“I don’t know. But she was beautiful; everyone who saw her said she had style, glamor, a face that one remembered. Felix Asherson admitted there was information missing from his department of the Foreign Office, which is also where Robert York worked.”
The constable took the end of his pencil out of his mouth. There were teeth marks where he had bitten into it.
“Mr. Ballarat didn’t believe that, Mr. Pitt. ’E made some inquiries, very discreet like, in several places, and there’s been no use made of anything that could ’a come from there. And ’e asked them as would know.”
“They don’t have to use it straightaway!” But Pitt felt he was fighting on sinking ground. Ballarat did not want to believe there was treason; he was afraid of facing his superiors and telling them something they would be so loath to believe, something that was frightening and innately a criticism of not only their competence but their honor. He was frightened of their anger, of having to muster arguments to persuade them of such a thing, showing them that the blame would be laid at their door. He wanted to be approved of; he had social ambitions that were far deeper than his professional or financial dreams. He liked good living; he liked petty authority, but he had not the courage for real power: the hazards, the envy, and the unpleasantness that it carried were prices he had no stomach to pay. He had been entrusted to prove there was no treason, or if there had been, that it had been safely covered up, and to discover it now would signal the utmost failure.
The constable was staring at him, chewing his pencil again viciously.
“I dunno much about that, sir. But it all seems a bit unlikely to the. I ’spect what men likes in a lady is as different as what they likes fer their dinner, but she didn’t seem anythink but ordinary ter me: dark ’air, darkish sort o’ skin, bit sallow like—prefer a bit o’ color meself. Not a bad face, but nothin’ special, an’ not much shape to ’er. Not what you’d call ’andsome at all.”
“She had grace,” Pitt said, trying to find words to explain the subtlety Cerise had had in life to this simple, straightforward man. “Spirit. Probably wit.”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Mr. Pitt, but she looked more like a maid who’d lorst ’er character and taken to the streets to me.”
“She was a courtesan.” He looked at the constable’s earnest, confused face. “A very high-class prostitute, one who selected her own customers—just a few—for a very high price.”
The constable shrugged. “If you say so, Mr. Pitt. But I’ll tell yer this: she’d scrubbed a few floors in ’er time. A look at ’er ’ands and ’er knees’d tell yer that. I seen too many women with them callouses not ter know. They didn’t come from prayin’, that’s for certain.”
Pitt stared at him. “You must be wrong!”
“No, Mr. Pitt. I looked at ’er proper, very careful, poor soul. It’s the job, an’ I knows ’ow ter do it. See, we ’ad no name for ’er”—a flash of pity crossed his face—“we still ’aven’t, come ter that.”
A staggering and dreadful new thought was beginning to take shape in Pitt’s mind: what if it were not the real Cerise he had found, but someone else, a helpless victim left there to fool him? Suppose the whole thing had been contrived to get rid of him, to land him precisely where he was now, in the Steel, helpless, entombed alive. Someone had murdered that wretched woman in order to cripple Pitt. Someone had been watching him, planning for him to arrive and be caught exactly where he was—while the real Cerise was still alive! Did Ballarat know that? Was he deliberately protecting her by turning away from the case, pretending he believed the obvious, and that Pitt was guilty?
Then how high did it go, this corruption, this treason?
No, he could not believe Ballarat had done it knowingly. He was too smug, too small in imagination. He had not the courage to play such a high game. He was complacent, insensitive, lacking imagination, a moral coward, a social climber, but he was English to the bone. In his own stubborn way he would have died before committing treason. If there were no England, what would be left for him to enjoy? What else was there to aspire to? No, Ballarat was being used.
But by whom?
“Are you all right, Mr. Pitt?” the constable said anxiously. “You look awful—taken back.”
“You’re sure about the calluses?” Pitt said slowly, trying to keep the despair out of his voice. “What about her face? Was it beautiful? At least, could you imagine she might have had grace, a kind of loveliness?”
The constable shook his head slowly. “ ’Ard ter say, Mr. Pitt.”
“The bones!” Pitt leaned forward impatiently. “I know about the swelling, the discoloration. But her bones. I can’t remember.” He waited, eyes fixed on the constable’s face.
“I’m sure about the calluses,” he said carefully. “And as well as I can reckon, sir, she were more or less ordinary, quite good, not plain, as yer might say, but nothin’ special neither. Why, Mr. Pitt? What is it you’re thinking?”
“That it wasn’t Cerise, Constable, it was some poor creature dressed in her clothes and murdered to implicate me. Cerise is still alive.”
“Gor’ blimey!” The constable breathed out slowly. There was only the faintest skepticism in his voice, a mere shadow of doubt in his plain, round face. “What do yer want me ter do, Mr. Pitt?”
“I don’t know, Constable, God help us. At the moment I have no idea.”
12
CHARLOTTE’S THOUGHTS WERE running parallel to Pitt’s, although at this point, of course, she did not know it. She began by assuming that Pitt was telling the absolute truth. He had looked for Cerise quite openly, and after dogged police work had been approached by someone who had led him to the house in Seven Dials, where he had arrived at precisely the right time to find her with her neck broken, and thus be caught in the appearance of having killed her himself.
Was that a coincidence, or had the killer organized her death to fall just that way, in one act silencing Cerise and disposing of Pitt? A stroke of superb fortune, or genius?
