“Perhaps even more strongly than you do, since they have tried to soil him too.”
“Perhaps,” he agreed slowly.
“Then you must give him the opportunity to fight them.” She leaned forward a little. “You cannot protect him from it, and I don’t believe you should try. I should not thank you if you removed from me the chance to redeem myself from a terrible mistake of judgment.”
He took her hand in his and held it gently.
“All right. You don’t need to argue any further. I understand. I shall tell him tomorrow.”
She lifted her other hand and touched his face very softly, smiling, her eyes bright. It was not necessary that she should speak.
However the following morning Pitt’s intention was balked by a furore of excitement when he reached Bow Street. There were newspapers being passed from one person to another and cries of indignation and anger all around the entrance and the desk and the corridors.
“It’s downright dishonest!” the desk sergeant said, his face bright pink.
“It’s monstrous, that’s what it is!” a constable said heatedly, holding the offending newspaper out in front of him. “It’s lies! How do they get away with printing such things?”
“It’s a conspiracy!” another constable agreed with outrage in his voice. “Ever since the Whitechapel murders they’ve been out to get us!”
“I wouldn’t wonder if there’s anarchists behind it,” the desk sergeant added.
“What is it?” Pitt demanded, snatching one of the newspapers from a constable.
“There.” The constable pointed with a rigid forefinger. “Look at that.”
Pitt looked.
“ ‘Police brutality’!” he read. “ ‘Miss Beulah Giles, a victim of police harassment and brutal interrogation, was yesterday taken forcibly from her home to Scotland Yard where she was secretly interrogated by Superintendent Latimer in police attempts to defend themselves against charges of perjury on the park bench case.’ ” And it went on in the same vein about the shock and dismay to an innocent girl’s feelings as she was removed from her home and family and subjected to insult and degradation in a desperate effort to force her to change her testimony and incriminate her friend.
Pitt pushed the paper back at the constable and reached for one of the others. The words were a trifle different, but the meaning was essentially the same. Beulah Giles had been the victim of police insult and intimidation. Everywhere people would rise to avenge the outrage. What was this new police force coming to when an English maiden was not safe from their assaults and abuse? Their entire existence must be questioned forthwith. Pitt swore, quietly and bitterly-an extraordinary circumstance for him; he very seldom lost his temper, and even more rarely did he use unseemly language.
8
W
Dear Emily,
I hope you are feeling thoroughly well, and have no need of me at your forthcoming dinner party for that reason, nevertheless it is most important that I come. Thomas told me some extraordinarily serious things about his current case last evening, and I am determined to do all I can to help. I cannot remember having seen him so upset before in quite this way. He has nowhere else to turn, for the most wretched of reasons.
And I know you will already have arranged how your table is to be, but I would like you to change it so as to place me next to both Lord Byam and Mr. Addison Carswell. Believe me I have excellent reasons for asking this, and I do know how inconvenient it will be-but both are being blackmailed and are suspects for murder. You know I do not exaggerate in such matters nor say it lightly.
Naturally I shall tell you all you wish when I see you, however I think perhaps you had better burn this letter when you have read it. In the meantime I remain your loving sister,
Charlotte
She folded it, put it in an envelope, wrote Emily’s address on it, then she found a postage stamp which she licked and stuck on.
“Gracie,” she called out.
She heard Gracie’s feet scuttling down the passage and her head appeared around the door.
“Yes ma’am?”
“Will you take this letter and put it in the box for me, please? It is extremely urgent. I must go to Mrs. Radley’s dinner party tomorrow evening, and it is terribly important that if possible I sit next to particular people, because they may have committed murder-one of them, I mean, not both.”
Any other housemaid might have shrieked and fainted at this point, but Gracie was well used to such ideas and fully intended to help where she could. Her eyes widened in her thin little face and she stood more smartly to attention.
“Oh ma’am.”
Charlotte knew she was longing to help as well, but she could think of nothing for her to do, beyond posting the letter. Judges and politicians were completely outside Gracie’s knowledge, in fact she had probably never even seen such a person, let alone spoken to one.
“It was a moneylender who was killed,” she added, just so her instructions were not so bare.
“Good,” Gracie said instantly, then blushed. “Beggin’ yer pardon, ma’am. But they in’t nice people. Once they gets their ’ands on yer they don’t never let go. Don’t matter ’ow much as yer borrers, or ’ow little, yer never gets done payin’ ’em back.” She frowned, screwing up her face. “But ma’am, people what goes ter Mrs. Radley’s dinner parties don’t borrer from the likes o’ moneylenders, do they?”
“One would not think so,” Charlotte agreed. “But he was also a blackmailer, so one never knows. But you must keep all this to yourself, Gracie. It would be most dangerous to allow anyone else to think you know something. No careless words to the butcher’s boy, or the fishmonger.”
Gracie’s chin came up and her eyes blazed.
“I don’t speak to the errand boys or their likes, ’ceptin’ to tell ’em their business,” she said with heat. “I listens, ’cos that’s me job, I might learn summink, but I don’t never tell ’em nuffin’.”
Charlotte smiled in spite of herself. “I apologize,” she said humbly. “I really didn’t imagine you did, I was simply warning from habit.”
Gracie forgave her instantly, but with a little sniff as she took the letter, and a moment later Charlotte heard the front door open and close.
She also told Pitt that evening when he came home tired and hot and hungry. She made very light of it, simply saying that she would attend the dinner because both Byam and Carswell would be there, and she had received Emily’s reply, delivered by hand, to say that arrangements had been remade and she would indeed sit at the table between the two people she had requested. She did not tell Pitt the dire threats that were also made, should Charlotte fail to tell Emily every single thing she knew about the case, proved or suspected. That really went without saying anyway.
“Be careful,” Pitt said quickly, his eyes sharpening and his attention reawakened in spite of the oppressive heat and his real tiredness. “You are dealing with very powerful people. Don’t imagine because they are unfailingly polite that they are as gentle in deed as they are in word.”
“Of course not,” she said quickly. “I shall merely listen and watch.”
“Rubbish! You never kept silent in your life when your interest was engaged,” he said with a twisted smile. “And neither will Emily.”
“I-” she began, then caught his eye and her denial withered away. He knew perfectly well Emily would demand and Charlotte would relate everything she knew, in between the hairpins and the petticoats and the instructions to footmen, parlormaids and anyone else who was involved. “I shall not forget how serious it is,” was the very best she could do and retain a shred of honesty. She passed him a glass of lemonade from the pantry (which was still
