Pitt was shaken, but he concealed it. “Perhaps not. I thought you might come up before him.”
“Well if ’e i’n’t a judge no more, I won’t, will I? Stands ter reason.”
Pitt dropped the blow he had been waiting for.
“And another thing you might not have heard, being in here … Leo Cadell is dead.”
Wallace sat motionless.
“Committed suicide,” Pitt added, “after confessing to blackmail.”
Wallace’s eyes widened. “Blackmail?” he said with what Pitt would have sworn was surprise.
“Yes. He’s dead.”
“Yeah … yer said. So is that all?” He looked at Pitt with wide eyes, untroubled, his lips still smiling, not the fixed and awful grin of a man whose last hope has slipped away, but the satisfaction of someone supremely confident, even if he had heard some news which he did not completely understand.
It was Pitt who was thrown into confusion. Reason and hope disappeared from his grasp.
Wallace saw it, and his smile widened, reaching his eyes.
Pitt was suddenly furious, aching to be able to hit him. He rose to his feet and told the warder he was finished before he betrayed his defeat even more. He walked out of the gray suffocation of Newgate totally perplexed.
He arrived home in Keppel Street still just as confused, and if possible even angrier, but now with himself rather than only with Wallace.
“What’s wrong?” Charlotte demanded as soon as he was in the kitchen. They must all have heard his footsteps coming down the passage from the front door, and were sitting around the table staring at him expectantly. He had not even bothered to take his boots off. He sat down, and automatically Gracie poured him a mug of tea.
“I told him I believed he had come back and moved the body to Bedford Square,” he answered. “And I could see it shook him.”
Tellman nodded with satisfaction.
“And I told him Dunraithe White had resigned,” Pitt went on. “And it meant nothing to him at all.”
“I don’t suppose he knew his name,” Charlotte explained. “Just that there was a judge in the blackmailer’s power.”
“And then I told him Cadell was dead,” Pitt finished, looking at their expectant faces. “He didn’t give a damn.”
“What?” Tellman was incredulous, his jaw dropping.
“He must have,” Charlotte said abruptly. “He must have known Cadell. It can’t have been all done by letter.” Her eyes widened. “Or are you saying it wasn’t Cadell after all?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” he admitted. “Except that I still don’t understand it.”
There were several minutes of silence. The kettle whistled on the hob, gathering shrillness, and Gracie got up to move it over.
Pitt sipped his tea gratefully. He had not realized how thirsty he was, or how keen to get the taste of prison air out of his mouth.
Charlotte looked apologetic, and very faintly pink.
“General Balantyne was worried about the funds for the orphanage at Kew …” she said tentatively.
“I’ve been out there,” Pitt answered wearily. “I’ve been over the books with a fine-toothed comb. Every penny is accounted for, and I’ve seen the children. They are healthy, well clothed and well fed. Anyway, Balantyne thought there was too little money given them, not too much.”
“That’s a turn up,” Gracie said dryly. “I never ’eard of an orphanage afore wot ’ad enough money, let alone too much. An’ come ter that, I never ’eard o’ one wot fed an’ clothed its kids proper. Beggin’ yer pardon, Mr. Pitt, but I think you was took in. It were likely the master’s own kids as yer saw, not the orphans.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Pitt said wearily. “I saw upwards of twenty children.”
“Twenty?” Gracie was incredulous.
“At least. More like twenty-five,” he assured her.
“In an orphanage?”
“Yes.”
“ ’ow big’s this orphanage, then? Couple o’ cottages, is it?”
“No, of course not. It’s a very large house, dozen bedrooms or more, originally, I should think.”
Gracie looked at him with weary patience. “Then you was took proper. ’Ouse that size they’d ’ave an ’undred kids at least. Ten to a room, countin’ little ones. Big ones ter look arter ’em.”
“There were nothing like that many.” He thought back on the clear, light rooms he had seen, admittedly only two or three of them, but he had chosen them at random, and Horsfall had been willing enough to show him everywhere he wished to go.
“Then w’ere was the rest o’ them?” Gracie asked.
“There were no more,” Pitt replied, frowning. “And the money was about right for that number, to feed and clothe and pay for the fuel and keeping of the house.”
“Can’t a’ bin much, then,” Gracie said dismissively. “Yer can feed an orphan kid, fer a few pence a day, on bread an’ taters and gravy. Clothe ’em in ’and-me-downs and stuff wot’s bin unpicked an’ remade. Get a pile fer a shillin’ down Seven Dials way. Same wif boots. An’ w’en yer places kids, which in’t often, like as not they leave their clothes be’ind. An o’ course w’en they grows out o’ them, someone else grows inter ’em.”
“What are you suggesting?” Charlotte turned to her, her eyes wide and dark in the dying light. The gas was flickering yellow on the wall.
“Maybe they are good at placing children?” Tellman said. “If they give them a little education they could go into trades, be useful?”
“You live in a dream, you do,” Gracie said, shaking her head. “Nobody places orphans that fast. “Oo wants extra mouths ter feed these days? ’Less they’re workin’.”
“They were little children,” Pitt put in. “Those ones I saw were as young as three or four years old, most of them.”
Gracie’s eyes were full of pity and anger. “Yer think kids o’ three or four can’t work? ’Course they can. Work ’ard, some o’ them poor little bleeders. An’ don’t answer back ner run away. Too scared. Nothin’ ter run ter. Work ’em till they either grow up or die.”
“They weren’t working,” Pitt said slowly. “They were happy, and healthy, playing.”
“Till they get placed,” Gracie answered him. “There’s good money in that. Sell an ’ealthy kid fer quite a bit … specially if yer got a reg’lar supply, like.”
Charlotte used a word that would have appalled her mother, breathing it out in a sigh of horror.
Tellman regarded Gracie with dismay.
“How do you know that?” he demanded.
“I know wot ’appens ter kids wot’s got no one ter take ’em in,” she said bleakly. “ ’ Appened ter one o’ me friends, down the street. ’Er ma got killed an’ ’er Pa got topped. ’Er an’ ’er bruvvers got sent ter an orphanage. I went ter see ’er, year arter. She were gorn ter pick oakum, an “er bruvvers gorn up north ter the mines.”
Charlotte put her hands up to her face. “Does Aunt Vespasia have to know, Thomas? She couldn’t bear it. It would break her heart to know that Cadell did such a thing.”
“I don’t even know if it’s true yet,” he answered. But it was a prevarication. In his heart he was certain. This was a secret worth committing blackmail to hide. This was why Brandon Balantyne had been singled out for the most powerful threat, even destruction, if possible. He had been asking too many questions. After the Devil’s Acre, he was one man who might be very difficult to silence. This was why all the members of the orphanage committee were victims. There was nothing random or opportunistic about it.
Charlotte did not bother to argue; she knew Pitt too well. Tellman and Gracie both sat silently.
“Tomorrow,” Pitt said. “Tomorrow we’ll go out to Kew.”
Pitt and Tellman reached the orphanage at mid-morning. It was a hot, still day, already oppressive at ten o’clock as they climbed the slight hill towards the large house.
Tellman screwed up his face against the light and stared at it, unconsciously thinning his lips. Pitt knew Gracie’s words were sharp and hurting in the sergeant’s mind. He drew in his breath as if to speak, and then said nothing after all. They approached the front door in silence.
