Pitt shrugged. “I rather suspect FitzJames had the second one made to try to prove his innocence, or at least to throw question on his guilt.”
“Then the badge you found in Pentecost Alley was his?” Cornwallis said quickly, swiveling around to face Pitt, all attempt at casualness abandoned. “What has that to do with Costigan? I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” Pitt admitted. He was about to continue, when there was a knock on the door of the box and a moment later Micah Drummond came in. He greeted Charlotte and Caroline, then as soon as formalities were over, turned to Pitt and Cornwallis. He was a tall, lean man with a gentle, aquiline face. Grace of manner and long habit of command masked a natural shyness.
“Congratulations,” he said warmly to both men. “A potentially very unpleasant case handled smoothly. And you managed to keep most of it out of the papers, which was just as well. I’ve heard murmurs that FitzJames is very pleased.” He laughed abruptly. “I suppose ‘grateful’ would be too strong a word for such a man, but he’ll remember it. He may prove an ally in the future.”
“Only if our enemies happen also to be his,” Cornwallis said dryly. “He’s a man to remember an offense and forget a service. Not that our conduct of the case was in any sense intended to be a service to him!” he added quickly. “If Pitt had proved his son guilty, I’d have had him arrested as soon as Costigan, or anyone else.”
Micah Drummond smiled.
“I’m sure you would. I’m still delighted it didn’t prove necessary.” He glanced at Pitt, and then back again at Cornwallis. “There is nothing we can do if tragedy strikes one of the prominent families, but it’s a most wretched thing to have to deal with.”
Pitt’s mind flew back to the tragedy which had affected Eleanor Byam, who was now Drummond’s second wife. The tension and the pain of that experience, the ultimate terrible outcome, and Pitt’s understanding of Drummond’s own emotions, had forged a bond between them which was still absent from his respect for Cornwallis.
Drummond swung around to exchange a few words with Charlotte and compliment Caroline on Joshua’s performance, then he excused himself and left.
Pitt turned to Cornwallis and was about to resume their conversation when there was another brief tap on the door and Vespasia sailed in with her head high. She looked marvelous. She had chosen to make a great occasion of the event, and was dressed in lavender and steel-gray silk. On anyone else it might have been cold, but with her silver hair and the diamonds at her ears and throat, it was magnificent.
Pitt and Cornwallis automatically rose to their feet.
“Quite fascinating, my dear,” Vespasia said to Caroline. “What an entrancing man. Such a presence.”
Caroline blushed, realized she was doing it, and blushed the more.
“Thank you,” she said almost hesitantly. “I think he is doing it rather well.”
“He is doing it superbly,” Vespasia admonished. “The part could have been written for him. I daresay it was! Good evening, Charlotte. Good evening, Thomas. No doubt you are pleased with yourself? Good evening, John.”
“Good evening, Lady Vespasia.” He bowed very slightly to her. He looked at once pleased and uncomfortable. Pitt glanced at him, and saw from his expression that he was already aware that Vespasia was in some distant way related at least to Charlotte. He was not surprised to see her, as he must otherwise have been.
“Quite extraordinary,” Vespasia went on, with a very slight lift of one shoulder and without offering any explanation of what she was referring to. She turned back to Caroline with a charming smile. “I’m so glad I came. Please don’t consider it in the slightest way a reflection on the fact that the alternative was the opera, which was something Wagnerian and fearfully portentous, to do with gods and destiny. I prefer my doomed love affairs in Italian, and to do with human frailty, which I understand, rather than fate, which I do not, and predestination, which I do not believe in. I refuse to. It negates all that humanity is, if it is to be worth anything whatever.”
Caroline opened her mouth to say something polite and changed her mind. It was not necessary, and no one, least of all Vespasia, expected it.
“And I could not abide to sit and watch Augustus FitzJames preen himself,” Vespasia continued. “I don’t know whether he is really fond of Wagner or only considers it the correct mark of good taste, but he attends every one, and always on the first night, with his wife wearing half a South African diamond mine ’round her neck. The sight of his face would be worse than sitting in a box listening to Brunnhilde screaming for four hours, or Sieglinde, or Isolde, or whoever it is. But it would be interesting to look around the audience and see if anyone is in a particularly filthy mood.”
“Would it?” Pitt said confusedly.
She looked at him with shadowed silver eyes. “Well, my dear Thomas, someone has tried very hard to ruin Mr. FitzJames’s family and has apparently failed. That wretched little man Costigan may have killed the girl, but do you really suppose it was his own idea to implicate young FitzJames? Where on earth would such a man acquire a club badge and a cuff link with which to do it? Do you imagine they could be acquainted?” She did not ask it sarcastically. She was considering the possibility.
“I don’t know,” Pitt replied. “It doesn’t seem likely, but there is a lot yet unanswered. I’m going back to question him again tomorrow. From what we have at the moment, it doesn’t seem to make sense that Finlay FitzJames had anything to do with it at all, either directly or indirectly.”
“Then how did his badge and cuff link get there?” Charlotte asked curiously. “Do you suppose Ada stole them?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt repeated. “Perhaps Finlay left them behind some other time, or someone else did.” Jago Jones’s face flitted into his mind with a sharp, unhappy thought.
“I wish I felt it was purely a mischance,” Vespasia said with a little shake of her head. “At least I think I do. I really find Augustus FitzJames one of the most displeasing men I have ever known. There is much in him I can understand, but he has the soul of a bully.”
There was a faint tinkling of a warning bell. Here and there a box door opened. A dozen women moved in a drift of colored silks. A score of men rose to their feet, and slowly the audience began to make their way back to their seats. The noise of chatter dropped to an intermittent hum.
Vespasia smiled. “It has been delightful to see you, but for once I have come to the theater principally to see the performance. I intend to be seated when the curtain rises again.” And she bade them all farewell and left in a rustle of shadow-dark silk and the scent of jasmine.
Cornwallis sat down again and turned to Pitt.
“We need to know where those possessions of FitzJames came from and how they got to Ada’s room,” he said just above a whisper. “Now that Costigan is charged, FitzJames is going to want to know who tried to implicate him and whether they used Costigan or not. Your job isn’t over, I’m afraid.” He frowned and leaned a little closer as the lights went down. “It was a pretty wild
He dropped his voice even lower as the curtain rose on the stage. “I have a very unpleasant feeling, Pitt, that it was someone close to him. And you had better find out, if you can, which of the two badges was the original.” He sighed. “And if Finlay had the second one made, or his father did continue to overlook it, there’s nothing we can do about it anyway.” His tone was sharp with anger and regret. He did not need to say how deeply he hated the compromise of his principles it required.
Further conversation was prevented by the necessity of courtesy that he watch the second act. Not to have done so would have hurt Caroline. They settled down to enjoy it, Charlotte glancing at Pitt, her eyes anxious, Caroline absorbed in the stage, and Cornwallis sitting back, his brow smoothed out, the Pentecost Alley case temporarily set aside.
“I dunno!” Costigan said desperately. “I dunno anyfink abaht it!”
He was sitting in his cell in Newgate and Pitt was standing by the door staring at him, trying to fathom whether he was speaking the truth or still lying-either by habit or with some hope of evading punishment. It was pointless. He would hang for having killed Ada. Anything else would simply be for the record, to solve the remaining mystery.
His dejected figure was hunched up and seemed far smaller without his well-cut clothes and crisp shirt. He wore an old gray jacket now and it was rumpled, as if he had not bothered to hang it up while he slept. Looking at
