“There can be no doubt,” he replied. “The address is given as well.”
“But my husband is a member of the police-you know that.” She looked at him as if she doubted his intelligence.
“Not everyone believes the police to be beyond temptation or weakness, Mrs. Latimer. It is against those people we must guard. Which is what I am attempting to do. Does your husband have private income, an inheritance, perhaps?”
“No.” Her face pinched with distaste at the question. “Senior officers earn a considerable amount, Mr. Pitt. Perhaps you are not aware…” She trailed off; the intrusion of such questions offended her, and confused her. She did not deal in financial matters; it was not a woman’s place.
Pitt had originally intended asking her if she knew of Latimer’s ever having borrowed money, even for a short time to meet some unexpected expense, but looking at her smooth, humorless face he abandoned the idea. Had he been Latimer he would not have told her of anything so mundane or displeasing as financial difficulty, he would simply have handled the matter himself in whatever way he thought best, and presented her with the result. He had seen the glint of purpose in her eye. He doubted she was a stupid woman, for all the carefully cultivated extreme femininity. She was probably capable of intense determination, and acute social judgment; but she seemed to be without any breadth of imagination. The very predictability of the room evidenced that, as did her responses to his statements now.
“I am aware, ma’am,” he answered her half question. “But this man has left written claims that Superintendent Latimer borrowed considerable amounts of money from him. It is my task to disprove that.”
She blinked. “What is wrong with borrowing money, if you repay it?”
“Nothing. It only becomes wrong if you cannot repay-which is what this man has suggested, among other things.”
“What things, Mr. Pitt?”
She had surprised him. He had not expected her to pursue that, only to deny debt. He had been right; it was a flash of steel under all the fair hair and pink-and-white skin.
“Blackmail, Mrs. Latimer.”
That jolted her. She had not flinched with distaste in the outward show she had given earlier, but now her eyes widened a little, and beneath the mannerisms her concentration sharpened.
“Indeed. I think perhaps you had better speak to my husband about this. It appears to involve crime as well as malicious charges.”
“The crime is also being investigated,” he assured her. “It is the charges I am personally concerned with disproving. The reputation of the police force has suffered very gravely in the last year. It is most important we protect it now. I would greatly appreciate your assistance.”
“I don’t see what I can do.”
“May I speak with your servants?” He wanted to see the rest of the house. It would give him the best opportunity he could desire to estimate their financial standing.
“If you believe it will help,” she conceded reluctantly. “Although I cannot imagine how it could.”
“Thank you, that is most generous of you.” He rose to his feet and she did also, reaching for the bell.
When the parlormaid arrived she gave the necessary instructions and bade him good-day.
He spent a further hour asking all the servants pointless questions about callers, which enabled him to see most of the rest of the house. His ugliest fears were realized. The money had been spent on the front rooms. All the more private areas where no visitor would pass were furnished in castoffs, wood was scratched or blemished, carpets were faded in the sun, worn where feet had passed over them in constant tread, fringes on lamps and chairs were patched and missing tassels, the wallpaper was faded where the light fell on it, curtains were barely to the floor, and unlined. The domestic staff was only the barest number necessary to run such an establishment. When dinner parties were given, as they were quite often, then extra servants were hired in for that occasion, as were the required plates, glasses and silver.
He left late in the afternoon with a heavy feeling of depression. Mrs. Latimer was apparently a woman with considerable social ambition and a driving will to achieve, indeed he was obliged to leave through the servants’ entrance to avoid the guests arriving at the front.
Latimer might well have felt the same ambition, but whatever his own desires he appeared determined to drive himself to the limit, and perhaps beyond. It would be very easy to believe he had borrowed from Weems in order to throw the extra party, feed his guests with the best, serve the best wines and impress all the right people. But how had he expected to repay? His salary was set.
Pitt had taken the very obvious step of learning a superintendent’s salary. He could imagine no way in which it could have maintained the establishment in Beaufort Gardens, even with the stringent economies practiced in the kitchens, the family bedrooms and the servants’ quarters. Thinking of it in the hansom on the way back to Bow Street he felt oppressed by the anxiety of it, the constant worry, the fear of the letter, the knock on the door, the feeling that everything was temporary, nothing safe, robbing one pocket to pay another, always juggling, thinking, deceiving, covering one lie with a second, spoken or implied.
There was little point in speaking to Latimer directly. If it were untrue he could not prove it; if it were true he would deny it. Neither would mean anything. Proof was all that would stand. He might not have killed Weems, but that was only part of the question, and now not the part that troubled Pitt the most. Whatever the truth of Weems’s murder, he needed to know where Latimer had hoped to acquire the money to repay the loans. He needed to know it was an honest way, although he could think of none.
He would have to have Micah Drummond’s authorization to inquire into Latimer’s cases. They were not in Bow Street but in Scotland Yard, and it would need a very strong explanation before an officer from another station would be permitted to examine them.
It took him many days of close, unhappy reading in a little room off a long corridor, sitting on a hard-backed chair in front of a wooden table piled with papers. He followed case after case of human violence, greed and deceit. Latimer had worked on a wide variety of evils, from murder and arson through to organized fraud and large-scale embezzlement. It was an unhappy catalogue of behavior, probably much the same as would have been found in the records of any other officer of similar rank in a city the size of London, the largest city in the world, the hub of an empire that circled the earth, the financial capital, the industrial and commercial heart, the busiest port, the center for transport and communication, as well as the social pinnacle.
He put aside all those where Latimer had worked closely with other officers and the results were precisely what anyone with experience would have expected. He also took out those where the trail of evidence was obvious and had culminated in arrest and conviction of a known felon.
He read and reread any that ended in an acquittal, but found little that was unusual, and nothing that was unaccountable.
Lastly, tired, eyes aching and fed up with spending his days inside poring over papers instead of out dealing with people, he turned to the cases unsolved. There were three murders over the last five years, and he read them carefully. From the evidence, the statements recorded, he would have done precisely what Latimer had done. His spirits lifted a little. Perhaps after all he was going to find it was simply a case of a man in love with a beautiful and socially ambitious wife who had overextended his means to satisfy her.
But there was no reason to suppose Carswell had borrowed money, and every reason to believe he was being blackmailed. There was sufficient reason to believe that Latimer also was blackmailed. Lord Byam had admitted it from the first. Was Latimer, the third name on the list, really only an innocent observer?
Was he a member of the secret brotherhood, the Inner Circle? He was just the sort of man who would join: young, ambitious, desirous of social status and preferment. Pitt would need not proof that he was, but proof that he was not before he would alter his belief.
He went outside in the hot, close midday to find himself some luncheon. In a noisy public house with a thick sandwich and a glass of cider he sat and watched the faces of the men coming and going, recognizing each other, exchanging whispers and nods, doing quick, secretive business, making acquaintances.
Was it any use trying his underworld sources? If Latimer were assisting the Inner Circle, they would not be the petty thieves and forgers, the pickpockets, fences and pimps of the criminal world, but the practitioners of fraud in business, the corrupt lawyers, the men who gave and took bribes, the financial deceivers and embezzlers of thousands.
He looked at the narrow, foxy face of the man at the table next to his. He was dirty and his teeth were stained,
