding him. The other two are women.”

  Pitt forbore from remark and went out as directed.

  He looked at the body of Edwin Lovat, hoping it would give him a sense of the man’s reality. He stared at the waxen features, a little sunken now, and tried to imagine him alive, laughing and talking, filled with feeling. Without movement, sound, anything of the thoughts or passions that had made Lovat unique, his body told Pitt nothing more than McDade had already said. A slender woman could not possibly have lifted him. Had he suspected any violence he would presumably not have stood so close to whoever it was who shot him, which meant that either the murderer was known to him as a friend or he had not seen his assailant until the moment before the shot was fired. Either possibility answered the facts, and there was no way to tell which was the case. It was probably irrelevant anyway. The woman had killed him. Pitt’s only hope to save Ryerson was to find some mitigating reason why.

  He spent the remainder of the afternoon learning what he could about Ryerson: his present responsibilities, which were largely to do with trade both within the empire and beyond; and the constituency he represented, which was in Manchester, the heart of the cotton-spinning industry in England. It was the second largest city in Britain, and also the home of the prime minister, Mr. Gladstone.

  He was back in Keppel Street in time for dinner.

  “Can you do anything to help?” Charlotte asked, looking up from her sewing as they sat together in the parlor afterwards.

  “Help whom?” Pitt asked. “Ryerson?”

  “Of course.” She kept on weaving the needle in and out, the light flashing on it like a streak of silver, the head of it clicking very softly against her thimble. He found it a uniquely pleasing sound; it seemed to represent everything that was gentle and domestic, and there was an infinite safety in it. He had no idea what she was mending, but it was clean cotton and the faint aroma of it drifted across the short space between them.

  “Can you?” she pressed.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted, feeling the weight of it sink on him as if the room were suddenly darker. “I’m not sure he’s prepared to help himself.”

  She stared at him, her
needle motionless in her hand, her face puzzled. “What do you mean? Are you saying he’s guilty?”

  “He says he’s not,” Pitt replied. “And I’m inclined to believe him.” He pictured Ryerson’s face in his mind as he had defended Ayesha Zakhari, and heard again the emotion in Ryerson’s voice. “At least I think so,” he added. “He’s willing to admit he was there, and that he actually helped her lift Lovat’s body into the barrow, intending to take it to Hyde Park.”

  “Then he is an accessory!” she said in amazement. “After the murder, even if not before.”

  “Yes, I know that,” he agreed.

  “And the prime minister wants you to protect him?” she asked, struggling with the idea.

  He stared at her. Her expression contained too many emotions for him to be certain which was the most powerful: incredulity, anger, dismay, anxiety.

  “I’m not sure,” he said honestly. “I don’t know which is the greatest ill.”

  She was confused. “What do you mean? It wouldn’t bring the government down, not so soon after the election. Ryerson would have to go, that’s all. And if he helped his mistress to murder a past lover, then so he should.”

  “The Manchester cotton workers are threatening to strike,” he pointed out. “That’s Ryerson’s department, his constituency. He’s possibly the only man who has a chance of settling the problem without ruining heaven knows how many people, workers and mill owners alike, and the shopkeepers, businesses and artisans of the nearby towns as well.”

  “I see,” she said soberly. “What can you do? You can’t conceal his involvement, can you? Would you?” She had put her sewing down now and her attention was undivided, her eyes dark and troubled.

  “I don’t suppose the question will arise,” he answered, hoping profoundly that that was true. “The Egyptian embassy knows he was there.”

  Her eyebrows rose in amazement. “How do they know that? She told them?”

  “Apparently not, she hasn’t had the opportunity. But it’s a most interesting question. She seemed to be willing to protect him when she was arrested. She behaved as if she was surprised to see him, and he’d only just arrived, although he says he had been there several minutes at least, and was the one who actually lifted the heavier part of the body into the barrow. Somebody certainly helped her. Lovat was far too heavy for her to have done it alone, and there was no blood on her dress.”

  “You need to know a lot more about him,” she said with concern shadowing her eyes. “I mean not what everybody knows, but something personal. You need to know what to believe. Have you thought of asking Aunt Vespasia? If she doesn’t know him herself, she’ll know someone who does.” She was referring to Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, actually her sister Emily’s great-aunt by marriage, but both Charlotte and Pitt had grown to care for her deeply, and treated her as their own.

  “I’ll see her as soon as I can,” Pitt agreed immediately. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Do you think it’s too late to telephone and ask her if tomorrow morning is convenient?” He was halfway to his feet already.

  Charlotte smiled. “If you tell her it is to do with a crime you are investigating, with the possibility of government scandal, I imagine she will see you at dawn, if that is when you need her to,” she replied.

  SHE WAS ALMOST RIGHT. However, Pitt had breakfast first, and glanced at the newspapers before leaving in the morning. It was September 16, and the news headlines were taken up with Mr. Gladstone’s visit to Wales, where he had apparently reached some level of agreement on the disestablishment of the Church in that country. Also written about extensively were the outbreaks of cholera in Paris and Hamburg, and on a lighter note, the fact that the recently completed bust of Queen Victoria, sculpted by Princess Louise, was to remain in Osborne House until its shipment to Chicago for exhibition there.

  By nine o’clock Pitt was in Vespasia’s bright, airy withdrawing room with its windows overlooking the garden. The simplicity of the furnishings, with none of the fashionable clutter of the last sixty years’ taste, reminded him that she was born in another age and her memories stretched back to the time before Victoria was queen. As a child she had known the fear of invasion by the Emperor Napoleon.

