“No, he did not!” Talbot retorted hotly, his thin face flushing. “He was fully dressed, and he walked over from the direction of the street.”
“Where his carriage was waiting, no doubt?”
“He said he came by hansom,” Talbot answered.
“Intending to call on the lady, only to find her conspicuously unprepared!” Pitt observed waspishly. “And you believe him?”
“What choice do I have?” Talbot raised his voice for the first time, his desperation ragged through his rapidly slipping composure. “It’s idiotic, I know that! Of course he was there. He was actually coming from the mews, where I imagine he’d gone to harness up a horse and hitch it to a trap, or whatever she has, to take the body somewhere and get rid of it. They’re only a stone’s throw from Hyde Park. That would do. It would be found, of course, but there would be nothing to connect it with either of them. But we got there too soon. We didn’t see him with her, and she isn’t saying anything.”
“And you don’t ask him because you don’t want to know,” Pitt finished for him.
“Something like that,” Talbot admitted, his eyes hot and wretched. “But if you want to, then Special Branch is very welcome. Have it! Have it all! Go and ask him. He lives in Paulton Square, Chelsea. I don’t know the number, but you can ask. There can’t be many cabinet ministers there.”
“I’ll see the Egyptian woman first. What is her name?”
“Ayesha Zakhari,” Talbot replied. “But you can’t see her. That’s my orders from the top, and Special Branch or not, I’m not letting you in. She hasn’t implicated Mr. Ryerson, so you’ve no brief here. If her embassy says anything it’ll be a matter for the Foreign Office, or the Lord Chancellor, or whoever. But so far they haven’t. She’s just an ordinary woman arrested for the murder of an old lover, and there’s no reasonable doubt that she did it. That’s how it is, sir-and that’s how it’s staying, as far as I’m concerned. If you want to make it different, you’ll have to do it somewhere else, ’cos you’re not doing it here.”
Pitt pushed his hands into his trouser pockets, finding a small piece of string, half a dozen coins, a bull’s-eye sweet wrapped in paper, two odd lumps of sealing wax, a penknife, and three safety pins. In the other were a notebook, a stub end of pencil, and two handkerchiefs. It flicked through his mind that that was too much.
Talbot stared at him. For the first time Pitt saw in his face that he was frightened. He had cause to be. If he were wrong, either for Ryerson or against him, not a matter of fact but of judgment, he would be ruined. He would take the blame, possibly for others’ mistakes, men of greater power and with more to lose.
“So Mr. Ryerson is at home?” Pitt asked.
“As far as I know,” Talbot said. “He certainly isn’t here. We asked him if he could help us, and he said he couldn’t. He said he thought Miss Zakhari was innocent. He didn’t believe she would have killed anyone, unless they were threatening her life, in which case it wouldn’t be a crime.” He shrugged. “I could have written it all down without bothering to ask him. He said the only thing he could-he doesn’t know anything about it, he only just arrived-to protect her honor, and all that. Decent men don’t say a woman’s a whore, even if she is and we all know it. He said she wouldn’t have killed anyone without a reason, but then he wouldn’t say she had, would he? Apart from anything else, it would make him look like he was betraying her-and that his mistress, which we all know that she is, was a likely murderess and he knew it. And as I said, she didn’t deny the gun was hers. We asked the manservant she has, and he admitted it as well. He kept it clean and oiled, and so on.”
“Why did she have a gun?”
Talbot spread his hands. “God knows! She did, that’s all that matters. Look, sir-Constable Black found her in the garden with the murdered body of an old lover of hers stuck in a wheelbarrow. What more do you want of us?”
“Nothing,” Pitt conceded. “Thank you for your patience, Inspector Talbot. If there’s anything further I’ll come back.” He hesitated a moment, then smiled. “Good luck.”
Talbot rolled his eyes, but his expression softened for a moment. “Thank you,” he said with a touch of sarcasm. “I wish I could walk away from it so easily.”
