Belgrave Square

of being overheard. “It is a secret society for mutual benefit, charitable work, and the righting of injustices.”

“Whose injustices?” Pitt asked quickly. “Who decides what is just or unjust?”

Urban’s face registered the difference with a flash of irony.

“They do, of course.”

“If its aims are so fine, why is it secret?”

Urban sighed. “Some things are hard to accomplish, and those who resent it can be very obstructive, at times very powerful. Secrecy gives you some safety from them.”

“I see. But what has this to do with you and Weems-and Osmar?” Pitt asked.

“I am a member of the Inner Circle,” Urban explained. “I joined some time ago, when I was a young and rising man in Rotherhithe. An officer in power then thought I was a promising man, just the sort who would one day be a fine member of the Circle, a brother.” He looked self-conscious. “I was a lot younger then. He flattered me, told me all the good works and the power I might have to help people. Not the superintendent they have now. He wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

He leaned still further forward. “I joined. To begin with it was all very simple stuff, a little gift to a good cause and a few hours of my time, nothing remarkable.”

Pitt remained silent.

“It was several years before I came up against anything that worried me,” Urban continued, “and even then nothing was said. I simply declined certain tasks I was asked to do. Six months ago the first real discipline came. I was asked to favor a man in a case. He was not accused, simply a witness, but he did not wish to testify, and I was supposed to overlook it, in the name of brotherhood. I refused. I had heard of other members of the Circle being disciplined for such acts, finding themselves suddenly unwelcome where they used to be respected, or unaccountably blackballed from clubs, when no charge had been made and no known offenses committed, criminal or social.”

“The Inner Circle disciplining its errant members,” Pitt said slowly.

“I think so. There wasn’t anything you could call proof, but the people concerned usually understood. And what may be more to the point, other members hovering on the brink of disobedience decided against it.”

“Effective,” Pitt said. A mass of thoughts whirled in his mind, possibilities connecting Weems and Addison Carswell, and Horatio Osmar, explaining the dismissal of charges-brothers of the Inner Circle. And Urban-and presumably Latimer too? A web of tacit understandings, favors, obligations, unspoken threats, and for rebels a swift and effective discipline: a warning to others.

Was that why Micah Drummond had been so willing to help Lord Byam, and why it made him so profoundly uncomfortable, and yet unable to explain? And of course that was why Byam had been told of Weems’s death in the first place, and why the Clerkenwell station had handed over the case when they were asked: all in the name of the Inner Circle, a secret brotherhood of power-used for what?

Micah Drummond!

How strong were the bonds of this brotherhood? Stronger than duty? Where did brotherhood end and corruption begin?

“And you defied them?” he said, looking at Urban again.

“I misbehaved,” Urban admitted. “I think my name on Weems’s list is a warning to others. But I can’t prove that.”

“Then the question is,” Pitt said slowly, “did Weems’s murderer leave the second list there for us to find, and so embarrass you, and Carswell…” He deliberately left off Latimer’s name. “Or was it there anyway, a precaution to be used at another time, and Weems’s murder unforeseen?”

“I don’t know,” Urban admitted. “I don’t even know beyond question that Carswell is a brother, but it would explain his dismissing the charge against Osmar. I know Osmar is. And Carswell’s name was also on your list.”

Pitt said nothing. His mind had grasped what Urban had said, and he knew it was very possibly true, but crowding it out and hurting far more was the memory of Micah Drummond’s face as he told him of Weems’s murder, and how they were going to help Byam. There were all sorts of questions springing from that. Was that why Micah Drummond agreed, and had the power to do it so easily? Why was Byam’s name not there? Could he have left the second list, and then been caught by his own trap when someone else, some desperate debtor, had come later and murdered Weems? Was that why he was so afraid, not that his name was there, but that he had been there himself, and was afraid he had been seen?

That made no sense. Why leave the list, unless he knew Weems would be murdered and the police find it?

But ugliest of all was the question of Micah Drummond’s part. What was his role in the Inner Circle? Was he being disciplined in some way? Was he obedient, pliant to their will? Or worse, was he the discipliner, the one who placed the threats, and the punishment? Could he have been there after Weems’s death and before Pitt went and found the lists?

Or for that matter, had Byam heard from the Clerkenwell station of Weems’s murder even before Drummond? Had he been to Cyrus Street and placed the second list?

Or was it someone in the Clerkenwell station whom he had not even considered yet-the unknown person who had first told Byam?

It was a secret society-who knew who its members were, or their real purpose? Did even its own members know? How many were innocent pawns of a few?

And how many of its tentacles grasped, twisted and corrupted the police?

“No,” he said aloud, breaking the long silence. “I don’t know either.”

7

MICAH DRUMMOND found himself thinking of the Byam case more and more often, at times even when he would normally have left police matters far behind him and begun to enjoy the very considerable pleasures of life. He smiled to himself wryly now. In his mind it was the Byam case, but to Pitt it would almost certainly be the Weems case. After all it was Weems who was dead. Byam was only a possible suspect, Drummond profoundly hoped an “impossible” one. That thought had troubled him like an unacknowledged darkness at the edge of his mind, something he refused to look at but could forget only for short, deliberately engineered moments, always ending when its shadow crossed his thoughts again.

Pitt had told him about the blunderbuss. That meant that in theory at least the means were there for anyone, even the poorest debtor from Clerkenwell. But did Weems leave gold coins lying around in such circumstances? Possibly. Maybe that kind of cruelty would appeal to him-have a desperate person, unable to make his repayments, into the office and face him across a pile of gold coins, then demand of him his last pence. Not only colorfully sadistic, but also surely dangerous? In his years of usury had not Weems learned to be a good enough judge of character to avoid such a thing?

Come to think, why had he received a debtor alone in his office after dark? That could hardly be his practice. But had Pitt asked? He would have been concentrating on finding who killed him, not on exonerating Byam.

Drummond stopped with a start of guilt. That was what he was doing: trying to exonerate Byam. He had given little thought to finding Weems’s murderer if it was someone else-once Byam was cleared. He felt the heat creep up his face at the consciousness of how his judgment had lapsed, his priorities become unbalanced.

It was a summer evening, still broad daylight, and he was at home. It was not the large house in Kensington he had kept when his wife was alive and his daughters were growing up; he had sold that when the loneliness in it became overbearing and the upkeep quite unnecessary. Now he had a spacious flat off Piccadilly. He no longer had any need to keep a carriage. He could always obtain a hansom if he needed one, and one manservant and a woman to do the domestic chores and cook were all that was necessary to see to his comfort. If they employed anyone else from time to time he was only peripherally aware of it. The expense was negligible, and he trusted their judgment.

This room still contained many of his old possessions: the embroidered fire screen with peacocks on it that his mother had given him the first year after he was married; the blue Meissen plates his wife had loved; the hideous brown elephant she had inherited, and they had both laughed over. And he had kept the Chippendale chairs, even