Bedford Square (26 page)

Charlotte still did not turn.

“It was kind of you to come,” Balantyne said quietly. “I admit I am extraordinarily glad to see you.” He led the way to his study and opened the door for her. Inside was warm and bright, and comfortable with long use. There was no fire lit—the unusually hot summer did not require one—and there was a large, green-glazed vase full of white lilies on the drum table. The flowers perfumed the whole room and seemed to catch the sunlight from the long windows.

He closed the door.

“You read the newspaper?” she said immediately.

“I did. I don’t know Guy Stanley well, but the poor devil must be feeling … beyond description.” He ran his hands over his brow, pushing his hair hard back. “Of course, we don’t even know yet if he is one of us, but I dare not believe he isn’t. It almost seems irrelevant; this has shown just what ruin can come upon us with a whisper, an innuendo. As if we didn’t know … with the Tranby Croft affair. Although I think Gordon-Cumming might well have been guilty.”

Suddenly his face paled, tightening with pain. “God! What am I saying? I know no more of the man than rumor, the gossip that passes in the club, snatches overheard. That’s exactly what is going to happen to all of us.” He walked unsteadily over to one of the large leather chairs and sat down heavily. “What hope have we?”

She sat down opposite him. “It is not quite the same as Mr. Gordon-Cumming,” she said quietly but very firmly. “There is no question that they were playing baccarat. No one denies that. And Mr. Gordon-Cumming’s reputation prior to this is such that there are many who do not find it difficult to believe that he would cheat. Seemingly there have been doubts before. Has anyone ever made so much as a whisper that you could have panicked on the battlefield?”

“No” He lifted his head a little. He smiled very slightly.

“That is some comfort, but there will still be many only too happy to assume the worst. I never heard any question of Stanley’s honor or integrity before, and yet look at the newspapers. I doubt he will be able to sue for libel, it is so subtly worded, and what could he prove? Even if he did, what could he win back that would be a quarter the value of the reputation he has lost? Money answers so very little where love or honor are concerned.”

It was true, and to argue with him would be not only pointless but offensive.

“No value, except punitive,” she agreed. “And I suppose a court case would only give people the opportunity to throw more accusations. And all the charges are so cleverly chosen that one cannot prove they are untrue. He has obviously thought of that.” She leaned forward, the sun catching the corner of her sleeve in vivid gold. “But we must not give up trying. There must be someone still left alive from the ambush in Abyssinia who can remember what happened and whose testimony would be believed. We must just keep searching for them.”

There was no hope in his face. He tried to compose himself to some kind of resolution, but it was automatic, without heart.

“Of course. I have been thinking who else I might approach.” He gave a half smile. “One of the ugliest aspects of all this is that one begins to suspect everyone of being involved. I try hard not to wonder who it is, but when I am awake at night thoughts come into my mind unbidden.” His mouth tightened. “I determine not to entertain them, but the hours go by and I find I have done. I can no longer think of anyone without suspicion. People whose decency and whose friendship I had never questioned before suddenly become strangers whose every motive I look at again. My whole life has changed, because I see it differently. I question everything good … might it really conceal deceit and secret betrayal?” He looked at her with undisguised anguish. “And in thoughts like that I am betraying all that I am myself, all that I want to
be, and thought I was.” His voice dropped. “Perhaps that is the worst thing that he is doing to me … showing me something in myself I had not known was there.”

She understood what he meant; she could see it in him too clearly, isolated, frightened, and alone, so vulnerable, all the certainties he had built over the years dissolving in a space of days.

“It is not you,” she said gently, putting out her hand and laying it not on his hand, but on his arm, on the fabric of his coat. “It is just being human. Any of us might be there; the only difference is that most of us don’t know that, and we cannot imagine it when it is outside our experience. Some things no imagining can reach.”

He sat silently for a few moments. He looked up at her once, and there was warmth in his eyes, a tenderness she was not certain how to interpret. Then the instant passed, and he drew in his breath.

“I have other people in mind whom I could ask about the Abyssinian Campaign,” he said in a studiously casual voice. “And I must go to my club for luncheon.” He could not hide the sudden tension about his eyes and lips. “I should greatly prefer not to, but I have obligations I cannot avoid … I won’t. I will not allow this to make me break my promises.”