Pitt grinned, and went to the door with a feeling of overwhelming relief. Talbot, poor man, was welcome to what was almost certainly no more than a domestic tragedy after all, cabinet minister notwithstanding.
All the same, Pitt decided that he would walk past Eden Lodge and look at it before going back to report to Narraway. Connaught Square was less than ten minutes away and it was now a very pleasant early morning. More deliverymen were out and the clip of horses’ hooves was sharp in the air. In the areaway of one large house a between-stairs maid of about fourteen was whacking a red-and-blue rug with enthusiasm and sending a fine cloud of dust up into the sunlight. He wondered if it was just exuberance or if the rug stood in for someone she disliked.
He crossed the road, cobbles still gleaming in the dew, and threw a penny to one of the small boys who swept away the manure when the need arose. It was too early for the boy to have much to do yet, and he leaned on his broom, his flat cap a couple of sizes too big for him, and resting on his ears.
“Ta, mister!” he called back with a grin.
Eden Lodge was an imposing house facing the open space of Connaught Square, and with a further wide view of St. George’s Burial Ground behind it, beyond the mews. It might be interesting to find out whether Miss Zakhari owned it or rented it, and if the latter, from whom? Or possibly they had not bothered to be so discreet, and it was simply owned by Ryerson in the first place.
But of more importance now was to see the garden where Miss Zakhari had been found with the corpse. For that it would be necessary to walk the short distance to the end of the block and around to the back.
There was a constable on duty in the mews, and Pitt identified himself before being permitted to go through the gate beside the stables and into the leafy, damp garden. He kept to the path, although there was little to mask or spoil in the way of evidence. The wooden wheelbarrow was still there, smears of blood down the right side, from where the person pushing it would have stood, and a dark pool, almost congealed, in the bottom. The dead man must have been laid across it with his head on that side and his legs over the other.
Pitt bent and looked more closely at the ground. The wheel was sunk almost an inch deep in the loam, witnessing the weight of the load. The rut it had caused was deep for about three yards, and from that point there were tracks from where it had come, empty, been turned around and loaded. He straightened up and walked the few yards. Faint scuff marks, indistinct, showed where feet had stood and swiveled, but it was impossible even to tell how many, let alone whether they were a man’s or woman’s, or both. The earth was scattered with fallen leaves and twigs and occasional small pebbles, leaving only rough traces of passage.
However, when Pitt looked more closely the rusty mark of blood was clear enough. This was where Lovat had been when he fell.
He stared around him. He was about five yards into the garden, between laurel and rhododendron bushes, and in the dappled shade of birches towering a great deal higher. He was completely concealed from the mews, and obviously from the street, by the bulk of the house itself. He was a good five yards from the stone wall which concealed the back entrance to the scullery and areaway, and ahead of him across a strip of open lawn edged by flowers was a French door to the main part of the house.
What on earth had Edwin Lovat been doing here? It seemed unlikely he had arrived through the mews and was intending to enter this way, unless by prior arrangement, and she had been waiting for him inside the French doors. If she had not wished to see him, it would have been simple enough not to have answered. Servants could have dismissed him, and thrown him out if necessary.
If he were indeed arriving, it looked unpleasantly as if she had lured him here deliberately, with the intent of killing him, since she was in the garden with a loaded gun.
Or else he had been leaving, they had quarreled, and she had followed him out, again with the gun.
When had Ryerson really arrived? Before the shooting or after? Had she lifted the dead man into the wheelbarrow by herself? It would be interesting to find out his size and weight, and hers. If she had lifted him, then there would be blood, and perhaps earth, on her white dress. These were questions he needed to ask Talbot, or perhaps the constable who had actually been first on the scene.
He turned and walked back through the gate to the mews and found the constable standing fidgeting from one foot to the other in boredom. He turned as he heard the gate catch.
“Were you on duty here last night?” Pitt asked. The man looked tired enough to have been up many hours.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you see the arrest of Miss Zakhari?”
“Yes, sir.” His voice lifted a little with the beginning of interest.
