On the river to their left a pleasure boat passed with people crowding the decks, laughing and pointing, straw hats waving, bright with ribbons. Somewhere out of sight a barrel organ was playing a popular song. The sound of laughter drifted on the breeze.
“Stoker told me this morning,” Pitt said quietly. “Apparently it happened yesterday evening. They can’t be sure as to the exact time. Quite early, though.”
“Alban Hythe was arrested by nine,” Narraway replied. “I know that beyond doubt.”
Pitt looked across at Narraway’s face, trying to read his emotions. As always, it was difficult. But he was getting to know Narraway far better now than he had when the man had been his superior. In the short time Pitt had been in charge of Special Branch he had carried the burden that Narraway had borne for years, and with that came a different kind of understanding between them.
In Narraway’s features he saw uncertainty and unhappiness. In a way, they had changed positions: Narraway was tasting the personal shock and pain, the dismay in the face of crime; Pitt was feeling the terrible loneliness and weight of responsibility he could not pass on to anyone else, could not even share.
“You don’t think he’s guilty of raping Catherine Quixwood, do you?” Pitt observed.
Narraway looked at him sharply. His eyes were nearly black in the sunlight, the pale streaks at his temples silver.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, expression half-concealed. “I’m not used to this … this sort of crime. It’s nothing like anarchy or treason. I don’t know how the devil you dealt with it, with the people and their … lives.”
“One at a time,” Pitt replied drily. “It’s not worse than being the one who decides who gets charged, who doesn’t, who’s let go quietly, and who gets killed. It’s just different. In the police you find the facts, then pass it all over to someone else to make the judgment.”
“Touché,” Narraway said quietly, glancing at Pitt and then away again. “And no, I don’t think I believe Alban Hythe raped Catherine Quixwood. But that may well be because I don’t want to. I liked him. And I like his wife. I don’t want to watch while all her hopes and dreams are laid bare and broken for the public to watch.”
“Liking people has very little to do with it,” Pitt pointed out. “Even sympathizing with them sometimes. More than once I’ve thought I could have done the same thing-had I been in the same situation.”
Narraway stared at him, incredulity in his eyes. As Pitt did not flinch, slowly the disbelief became the beginning of an understanding. “You mean kill someone?”
“Well, I certainly don’t mean rape them!” Pitt retorted a little waspishly. “But yes, I’ve felt like killing those who beat and terrify women, children, the weak, the old; those who blackmail and extort and yet manage to ensure the law doesn’t touch them.”
“And rapists?” Narraway asked.
“Yes, them also.”
“Pitt …” Narraway started.
Pitt smiled with a twisted humor. “Perhaps only if it happened to my wife, or daughter. But I can understand someone who would feel that way, who would want to take justice into his own hands.”
Narraway bit his lip. “So can I, and I have no wife or daughter. Do we need to watch Quixwood, once he knows that it’s Hythe? Or if Hythe gets off?”
“If he gets off, yes, very possibly,” Pitt admitted.
“And the Portuguese ambassador?” Narraway added quietly.
Pitt shivered. “I am watching. Castelbranco taking matters into his own hands is one of several things I am concerned about.”
Narraway looked at him closely. “And the others?”
“That whoever is doing this will not stop,” Pitt replied.
“All the same man? It can’t be, unless Hythe is innocent.” Narraway said it with something that could have been hope.
“Or we have two, or even three, men of such violent and brutal disposition loose in London right now,” Pitt finished the thought.
Narraway had no answer to that.
Pitt had not seen Rafael Castelbranco for nearly a week. There had been no news to report that would ease any of the man’s distress. However, Pitt felt compelled to inform him of the arrest of Alban Hythe, and that as far as he was aware, Catherine Quixwood’s death had nothing to do with Angeles’s attack.
He made the appointment formally and presented himself at the Portuguese Embassy at four o’clock, as requested.
He was received in a large study with elegant furniture, a wooden floor with beautifully woven rugs and on the walls portraits of past kings and queens of Portugal.
Castelbranco came forward to greet him. He was at least outwardly composed, but was still wearing black relieved only by a white shirt, with no jewelry, not even a pocket watch. His face was calm but his eyes looked hollow, and his skin brittle and drained of color. He did not even pretend to smile, nor did he offer refreshment.
“Good afternoon, Commander Pitt,” he said in little more than a whisper, as if his throat was painful. “Have you come to tell me again that you can do nothing to prosecute the man who drove my daughter to her death?” There was no bitterness in his voice, no accusation, just pain.
Pitt hesitated. He had been prepared to be less blunt and this took him by surprise, but to be evasive now would be insulting.
“I suppose, for the present time, that is the truth,” he replied. “But the reason I came today is to tell you that a man has been arrested for the rape, and thus causing the suicide, of another woman. It is not public news yet, but it will be by tomorrow morning.”
Castelbranco was startled. His body stiffened. His dark eyes met Pitt’s with bewilderment. “Another woman? And you can arrest him for raping her?”
Pitt was embarrassed and he knew it showed in his face. “He appears to have had a relationship with her that can be proved,” he explained, feeling as if he was making excuses. “They were seen together. There are letters, gifts between them.”
Castelbranco said nothing, his eyes unmoving, his mouth closed tightly.
“She let him into her house, after dark,” Pitt went on. “When her husband was at a function in the course of his business, and she had dismissed the servants. The man raped her and beat her extremely badly. She was very seriously injured indeed, but it was actually an overdose of laudanum that directly caused her death.”
Castelbranco was stunned. He stepped back and sank into one of the chairs. He breathed in and out heavily, his fingers gripping the leather of the arms. For several moments he did not speak. When he did, it was with difficulty.
“Are you saying that this same … creature … raped my daughter, Mr. Pitt?”
Pitt felt again as if he was making excuses, totally ineffectually.
“No, Ambassador, I’m not. Nor am I suggesting that your daughter had any relationship with the man who did. I’m telling you of this only because the case bears a superficial resemblance, and I don’t want you to hear of it without some warning. Also, the man is only accused. He has not stood trial yet, and he has denied his guilt completely. Indeed, it is possible he is innocent.”
“You said there was a relationship between this man and the woman he raped? Letters, gifts, meetings?” Castelbranco accused.
“Yes, it seems so. And he cannot account for his time on the evening the poor woman was attacked.”
“She let him in? What kind of a woman was she?” Castelbranco glared at him, bewildered and hurt, desperately seeking escape from the thoughts that crowded in on him.
“According to what I have heard, a beautiful woman in her early forties, trapped in a lonely and sterile marriage,” Pitt replied.
“And so she took a lover who was depraved?” Castelbranco closed his eyes as if by not seeing Pitt he could deny the reality of what he had said. “Her poor husband. He must be insane with grief. I hear my daughter spoken of as if she was a loose woman, without virtue, but at least I know it was not true.” The tears seeped between his eyelids and it took him some moments to master himself. “What must he feel, poor man?”
