Belgrave Square

trousers and a tankard of ale in each hand.

Joey looked back at Pitt reluctantly.

“Yes, Mr. Pitt. I dunno wot yer wanna hear.” His voice sank into a plaintive whine as he expected to be criticized.

“ ’E in’t wot yer’d call reelly bad-just a bit kind o’ selective abaht ’Oo ’E does, like. Y’ unnerstand?”

“No,” Pitt said unhappily. “Explain to me, and there’ll behalf a guinea.”

“ ’Alf a guinea.” Joey’s face brightened.

“The truth,” Pitt warned. “Not what you think I want to hear. You don’t know what I want, or don’t want. If I discover you’re telling me lies I’ll come back and do you for everything in the book-I swear it.”

Joey let out a wail of outrage.

“Be quiet!” Pitt warned sharply. “Do you want everyone in the place looking at you?”

“Yer an ’ard man,” Joey complained.

“I am,” Pitt agreed. “Now tell me.”

And slowly Joey told Pitt what he most feared to hear. There was no explanation for Latimer’s omission to press some of his cases, for not calling certain witnesses. Joey did not know of his having taken money for his decisions, but he had assumed it, because to him there was no other answer. Why else did men do things, unless of course it was from fear? But to Joey, policemen of Latimer’s rank had nothing to fear. They were the powerful, the unassailable, the safe.

“Thank you,” Pitt said with a bitter misery inside. He handed over the half guinea he had promised and left the Grinning Rat. Tomorrow he would go back to Clerkenwell and Sergeant Innes.

Of course there were still the ordinary debtors from Weems’s first list, and perhaps Innes would turn up evidence against one of them. He half hoped for it, although he did not expect it; but perhaps a more conscious, sharper half would hate it even more should some desperate man struggling to survive prove to have shot Weems.

“Nothing,” Innes said gloomily, his thin face tired and without any lift of hope anymore.

“Nothing on Weems’s private life?” Pitt pressed pointlessly. “He must have had friends of some sort, surely? No women-not one?”

“Found nothin’,” Innes said flatly. His eyes looked anxious, even guilty.

“What is it?” Pitt demanded. They were sitting in the small room, little more than a cubbyhole, where Innes kept his notes and papers on the Weems case. Innes was perched on the narrow windowsill, leaving the solitary chair for Pitt, as the senior officer, and his guest.

Innes looked even more uncomfortable.

“I know as ’ow Mr. Latimer gets ’is money, sir. It weren’t borrered from Weems-”

Pitt would have been pleased, had not the look on Innes’s face made it impossible. Whatever the answer was, it was no better than usury.

“Well?” he said more sharply than he had intended.

Innes took no offense, he understood.

“Gambling, sir. ’E gambles, very successfully, it seems.”

“How do you know?”

“Discovered it by accident, sir. Was lookin’ inter one of our local debtors, ’Oo gambles. Come across proof as Mr. Latimer does-in a big way. An’ ’e wins, no doubt about it. ’E knows ’is bare-knuckle fighters.” His face was pinched with unhappiness. Apart from the brutality, bare-knuckle fighting was illegal and they both knew it; so would Latimer.

“I see,” Pitt said slowly. He did not bother to ask if Innes was sure beyond any doubt. He would not have mentioned it until he was.

Innes was looking at him earnestly. Neither of them needed to explain the possibilities ahead. Latimer would be ruined if his gambling, and condoning an illegal sport, were known. Was that what Weems had blackmailed him over? That would account for his name on the second list.

It was a powerful motive for murder.

“What are we going to do, Mr. Pitt?” Innes said quietly. “You want me ter go ter Mr. Drummond, like?”

It was a generous offer, made at some cost, and Pitt felt a tiny spark of warmth because of it.

“No,” he said with a bleak smile. “Thank you. I’ll go.”

“Yes sir.”

9

PITT MADE NO OBJECTION whatever when Charlotte said she would like to attend Emily’s musical evening towards the end of that week. Indeed when she explained, by the way, as though she had assumed he knew it already, that the Carswells would be there, he was quite openly pleased.

They had no time to discuss it because he was leaving early to go to Clerkenwell. He and Innes must work on the very last of the debtors on Weems’s first list. Little by little Innes had whittled it down, but there were still a dozen or so left who were not accounted for beyond doubt. It was still possible one of them might have gone to Cyrus Street late in the evening, been admitted, and seized the blunderbuss, found the powder, and loaded the gun. But neither of them believed it. Weems may have despised his clients, but he surely knew despair when he saw it, and over the years had learned that desperate people can be dangerous.

Today they planned to question Weems’s errand runner, Windy Miller, yet again, although they expected little useful from him, and later perhaps his housekeeper, in case there were any details they had overlooked, any thread of knowledge however frail. But both of them were convinced that Weems’s killer was someone on the second list- or else Byam himself, although Innes had not said so, because of course he still did not know of Byam, a fact which weighed heavily on Pitt’s mind and disturbed his conscience increasingly.

Charlotte kissed him good-bye, and when he was gone immediately set about that housework which could not wait, so that she could leave in the late afternoon with a clear mind and no housewifely guilt.

By six o’clock she was sitting on the Hepplewhite chair in Emily’s withdrawing room, wearing a rose-colored gown spread around her elegantly, and surrounded by about thirty other people also sitting upright, facing the grand piano where a very earnest young man was playing some extraordinarily beautiful, dark and sad music by Franz Liszt. Indeed it was so lovely Charlotte’s attention was entirely taken by it and she forgot even to glance at Addison Carswell, Regina, one of the Misses Carswell, or at Herbert Fitzherbert and Odelia Morden, or Fanny Hilliard, whom she was surprised to see present. Then she realized precisely what political value Fanny had in the possible fall from grace of Herbert Fitzherbert and Emily’s so gentle part in it.

However at the first interval Charlotte remembered her own reason for being here, cast aside self-indulgence and began to observe other people. One of the first she noticed was the Miss Carswell present; she did not know her name as she could not tell one from another. She was no more than seventeen or eighteen, a girl pretty in a usual sort of way, clear complexion, all pink and white, fair hair tending a little towards mouse, and an agreeable, good-tempered face of no particular character. No doubt if one knew her one would find the individuality, the beliefs and emotions which made her unique, the humor, the dreams, the small kindnesses.

She now stood a few yards away from her mother, effectively unchaperoned, and was speaking with some animation to a young man Charlotte could not remember seeing before; but obviously Miss Carswell had. Her face was full of interest, instead of the usual rather simpering response many young women had to a first approach from an eligible and attractive man. And the man was responding with warmth and a total involvement of his attention.

Charlotte smiled. It was a most promising situation, and she imagined it might well progress into a happy relationship, most young girls’ profoundest ambition. So much the better if it could accompany a genuine affection as well, and this looked, from their faces, as if it did. How wise of Regina Carswell not to interrupt with quite unnecessary affectations of propriety.

Since the Carswells were the only ones present who in Charlotte’s mind could possibly be considered suspects, she determined to engage at least one of them in conversation, as the only way in which she might learn something