“Yes, I have investigated in many places,” he answered aloud. “Enough to know that some things are just as simple as they appear, and some are not. It seems as if Miss Zakhari had an assignation of some kind with Mr. Lovat, or why did she go out to meet him, and why did she take the gun with her? Had she simply heard an intruder she would have sent her manservant, not gone out herself. And why would Lovat make a noise, if he was walking on grass?”
“Yes,” Ryerson conceded tersely. “You have justification for your reasoning. Possibly someone followed him, and killed him at Eden Lodge in order to lay the blame on someone else. Which they seem to have done with great success.”
Pitt said nothing. He was thinking of Ayesha Zakhari’s gun, lying next to Lovat on the damp ground in the darkness. He looked up at Ryerson, and saw in an instant that exactly the same thought was in his mind. He knew it from the faint flush on his cheeks and the way the understanding flashed between them, and then Ryerson lowered his glance.
“Did you know Lovat?” Pitt asked.
Ryerson moved towards the window and looked out at the leaves turning in the wind. “No. I never met him. The first time I saw him was on the ground at Eden Lodge, at least as far as I know.”
“Did Miss Zakhari ever mention him?”
“Not by name. She was a little upset one afternoon when we met, and she said a past acquaintance was being a nuisance. That could have been Lovat, but I suppose not necessarily.” He moved his hands restlessly. He stood with his shoulders and neck stiff. “Find out the truth,” he said quietly, his voice so soft it was as if he were speaking to himself, and yet the intensity in him made it obvious that he was begging Pitt, he simply did not use the words.
“Yes, sir, if I can.” Pitt rose to his feet. There was a great deal more he wanted to know, but it was too ephemeral to put into words. It was ideas, emotions, things for which he had no name, and he needed to find Narraway before the end of the day.
“Thank you,” Ryerson answered, and Pitt hesitated, wondering if it would be fair to warn him that the truth could be painful, and not at all what he was now forcing himself to believe. But there was no point. Time enough for that if it had to be. Instead, he simply excused himself and went out.
“WHAT HAVE YOU?” Narraway looked up from the papers he was studying and regarded Pitt with challenge. He too looked tired, his eyes red rimmed, his cheeks a little sunken.
Pitt sat down uninvited and tried to make himself comfortable, but it was impossible; the tension inside him made his back ache and his hands stiff.
“Nothing in which I can see any hope of a more satisfactory answer,” Pitt replied, deliberately using words sharp enough to hurt Narraway, and himself. “Lovat was a womanizer, and careless enough to use young, unmarried and respectable women who could be ruined by his attentions, and then moving from one to another, leaving society wondering what sin he had discovered in them.”
Narraway’s mouth pulled tight, lips thin in disgust. “Don’t be so squeamish, Pitt. You know damned well what sins society attributed to them… rightly or not. They don’t care who or what you are, only what other people think you are. A woman’s purity is worth more than her courage, warmth, pity, laughter, or honesty. Her chastity means that she belongs to you. It’s a matter of ownership.” There was a bitterness in his voice that was more than cynicism; Pitt would have sworn it was also pain.
Then he thought of how he would feel if Charlotte were to allow herself to be touched intimately by anyone else, let alone that she should return the passion, and any reason in the argument was overwhelmed.
“It matters.” He made it a statement, too hot and sharp to be taken as debate.
Narraway smiled, but he did not meet Pitt’s eyes. “Are you speaking generally, or do you know the names of any of these women, and more to the point, their fathers, brothers, or other lovers who might feel like following Lovat around London and shooting him?”
“Of course I do,” Pitt responded, glad to be on safer ground, and yet feeling he had left something unsaid which mattered. Was it only his feelings, too powerful to be expressed in so few and simple words, or was there something of reason there also, a fact that momentarily escaped him?
“And from the expression in your face,” Narraway observed, “it was all of no use to you.”
“To us,” Pitt corrected tartly. “None at all.”
He was amazed and a little hurt to see the hope die out of Narraway’s eyes, as if he had held it as more than a thing of the mind.
Sensing Pitt’s gaze on him, Narraway turned half away, shielding something in himself. “So you have learned nothing, except that Lovat was a man courting disaster.”
That was a cutting way to have worded it, but it was essentially true. “Yes.”
Narraway drew in his breath to say something else, then let it out without speaking.
“I saw Ryerson,” Pitt volunteered. “He’s still convinced Miss Zakhari is innocent.”
Narraway looked back at him, his eyebrows raised.
“Is that an oblique way of saying that he isn’t going to help himself by stepping back and admitting that he arrived to find Lovat already dead?” Narraway asked.
“I don’t know what he’s going to say. The police know he was there, so he can’t deny it.”
“Too late anyway,” Narraway retorted with sudden bitterness. “The Egyptian embassy knew he was there. I’ve moved everything I can to find out who told them, and learned nothing, except that they have no intention of telling me.”
Very slowly Pitt sat up straighter. He had not even been thinking about what Narraway had been doing, but with a charge like electricity shooting through him, he realized the import of what he had said.
Narraway smiled with a downward twist of his mouth. “Exactly,” he agreed. “Ryerson may be making a fool of himself, but someone is giving him some discreet and powerful assistance. What I am not yet certain of is what part Ayesha Zakhari is playing, and whether she is aware of it herself. Is she the queen or the pawn?”
“Why?” Pitt asked, leaning forward now. “Cotton?”
“It would seem the obvious answer,” Narraway replied. “But obvious is not necessarily true.”
Pitt stared at him, waiting for him to continue.
Narraway relaxed back into his chair, but it seemed more a resignation than a matter of ease. “Go home and sleep,” he said. “Come back tomorrow morning.”
“That’s all?”
“What else do you want?” Narraway snapped. “Take it while you can. It won’t last.”
CHAPTER FIVE
CHARLOTTE GAVE A GREAT DEAL of thought to Martin Garvie and what could have happened to him. She was aware of many of the ugly or tragic things that could overtake servants, and of the misfortunes they could bring upon themselves. She also knew that Tilda was his sister, and Tilda’s opinion of him was bound to be colored by her affections, and a certain innocence of the world inevitable in any girl of her lack of experience. Charlotte would not have wished it to be otherwise for Tilda’s own sake. She must be of a similar age to Gracie, but she had nothing like the same spirit or the curiosity, and perhaps not the bitter experience of the streets either. Perhaps Martin had protected her from that?
They were in the kitchen, and Pitt had not been gone more than an hour.
“Wot are we gonna do?” Gracie asked with an awkward mixture of deference and determination. Nothing would persuade her to stop, and yet she knew she needed Charlotte’s help. She was ashamed of having alienated Tellman, and she was confused by it, and for the first time, a little afraid of her own feelings.
Charlotte was busy removing a grease stain from Pitt’s jacket. She had already made a fine powder of ground sheep’s trotters. It was something she naturally kept in store, along with other ingredients for cleaning agents, such as sorrel juice, chalk, horse hoof parings-clean, of course-candle ends, and lemon or onion juice. She concentrated on what she was doing, dabbing at the stain with a cloth soaked in turpentine, and avoiding looking at Gracie so as not to give any emotional value to what she was saying.
