“WELL?” Narraway looked up from the papers he was reading. His face was a little pinched, his eyes anxious.
“The police are holding the woman, Ayesha Zakhari, and completely ignoring Ryerson,” Pitt told him. “They aren’t investigating it too closely because they don’t want to know the answer.” He walked over and sat down in the chair in front of Narraway’s desk.
Narraway breathed in deeply, and then out again. “And what are the answers?” he asked, his voice quiet and very level. There was a stillness about him, as if his attention were so vivid he dared not distract himself by even the slightest action.
Pitt found himself unconsciously copying, refraining from crossing one leg over the other.
“That Ryerson helped her, at least in attempting to dispose of the body,” he replied.
“Indeed…” Narraway breathed out slowly, but none of the tension disappeared from him. “And what evidence told you that?”
“She is a slender woman, at the time wearing a white dress,” Pitt replied. “The dead man was slightly over average height and weight. It took two mortuary attendants to lift him from the barrow into the wagon, although of course they may have been more careful with him than whoever was trying to dispose of him.”
Narraway nodded, his lips tight.
“But her white dress was not stained with mud or blood,” Pitt went on. “Only a little leaf mold from where she had knelt on the ground, possibly beside him where he lay.”
“I see.” Narraway’s voice was tight. “And Ryerson?”
“I didn’t ask,” Pitt said. “The constable was quite aware of why I enquired, and of the obvious conclusions. Do you want me to go back and ask him? I can do so perfectly easily, but it will then-”
“I can work that out for myself, Pitt!” Narraway snapped. “No. I do not want you to do that… at least not yet.” His eyes flickered for a moment, then he looked over at the far wall. “We’ll see what happens.”
Pitt sat still, aware of a curious, unfinished air in the room, as if elusive but powerful things were just beyond the edge of perception. Narraway had left something unsaid. Did it matter? Or was it just an accumulation of knowledge gathered over the years, a feeling of unease rather than a thought?
Narraway hesitated also, then the moment passed and he looked up at Pitt again. “Well, go on,” he said, but with less asperity than before. “You’ve told me what you saw and what the constable reported. We’ll save Ryerson from himself, if we can. The next move is up to the police. Go home and have breakfast. I might want you later.”
Pitt stood up, still looking at Narraway, who stared back at him-his eyes bright, almost blank of emotion, but with deliberate concealment. Pitt was as certain of that as he was of the charge in the room, like electricity in the air on a sultry day.
“Yes, sir,” he said quietly, and with Narraway still looking at him, he went out of the door.
WHEN HE GOT HOME, it was late morning. His children, Jemima and Daniel, were at school, and Charlotte and the maid, Gracie, were in the kitchen. He heard their laughter the moment he opened the front door. He smiled to himself as he bent and took off his boots. The sounds washed around him like a balm: women’s voices, the clatter of pans, a kettle whistling shrilly. The house was warm from the kitchen stove, and there was an odor of freshly laundered cotton, still a little damp, clean wood from the scrubbed floor, and baking bread.
A marmalade-striped cat came out of the kitchen doorway and stretched luxuriously, then trotted towards him, tail up in a question mark.
“Hello, Archie,” Pitt said softly, stroking the animal as it swiveled under his hand, pressing against him and purring. “I suppose you want half my breakfast?” he went on. “Well, come on then.” He stood up and walked silently down to the doorway, the cat following.
In the kitchen, Charlotte was tipping bread out of its tin onto a rack to cool, and Gracie, still small and thin although she was now well over twenty, was putting clean blue-and-white china away on the Welsh dresser.
Sensing his presence rather than seeing him, Charlotte turned around, questions in her face.
“Breakfast,” he replied with a smile.
Gracie did not ask anything. She was outspoken enough once she was involved. She did not regard that as impertinence, rather the role of helping and looking after him, which she had taken upon herself almost from the time she had arrived in the household, at the age of thirteen, half starved, and with all her clothes too big for her. Her hair had been scraped back off her bright little face, and although then she could neither read nor write, she had a wit as sharp as any.
Now she was far more mature, and considered herself to be an invaluable employee of the cleverest detective in England, or anywhere else, a position she would not have exchanged for one in service to the Queen herself.
“It’s not the Inner Circle again, is it?” Charlotte said with an edge of fear in her voice.
Gracie stood frozen, the dishes in her hands. No one had forgotten that dreadful, secret organization which had cost Pitt his career in the Metropolitan Police-and very nearly his life also.
“No,” Pitt said immediately and with certainty. “It’s a simple domestic murder.” He saw the disbelief in her face. “Almost certainly committed by a woman who is the mistress of a senior government minister,” he added. “Equally certain he was there, if not at the time, then immediately afterwards, and helped her attempt to get rid of the body.”
“Oh!” she said with instant perception. “I see. But they didn’t get away with it?”
“No.” He sat down on one of the straight-backed wooden chairs and stretched out his legs. “The alarm was raised by someone who heard the shots, and the police arrived in time to catch her in the back garden with the corpse in a wheelbarrow.”
She stared at him in a moment’s disbelief, then saw from his eyes that he was not joking.
“Must be a bleedin’ idjut!” Gracie said candidly. “I ’ope ’e in’t in charge o’ summink wot matters in the gov’ment, or we’ll all be in the muck!”
“Yes,” Pitt agreed with feeling. The cat leapt up onto his knee and he stroked it absently, fingers gentle in the deep fur. “I’m afraid we will.”
Gracie sighed and started to sort out the dishes he would need for breakfast, and to make him a cup of tea first. Charlotte went to the stove to begin cooking, her face eloquent of the trouble she could foresee.
CHAPTER TWO
THE EVENING NEWSPAPERS had carried a brief account of the finding of Edwin Lovat’s body at Eden Lodge; however, the following morning they were full of the murder in detail.
“There you are!” Gracie said, presenting the
Pitt took both papers from her and looked at them for himself, spreading the pages wide over half the table. Charlotte was still upstairs. Jemima came in looking very grown up with her hair in pigtails and her school pinafore on over her dress. She was ten years old, and very self-possessed, at least on the surface. She was growing tall, and the slight heels on her buttoned-up boots added to her height.
“Morning, Papa,” she said demurely, standing in front of him and waiting for his reply.
He looked up, ignoring the newspaper, aware that she required his attention, more especially lately, since their adventure in Dartmoor, when their lives had been in danger and for the first time he had been unable to protect them himself. His sergeant, Tellman, had done an excellent job, at considerable risk to his own career. He was still at the Bow Street station, now under a new superintendent, a man named Wetron. Wetron was cold and ambitious, and with good cause; they believed him to be a senior member of the Inner Circle, possibly even with eyes on the
