“Yes-of course you do.” He sat down behind the desk and waved towards the chair opposite. “There’s one good thing. That self-important idiot Osmar has done it again, and been caught beyond question this time-in a public railway carriage on the Waterloo line, of all things.” His eyes held a flash of humor. “And by an elderly lady of unquestionable reputation and veracity. No one will doubt the Dowager Lady Webber when she says his behavior was unpardonable and his dress inadequate for public wear. And the young woman likewise, and her profession only too apparent. He’ll have no defense this time.” In other circumstances Pitt would have laughed. Now all he could raise was a hard smile.
“What did you come for?” Drummond asked.
Pitt told him all he either knew or believed about Lord Anstiss, his suppositions about Weems and the letter, Charlotte’s information concerning venture capital and his subsequent meeting with Peter Valerius.
“Do you have this letter?” Drummond asked, frowning.
Pitt drew it out of his pocket and passed it to him.
Drummond took it and read it slowly, his brows drawing down, his face darkening as he came to the end. He looked up, puzzled and oddly disappointed.
“Somehow this is not how I imagined Laura Anstiss.” He smiled very briefly. “Which is foolish. It hardly matters, but I…” He seemed unable to find the words, or else was embarrassed by his emotion and its irrelevance.
“Nor I,” Pitt agreed. “It’s a forceful letter, and perhaps even a little indelicate.”
“That’s it,” Drummond agreed quickly. “And it seems Byam was a good deal less than honest with us. From this it sounds as if they were indisputably lovers, which he said they were not. I’m not surprised he still feels guilt over her.”
Pitt looked at Drummond’s face, the letter lying on the desk between them. He knew Drummond was faintly repelled by it, as he had been himself, and had not wished to say so.
“I think Weems may have decided to try his hand with Anstiss as well,” Pitt said. “After all, it had worked successfully for him with Byam. For two years he had had a nice little addition to his income.”
Drummond regarded him steadily without interruption.
“But this time he found a very different mettle of man,” Pitt went on. “Anstiss lost his temper and struck him with his stick. If we go to Anstiss’s house and find his cane, I think there may well be blood or hair on it.”
Drummond pursed his lips but there was agreement in his eyes.
“And then when Weems was temporarily unconscious,” Pitt continued, “he saw the opportunity-probably Weems had already let him know he was blackmailing Byam-so he loaded the blunderbuss and killed Weems. Then he took the papers incriminating Byam, and Weems’s half of the letter, perhaps not even realizing there was another half. He left the second list incriminating the errant members of the Inner Circle, of which he is a master, in order to discipline them. I daresay he knew their secrets through the Inner Circle as well. With this situation he would take over the blackmail of Byam himself, and force him to change his Treasury decisions and allow Anstiss to step in with his venture capital. The profit would be enormous.”
Drummond sat without speaking for several moments, then at last he looked up. There was no conviction in his eyes.
“It seems to me you are trying too hard, Pitt. There are too many motives for Anstiss, and all of them too small to move an intelligent and self-controlled man to murder, especially one who already has power, wealth and position. I can easily believe he would take advantage of Weems’s death and Byam’s vulnerability to extend the blackmail and force Byam to change his political decisions on African loans. But I can’t see him committing cold- blooded murder to bring it about. And honestly, even with proof that he profited, I don’t think we would convince any jury of it. In fact I don’t think we’d even get the public prosecutor to bring the charge.”
Pitt refused to give up.
“Perhaps Anstiss had not seen the letter until Weems showed it to him,” he suggested. “And we don’t know what was in his half, but if it was in the same vein as the half we have, he may have struck out in rage then, and his prime motive might have been to have revenge on Byam. Especially if Byam told him what he told you-that he was never Laura Anstiss’s lover, that it was simply a sudden infatuation she had for him, and he broke it off when he realized how serious she was. If Anstiss had accepted that all these years and forgiven him in that belief, to see proof in Laura’s own hand, if he was also deeply in love with her…”
He stopped. It was not necessary to fill in the rest. Infatuation was one offense; to be cuckolded in one’s own house quite another.
Drummond’s face tightened.
“That I can believe. If he had always accepted Byam’s innocence, and his wife’s virtue, if not her love, then it would come as a very violent shock to him, enough to make him lose all control, at least for long enough to strike out at Weems’s smiling face, and then kill him, and get rid of the one other person who knew of it-and destroy Byam as the perpetrator. But can you prove any of it?”
“I don’t know.” Pitt shook his head. “Valerius will bring proof of the financial connection, which will be sufficient to go and question him. Then we can find the stick, or prove he has recently lost one. I don’t suppose we’ll ever find the blunderbuss, or that he will have kept Weems’s half of the letter.”
“The main thing will be to see if we can place him in Cyrus Street,” Drummond pointed out. “Or if he can prove he was somewhere else. When do you expect this Valerius?”
“Some time this evening.”
“No more accurate than that?”
“No-he said it would not take him long, but I did not press him to a particular hour.”
Drummond rose to his feet slowly, as though his body were stiff.
“Then I’ll go and see Byam, at least tell the poor devil he is no longer suspected. He will be very shocked if it is Anstiss. They have been friends most of their lives.”
“He won’t be so very shocked when he realizes Anstiss has read Laura’s letters,” Pitt said dryly.
Drummond made no comment, but picked up his hat from the stand at the door, and his cane from the rack below.
Drummond walked well over a mile before he hailed a hansom and directed it towards Belgrave Square. It was a cool evening with a breeze off the river and the mist was rising. By dusk it could well be foggy. He needed time to think, although all the time in the world would not alter the facts. He would be able to give Eleanor the one thing she really wished: her husband’s innocence, even his release from the second blackmail. Drummond would always know what the letter contained, the evidence that Byam’s involvement with Laura Anstiss was not as innocent as he had claimed, but he would not tell her that.
He passed a group of ladies and tilted his hat politely as they inclined their heads.
What Byam chose to tell Eleanor was his affair, and if she guessed he had lied it was still between them. She might well put it from her mind and forgive him. It had been twenty years ago, and before he knew her.
Then Drummond would never see her again, unless their paths crossed socially, and he was torn as to whether he even wanted that or not. It was a decision he would not make now.
An acquaintance passed in an open carriage and he acknowledged him absently. Why was it when you most wished to be alone that you passed so many people you knew?
He hailed a hansom and climbed in.
Belgrave Square came all too quickly. He alighted and paid. There was nothing more to decide, nothing more to think about. He went up the steps and pulled the bell.
The butler let him in and mistook his grave face for a portent of bad news.
“Shall I call Lord Byam, sir?” he said grimly.
Drummond forced a pleasanter look.
“If you please. I have word he will wish to hear.”
“Indeed, sir.” The man’s eyebrows rose. “I am very relieved.” And after conducting Drummond to the library, he disappeared about his errand.
The fire was lit this evening, in spite of its being summer and still many hours of daylight left. The mist was heavier now and there was a dampness to the air outside. The fire’s glow was welcome. Automatically Drummond went over to it.
Byam came almost immediately. Drummond was half glad Eleanor had not come with him. It would be easier, and perhaps more appropriate, if he were able to tell Byam without her there.
“What have you heard?” Byam did not even pretend to courtesies. His face was pale with spots of color high in