  Now she sat in her favorite chair and regarded him with interest. She was still a woman of remarkable beauty, and she had lost none of the wit and style that had dazzled society for three generations. She was dressed in dove gray this morning, with her favorite long rows of pearls around her neck and gleaming softly over her bosom.

  “Well, Thomas,” she said with slightly raised silver eyebrows. “If you wish for my assistance you had better tell me what it is you require to know. I am not acquainted with the unfortunate young Egyptian woman who appears to have shot Lieutenant Lovat. It seems an uncivilized and inefficient way to discard an unwanted lover. A firm rebuff is usually adequate, but if it is not, there are still less hysterical ways of achieving the same end. A clever woman can organize her lovers to dispose of each other, without breaking the law.” She regarded him very soberly, but there was a wry humor in her silver-gray eyes, and for an instant he dared to imagine that she spoke from experience and not merely opinion.

  “And how do you guarantee that your lover will remain within the law?” he asked politely.

  “Ah!” she said with instant understanding. “Is that the story? Who is the lover who has behaved with such ungoverned stupidity? I assume there is no question of self-defense?” A flicker of concern crossed her face. “Is that why you are here to see me, Thomas, on the lover’s behalf?”

  “Yes, I am afraid it is. At least not his behalf, but in his interest.”

  “I see. So she was not alone, and he is a person in whom Victor Narraway has some concern. Of whom are we speaking?”

  “Saville Ryerson.”

  She sat perfectly still, facing him with a steady, curiously sad gaze.

  “Do you know him?” he asked gently.

  “Of course I do,” she replied. “I have known him since before his wife was killed … twenty years, at least. In fact, I fear it is more … perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three, by now.”

  He felt a tightening inside him. He studied her face and tried to read how much it was going to hurt her if Ryerson was guilty. Which would matter most to her—his political disgrace or the fact that he was ill-judged enough to allow what should have been a casual affair, with a woman of a different race, religion, and national loyalties, to rule his passions to the point where he colluded in murder? Sometimes one knows a person for years but sees only a surface the person wishes to show. There are vast tides underneath which are not even guessed at.

  “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. He had come to her for help without thinking for a moment that perhaps the truth could be painful for her. Now he was ashamed of taking it for granted. “I need to know more of him than public opinion can tell me,” he explained.

  “Of course you do,” she agreed with asperity. “May I ask what it is you suspect him of? Not actually murder, surely?”

  “You think he would not kill, even to protect his reputation?”

  “You are being evasive, Thomas!” she replied, but there was a slight tremor in her voice. “Is that your way of allowing me to understand that you do?”

  “No,” he said quickly, guilt biting a little deeper. “I spoke with him, and he confuses me. I want a clearer impression of him, without unintentionally placing the thoughts in your mind by telling you too much.”

  “I am not a servant girl to be so easily led,” she said with undisguised disparagement. Then, when she saw him blush, she smiled with the charm she had used to devastate men, and occasionally women as well, all her life. “I do not believe for a moment that Saville Ryerson would kill to protect his reputation,” she said with conviction. “But I do not find it impossible to accept that he would do so to defend his life, or someone else’s, or for a cause that he held sufficiently important. Which I profoundly doubt would be anything to do wi
th cotton strikes in Manchester. What other issues are there at stake?”

  “None that I know of,” he replied, the tightness easing out of him again at her warmth. “And I don’t know of any real reason why Lovat should be a threat to Miss Zakhari.”

  “Might he have attacked her, or attempted an assault which she rejected?” Vespasia asked with a frown.

  “At three o’clock in the morning, in her back garden?” he said dryly.

  Her expression was momentarily comical.

  “Oh—hardly,” she agreed. “One does not meet in such circumstances unless one has some nature of assignation.” Then total seriousness returned. “And one does not innocently take a gun. It was her gun, I assume?” Hope of denial was born and died in the same instant. “I admit, I read only the headlines. It seemed of no concern to me then.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “It was her gun, but she said she found it there. She heard the shot and that is why she went outside. He was already dead when she reached him.”

  “And what does Saville Ryerson say?” she asked.

  “That Lovat was dead when he got there,” he replied. “And he helped her lift the body into a wheelbarrow in order to take it to Hyde Park and leave it there. The police were called by someone, we don’t know who, and arrived in time to find her with the body. Ryerson had gone to the mews to harness a horse to the gig.”

  Vespasia sighed, her eyes troubled. “Oh, dear. I presume the evidence bears all this out.” It was hardly a question.

  “Yes, so far. Certainly someone lifted the body for her.” He watched her face. “You don’t find that hard to believe?”

  She looked away. “No. Perhaps I had better tell you from the beginning.”

  “Please.” He sat back a little in his chair, still watching her.

  “The Ryersons were landed gentry,” she began quietly, her voice remote in memory. “They had only the occasional link with aristocracy, but plenty of money. There were two or three sisters, I believe, but Saville was the only son. He was well educated at Eton, and then Cambridge, then the army for a spell. He served with distinction, but did not wish to make a career of it. He stood for Parliament around about 1860, and won easily.” Regret touched so softly he barely saw it. “He married well,” she continued. “I don’t believe it was a love match, but it was certainly amiable enough, which is as much as most people expect.”