the Lord of the Purple.” He saw Pitt’s face. “All right!” he said with a sudden edge of anger to his voice Pitt had never heard before. “You can smile. It has its absurdity. But there is nothing even faintly ridiculous about the power that man holds. It’s secret, and for those in the Circle it’s total. If he pronounced sentence of ruin, or death, it would be carried out. And believe me, Pitt, the perpetrators would go to the gallows without betraying him.”
In this gracious room with its Georgian simplicity, its simple warmth and familiar touches, such talk should have been no more than a fanciful and rather ghoulish entertainment. But looking at Drummond’s face, the tight muscles of his body, the horror in his eyes, it woke an answering fear in Pitt, and suddenly he felt chilled inside. The warmth no longer touched him.
Drummond saw that he had at last conveyed what he meant.
“It might not be,” he said quietly. “It might have nothing to do with the Circle at all. But remember what I say, Pitt Whoever he is, you have already crossed him once, when you exposed Lord Byam and Lord Anstiss. He won’t have forgotten. Walk carefully, and make friends as well as enemies.”
Pitt knew better than to wonder if Drummond were suggesting he retreat. It was not in his nature even to think of such a thing. He had sometimes thought Drummond stiff, a product of his army career and his aristocratic upbringing, even lacking in information and grasp of which poverty or despair might be. He had wondered if he were capable of real laughter or of consuming passion. But never for an instant had he doubted his courage or his honor. He was the sort of shy, sometimes inarticulate, painfully polite, easily embarrassed, elegant, dryly humorous sort of Englishman who will face impossible odds without complaint and die at his post, but never, ever, desert it even if he were the last man living.
“Thank you for your warning,” Pitt said soberly. “I shall not dismiss the possibility, even though in this case, I think it is unlikely.”
Drummond relaxed very slowly. He was about to speak on some other subject when there was a tap on the door and both men turned.
“Yes?” Drummond answered.
The door opened and Eleanor Drurnmond came in. Pitt had not seen her since the day of her marriage, which he and Charlotte had attended. She looked quite different. The happiness was deeper and calmer in her, as if at last she believed it and did not feel the compulsion to clasp it to her in case it vanished. She was dressed in deep, soft blue and it flattered her dark hair with its touches of gray, and her olive skin and clear gray eyes. There was a repose in her face which Pitt found immensely pleasing.
He rose to his feet.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Drummond. Forgive me taking up your time, but I was looking for a little counsel—”
“Of course, Mr. Pitt,” she said quickly, coming into the room and smiling first at Drummond, then at Pitt. “It is too long since we have seen you. I am sorry it is this wretched business in Hyde Park which has brought you. It is that—isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m afraid it is.” He felt guilty, and yet he would never have called upon them socially. Drummond had been his superior, only in a certain sense a friend.
“Then perhaps you and Mrs. Pitt will come to dine when this is over?” she asked. “And we can discuss pleasanter things.” She smiled suddenly with brimming pleasure. “I am so glad you are superintendent now, and this has nothing to do with Micah. It must be totally wretched. I was sorry to hear about Aidan Arledge. He was a charming man. Captain Winthrop I cannot grieve over as much as perhaps I should.”
“Did you know him?” he asked in surprise.
“Oh no,” she denied quickly. “Not really. But society is very small. I am acquainted with Lord and Lady Winthrop, of course, but I could not really say I knew them.” She looked at him apologetically. “They are not the sort of people it is easy to form any relationship with, but the most superficial, a matter of pleasantries when one meets them at the same sort of function year after year. They are very—predictable, very correct. I am sure there must be more that is individual, if one—” She stopped. They both knew what she was going to say, and it was pointless to pursue it.
“And the captain?” he asked.
“I met him once or twice.” She shook her head a little. “He was the sort of man who always made me feel condescended to, I am not sure why. Perhaps because there are no women in the navy. I rather formed the opinion all civilians were in his view a lesser species. He was perfectly polite.” She searched Pitt’s face. “But the sort of politeness one keeps for the inferior, if you understand me?”
“Do you think he might have known Arledge?” Pitt asked.
“No,” she said immediately. “I cannot think of two men less likely to have found each other agreeable.”
Drummond glanced at Pitt, his eyes dark.
Pitt smiled back at him. He understood the warning. He had no intention of discussing Arledge’s love affair in front of Eleanor, least of all its nature.
Eleanor moved over to Drummond, and a trifle selfconsciously he put his arm around her. The freedom to do so was still new to him, and acutely pleasurable.
“I wish I could be of assistance, Pitt,” he said seriously. “But it may well be the work of a madman, and to find him you will have to learn what it is these men had in common.” He looked steadily at Pitt and their previous conversation about the Inner Circle hung unspoken in the air between them. “It seems exceedingly unlikely it is an acquaintance with each other,” he continued. “But there may be someone they all knew. I assume you have thought of blackmail?” His arm tightened around Eleanor.
“I thought Yeats might have known something,” Pitt replied, equally carefully. “But how?”
“Does his omnibus route go past the park?” Drummond asked. “He does a late run, or he would not have been getting off at Shepherd’s Bush in the middle of the night.”
“Yes, but he does not go past Hyde Park,” Pitt replied. “Tellman checked that.”
Drummond pulled a face. “How are you getting on with Tellman?”
Pitt had already decided to keep his own counsel. “He’s quick,” he replied. “And diligent. He doesn’t want to arrest Carvell either.”
