Pitt looked nonplussed.
“Slingsby? How do you know?”
Tellman stood in front of the desk as Pitt stared up at him over the scattered papers on its surface.
“Identified by someone who knew him,” he replied. “I don’t think she was mistaken or lying. She described the gap in his eyebrow and she knew about the knife wound in his chest. Remembered when it happened a couple of years ago. It certainly isn’t Albert Cole; military records make that plain, because of the shot. Cole was invalided out of the army with his leg wound. The corpse had none. Sorry, sir.” He did not elaborate. Pitt deserved an apology, but not a long story, and certainly not an excuse.
Pitt leaned back in his chair and pushed his hands into his pockets. “I suppose the barrister who identified him did his best. I daresay he wasn’t used to corpses. Most people aren’t. And we rather assumed it was Cole because of the socks. Which brings us to the interesting question of why he had Albert Cole’s receipt in his pocket. Or was it his own?”
“Don’t think so. He didn’t live anywhere near Red Lion Square; lived miles away, in Shoreditch. I checked yesterday afternoon. Nobody around Holborn had ever seen or heard of him-not on the streets, not in the pub. Far as I can see, he never met Albert Cole or had anything to do with him. The more I think of it, the less sense it makes. Slingsby was a thief, but why would anybody steal a receipt for socks? They’re only worth a few pence. Nobody keeps that sort of thing more than a day or two, if that.”
Pitt chewed his lip. “So what was Slingsby doing in Bedford Square? Thieving?”
Tellman pulled the other chair over and sat down. “Probably. But the funny thing is, nobody’s seen Cole either. He’s disappeared as well. His things were left in his room and his rent is paid up, but nobody’s seen him on his patch or in the Bull and Gate. But he was there on Monday, when Slingsby was in his usual haunts as well. We are definitely dealing with two different men who only happen to look alike.”
“And Slingsby was found dead with Cole’s receipt in his pocket,” Pitt added. “Did he take it from Cole for some reason we haven’t thought of? Or did someone else, some third party we don’t know about, take it from Cole and give it to Slingsby? And if so, why?”
“Maybe there’s some stupid little reason we haven’t thought of,” Tellman said without meaning it. He was just casting around hopefully. “Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with why Slingsby was killed.”
“And why he had General Balantyne’s snuffbox in his pocket,” Pitt added. “General Balantyne was being blackmailed ….”
Tellman was startled. His opinion of Balantyne was poor, as it was of all privileged men like him, but it was a contempt for those who took from society more than they put in and who assumed an authority they had not earned. It was something most people accepted, and it was certainly not a crime.
“What did he do?” he asked, tilting his chair back a little.
A quick flare of anger crossed Pitt’s face, and suddenly a gulf opened up between them. All the old hostilities and barriers were there again, just as when Pitt had first been given command of Bow Street. They were both of humble origin. Pitt was no more than a gamekeeper’s son, but he had aspirations to something more. He spoke like a gentleman and tried to behave as if he were one. Tellman was faithful to his roots and his class. He would fight the enemy, not join them.
“He did nothing,” Pitt said icily, and perhaps rashly. “But he cannot easily prove it, and the accusation would ruin him. It refers to an incident in the Abyssinian Campaign, in which, as you proved, Albert Cole was also involved. Whether Josiah Slingsby had anything to do with the blackmail is what we have yet to learn.”
“The snuffbox!” Tellman said with satisfaction. “Payment?” And the moment the words were out he regretted them. Automatically, he straightened up in his chair.
Pitt’s face was a picture of scorn. “For a pinchbeck snuffbox? Hardly worth the effort, is it? Josiah Slingsby might murder for a few guineas, but Balantyne wouldn’t.”
Tellman felt himself clench with anger, for his own stupidity. He knew it showed in his face, much as he tried to conceal it.
“The snuffbox might not be all of it,” he said sharply. “Might only be one payment. We don’t know what else he may have given him. Maybe that was the last of many, and the General just lost his temper? Perhaps he realized he was never going to be rid of him and would just be bled dry and then maybe ruined anyway?”
“And Cole’s socks?” Pitt asked.
“Makes sense.” Tellman leaned forward, eagerly now, putting one hand on the desk. “Cole and Slingsby were in it together. Cole was the one who told him, maybe he knew how he would use the information, maybe not. Maybe Slingsby killed Cole over the proceeds?”
“Except that it’s Slingsby who’s dead,” Pitt pointed out.
“All right, then Cole killed him,” Tellman argued.
“Which leaves Balantyne innocent,” Pitt said with a tight smile.
Tellman refrained from swearing only with difficulty. “That’s one thing that would be possible,” he conceded. “Don’t know enough to say yet.”
“No, we don’t,” Pitt agreed. “So you’d better find out all you can about it. See if you can discover any connection between Slingsby and Balantyne, and if Balantyne had paid out anything apart from the snuffbox, or done anything that could have been forced on him by Slingsby.”
“Yes sir.” Tellman stood up, but casually, not to attention.
“And Tellman …”
“Yes?”
“This time you’d better report direct to me, here, not at home ….”
Tellman felt the heat burn up his face, but there was nothing he could say that would not only make it worse. He refused to stoop to giving explanations that might be taken for excuses. He stood stiff and unanswering.
“I don’t want anyone else to know you are enquiring into his life,” Pitt emphasized. “Or following him. Is that clear? And ’anyone’ includes Gracie and Mrs. Pitt.”
“Yes sir. Is that all?”
“It’s enough,” Pitt replied. “At least for the present.”
The following morning’s newspapers were filled with two scandals. One was the continuing saga of the Tranby Croft affair, growing increasingly ugly with every new revelation. It now appeared that, after the initial accusation of cheating at baccarat, Gordon-Cumming had been persuaded to sign a letter promising never to refer to the matter with another soul.
Then two days after Christmas, Gordon-Cumming had received an anonymous letter from Paris mentioning the Tranby Croft affair and advising him never to touch cards if he should come to France, because there was much talk about the subject.
Naturally, he was horrified. The pledge of secrecy had very obviously been broken.
Nor had that been the end of it. Shortly after that, news had come of the story from another source, the Prince of Wales’s latest mistress, Lady Frances Brooke, an inveterate gossip nicknamed “Babbling Brooke.”
Gordon-Cumming wrote to his commanding officer. Colonel Stracey, sending in his papers and asking leave to retire from the army on half pay.
A week later General Williams and Lord Coventry, the two friends and advisers of the Prince, visited Sir Redvers Butler at the War Office and formally told him all about the events at Tranby Croft that weekend, then requested a full enquiry by the military authorities at the earliest possible moment.
Gordon-Cumming appealed to Butler to delay such an enquiry in order not to prejudice his own pending civil action for slander.
The Prince of Wales wound himself into a state of all but nervous exhaustion over the prospect of having to testify, but to no effect. The other witnesses, the Wilsons, the Lycett Greens and Levett, all refused to withdraw their charges of cheating.
Now the case was being heard before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Coleridge, and a special jury. In the glorious sunshine of a hot, early July, the courtroom was packed, and the public hung on every word.
Pitt was interested in the case only for its reflection on the fragility of reputation, and how easily a man, any man, could be ruined by a suggestion, let alone a fact.
Lower down the page, another scandal caught his eye. It was a story printed beneath a photograph of Sir Guy Stanley, M.P., speaking with a very strikingly dressed woman named in the caption as Mrs. Robert Shaughnessy They had been caught in a moment’s close conversation. Mr. Shaughnessy was a young man with radical political
