Bedford Square

she thought he was, then, satisfied, closed it again and went back to sleep.

“Not really,” he replied, glancing at the Times where she had let it fall. She had been following the Tranby Croft affair. Black letters proclaimed that the verdict had been brought in: guilty Pitt found it strangely chilling. He had no idea whether Sir William Gordon-Cumming had been guilty of cheating or not, but that a simple matter of dishonor at cards should have escalated into a formal court case involving so many people in conflicting testimony which had now laid bare hatred and national scandal was a tragedy. And it was one which need not have happened. There was too much that was beyond human ability to avoid; it was absurd that this should have reached such a stage.

“I suppose the Prince of Wales at least will be relieved it is over,” he said aloud.

Vespasia glanced at the paper, half on the floor. Her face was bleak with disgust.

“One presumes so,” she said coldly. “This is the first day of the Ascot races. He did not stay in court to hear the verdict. Lady Drury called by on her way home. She told me he drove to the royal box accompanied by Lady Brooke, which was tactless to say the least, and was met by boos and hisses from the crowd.”

Pitt remembered Vespasia’s dislike of craning her neck to look up at him, and accordingly sat down. “What will happen to Gordon-Cumming?” he asked.

She replied unhesitatingly. “He will be dismissed from the army, expelled from all his clubs and boycotted from society in general. He will be fortunate if anyone continues an acquaintance with him.” Her face was difficult to read. There was a sharp pity in it, but she could have considered him guilty and still felt that. Pitt knew her well enough to realize how complex were her emotions. She belonged to a generation to which honor was paramount, and the Prince of Wales’s own gambling and self-indulgent manner of life were not excused by his royal status. In fact, it made them the more reprehensible. She was of the same generation as Victoria herself, but from all he had heard, as unlike her in nature as possible, although they had lived through the same epoch of history.

“Do you think he was guilty?” he asked.

She opened her amazing silver-gray eyes wide, her perfectly arched brows barely moving.

“I have considered it carefully, for reasons relating to the problem facing us. It serves as something of a measure of public opinion, at least that part of it which would be of concern to men like Dunraithe White and Brandon Balantyne.” She frowned slightly, looking directly at Pitt. “It seems undeniable his method of placing his wager was ill advised, most particularly in the company in which he found himself.” The expression in her eyes was impossible to read. “No one comes out of this well, neither man nor woman. There has been a suggestion, not entirely absurd, that the whole matter was deliberately brought about in order to discredit Gordon-Cumming and thus disqualify him as a rival of the Prince’s for the affections of Frances Brooke.”

“The Lady Brooke with whom the Prince arrived at Ascot today?” Pitt asked, surprised. It seemed either extremely stupid or unnecessarily arrogant, and possibly both.

“The same,” she agreed dryly. “I have no idea whether it is true, but the fact that it can be suggested is indicative of opinion.”

“Innocent?” he said quietly.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “The jury apparently took only fifteen minutes to reach their decision. It was greeted by jeers and hisses also. But after the summation given by the judge little else was possible.”

“To save the Prince?” he asked.

She gave a very slight gesture of despair.

“That seems unarguable.”

“Then it has no bearing upon our situation ….”

She smiled very slightly. “Other things will have, my dear Thomas. Public opinion is a very fickle animal, and I fear our blackmailer has great skill. He has chosen his subjects far too well for us to delude ourselves that he is likely to make mistakes. To answer your question, yes, I think poor Gordon-Cumming may well have been innocent.”

“I have looked through all the possible cases where there might be a connection between Cornwallis and Dunraithe White,” he said thoughtfully, reverting back to the reason for which he had come. “A very ugly fear is in the back of my mind that the conspiracy may be a great deal more ambitious than I imagined to begin with. Nothing to do with simple payment of money, but the corruption of power …” He watched her face as he spoke, seeking to read whether she found his thought absurd. He saw only the greatest gravity. “To do with expansion in Africa, perhaps. That is the area involving all the people we know about which comes most easily to mind.”

“Indeed.” She nodded. “Of course, we do not know who else may be concerned. That is one of the most frightening aspects of this case. There may be other members of government or the judiciary, or any other area of power or influence. But I agree, Africa does seem likely. The amounts of money to be gained there at present are beyond the dreams of most of us. I think Mr. Rhodes may end up building little short of his own empire. And throughout history people have been dazzled by the prospects of gold. It seems to breed a kind of madness.”

He brought out the piece of paper on which he had written the names of the cases in which Cornwallis and Dunraithe White were both involved. There were only five. He showed it to her.

She picked up her lorgnette to read his handwriting.

“What do you need?” she asked when she had finished. “To know more about them?”

“Yes. White would not tell me, because he intends to yield to the blackmailer; you told me that yourself. I should prefer not to ask Cornwallis, because I believe he is politically naive, and I would also rather not compromise him, should we not be able to prevent the matter from becoming public.” He felt a weight inside himself, a heaviness of foreboding it was not easy to dispel, even here in this calm, sunlit room with which he had become so pleasantly familiar. “I must be able to help him … if it should come to that.”

“You do not need to explain it to me, Thomas,” she said quietly. “I understand the nature of suspicion, and of honor.” She met his gaze steadily. “I think perhaps that you should speak to Theloneus. What he does not know already, he will be able to learn. He is as deeply worried by this as we are. He also fears it may be a political plan of far-reaching nature, with high and irrevocable stakes involved. We shall call upon him … unless, of course, you feel it wiser to go alone?” There was no shadow of personal hurt or affront in her silver eyes.

He answered honestly. “I should value your judgment. You may think to ask him questions I would have missed.”

She nodded her assent. She was grateful; she loved to be involved. Her intellect and her curiosity were as sharp as ever, and the foibles of society had bored her for years. She knew them all so well she could predict them. Only the rarest, most genuine eccentric still awoke her interest or amusement. But of course she would not say so. She merely smiled, and asked Pitt if he would care for dinner first, which he accepted, asking permission to use the telephone to let Charlotte know that he would not be home.

“Of course, there are many possibilities,” Theloneus Quade said as they sat in the late-evening sun in his quiet library, the small summer garden beyond the window filled with the sounds of birdsong and of falling water from a stone fountain. The long light was apricot-gold on the full-blown roses, and a white clematis shone in a flash of silver.

“Tannifer may be pressured to grant a loan which he is aware cannot be satisfactorily guaranteed,” he continued earnestly. “Or indeed repaid. Or to overlook dealings which are fraudulent, not to investigate accounts when there has been embezzlement.”

“I know.” Pitt sat back in the comfortable chair. The room was quiet, charming, and full of individual touches. He had noticed books on a wide variety of subjects as he came in: the fall of Byzantium, Chinese porcelain, a history of the Tsars of Russia, the poetry of Dante and of William Blake and a dozen other unrelated subjects, and on the wall a watercolor of ships by Bonington which he thought was probably quite valuable. Certainly it was very lovely.

“It could also be someone who has already committed some act for which he will shortly be tried,” Theloneus went on. “And he hopes to subvert the cause of justice. Possibly, without being aware of it, the other victims may be in some way witnesses to it, and he believes they may be suborned by the threat of disclosure, or their testimony invalidated by their own ruin.” He looked at Pitt steadily, the question in his eyes. His features were mild, sensitive, but there was an acute intelligence in him which burned through, and only a foolish man would mistake his quiet voice, his outward gentleness, for any weakness of courage or intent.

“I’ve not found any connection between all the victims we know of,” Pitt explained. “They do not seem to have any common interest or background. They have only the slightest acquaintance, as all London of a certain social level has. There are a limited number of gentlemen’s clubs, the museum, the National Geographic Society,