know all our members, of course, but sometimes gentlemen bring in guests.”
“So far as we know, he’s clean shaven,” Tellman went on. “Although of course that can change. Fairish hair, thinning a bit, gray at the temples. Aquiline features. Blue eyes.”
“Can’t say as I’ve seen him.”
“I followed a man here just this moment.”
The steward’s face cleared.
“Oh! That’s General Balantyne. Known him for years.” His expression suggested something close to amusement.
“Are you certain?” Tellman persisted. “This devil uses other people’s names pretty freely. Was General … Balantyne? Yes … did General Balantyne seem his usual self to you?”
“Well … hard to say.” The steward hesitated.
Tellman had a stroke of genius. “You see, sir,” he said confidentially, leaning forward a little, “I think this bounder may be using General Balantyne’s name … running up bills, even borrowing money …”
The steward’s face blanched. “I must warn the General!”
“No! No sir. That would not be a good idea … just yet.” Tellman swallowed hard. “He would be extremely angry. He might unintentionally warn this man, and we need to catch him before he does the same thing to someone else. If you would be so good as to tell me a little about the real General, then I can make sure that the other places he frequents are not taken in by the impostor.”
“Oh.” The steward nodded his understanding. “Yes, I see. Well, he belongs to one or two services clubs, I believe. And White’s, although I don’t think he goes there so often as here.” This last was added with pride, a slight straightening of the shoulders.
“Not a very social sort of man?” Tellman suggested.
“Well … always very civil, but not … not overfriendly, if you get my meaning, sir.”
“Yes, I do.” Tellman thought of Balantyne’s rigid back, his rapid stride along Oxford Street, speaking to no one.
“Does he gamble at all, do you know?”
“I believe not, sir. Nor drink very much either.”
“Does he go to the theater, or the music hall?”
“I don’t think so, sir.” The steward shook his head. “Never heard him refer to it. But I think he has been to the opera quite often, and to the symphony.”
Tellman grunted. “And museums, no doubt,” he said sarcastically.
“Yes sir, I believe so.”
“Rather solitary sort of occupations. Doesn’t he have any friends?”
“He’s always very agreeable,” the steward said thoughtfully. “Never heard anyone speak ill of him. But he doesn’t sit around talking a lot, doesn’t … gossip, if you know what I mean. Doesn’t gamble, you see.”
“No sports interests?”
“Not that I ever heard of.” He sounded surprised as he said it, as if it had not occurred to him before.
“Pretty careful with money?” Tellman concluded.
“Not extravagant,” the steward conceded. “But not mean either. Reads a lot, and I overheard him once say he liked to sketch. Of course he’s traveled a lot-India, Africa, China too, so I heard.”
“Yes. But always to do with war.”
“Soldier’s life,” the steward said a trifle sententiously and with considerable respect. Tellman wondered if he had the same respect for the foot soldiers who actually did the fighting.
He went on talking to the steward for several minutes more, but little was added to the picture he was forming of a stiff, cold man whose career had been purchased by his family and who had made few friends, learned little of comradeship and nothing of the arts of pleasure, except those he considered socially admirable, like the opera … which was all foreign anyway, so Tellman had heard.
None of it appeared to have anything whatever to do with Albert Cole. And yet there was a connection. There must be. Otherwise how had Cole got the snuffbox? And why was that the only thing taken?
General Brandon Balantyne was a lonely, unbending man who followed solitary pursuits. He had been privileged all his life, working for none of the advantages he possessed, money, rank, position in society, his beautiful house in Bedford Square, his titled wife. But he was also a troubled man. Tellman was a good enough judge of character to know that. And he intended to find out what that trouble was, most especially if it had cost ordinary, poor, underfed and ill-clothed Albert Cole his life. Honest men reported thieves, they did not murder them.
What could Albert Cole, poor devil, have seen in that house in Bedford Square for which he had been killed?
3
Pitt was concerned with the murdered man who had been found in Bedford Square, but Cornwallis’s problem preyed more urgently upon his mind. For the time being there was not a great deal he could accomplish that could not be done equally as well by Tellman as far as discovering who the man was and, if possible, what had taken him to Bedford Square in the middle of the night. He still thought it most likely to be a burglary which had in some disastrous way gone wrong. He hoped profoundly that Balantyne was not involved, that the man had burgled Balantyne first, taking the snuffbox, and then gone on elsewhere and been caught in the act and killed, perhaps accidentally. The killer had removed his own belongings but had not taken the snuffbox in case the possession of it incriminated him.
It was probably a footman or butler in one of the other houses. When it was discovered which, then great tact would be necessary, but all the discretion in the world would not much alter the final outcome. And he had confidence in Tellman’s ability to pursue the trail quite as well as he would have himself. Meanwhile, he would do all he could to help Cornwallis.
He set out from home in the morning as usual, but instead of going either to Bow Street or to Bedford Square, he caught a hansom and requested the driver to take him to the Admiralty.
It took considerable argument and persuasion to obtain the naval records of H.M.S.
The record was simple: Lieutenant John Cornwallis had been on duty when a seaman had been injured attempting to reef the mizzen royal in rising bad weather. According to his own account, Cornwallis had gone up to help the man and had brought him down, half conscious, the last few yards assisted by Able Seaman Samuel Beckwith.
Beckwith was illiterate, but his verbal account, taken down by someone else, was largely the same. Certainly he had not contradicted any part of the official version. The words recorded were bare, just a few sentences on white paper. There was no sense of the people behind it, none of the roaring wind and sea, the pitching deck, the terror of the man trapped up the mast, one minute over the wooden boards which would break his bones if he were to fall on them, the next over the howling, cavernous depths of water which would swallow him beyond any human power to rescue. Any man who fell into that would be gone forever, as completely as if he had never existed, never had life or laughter or hope.
There was no sense of what manner of men they had been, brave or cowardly, wise or foolish, honest or lying. Pitt knew Cornwallis, at least knew him as he was now, an assistant commissioner in the police force, taciturn, painfully honest, out of his depth with politicians, having no conception of their deviousness.
But he did not know how he had been fifteen years before as a lieutenant, faced with physical danger, the chance of admiration and promotion. Had this been an otherwise honorable man’s one mistake?
He did not believe that. Such deceit would surely have left a deeper mark. If Cornwallis had profited from stealing another man’s reward, praise for someone else’s act of courage, would it not have stained everything else he touched? Would he not have spent the rest of his career looking backward over his shoulder, fearing Beckwith’s
