“M-m-money?” Horsfall stammered.
Pitt moved forward half a step.
“I don’t know!” Horsfall’s voice rose as if he had been physically threatened. “I only take my pay. I don’t know where it goes.”
“You know where you send it,” Tellman said bitterly. He was shorter and narrower than Horsfall, but there was such a rage in his voice that the bigger man quailed.
“Show me!” Pitt commanded.
“I–I don’t have … books!” Horsfall protested, raising his hands as if to ward off a blow.
Pitt was unimpressed. “You have accounts of some kind. Either you have a master who takes the money from you one way or another, or else you haven’t, and you are responsible for it all ….” He did not need to continue. Horsfall was shaking his head and waving his hands in denial. “Is this house yours?” Pitt pressed.
“No. Of course not. It belongs to the orphanage.”
“And the profits from selling the children?”
“Well … I wouldn’t use terms like that ….” Horsfall sputtered.
“Slavery, Mr. Horsfall-the selling of human beings-is illegal in this country. You can be charged as an accomplice or all by yourself, as you like,” Pitt answered. “Where does the money go?”
“I’ll-I’ll show you.” Horsfall surrendered. “I only do what I’m told.”
Pitt looked at him with complete disgust and followed him out of the room to find the notes he kept of his transactions. He read them all and added them up. Over the space of eight years it amounted to tens of thousands of pounds. But there were no names to prove in whose pockets it had ended.
The local police arrested Horsfall and placed someone in temporary charge of the orphanage. Pitt and Tellman set out on their way back to London, traveling on the ferry, glad of the bright air and the sounds of the busy river.
“He should swing,” Tellman said between his teeth. “That blackmailing swine won’t get him off.”
“I’ll be damned if he’ll get Wallace off either,” Pitt retorted.
Tellman stared straight ahead of him up the river towards the Battersea Bridge. A pleasure boat passed them going the other way, people waving, ribbons and streamers bright in the wind. He did not seem to see it. “If it isn’t Cadell, then it’s got to be White or Tannifer.” He looked at Pitt’s bulging pockets. “We’ve got enough paper there to work out where the money went.”
It took them a day and a half of painstaking, minute unraveling of buying and selling, of finding the names behind the names, all accomplished with savage deliberation, but by four o’clock in the afternoon, two days after their return from the orphanage, they could prove that the trail led to Sigmund Tannifer.
Tellman stood with the last piece of paper in his hand and swore viciously. “What’ll he get?” he said fiercely. “He’s sold little children to labor in the mines like they were animals. Some of them’ll never see the light of day again.” His voice caught with his emotion. “But we can’t prove he knew what Horsfall was doing. He’ll deny it. Say it was rents or something, surplus from other properties. He blackmailed innocent men and near drove them mad with fear … enough to make Cadell shoot himself and White resign … but we can’t prove that either. We’d have to show that he threatened to expose them, and that would only ruin them just like he said he would. We’d be doing it for him.” He swore again, his fists clenched white, his eyes blazing. He was demanding an answer from Pitt, expecting him to solve the injustice somehow.
“It wasn’t even blackmail,” Pitt said with a shrug. “He didn’t ask for anything. He would have … their silence over the orphanage, if they had ever found out … but it never came to that.”
“We’ve got to get him for something!” Tellman’s voice rose to a shout, his fist gripping the air.
“Let’s go and arrest him for taking the proceeds of Horsfall’s business,” Pitt answered. “No jury will believe he thought that it was profits from the kitchen garden.”
“That doesn’t matter a damn,” Tellman said bitterly.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Pitt pulled a face. “I think that officious little newspaper writer, Remus, could make a good story out of it.”
Tellman stared at him. “He couldn’t know … could he?”
“He could if I told him,” Pitt responded.
“We can’t prove that Tannifer knew what Horsfall did.”
“I don’t think that will bother Remus too much ….”
Tellman’s eyes widened. “You would tell him?”
“I don’t know. But I should enjoy letting Tannifer think I would.”
Tellman laughed, but it was an unhappy, mirthless sound.
Sigmund Tannifer received them in the ornate withdrawing room without the slightest indication in his smooth features that there was anything amiss or that he could be concerned over any matter but Pitt’s progress in concluding his case. He looked at Parthenope, who was standing beside his chair, her vivid face for once completely at peace, reflecting none of the anxiety that had so disturbed her on Pitt’s previous visits.
“Good of you to come, Superintendent,” Tannifer said, pointing to the chairs where Pitt and Tellman could be seated. “Miserable end to the matter. I admit, I never imagined Cadell could be so … I am at a loss for words ….”
“Vicious … cruel … utterly sadistic,” Parthenope supplied for him, her voice shaking and her eyes filled with anger and burning contempt. “I am so sorry for Mrs. Cadell; my heart aches for her. What could be more terrible than to discover the man you have loved, have been married to all your adult life and have given your loyalty and your trust …. is a total blackguard?” Her whole slender body shook with the force of her emotions.
Tellman glanced at Pitt, and away again.
“My dear,” Tannifer said soothingly, “you cannot bear the ills of the world. Theodosia Cadell will recover, in time. There is nothing you can do for her.”
“I know there isn’t,” she said desperately. “That’s what makes it so awful. If I could help …”
“I was quite shocked when I returned the day after his death and read the news,” Tannifer went on, looking at Pitt. “I admit, I would have believed it of almost anyone before him. Still … he deceived us all.”
“Returned from where?” Pitt asked, irrationally disappointed. He already knew no one had been to Cadell’s house. What had he hoped for?
“Paris,” Tannifer replied, leaning back a little in his wide chair, his hands folded comfortably. “I went over in the steamer the day before. Exhausting. But banking is an international business. Why do you ask?”
“Only interest,” Pitt replied. Suddenly all his anger returned in a wave, almost choking him. “And did you deposit money in a French bank?”
Tannifer’s eyes widened. “I did, as a matter of fact. Is it of interest to you, Superintendent?” He was at ease, bland, sure of himself.
“Is that where the money ends up from the orphanage, in a French bank?” Pitt said icily.
Tannifer did not move. His expression did not change, but his voice was oddly different in timbre.
“Money from the orphanage? I don’t understand you.”
“The orphanage at Kew which is supported by the committee of the Jessop Club,” Pitt explained elaborately. “All of whose members were victims of the blackmailer.”
Tannifer stared back at him. “Were they? You never mentioned the names of the other victims.”
“Yes … Cornwallis, Stanley, White, Cadell, Balantyne and you,” Pitt answered him gravely, ice in his voice. “Balantyne especially. That’s why the corpse was left on his doorstep, to terrify him, possibly have him arrested for murder. Of course, that is why Wallace tried to kill Albert Cole to begin with, only Cole fought back and escaped.” His eyes did not move from Tannifer’s. “Then he thought of the excellent idea of using Slingsby, whom he knew, and who resembled Cole so much. He bought the socks himself, spinning a yarn so the clerk would remember him and identify him as Cole, and put the receipt on Slingsby’s body. And Balantyne’s snuffbox too, of course.”
“Ingenious …” Tannifer was watching Pitt closely He opened his mouth as if to lick his lips, then changed his mind.
“Wasn’t it,” Pitt agreed, not even allowing his eyes to flicker. “If any of the committee had taken up Balantyne’s anxiety over the amount of money put into the orphanage, for what was actually very few children indeed, then the blackmail threat would have silenced them.”
Parthenope was staring at Pitt, her fair brows drawn into a frown, her mouth pinched.
“Why did it matter that there was too much money and very few children, Superintendent?” she asked.
