“Surely only too little would be cause for concern? Why would Mr. Cadell want that kept silent? I don’t understand.”
“The answer was not easy to find.” He spoke now to her, not to Tannifer. “You see, the committee put money into the orphanage, and a great many orphans were sent there from all over London. But it also made a huge profit, tens of thousands of pounds, over the years because the children didn’t stay there very long.” He looked at her puzzled face, the wild emotions in it, and felt a moment’s misgiving. But his anger was white-hot. “You see, they were sold to work in factories and mills and mines, especially mines, where they can crawl into spaces grown men cannot ….”
She gasped, her face bloodless, her voice choking.
“I’m sorry,” Pitt apologized. “I’m sorry you had to know that, Mrs. Tannifer. But the proceeds from this trade are what has finished this beautiful house and bought the silk gown you are wearing.”
“It can’t be!” Her words were torn from her in a kind of shout.
Pitt took the papers from the orphanage out of his pockets and held them up.
Parthenope swung around to Tannifer, her eyes beseeching, filled with terror.
“My dear, they were East End orphans for the most part,” he said reasonably. “Perfectly used to hard conditions. They were not children of people like us. They would have had to work wherever they were. At least this way they won’t starve.”
She stood frozen.
“Parthenope!” There was impatience in his tone. “Please have a sense of proportion, my dear, and of the realities of life. This situation is something you know nothing about. You really have no idea-”
Her voice was harsh, a travesty of its previous beauty.
“Leo Cadell was innocent!” There was agony in her cry.
“He was innocent of blackmail, yes,” he conceded. “But nothing was ever asked for, except worthless trinkets.” He looked at her with exasperation. “But I presume he must have been guilty of using his wife’s beauty to advance his career, which is pretty disturbing, because he shot himself when he feared exposure. Guilt does some strange things.”
Her face was racked with emotions so deep it was a white, contorted mask, terrible, painful to see. “You know what he was accused of.”
“You had better go and lie down,” Tannifer said more gently, his cheeks a little red. “I’ll call your maid. I’ll be up to see you as soon as I have dealt with Pitt and …” He gestured at Tellman. “Whatever his name is.”
“No!” She staggered back, then turned and fled from the room, leaving the door swinging behind her.
Tannifer looked back at Pitt. “You really are unnecessarily clumsy, Superintendent. You might have spared my wife that sort of description.” He glanced down at the papers in Pitt’s hand. “If you think you have something with which to charge me, come back when I have my legal representative present, and we’ll discuss the matter. Now, I must go to my wife and see if I can help her to understand this business. She is rather naive as to worldly things, idealistic, as women sometimes are.” And without waiting for Pitt to answer, he strode from the room and into the hall.
Tellman glanced at Pitt, all his fury and frustration in his eyes, challenging, demanding some justice.
Pitt moved towards the door.
Before he reached it a shot rang out, a single sharp explosion, and then a thud.
Pitt lurched forward and almost tripped into the hall, Tellman at his shoulder.
Parthenope stood on the stairs with a dueling pistol in her hands, her arms rigid out in front of her, her back straight, her head high.
Sigmund Tannifer lay on the tiled floor below her, blood oozing from the hole in his forehead between his wide-open eyes, his face filled with amazement and disbelief.
Tellman went over to him, but examination was pointless. He had to be dead.
Parthenope dropped the pistol, and it clattered down the steps. She stared at Pitt.
“I loved him,” she said quite steadily. “I would have done anything to defend him. I did … anything … everything. I dressed up as the gardener’s boy and killed Leo Cadell be cause I thought he was blackmailing Sigmund and would ruin him for something he didn’t do. I knew where to find him. I wrote the suicide note on our own stationery, just like the blackmail letters Sigmund received … wrote himself.” She started to laugh, and then to choke, gasping for breath.
Pitt took a step towards her.
She unfroze. Her whole body was shaking in agonizing grief for love and life and honor lost. She reached behind her waist to the back of her skirt, and her hand came forward holding the other pistol, the pair to the one on the floor at Pitt’s feet.
“No!” Pitt shouted, stumbling forward.
But quite calmly now, as if his cry had steadied her, she put both hands on the pistol, lifted it to her mouth and pulled the trigger.
The shot rang out.
He caught her as she pitched forward, holding her in his arms. She was so slight there seemed hardly any weight to her for so much passion. There was nothing he could do. She was already dead. The betrayal, the grief and the unbearable guilt were ended.
He bent and picked her up to carry her, unheeding of the blood, or the pointlessness of being gentle now. She had been a woman who had loved fiercely and blindly, giving her whole heart to a man who had defiled her dreams, and she had broken herself to protect something which had never existed.
He held her tenderly, as if she had been able to know what he felt, as if some kind of pity mattered even now.
He stepped over Tannifer, and Tellman held open the withdrawing room door for him, his face white, his head bowed.
