other hand, his fertile imagination, and some education, made his company, on the few occasions they were permitted to speak, a relief from the corroding boredom.
And there was Wilson, a man so savage in his rage he lashed out at everyone; Wood, ignorant and angry with a world which had no use and no place for him; fat Molloy, who had spent most of his life in prison and feared the outside world in spite of his repeated longing for it; and poor little Raeburn with drooping eyes and mouth, who stole simply because he was hungry and incapable of earning his way.
At first Pitt hated them all because they were part of the Steel, and everything that trapped and held him, all the ugliness and the perpetuity of the place.
Then through small acts, glimpses of pain, he was reached. At first these incidents seemed trivial; a brushing of the surface of his mind, more an irritation because he had no emotion to spare than any real empathy.
Then a stupid and pointless tragedy involving Raeburn jerked Pitt violently out of his self-pity. Raeburn was a purposeless, simpleminded little man who seemed inadequate to face the world. He had only one thing of which he was proud: though he was promiscuous and he stole, he did not tell lies, not even to escape punishment. Now and again he boasted of it and no one minded; it was boring and they took for granted that he was harmless, and he challenged no one’s territory. There was a tacit understanding that one did not victimize Raeburn. He filled the role of a house pet.
On this occasion, when Pitt was sunk deep in his own misery, the permanent cold, the hunger, and the emotional loneliness and fears he was being forced with every succeeding day to face more openly, a jailer’s watch was mislaid, and by some mischance Raeburn was accused of having taken it. He swore he had not, but the jailer, who did not know him, did not accept the denial. Raeburn was removed to solitary confinement. He was terrified of being alone, he had no thoughts to fill the silence and it threatened to obliterate him. When they came for him he lashed out, and for that he was undeniably guilty. They dismissed the charge of thieving as no longer important; now he had assaulted a warden. He was put in a cell in isolation, uncomprehending, still swearing he had not taken the watch.
At night in his bunk, shivering in the dark, Pitt could hear Raeburn crying out, sometimes loudly, “I didn’t do it! Tell ’em I didn’t do it!” Other times it was only a confused babbling that sank away into silence.
He was a weak little man, and the one thing he valued had been removed. His only worth was that everyone knew he did not tell lies, but now someone had not believed him. His solitude was vast, like annihilation itself, and he had nothing to cling to. He either would not or could not eat.
A week later they took him away to the Bedlam asylum for the insane, and within a short time he was dead.
The effect on the other prisoners was surprisingly deep. While he had been alive Raeburn was tolerated with a mild contempt, but there had been a tacit comprehension that his honesty had been one small light in the darkness of his loneliness and stupidity; it was his mark of identity in a nameless sea. He had no other strength, nor was he aware of any other virtue. His weaknesses had let him down so often they were intimately known.
When he was taken away there rippled through the others a kind of anger that for once had nothing to do with selfishness. Raeburn’s fate brought them as close to pity as they could come.
The incident marked Pitt deeply. He willed himself to forget it, but Raeburn’s cries repeated themselves in his head and his imagination filled in the picture of the man’s shallow, droop-eyed face, witless with fear, stained with weeping.
His own self-pity dissolved into anger. From hating the other men, he surprised himself by managing to forget, sometimes for hours on end, all the world of difference between himself and them, and felt only the pain they had in common.
At night, lying in the cold, he turned over every possibility in his mind. He could speak to no one about his own case, but they could not stop him from thinking.
Surely the key to it lay in the treason. Who was the spy? At first he thought it had been Robert York, seduced by Cerise, perhaps with some spy master behind her. Then since Dulcie’s death, which he was certain had also been murder, the suspects had been narrowed to either someone in the York house or one of their visitors that night, the Danvers and the Ashersons, who also had access to the Foreign Office.
Now Cerise herself had been murdered-by whom? The unknown spy master who was afraid Pitt would find her and that she might knowingly or unknowingly betray him?
He was growing confused. It made no sense. If there was such a figure, shadowy, unknown, then that person had no part in the murder of Dulcie. It had to be someone Pitt knew, someone he had already seen and talked to. Dulcie had been killed because she had seen Cerise, there could be no other reason. That was borne out by the fact that Cerise herself had been murdered when it became inevitable that Pitt would find her.
But why had Robert York been killed? Was there something he knew, something he had seen or heard? Was it what he had done, and thus could reveal?
Perhaps there had been a real thief, someone Robert York would have recognized when he interrupted and caught him. Perhaps Cerise had not succeeded in her attempts to seduce him, and had sent a thief instead. Then who was the thief? Someone known to Robert York, strong enough and skilled enough-and cold-blooded enough-to kill him with a single blow, even when he was prepared and presumably on his guard. After all, if you disturb a burglar in your house in the middle of the night, and you recognize him and know his intent, then surely you would understand he could not leave you to reveal him, as you would be bound to?
Julian Danver, Garrard Danver, possibly, although he was twice York’s age-or Felix Asherson? Pitt did not even consider Piers York; he would hardly have needed to offer any explanation for being in the library of his own house, whatever the time of night.
But the Danvers and Asherson all worked at the Foreign Office themselves. It did not make sense that they should steal secrets from Robert York.
Pitt lay awake in the bitter night, hearing the now familiar sounds of uneasy movement, the echo of coughs, groans, someone swearing, and further away a man weeping with hollow, racking sounds of despair.
He was no further forward. The pieces did not fit. Who was Cerise? he wondered, hovering on the borders of sleep, his mind snatching at shadows. It all hinged on her.
In the morning the gray immediacy of the day returned, crowding his senses. He could close his eyes to some of it, even turn his mind from the sounds, becoming numb to the creeping cold, but he could never completely shut out the sour smell. It was there with every breath, the taste of it at the back of his throat, making his stomach querulous.
There was no stillness to think.
With darkness came the illusion of solitude again, and his mind returned to gnaw the question. He turned it over and over and no answer seemed to satisfy him. It still seemed most likely that Robert York had interrupted someone, and he was killed because of his knowledge, as was Dulcie, and, of course, Cerise. But knowledge of what?
The constable returned, graver this time, and he did not mention Ballarat at all.
“So it was the maid, Dulcie, as first told you about this woman in pink, Mr. Pitt?” He frowned, looking at his notebook and then up again. “’Ow did you find ’er in Seven Dials?”
“With a lot of work,” Pitt replied flatly. “I walked the streets asking costers, flower girls, sandwich sellers, theater doormen, prostitutes.”
The constable shook his head slowly. “Must ’a taken a fair while, sir. Weren’t there no better way, nobody as knew nuffink?”
“Nobody who would speak, except Miss Adeline Danver, and she only saw the woman for a moment on the landing in the gaslight.”
“That’d be Mr. Julian Danver’s aunt?”
“Yes. But naturally Miss Danver didn’t know where to find her.”
The constable screwed up his face. “I could check that with ’er, Mr. Pitt.”
“Well, if you do, for God’s sake be careful! The last person to speak to the police about seeing Cerise fell out of a window to her death immediately after.”
The constable sat silently for several moments, then slowly began chewing his pencil. “Who do you reckon she was, this woman you calls Cerise, Mr. Pitt?”
Pitt leaned a little more heavily on his wooden chair.
“I don’t know. But she was beautiful; everyone who saw her said she had style, glamor, a face that one
