reasons. I shall ask your father also for a similar list.”
“Of course.”
Pitt thanked the two constables who had helped in the search, then left the FitzJames house and walked along Devonshire Street towards the Park. He bought two ham sandwiches from a seller on the corner and ate them as he crossed the Marylebone Road and turned up York Gate, across the Outer Circle and through the trees. It was a balmy day. The Park was full of people strolling and fashionable ladies parading, and courting couples. Children were playing with hoops and riding sticks with horses’ heads and several tried to fly kites in the lazy air, but there was too little wind to lift them.
Nursemaids in prim uniforms wheeled perambulators or took their small charges by the hand. Some of them sat on seats together, swapping gossip while children ran around. Old gentlemen sat in the sun and relived past glories. Young girls giggled and talked about each other. In the distance a band was playing songs from the music halls.
Pitt could not have argued with Ewart as to why he found it hard to believe that any enemy of Augustus FitzJames should murder a prostitute and lay the blame on Finlay in order to exact a revenge on his father. There was no single argument against it. He simply did not believe in such deliberate machination. In his experience robberies were sometimes carried out this way, but not murder. With violence, the convolutions, the attempts to lay blame elsewhere, came afterwards. However callous this supposed enemy, Pitt found it hard to conceive of him deliberately committing a crime for which he himself could be hanged, could it be traced to him.
And yet he also had to admit that there was something deliberate about it. The badge and the cuff link were extraordinary. How could a man be careless enough to leave two such pieces of evidence behind him?
He must try harder with Helliwell and Thirlstone and, much against his will, with Jago Jones. Finding another badge to compare with the two he had now might be crucial to Finlay’s guilt or innocence.
“Good heavens, Superintendent!” Helliwell said irritably when Pitt approached him as he was walking down Birdcage Walk after a long and excellent luncheon in Great George Street. “I really cannot help you. I have no idea about Finlay FitzJames and his current behavior.” His expression darkened. “I thought I had already explained to you that we were friends in the past, but the present is an entirely different matter. I wish I could tell you some definitive fact that would clear his name, but I am not in a position to. Now I have business for which I am a trifle late. You must excuse me.” He quickened his pace.
Pitt quickened his also.
“I have found a second Hellfire Club badge,” he said at Helliwell’s elbow.
“Indeed.” Helliwell kept on walking and did not turn. He did not ask where it had been found. “I cannot see how that concerns me. If it is mine, it was lost years ago, and it could be anywhere.”
Pitt studied his face, but in the afternoon sun it looked a little red with exertion, and perhaps self-indulgence over the port, but there was not the discomfort of lying on it. He was annoyed, but if he was afraid, he hid it with consummate skill, a subtlety quite different from the rest of his character.
“No,” Pitt replied. “It was not yours. It was apparently also Mr. FitzJames’s.”
This time Helliwell did stop, swinging around. “What? That makes no sense! We had only one each. What … what are you saying?”
“That someone has made a second badge, Mr. Helliwell. I would very much like to see yours so I can tell which is the original.”
“Oh!” Helliwell let out his breath in a gusty sigh. “Yes. I see. Well, I still can’t help you, and frankly I am beginning to find this constant questioning a trifle irritating.” He turned to look at Pitt to allow him to understand that he was not apprehensive, but his anger was very real and increasing. “FitzJames was a friend of my rather immature days, which I have now left behind me, and what he may or may not be doing now is none of my concern. Although I find it almost impossible to believe he had anything to do with the death of a prostitute in the East End. It can only be a catalog of mischance that has led you even to imagine such a thing. You would be far more profitably employed looking into the unfortunate woman’s own acquaintances, her enemies, or debtors.
“Now, as I said, I have an appointment, and I must hurry, or I shall keep Sir Philip waiting. Good day, Superintendent.” And with that he swiveled smartly on his heel and strode away without looking back, or to either side of him.
Mortimer Thirlstone was harder to find. He was not involved in political or public life, and his comings and goings were dependent only upon his whim of the moment. Pitt discovered him at an artist’s studio in Camberwell, and it was mid-afternoon before he was able to speak with him. It was a bright, airy room, and several young men and women sat around in earnest discussion. There were paintings on every stretch of wall, and windows in most unexpected places, never as intended by the original architect. Nevertheless the impression was surprisingly pleasant, one of startling color and space, splashes of yellows and blues, shimmering scenery. And it was more an impression, as if seen through half-closed eyes, than a photographic image.
“Oh dear,” Thirlstone said wearily, leaning against a windowsill and staring at Pitt. He was dressed in a loose-sleeved white shirt with a floppy collar and an enormous bow at the neck. It was all very affected, but he seemed quite unconscious of it.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Thirlstone.” Pitt was about to continue when Thirlstone straightened up.
“Not you again,” he said, his eyes darting around the room as if to seek a way of escape. “This is getting frightfully tedious, my dear fellow.” He faced Pitt suddenly. “What am I possibly to tell you? I knew Finlay years ago. He was a decent young man, but a bit of a rake. I suppose we all were … then. But I see nothing of him now, not a thing. Pleasant enough, you know, but a complete Philistine. Doesn’t know old gold from plate. Sometimes I think he’s color-blind!”
“I wanted to know if you could find your old Hellfire Club badge, sir,” Pitt asked, looking at his agitated face and wondering why he was so uncomfortable. This should not be embarrassing. Pitt was not recognizable as police.
“I told you, I haven’t got it anymore!” Thirlstone replied with a frown, his voice sharpening with exasperation. “What can it matter now?”
Pitt told him about the two badges with Finlay’s name on them.
“Oh.” Thirlstone looked disconcerted. He swallowed, seemed about to speak again, then changed his mind. He moved uncomfortably, as if something in his loosely fitting shirt still scratched his skin. “Well … if I … if I have it, I’ll bring it to you. But it’s not likely.” He shook his head abruptly. “I really can’t imagine Finlay would do such a thing, but people change….”
A statuesque young woman walked by, running her fingers through her mane of hair. A man by the farther window was sketching her, and she knew it. “I think you’ll find us … oh …” Thirlstone shrugged. “I don’t know. Really. I have no idea.” He glanced at the woman, and back to Pitt. “Not pleasant to be disloyal, but I can’t tell you anything.”
Pitt wished he could think of some question which would crack the facade and let him see beneath to what these men really knew of each other, what relationships there had been, the rivalries, the bonds which held, and the jealousies which divided, the secret feelings underlying the outward behavior.
“Did Finlay have one particular friend among you?” he asked casually, as if he had thought of it only as he was about to leave.
“No,” Thirlstone said instantly. “We were all together … well … er, possibly he was a little closer to Helliwell. More in common, maybe.” Then he blushed, as if it had been a hand of betrayal, but it was too late to take it back.
“Did he have more money than the rest of you?” Pitt enquired. “His father is extremely wealthy.”
Thirlstone looked relieved.
“Ah … yes. Yes, he did. Certainly more than Jago or I. And I suppose more than Helliwell too.”
“Was he generous?”
A curious expression crossed Thirlstone’s face, a mixture of bitterness and wry, almost careful regret. He obviously disliked talking about it at all, and that might have been some kind of guilt, or simply that Thirlstone regarded that as an aesthetically wasted time and preferred to live in the present.
“Was he generous?” Pitt repeated.
Thirlstone shrugged. “Yes … quite often.”
“He gambled?” It did not matter, except as a blight on his character, but Pitt wanted to keep the conversation going.
