Remus smiled bleakly. “Isn’t this the same General Balantyne whose daughter, Christina, was involved in the murders in the Devil’s Acre in about ’87?”
“Don’t expect me to do your work for you, Mr. Remus!” Pitt snapped, and slipped around him smartly. “Good day.” He strode off, leaving Remus looking satisfied.
Pitt arrived home at the end of the day tired and unhappy. They had the full information about the death of the man in Bedford Square. The written report added nothing to what the surgeon had told him in the beginning. Tellman was busy pursuing the bill for the socks and further questioning all the residents around the square. Nobody had seen or heard anything of value.
Actually, Pitt was more troubled over the letter Cornwallis had received. Although the two matters were not dissimilar, insofar as each could cause harm to the reputation of a good man by whisper, suspicion and innuendo before any facts were known. Suggestions could ruin a person if they were believed even by a few. Both men were vulnerable, but Pitt knew and liked Cornwallis, and he believed him totally innocent. It was odd that he had received what was clearly a threatening letter, yet with no request or demand. Presumably it would follow soon.
He went in through the front door, hung up his coat, then bent and unlaced his boots and took them off. He walked in stocking feet along to the kitchen, where he guessed Charlotte would be. They had an excellent maid, Gracie, but Charlotte still did most of the cooking herself. A maid-of-all-work came in four days a week to do the heavy linen laundry, scrubbing and so on. At least that was what he thought. It was not his concern.
Charlotte was at the stove, as he had expected, and there was a savory aroma coming from the oven. Everything was clean, smelling of scrubbed wood and fresh linen. He glanced up and saw sheets hanging on the airing rail across the ceiling, ropes to the winch that held it up on the wall. Blue-and-white china on the dresser gleamed in the sun from the windows. Charlotte had flour on the front of her dress, her apron was caught up at the corner and her hair was coming out of its pins.
He put his arms around her and kissed her, ignoring the long spoon in her hand which trailed egg yolk across the top of the stove and onto the floor.
She kissed him back with considerable enthusiasm, then told him off.
“Look what you have made me do!” She indicated the egg. “It’s all over the place!” She went to the sink, wrung out a cloth and came back and wiped it up. On the stove it was burnt and smelling slightly.
He stood still, Cornwallis’s face sharp in his mind’s eye. Cornwallis had none of Pitt’s safety protecting him; no one Cornwallis knew would believe in him regardless of what anyone said, not even someone with whom he could share the tension of waiting for the next letter to come or explain why it mattered so much.
“What is it?” Charlotte asked, watching him more closely now. Automatically, she pulled the dish with the egg away from the heat. “Is it the body in Bedford Square? Is it going to involve one of the houses there?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, sitting down on one of the hard-backed chairs by the kitchen table. “It’s possible. I was stopped by a newspaper writer this afternoon. He wanted to know if I was going to investigate General Balantyne.”
She stiffened. “Balantyne? He lives in Callander Square. Why would you investigate him?”
“He must have moved,” he replied, still unable to rid himself of his fear for Cornwallis. “I’m sorry … it was on his doorstep that the body was found. I don’t suppose it was more than mischance.”
It was only towards the end of dinner, when he was eating the baked egg custard, that he even thought of the snuffbox and realized that he had told her a good deal less than the truth. But there was no point in distressing her by adding that now. It would worry her for nothing. She could not help.
He was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice her silence as anything but companionable. Where should he begin with Cornwallis’s letter? How could he protect him?
2
Charlotte had been distressed to learn that the tragedy of murder had again overtaken General Balantyne, even if only in that the dead man had been found on his doorstep. But it was a public place. Certainly anyone at all might have come to it without his knowledge or any acquaintance with him.
The following morning when Pitt had gone, she left Gracie to clean away the breakfast dishes while she saw nine-year-old Jemima and seven-year-old Daniel off to school, then returned to the kitchen with the daily newspaper, brought to the step as a kindness by Mr. Williamson along the street. The first thing that leapt to her eye was the latest report on the Tranby Croft affair. Speculation was running riot as to whether the Prince of Wales would actually be called to the witness stand-and of course, what he would say. Having the heir to the throne appearing in court like a common man had never even been imagined before, much less had it happened. The room would be jammed with people curious just to stare at him, to hear him speak and have to answer questions put to him by counsel. Admission to the court was by ticket only.
Sir William Gordon-Cumming was represented by Sir Edward Clarke; for the other side, Sir Charles Russell. Present, according to the newspaper, were Lord Edward Somerset, the Earl of Coventry and Mrs. Lycett-Green, among many others.
Baccarat was an illegal game. Gambling in any form was upon by many. Cards were viewed as a waste of precious time. Everyone knew that thousands of people played, of course, but there was a world of difference between knowing and seeing. It was said that the Queen was beside herself with anger. But then she was rather a straitlaced and forbidding woman even at the best of times. Ever since Prince Albert had died of typhoid fever, nearly thirty years before, she seemed to have lost all pleasure in life and was fairly well determined to see that everyone else did too. At least that was what Charlotte had heard said, and the Queen’s rare public appearances did nothing to disprove it.
The Prince of Wales was a spendthrift, self-indulgent, gluttonous; and wildly and regularly unfaithful to his wife, the long-suffering Princess Alexandra, most particularly with Lady Frances Brooke, who was also intimately admired by Sir William Gordon-Cumming. Until this point Charlotte had had a very slight sympathy with him. Facing the court, Sir Ediward Clarke and the public would be nothing compared with facing his mother.
Then, farther down on the same page, she saw an article by one Lyndon Remus about the corpse found in Bedford Square.
The identity of the dead man on the front doorstep of the house of General Brandon Balantyne two mornings ago remains a mystery. Superintendent Thomas Pitt of Bow Street informs this writer that as yet the police have no idea as to his identity. Indeed he went so far as to say that he knew no more of it than any member of the general public.
When pressed he refused to say whether or not he intended to investigate General Balantyne, who as readers will remember, was the father of the infamous Christina Balantyne of what came to be known as the Devil’s Acre Murders which scandalised London in 1887.
There then followed a brief but lurid outline of that terrible and tragic case, with which Charlotte was all too familiar, remembering it now with a profound sense of sorrow. She could see Balantyne’s face as it had been when he had learned the truth, and everyone was powerless to help or comfort.
Now another wretchedness threatened him, and all the misery and grief of the past were resurrected again. She was furious with Lyndon Remus, whoever he might be, and her mind was filled with anxiety for Balantyne.
“Yer all right, ma’am?” Gracie’s voice cut across Charlotte’s thoughts. The little maid picked up the smoothing iron and automatically shooed Archie, the marmalade-and-white cat, from his nest on top of the laundry. He uncurled and moved away lazily, knowing full well that she would not hurt him.
Charlotte looked up. “No,” she replied. “The body that Mr. Pitt found the other night was on the doorstep of an old friend of mine, and the newspapers are suggesting that he may be somehow involved. There was an appalling crime in his family a few years ago, and they have raked that up again as well, reminding everybody of it just when he and his wife might be beginning to forget a little and feel normal again.”
“Some o’ them people wot writes for the newspapers is downright wicked,” Gracie said angrily, gripping the iron like a weapon. She knew precisely where her loyalties lay: with friends; with the hurt, the weak, the underdog, whoever he was. Sometimes, with a lot of reason and persuasion, she could change her mind, but not often and not easily. “Yer goin’ ter ’elp?” she said, looking narrowly at Charlotte. “In’t nuffin’ yer needs ter do ’ere. I can manage ev’rythink.”
