Hyde Park Headsman

cover this up, if you can. I trust you know that?” He fixed Pitt with a sharp stare.

“I never expose people’s private griefs and sins voluntarily,” Pitt replied, but it was an equivocation, and Farnsworth knew it.

“Winthrops are an important family, connections all over the place,” Farnsworth went on, moving his weight restlessly from one foot to the other. “For Heaven’s sake be discreet. And don’t pull faces, man! I know you’ve got to solve the case!” He bit his lip, looking at Pitt hard and obviously turning over something in his mind.

Pitt waited.

“It’s going to be difficult,” Farnsworth said again.

The remark was so obvious Pitt did not reply.

Farnsworth looked Pitt up and down closely, still cogitating. “You’ll need connections yourself,” he said slowly. “Not impossible. Self-made man, but that doesn’t rule out influence, you know.”

Pitt felt a sudden stab of fear, but still he said nothing.

“Just a few friends can make the world of difference,” Farnsworth went on. “If they are the right ones.”

The fear subsided. It was not what Pitt had dreaded. He found himself smiling.

Farnsworth smiled as well.

“Good man,” he said with a nod. “Opens a lot of doors for you, furthers your career. Drummond was, you know?”

Pitt went cold. It was the Inner Circle he was referring to after all, that secret society, outwardly benevolent, inwardly malign, which Drummond had joined in his innocence and regretted so bitterly afterwards. The price of brotherhood was the surrender of loyalties, the forfeit of conscience so that an unknown army helped you, and could call on your help, at whatever cost, whenever it chose. The price of betrayal was ruin, sometimes even death. One knew only a half dozen or so other members, as the need arose. There was no way to tell to whom your loyalty might be pledged, or in what cause.

“No.” Pitt blurted out the word before realizing how foolish it would be, but he felt cornered, as if a darkness were trapping him and closing tight around him. “I …” He drew in his breath and let it out slowly.

Farnsworth’s face was flushed with annoyance and there was a bright glitter in his eyes.

“You are making a mistake, Pitt,” he said between his teeth.

“I don’t belong.” Pitt kept his voice as calm as he could.

“If you want to succeed, you had better make yourself belong.” Farnsworth looked at him unsmilingly. “Otherwise the doors will be closed. And I know what I am talking about. You need to clear up this case quickly.” He gestured towards the window and the street below. “Have you seen the newspapers? The public are beginning to panic already. You have no time to dither.” He walked to the door. “I’ll give you three days, Pitt, then you had better have something very decisive. And I expect you to reconsider that other matter. You need friends, believe me. You need them very much.” And with that he went out, leaving the door open behind him, and Pitt heard his footsteps down the stairs.

3

CHARLOTTE HAD HEARD the newsboys crying out the latest speculation on the Hyde Park murder, but she had given it less of her attention than she usually gave to Pitt’s more sensational cases because her mind was very fully occupied with the matter of plasterwork on the ceiling of the new house. At present she was in the middle of what was to be the withdrawing room, and staring upwards. The builder, a thin, lugubrious man in his thirties with sad eyes and a long nose, was standing in front of her shaking his head.

“Can’t do it, ma’am. Wouldn’t expect you to understand why, but it just in’t possible. Too far gorn, it is. Much too far.”

Charlotte looked up at the broken plaster on the cornice.

“But it’s only about two feet altogether. Why can’t you just replace that bit?” she asked, as she thought, very reasonably.

“Oh no.” Again he shook his head. “It’ll look like a patch, ma’am. Wouldn’t be right Can’t turn out work like that I’ve got my reputation to consider.” He met her eyes with a clear, indignant gaze.

“No it wouldn’t,” she argued. “Not if you put in the same pattern.”

“Can’t patch old wine bottles with new skins, ma’am. Don’t you read your Bible?” he said accusingly.

“Not when I’m looking for instruction on repairing the ceiling, I don’t,” she replied briskly. “Well, if you can’t do that piece, what about the whole of that side?”

“Ah—well.” He squinted up at it, head on one side. “I’m not sure about that Might be a different pattern, mightn’t it?”

“Can’t you find the same one? It doesn’t look very complicated to me.”

“That’s ’cause you in’t a plasterer, ma’am. Why don’t you ask your husband to explain it to you?”

“My husband is not a plasterer either,” she said with rising irritation.

“No ma’am, I daresay not,” he agreed. “But ’cos ’e’s a man, yer see, and men understand these things better than ladies, if you don’t mind my saying so?” He regarded her with a sententious smile. “Now I wouldn’t understand how to stitch a seam, or bake a cake, but I do know about cornices and the like. And you’ll be wanting a new rose too, to ’ang them good chandeliers from. Gotta watch that, or it’ll spoil the ’ole thing.”

“And how much will a new one be?”