“Of course,” she agreed, withdrawing her hand and standing up slowly. She would have liked to protect him from it, but there is no defense against failure except to keep trying, to face the enemy, open or secret. She smiled at him a trifle wanly. “Please always count on me to help in any way I am able.”

“I do,” he said softly. “Thank you.” He colored painfully and turned away, walking to the door into the hall and opening it for her.

She went past him and nodded to the waiting footman.

Pitt stood in Vespasia’s pale, calm sitting room staring at the sunlit garden beyond the windows, waiting for her to come downstairs. It was too early in the afternoon for a social call, especially on someone of her age, but his business was
urgent, and he had not wished to arrive and find she had gone out to pay calls herself, which could have easily happened if he had left his own visit until a more appropriate hour.

The white lilacs still perfumed the air, and the silence, away from the road, was almost palpable. It was a windless day; there was no rustle of leaves. Once a thrush sang for a moment, and then the sound disappeared again, lost in the heat.

He turned as he heard the door open.

“Good afternoon, Thomas.” Vespasia came in, leaning a little on her cane. She was dressed in ecru and ivory lace with a long rope of pearls catching the light almost to her waist. He found himself smiling in spite of the reason for his visit.

“Good afternoon, Aunt Vespasia,” he replied, savoring the fact that she permitted him to use that title. “I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, but it is too important to me to risk missing you.”

She brushed the air delicately with one hand, dismissing the idea. “My calls can wait for another day. It was nothing of importance, merely a way to spend the afternoon and fulfill a certain duty. Tomorrow will do as well, or next week, for that matter.” She walked across the carpet and sat down in her favorite chair, facing the garden.

“You are very generous,” he replied.

She looked at him candidly. “Rubbish! I am bored to tears with idle conversation, and you know it, Thomas. If I hear one more silly woman make some remark about Annabelle Watson-Smith’s betrothal, I shall cause my own scandal with my reply. I was going to call upon Mrs. Purves. And how she has an unbroken lamp mantle in her house I cannot imagine. Her laugh would shatter crystal. You know me well enough not to try humoring me.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized.

“Good. And for heaven’s sake, sit down! I am getting a crick in my neck looking up at you.”

He sat obediently in the chair opposite her.

She regarded him steadily. “I assume you have come about this appalling business of Guy Stanley. Have you ascertained if he is another victim?” She shrugged very slightly, just the
lifting of one shoulder. “Even if he is not, and this is simply a coincidental tragedy, the effect upon everyone else will be the same. I can imagine what Dunraithe White will feel. Thomas, this is really very serious.”

“I know it is.” It seemed strange to be speaking of such evil and deliberate pain in this beautiful room with its simplicity and its scent of flowers. “And you do not yet know the full extent of it. I went to see Sir Guy this morning, and it is uglier than I had supposed. He was indeed threatened in exactly the same manner as the others …”

“And he refused,” she finished for him, her face grim. “And this is the terrible revenge, and the warning to everyone else.”

“No … I wish it were.”

Her eyes widened. “I do not understand. Please be frank, Thomas. Whatever the truth is, I am not too fragile to hear it. I have lived a long time and seen more than I think you imagine.”

“I am not being evasive,” he said honestly. “I do wish the answer were as simple as Sir Guy’s having been asked for something and refusing it. He was not asked for anything at all, except a silver-plated flask, as a token, much as I assume Balantyne was asked for the snuffbox. Just something individual and marking the blackmailer’s power. Sir Guy gave him the flask, by messenger. This exposure comes without warning and for no reason other than to make a display of power. It chanced to be Sir Guy who was the victim; it could as easily have been anyone else.”

She looked at him steadily, absorbing what he had said.

“Unless Sir Guy has nothing the blackmailer wants,” he went on, thinking aloud. “And he was chosen in order to expose him and frighten the others.”

“So the poor man never had a chance.” She was pale, and she spoke sitting very upright, her back stiff and her chin high, her hands folded in her lap. She would never betray panic or despair—she had been schooled to greater self-mastery than that—but in the early-afternoon sun there was a rigidity in her that spoke of inner pain. “Nothing he could have said or done
would have affected the outcome. I doubt the offense with which he is accused has much to do with him either.”

