Pitt opened his eyes but the thumping did not stop. The
first gray of mid-September daylight showed through the
curtains. It was not yet six, and there was someone at the
front door.
Beside him, Charlotte stirred a little in her sleep. In a
moment the knocking would waken her too. He slid out of bed
and moved quickly across the floor and onto the landing. He
ran down the stairs in his bare feet, snatched his coat off
the rack in the hall, and with one arm through the sleeve,
unbolted the front door.
"Good morning, sir," Jesmond said apologetically, his hand
still in the air to knock again. He was about twenty-four,
seconded from one of the local London police stations to
Special Branch, and he considered it to be a great
promotion. "Sorry, sir," he went on. "But Mr. Narraway
wants you, straightaway, like."
Pitt saw the waiting hansom just beyond him, the horse
fidgeting a little, its breath hanging vapor in the
air. "All right," he said with irritation. It was not a
particularly interesting case he was on, but he had it
nearly solved; only one or two small pieces remained. He
did not want a distraction now. "Come in." He gestured
behind him towards the passage to the kitchen. "If you know
how, you can riddle the stove and put the kettle on."
"No time, sir, beggin' your pardon," Jesmond said
grimly. "Can't tell you wot it's about, but Mr. Narraway
said ter come right away." He stood firmly on the pavement
as if remaining rooted to the spot would make Pitt leave
with him even sooner.
Pitt sighed and went back in, closing the door to keep the
damp air out. He climbed the stairs, doffing his coat, and
by the time he was in the bedroom, pouring water outof the
ewer into the basin, Charlotte was sitting up in bed
pushing her heavy hair out of her eyes.
"What is it?" she asked, although after more than ten years
of marriage to him, first when he was in the police, now
the last few months in the Special Branch, she knew. She
started to get out of bed.
"Don't," he said quickly. "There's no point."
"I'll get you a cup of tea, at least," she replied,
ignoring him and standing on the rug beside the bed. "And
some hot water to shave. It'll only take twenty minutes or
so."
He put down the ewer and went over to her, touching her
gently. "I'd have had the constable do it, if there were
time. There isn't. You might as well go back to sleep . . .
and keep warm." He slid his arms around her, holding her
close to him. He kissed her, and then again. Then he
stepped back and returned to the basin of cold water and
began to wash and dress, ready to report to Victor
Narraway, as far as he knew, the head of the Secret Service
in Queen Victoria's vast empire. If there was anybody above
him, Pitt did not know of it.
Outside, the streets were barely stirring. It was too early
for cooks and parlor maids, but tweenies, bootboys, and
footmen were about, carrying in fresh coal, taking
deliveries of fish, vegetables, fruit, and poultry. Areaway
doors were open and sculleries were brightly lit in the
shadows of the widening dawn.
It was not very far from Keppel Street, where Pitt lived in
a modest but very respectable part of Bloomsbury, to the
discreet house where Narraway currently had his offices,
but it was already daylight when Pitt went in and up the
stairs. Jesmond remained below. He had apparently finished
his task.
Narraway was sitting in the big armchair he seemed to take
with him from one house to another. He was slender, wiry,
and at least three inches shorter than Pitt. He had thick,
dark hair, touched with gray at the temples, and eyes so
dark they seemed black. He did not apologize for getting
Pitt out of bed, as Cornwallis, Pitt's superior in the
police, would have done.
"There's been a murder at Eden Lodge," he said quietly. His
voice was low and very precise, his diction perfect. "This
would be of no concern to us, except that the dead man is a
junior diplomat, of no particular distinction, but he was
shot in the garden of the Egyptian mistress of a senior
cabinet minister, and it seems the minister was
unfortunately present at the time." He stared levelly at
Pitt.
Pitt took a deep breath. "Who shot him?" he asked.
Narraway's eyes did not blink. "That is what I wish you to
find out, but so far it unfortunately looks as if Mr.
Ryerson is involved, since the police do not seem to have
found anyone else on the premises, apart from the usual
domestic servants, who were in bed. And rather worse than
that, the police arrived to find the woman actually
attempting to dispose of the body."
"Very embarrassing," Pitt agreed dryly. "But I don't see
what we can do about it. If the Egyptian woman shot him,
diplomatic immunity doesn't stretch to cover murder, does
it? Either way, we cannot affect it."
Pitt would have liked to add that he had no desire or
intention of covering the fact that a cabinet minister had
been present, but he very much feared that that was exactly
what Narraway was going to ask him to do, for some
perceived greater good of the government or the safety of
some diplomatic negotiation. There were aspects of being in
Special Branch that he disliked intensely, but ever since
the business in Whitechapel he had had little choice. He
had been dismissed from his position as head of the Bow
Street station, and had accepted secondment to Special
Branch as protection for himself from the persecution that
had followed his exposure of the Inner Circle's power and
its crimes. His new assignment was the only avenue open to
him in which he could use his skills to earn a living for
himself and his family.
Narraway gave a slight smile, no more than an
acknowledgment of a certain irony.
