Papa. Good night.”
“But Mama …”
“Good night, Jemima!”
“Can I say good night to Papa?”
Pitt did not wait for Charlotte’s answer to this, but strode up the stairs two at a time and picked up his daughter in his arms. She was so slight, so delicately boned she felt fragile as he held her, even though she clung to him with surprising strength. She smelled of clean cotton and soap, and the hair around her brow was still damp. Why on earth did he challenge the Inner Circle? Life was too precious, too sweet to endanger anything. He could not destroy them, only bruise himself trying. Africa was half the earth away.
“Good night, Papa.” Jemima made no move to be put down.
“Good night, sweetheart.” He let her go gently, turned her around and gave her a little push on her way.
This time she knew she was beaten, and disappeared without further argument.
Pitt came downstairs too full of emotion to speak. Charlotte looked at his face, and was content to bide her time.
In the morning he slept in, then ignored Bow Street entirely and went directly to the Morton Club to look for Horace Guyler, the steward who had given evidence at the inquest. He was too early. The club was not yet open. Presumably there were maids and footmen cleaning the carpets, dusting and polishing. He should have thought of that. He was obliged to kick his heels for an hour, and then he was allowed in, and had to wait a further thirty minutes before Guyler was given the freedom to see him.
“Yes sir?” Guyler said with some apprehension. They were standing in the small steward’s room, at present empty but for the two of them.
“Good morning, Mr. Guyler,” Pitt replied casually. “I wonder if you would tell me a little more about the day Sir Arthur Desmond died here.”
Guyler looked uncomfortable, but Pitt had a strong feeling it was not guilt so much as a deep-seated fear of death and everything to do with it.
“I don’t know what else I can say, sir.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “I already said all I know at the inquest.”
If he were an Inner Circle member, he was a consummate actor. Or perhaps he was a cat’s paw? Perhaps the executioner simply used him?
“You answered all you were asked.” Pitt smiled, although no smile was going to put him at his ease. “I have a few questions the coroner did not think to ask you.”
“Why, sir? Is something wrong?”
“I want to make sure that nothing becomes wrong,” Pitt said ambiguously. “You were serving gentlemen in the drawing room that day?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alone?”
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Were you the only steward on duty?”
“Oh no, sir. There’s always two or three of us at least.”
“Always? What if someone is ill?”
“Then we hire in extra staff, sir. Happens quite often. Fact, I saw one that day.”
“I see.”
“But I was looking after that part o’ the room, sir. I was the one what served Sir Arthur, at least most o’ the time.”
“But someone else did for part of it?” Pitt kept the rising urgency out of his voice as much as possible, but he still heard it there, as Guyler did. “One of these extra staff, perhaps?”
“I don’t know for sure, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well … I can’t really see what other stewards are doing if I’m pouring drinks for someone, taking an order or an instruction, sir. People is every so often coming and going. Gentlemen go to the cloakroom, or to the billiard room, or to the library, or the writing room or the like.”
“Did Sir Arthur move around?”
“Not as I recall, sir. But I don’t rightly know. I wouldn’t swear to nothing.”
“I certainly wouldn’t press you,” Pitt tried to reassure him.
Guyler’s anxious expression did not change in the slightest.
“You said that Sir Arthur drank a great deal of brandy that day,” Pitt pursued.
“Yes, sir. At my judgment, I would say five or six glasses at any rate,” Guyler replied with conviction.
“How many of those did you serve him?”
“About four, sir, clear as I can remember.”
“So someone else served him one, perhaps two?”
Guyler heard the lift of hope, even excitement in Pitt’s voice.
“I don’t know that, sir. I’m just supposing,” he said quickly, biting his lip, his hands clenched.
“I don’t understand….” Pitt was genuinely confused; he had no need to pretend.
“Well, sir, you see … I’m saying Sir Arthur had about five or six glasses o’ brandy because that’s what I counted from what people said-”
“From what people said?” Pitt broke in sharply. “What people? How many glasses did you serve him yourself, Guyler?”
“One, sir. One glass o’ brandy a little before dinner. The last one …” He gulped. “I suppose. But I swear before God, sir, that I never put nothing in it but brandy out o’ the best decanter, exactly as I’m supposed to!”
“I don’t doubt that,” Pitt said steadily, looking at Guyler’s frightened face. “Now explain to me these other four or five brandies you say Sir Arthur had. If you did not serve them, and you don’t know whether any of the other stewards did, what makes you assume they existed at all?”
“Well, sir …” Guyler’s eyes met Pitt’s with fear, but no evasion. “I remember Sir James Duncansby saying as Sir Arthur wanted another drink, and I poured one and gave it to him to take to Sir Arthur. Seeing as Sir James had one at the same time, and said as he’d take it back to Sir Arthur. It isn’t done to argue with gentlemen, sir.”
“No, of course it isn’t. That accounts for one. What about the others?”
“Well, er … Mr. William Rodway came and ordered a second one from me, saying as the first, which he’d had from one of the other stewards, he’d given to Sir Arthur.”
“That’s two. Go on.”
“Mr. Jenkinson said as he’d treat Sir Arthur, and ’e took two, one for himself like.”
“Three. You want one or two more.”
“I’m not really sure, sir.” Guyler looked unhappy. “I just overheard Brigadier Allsop saying as he’d seen Sir Arthur ordering one from one of the other stewards. At least I think it was one, I’m not sure. It could have been two.”
Pitt felt a curious sense of lightness. The steward had served Sir Arthur only one drink! All the rest were hearsay. They might never have reached him at all. Suddenly the confusion and nightmare were sorting into some kind of sense. Sanity was returning.
And with sanity were the darker, uglier, but so much less painful conclusions that if this were not the truth but a conspiracy, then Sir Arthur had been murdered, just as Matthew believed.
And perhaps if Pitt had been there, if he had been home to Brackley and Sir Arthur had been able to turn to him in the first place with his terrible suspicion of the Inner Circle, then maybe Pitt could have warned him, have advised him, and he would not now be dead.
He thanked Guyler and left him, anxious and more puzzled than when he had come in.
Dr. Murray was not a man to be so easily led or persuaded. Pitt had been obliged to make an appointment to see him in Wimpole Street and to pay for the privilege, and Murray was not amused when he discovered that the purpose for Pitt’s presence in his surgery was to ask questions, rather than to seek aid for some complaint. The rooms were imposing, soberly furnished, exuding an air of well-being and confidence. It crossed Pitt’s mind to
