‘That’s not worthy of you, Pitt,’ Carlisle sounded disappointed. ‘Why the hell should I care who Kynaston’s in bed with?’
‘You don’t,’ Pitt agreed. ‘So I wonder what it is you do care about — sufficiently to step into this macabre farce. And it is a farce, isn’t it?’
Carlisle’s eyes did not leave Pitt’s face. ‘Is it?’ he whispered.
‘If I don’t find the truth of it, yes it is!’ Pitt responded sharply, his own nerves taut.
He saw a flicker of fear in Carlisle’s eyes, just for a moment, so brief he was not even certain he had seen it at all.
‘I don’t believe you killed either one of them,’ he added. ‘In fact you probably never saw them alive.’
Carlisle breathed out slowly. Something within him eased, but only a fraction.
‘And put the pieces of the watch there as well,’ Pitt continued. He did not mention the mutilations; that was a hideous lacuna between them. ‘And probably the cupboard key. You must have been damn sure I wouldn’t connect it up, and charge you!’
‘You’re the best detective I know,’ Carlisle replied, his voice a little hoarse, as if his lungs were starved, his throat tight.
‘So what is it you want me to find?’ Pitt leaned forward. ‘You left those women up there for the animals to eat! What matters that much to you, Carlisle? Murder? Multiple murder?’ He said the last word very carefully. ‘Still not enough! It has to be treason!’
Carlisle took a long, deep breath. ‘Do you know Sir John Ransom?’
‘Not personally. I know who he is.’
‘Precisely,’ Carlisle agreed. ‘It was a rhetorical question. If the head of Special Branch did not know the name of the man who leads scientific inventions regarding the navy, and naval warfare, then we have very deep problems indeed.’
‘What about Ransom?’ Pitt asked.
‘He is a friend of mine. A couple of years ahead of me at Cambridge,’ Carlisle replied.
Pitt allowed him to continue, knowing that this much preamble must be necessary. A log of wood collapsed in the fire, sending up a shower of bright sparks, but Carlisle apparently did not notice it.
‘He came to me two or three months ago,’ Carlisle resumed. ‘He had no proof at all, but he believed that certain highly sensitive facts regarding a new step forward in submarine warfare were being offered to another naval power. He did not say which because I believe he did not know.’
‘From the department where Kynaston works,’ Pitt concluded.
‘Precisely. Ransom was very worried because he had little doubt in his own mind that it was occurring, but no idea who was responsible. But it rested between three men. The other two have since been exonerated …’
‘Leaving Kynaston …’ Pitt said unhappily. ‘But there is no proof, or you would not be discussing it. You would simply have handed over the evidence to us.’
‘Yes. Without proof, allowing Kynaston to know that we are aware of what he is doing would only alert him, and perhaps make the matter worse,’ Carlisle agreed.
‘So you make it appear that he murdered his wife’s maid, over some real or imagined love affair, and hope that I will pull your chestnuts out of the fire!’
‘That’s about right,’ Carlisle admitted. ‘But you’re damn slow about it!’ He gave a harsh, twisted smile. ‘You like the man …’
‘Yes, I do. But that has nothing to do with it,’ Pitt said angrily. ‘Whatever I think of him, I can’t charge him with anything at all until I have evidence to prove it. And since Kitty Ryder was seen alive and well after the first body was found, and the second body doesn’t even resemble her, I have no reason to accuse Kynaston!’
‘I slipped up there,’ Carlisle admitted, wincing at his own failure. ‘But I didn’t know Kitty had been seen. Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I have a highly diligent assistant …’
‘Ah! The redoubtable Stoker. Yes. An excellent man.’ Carlisle smiled very slightly. ‘If he could actually find the woman, then she would testify as to what it was she saw, or heard, and why she ran away. Although it would be better to have something rather weightier than the word of a runaway lady’s maid.’
‘I’ll widen the search for her,’ Pitt promised. ‘Who else is involved? He must be passing the information to someone? And why, for God’s sake?’ Even giving words to the question and speaking it aloud was painful. He had not thought Kynaston more than perhaps self-indulgent with his mistress, certainly not a man to betray his own country. He had become used to disillusion but this still hurt.
Carlisle pulled his mouth into a gesture of apology. ‘I have no idea. But I have no doubt he will have plenty of defenders simply because no one will wish to believe that he could have betrayed them, or that they could have let him! The Prime Minister will be displeased, to say the least of it!’
‘I’m getting rather accustomed to displeasing the Prime Minister,’ Pitt said tartly. ‘It seems to be a function of the job. But catching Kynaston, even proving what he has done, is far from the end of the task …’
‘Oh, I know that!’ Carlisle agreed. ‘You need to know all of it! More than anything else, you need to know exactly how much information he has given, and to whom. Preferably, you also need to know how he came into such a position, and everyone else who is involved. And then, naturally, you need to deal with him so that as few people are aware of it as possible, in the circumstances. To have a trial and exposure would be almost as damaging as the act itself.’
‘Thank you, Carlisle! I am aware of that!’ Pitt snapped. ‘I also would prefer not to be obliged to prosecute you! I accept that you did not kill either of the women, but you took their bodies from wherever they were kept — a morgue of some sort, I imagine — and you laid them out in the gravel pits. I prefer not to know that you also mutilated them in identical ways so we would be forced to conclude they were killed by the same person, and the link to Kynaston was too clear to ignore. Well, I have your message, and I understand it. You have succeeded.’
Carlisle was pale, even in the firelight. ‘I am not proud of it,’ he said very quietly. ‘But Kynaston is betraying my country. He must be stopped.’
‘I will do all I can to stop him,’ Pitt promised. ‘And you will help me, if I can think of a way. And from now on you will do exactly what I tell you to … so I can find a reason not to charge you with body-snatching, mutilating the dead, and generally being a damn nuisance!’
‘Would you-’ Carlisle began.
Pitt glared at him. ‘Yes I would! And if you involve Lady Vespasia in this I’ll see you pay for it with your seat in Parliament!’
‘I believe you,’ Carlisle said very quietly indeed. ‘I give you my word I have not done so, and I will not.’
‘Thank you.’ Pitt stood up. ‘I thank you for at least this much truth. Now I wish I’d had the whisky!’
‘It’s still available …’
‘No, thank you. I must go home. It’s late, and I need to think how the hell I’m going to clear this up, starting tomorrow morning. By the way, where did you get the bodies? I assume you took them from some morgue?’
‘Yes. But I’ll see they are decently buried, when you’ve finished with them. As I promised in the first place,’ Carlisle replied.
Pitt stared at him for a moment, trying to find words for what lay between them, and failing. He turned and left.
Outside the rain had stopped but the wind was even colder. Pitt thought, seeing the hard, brittle glitter of the stars, that there could be a frost.
Walking briskly along the pavement he thought again of Carlisle. The man infuriated him, but he could not dislike him. This time he had seen beyond the wit and the imagination to someone who dared to believe in things further than he could see himself, and who reached, however crazily, for the sublime. A lonely man.
He could not believe that Carlisle had had any part in the deaths of either of the women, he had merely seized an opportunity. Pitt could imagine him carefully cutting the dead faces, women beyond indignity or pain, and apologising for using them for what he believed was a greater and more desperate good. The man he had known in the past would never have killed anyone, even to expose treason.
But people can change. Unknown pressures can fall on them, old debts can need to be paid. Was that why Carlisle had rescued Pitt from the fury of Edom Talbot so fortuitously? And was it he who had created the situation