"Just go and find out, Pitt. She's been taken to the
Edgware Road police station. The house is on Connaught
Square, apparently. Somebody is spending a good deal of
money on it."
Pitt gritted his teeth. "Mr. Ryerson, I presume, if she is
his mistress. I suppose you are not saying that loosely?"
Narraway sighed. "Go and find out, Pitt. We need the truth
before we can do anything about it. Stop weighing it and
judging, and go and do your job."
"Yes, sir," Pitt said tartly, standing a little straighter
for an instant before turning on his heel and going out,
thrusting his hands into his jacket pockets and pushing the
entire garment out of shape.
He set out along the street westward towards Hyde Park and
the Edgware Road, intending to pick up a hansom as soon as
he saw one.
There were more people around now, more traffic in the
streets. He passed a newsboy with the earliest edition,
headlining the threat of strikes in the cotton mills of
Manchester. This problem had been grumbling on for a while,
and looked like it was getting worse. Processing cotton was
the biggest industry in the whole of the West Midlands, and
tens of thousands of people made their living from it, one
way or another. The raw cotton was imported from Egypt and
woven, dyed and manufactured into goods there, then sold
again all over the world. The damage of a strike would
spread wide and deep.
There was a woman on the corner of the street selling hot
coffee. The sky was calm and still, shredded with ragged
clouds, but he was chilled enough to find the prospect of a
hot drink welcome. There could well be no time for
breakfast. He stopped.
"Mornin', sir," she said cheerfully, grinning to show two
missing teeth. "Lovely day, sir. But a nip in the air,
eh? 'Ow abaht an 'ot cup ter start the mornin'?"
"Yes, please."
"That'll be tuppence, sir." She held out a gnarled hand,
fingers dark with the stain of the beans.
He gave her the money, and accepted the steaming coffee in
return. He stood on the pavement, drinking slowly and
thinking how he could approach the police when he reached
the Edgware Road station. They would resent his
interference, even if the case threatened to be so ugly
they would be glad to pass the blame on to someone else. He
knew how he had felt when he was in charge of Bow Street.
Good or bad, he wanted to handle cases himself, not have
his judgment overridden by senior officers who knew less of
the area, of the details of the evidence, and who had not
even met the people concerned, let alone questioned them,
seen where they lived, who they cared for, loved, feared,
or hated.
The cases he had handled so far in Special Branch were
largely preventative: matters of finding men likely to
incite violence and stir up the cold, hungry, and
impoverished into riot. Occasionally he had been involved
in the search for an anarchist or potential bomber. The
Special Branch had been formed originally to combat the
Irish Problem, and had had a certain degree of success, at
least in keeping violence under control. Now its remit was
against any threat to the security of the country, so
possibly the fall of a major government figure could be
scraped into that category.
He finished the coffee and handed the mug back to the
woman, thanking her and continuing along the pavement. He
took the last few yards at a run as he saw an empty hansom
stop at the intersection, and he hailed the driver.
At the Edgware Road station an Inspector Talbot was in
charge of the case and received Pitt in his office with
barely concealed impatience. He was a man of middle height,
lean as a whippet, with sad, slightly faded blue eyes. He
stood behind his desk, piled with neatly handwritten
reports, and stared at Pitt, waiting for him to speak.
"Thomas Pitt from Special Branch," Pitt introduced himself,
offering his card to prove his identity.
Talbot's face tightened, but he waved a hand for Pitt to
sit down in one of the rigid, hard-backed chairs. "It's a
clean case," Talbot said flatly. "The evidence is pretty
hard to misunderstand. The woman was found with the body,
trying to move it. It was her gun that shot him, and it was
in the barrow beside the body. Thanks to someone's quick
thought, we got her in the act." The expression in his face
was a challenge, daring Pitt to contradict such blatant
facts.
"Whose honesty?" Pitt asked, but his stomach knotted up
with foreknowledge of a kind of hopelessness already. This
was going to be simple, ordinary and ugly, and as Talbot
said, there was no way of evading it.
"Don't know," Talbot replied. "Someone raised the alarm.
Heard the shots, they said."
"Raised the alarm how?" Pitt asked, a tiny prickle of
curiosity awakened in him.
"Telephone," Talbot answered, catching Pitt's meaning
instantly. "Narrows it down a bit, doesn't it? Before you
ask, we don't know who. Wouldn't give a name, and apart
from that, the caller was so alarmed the voice was hoarse-
and so up and down the operator couldn't even say for sure
whether it was a man or a woman."
"So the caller was close enough to be certain it was
shots," Pitt concluded immediately. "How many houses have
telephones within a hundred yards of Eden Lodge?"
Talbot pulled his mouth into a grimace. "Quite a few.
Within a hundred and fifty yards, then, probably fifteen or
twenty. It's a very nice area, lot of money. We'll try
asking, of course, but the fact the caller didn't give a
name means he or she wants to keep well out of it." He
shrugged. "Pity. Might have seen something, but I suppose
more likely they didn't. Body was found in the garden, well
concealed by shrubbery, all leaves still on the trees,
barely beginning to turn color. Laurels and stuff on the
ground, evergreens."
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