“He says not,” Pitt agreed. “And I believe him. But it is actually about something else that I have come to you. I know of no way in which you could help me regarding Sir Guy Stanley; in this other matter you may.”

Her silver eyebrows rose. “Other matter?”

“Mrs. Tannifer sent for me this morning. She is deeply concerned, having heard the news—”

“Tannifer?” she interrupted. “Who is she?”

“The wife of the banker, Sigmund Tannifer.” He had temporarily forgotten that she did not know about him.

“Another victim?”

“Yes. She is a woman of courage and individuality, and Tannifer himself did not keep the truth from her.”

The ghost of a smile touched Vespasia’s lips. “I assume Mr. Tannifer’s supposed offense was not of a marital nature?”

“No, financial.” The momentary humor flickered through him also. “The betrayal of trust regarding his clients’ funds. Ugly and certainly ruinous if it were even considered possible it were true, but not personal in the same way. Mrs. Tannifer is wholly behind him.”

“And she is alarmed, very naturally.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “But not simply that. She is determined to fight in every way open to her. She called me because she overheard a conversation on the telephone between her husband and Mr. Leo Cadell, who apparently holds a position of importance in the Foreign Office.” He stopped, seeing a new pain in Vespasia’s face, a very slight tightening of her fingers in her lap. “I came to ask you if you knew Mr. Cadell. I see that you do.”

“I have known him for years,” she answered, so quietly he had to strain to hear her. She saw him lean forward, and cleared her throat. “I have known his wife since she was born. Indeed, I am her godmother. I was at her wedding … twenty-five years ago. I have always liked Leo. Tell me what I can do.”

“I’m sorry. I hoped you might know them, but I wish it were not so well.” He meant it. The ugliness of this seemed to
be touching so many places, the pain and the fear spreading, and he still had so little idea even where to look, never mind where to strike back. “Have you any idea as to a connection between Balantyne, Cornwallis, Dunraithe White, Tannifer and Cadell? Anything at all they have in common?”

“No,” she said without waiting to give the matter a thought. “I have already spent too many hours trying to imagine any sphere of influence or power they have in common, or the remotest family connection, and I should be surprised if they were even more than passingly acquainted with one another. I have wondered if there was anyone they could have injured, even unknowingly. But Cornwallis was in the navy; Balantyne, the army. Dunraithe has never been abroad so far as I know, and has always served the law. You say Tannifer is a banker; and Leo is in the Foreign Office. They are not of a generation, so even if they went to the same school, it could not have been at the same time. Brandon Balantyne must be at least fifteen years older than Leo Cadell.” She looked confused and at a loss.

“I have tried everything else,” he conceded. “I have tried financial and business interests, investments, even gambling or sporting pursuits. There doesn’t seem to be anything that ties them all together. If there is, it must be far in the past. I’ve asked Cornwallis. He is the one man I can press for any detail he can recall. He swears he never even heard of any of them, except Balantyne, until a couple of years ago.”

“Then I had better go and call upon Theodosia.” Vespasia rose, accepting Pitt’s hand reluctantly as he stood more rapidly than she and offered it. “I am not yet decrepit, Thomas,” she said a trifle stiffly. “I simply do not shoot to my feet as you do.”

He knew she was not angry with him but with her own limitations, most especially now, when she felt helpless to protect her friends and was growing daily more bitterly aware of how serious was the threat to them.

“Thank you for listening to me,” he said, walking beside her. “Please do not give any undertaking to keep confidences unless you have no other possible way of learning the truth. I need to know all you hear.”

She turned to look at him, her hooded eyes dark silver-gray. “I am as aware as you are of the depth of danger in this case, Thomas, and not only of how deeply it could scar the individual men and women involved but also of the corruption to our society altogether if even one of these men succumbs to whatever it is that is asked of them. Even if it is trivial, and not illegal, the very fact that they can be persuaded to do it at another’s command is the first symptom of a disease which kills. I know these men, my dear. I have known men like them all my life. I understand what they are suffering and what they fear. I understand their sense of shame because they do not know how to fight back. I know what the esteem of their fellows means to them.”