“No. As I was coming down the stairs again Sir John was leaving. I did not wish to meet with him when he was so deeply angry and it must be of the greatest embarrassment to him, since he had undoubtedly quarreled bitterly with Sholto. I waited in the shadows at the top of the stairs, and I saw Sholto bid him good-bye. They were both very stiff and barely civil to one another. I think perhaps had the footman not been there, they might not even have pretended so far.”
“Did you ask Lord Byam the cause of his quarrel?”
“Yes-not immediately. He was too furious at the time, and…” Her voice sank to little more than a whisper. “And I was afraid of what his answer would be.”
Drummond forgot himself at last. He took her hand in his and felt her fingers tighten in a quick grasp as if he were a lifeline and she feared drowning in her distress.
“What was his answer?” he said, closing his hand over hers also.
“He said it was a political difference about finance,” she said miserably.
“And do you not believe that?”
“No-I-Mr. Drummond-I fear something terrible has happened, that whatever Sholto is so afraid of has actually come to pass. I feel as if I have betrayed him myself, even to think of it, but it lies so deeply in me I can deny it to myself no longer. I fear Sir John knows of Laura Anstiss’s death, and Sholto’s part in it, innocent as it was-and he knows of Weems’s blackmail.”
She swallowed and struggled for a moment to regain her composure before going on. “I believe him mistaken, and quite terribly wrong, but I think he believes Sholto killed Weems. That is all I can imagine that would make him so fearfully enraged with Sholto, and Sholto unable to defend himself. You see he still does feel guilty over Laura’s death, even though he had no possible idea she was so-so wild, and self-destructive.”
She looked at Drummond earnestly. “He did not imagine anyone, least of all she, would fall so in love with him she would sooner die than live without him. It is surely not-not quite sane-is it? When one hardly knows someone, and has shared no… intimacy of even the slightest sort with her?”
“I think it is sane,” he said slowly. “But perhaps it is a little…” He searched for a word that would not be too cruel, too dismissive of an emotion he was trying to understand only too sharply in himself. “A little weak,” he said. “Life often gives one the feeling that it is beyond enduring at the time. But with courage, one does-one has to. Perhaps that is something Laura Anstiss had never learned.”
“Poor Laura,” she whispered. “How well you put it. It is as if you have known…” She drew in her breath quickly and looked away. “I’m sorry, that is intrusive. Thank you for being so-” She withdrew her hand. “So patient, Mr. Drummond. I feel better to have told you.”
“I will do all I can, I promise you,” he said quietly. “We have several others we suspect, whose motives are stronger than Lord Byam’s-and who can give no account of where they were at the time.”
“Have you?” There was a lift in her voice for the first time.
“Yes-yes. There is cause to have much hope.”
“Thank you.” And with a rustle of taffeta, she moved away back towards the room and the lights and the laughter.
At the end of the evening when the last guests had departed, Charlotte, Emily and Jack were seated in the withdrawing room. The gas was turned low and the last glasses and small dishes were packed up for the servants to take away and deal with before they too were able to go to bed.
Emily turned to Jack. She was interested in Charlotte’s affairs, but his took precedence.
“Was the evening successful?” she asked eagerly. “You seemed to be a long time in the library with Lord Anstiss. Did he ask you a great deal?”
Jack smiled, wiping as if by magic the tiredness from his face.
“Yes,” he said with deep satisfaction. “And he told me a great deal which I did not know. He is an extraordinarily…” He looked for the right word. “… magnetic man. His knowledge is vast, but far more than that, he speaks with so much vitality and wit. And I think his influence is greater than I first supposed.”
“But he liked you?” Emily pressed with a fine grasp of what was important. “What did he say? Jack, don’t keep us in suspense!”
His smile broadened. “He invited me to join a most select society which does a great deal of good work, often secretly. They provide funds for many charities, strive to fight inequity and injustice, even some of the more dangerous and ugly facets of crime.”
“It sounds excellent!” Emily was enthusiastic. “Are you going to join?”
“No!” Charlotte said with vehemence so sharp both Jack and Emily turned to her with incredulity. “No,” she said more moderately. “You must know a great deal more about it before you join anything.”
“Charlotte! It is a society wholly dedicated to doing good,” Emily said reasonably. “What could possibly be wrong with that?” She turned around to Jack again. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes of course it is,” Jack agreed. “And from what Lord Anstiss says, it would be the most powerful single step I could take to ensure the support of those who really matter in the political and social world.”
Charlotte wanted to muster an argument, but all she could think of was Pitt’s fears for Micah Drummond, his misery over the corruption he had uncovered, and the deeper corruption he so far only suspected.
“And what do they want from you in return?” she demanded. “What loyalty? What sacrifice of your independence, perhaps in time of your conscience?”
“Nothing.” Jack was surprised and mildly amused. “It is a society for doing good, Charlotte!”
“But secret?” she persisted.
“Not secret,” he corrected. “Discreet. Surely that is how charity should be, done quietly, modestly and without seeking recognition?”
“Yes.” She was reluctant to admit it not because what he said was untrue, but because she feared so much more. “But Jack, there may be other things. Thomas is dealing with a society at the moment…”
Emily looked at her with skepticism. “He is investigating the murder of a usurer, you told me.”
“Yes, but he has uncovered a society as well…” She was out of her depth and floundering. She was not prepared to tell them of the police corruption. It was too indefinite in form as yet, and too painful. In some basic way she felt it reflected on Pitt, on his profession, and she did not wish them to know if it could be avoided.
“London is full of societies,” Jack said more quietly, aware that her concern for him was real. “This one is very honorable, I promise you.”
“What is it called?”
“I don’t know-Anstiss did not tell me.”
“Be careful.”
“I will be. I give you my word.” He stood up. “Now it is past time Emily went to bed, and you too I am sure. Would you prefer to go home in the carriage now, or stay here until morning and go then? You are very welcome, you know, always.”
“Thank you, but I will go now. I would prefer to be there when Thomas leaves in the morning.”
Jack smiled and took Emily’s hand in his. “Then good night, my dear.”
Pitt listened as he had breakfast to all that Charlotte related to him of the evening before, which was only impressions of conversation, emotions and fears, and the conviction that Micah Drummond had learned to love Eleanor Byam, with all the pain and conflict that that meant. She did not mention Anstiss’s invitation to Jack to join the society. She would not burden him with that yet.
Pitt did not say anything, but he knew she understood his silence. He kissed her, long and gently, and went out into the hot, dusty street to find an omnibus and travel slowly to Scotland Yard and resume his investigations of Latimer’s cases. From there he spent a miserable day going from one old underworld source to another, through filthy alleys, up steps of rotting wood into rookeries where rats scuttled at the sound of his feet, squeaking, their claws rattling on the boards and their little eyes red in the shadows. Refuse lay heaped in slowly sagging piles and the gutters stank in the heat. He swatted ineffectually at some of the flies, and gave all his coppers to children who begged.
Finally in a small, crowded public alehouse called the Grinning Rat he sat opposite a little man with a twisted arm, broken when as a child he had been a sweep’s boy and fallen inside one of the vast chimneys. It had healed badly, and been broken a second time when he slipped off a church roof, stealing the lead, and now it was deformed past help. He made his living by selling information.
“Joey.” Pitt brought his wandering attention back from a large man with a protuberant belly hanging over grimy
