Bedford Square (9 page)

“Not a very social sort of man?” Tellman suggested.

“Well … always very civil, but not … not overfriendly, if you get my meaning, sir.”

“Yes, I do.” Tellman thought of Balantyne’s rigid back, his rapid stride along Oxford Street, speaking to no one.

“Does he gamble at all, do you know?”

“I believe not, sir. Nor drink very much either.”

“Does he go to the theater, or the music hall?”

“I don’t think so, sir.” The steward shook his head. “Never heard him refer to it. But I think he has been to the opera quite often, and to the symphony.”

Tellman grunted. “And museums, no doubt,” he said sarcastically.

“Yes sir, I believe so.”

“Rather solitary sort of occupations. Doesn’t he have any friends?”

“He’s always very agreeable,” the steward said thoughtfully. “Never heard anyone speak ill of him. But he doesn’t sit around talking a lot, doesn’t … gossip, if you know what I mean. Doesn’t gamble, you see.”

“No sports interests?”

“Not that I ever heard of.” He sounded surprised as he said it, as if it had not occurred to him before.

“Pretty careful with money?” Tellman concluded.

“Not extravagant,” the steward conceded. “But not mean either. Reads a lot, and I overheard him once say he liked to sketch. Of course he’s traveled a lot—India, Africa, China too, so I heard.”

“Yes. But always to do with war.”

“Soldier’s life,” the steward said a trifle sententiously and with considerable respect. Tellman wondered if he had the same respect for the foot soldiers who actually did the fighting.

He went on talking to the steward for several minutes more, but little was added to the picture he was forming of a stiff, cold man whose career had been purchased by his family and who had made few friends, learned little of comradeship and nothing of the arts of pleasure, except those he
considered socially admirable, like the opera … which was all foreign anyway, so Tellman had heard.

None of it appeared to have anything whatever to do with Albert Cole. And yet there was a connection. There must be. Otherwise how had Cole got the snuffbox? And why was that the only thing taken?

General Brandon Balantyne was a lonely, unbending man who followed solitary pursuits. He had been privileged all his life, working for none of the advantages he possessed, money, rank, position in society, his beautiful house in Bedford Square, his titled wife. But he was also a troubled man. Tellman was a good enough judge of character to know that. And he intended to find out what that trouble was, most especially if it had cost ordinary, poor, underfed and ill-clothed Albert Cole his life. Honest men reported thieves, they did not murder them.

What could Albert Cole, poor devil, have seen in that house in Bedford Square for which he had been killed?

3

P
ITT WAS CONCERNED
with the murdered man who had been found in Bedford Square, but Cornwallis’s problem preyed more urgently upon his mind. For the time being there was not a great deal he could accomplish that could not be done equally as well by Tellman as far as discovering who the man was and, if possible, what had taken him to Bedford Square in the middle of the night. He still thought it most likely to be a burglary which had in some disastrous way gone wrong. He hoped profoundly that Balantyne was not involved, that the man had burgled Balantyne first, taking the snuffbox, and then gone on elsewhere and been caught in the act and killed, perhaps accidentally. The killer had removed his own belongings but had not taken the snuffbox in case the possession of it incriminated him.

It was probably a footman or butler in one of the other houses. When it was discovered which, then great tact would be necessary, but all the discretion in the world would not much alter the final outcome. And he had confidence in Tellman’s ability to pursue the trail quite as well as he would have himself. Meanwhile, he would do all he could to help Cornwallis.

He set out from home in the morning as usual, but instead of going either to Bow Street or to Bedford Square, he caught a hansom and requested the driver to take him to the Admiralty.

It took considerable argument and persuasion to obtain the naval records of H.M.S.
Venture
without explaining why he
wanted them. With much use of words like
tact, reputation,
and
honor,
but mentioning no names, by mid-morning he finally sat alone in a small, sunlit room and read what he had asked for.

The record was simple: Lieutenant John Cornwallis had been on duty when a seaman had been injured attempting to reef the mizzen royal in rising bad weather. According to his own account, Cornwallis had gone up to help the man and had brought him down, half conscious, the last few yards assisted by Able Seaman Samuel Beckwith.

Beckwith was illiterate, but his verbal account, taken down by someone else, was largely the same. Certainly he had not contradicted any part of the official version. The words recorded were bare, just a few sentences on white paper. There was no sense of the people behind it, none of the roaring wind and sea, the pitching deck, the terror of the man trapped up the mast, one minute over the wooden boards which would break his bones if he were to fall on them, the next over the howling, cavernous depths of water which would swallow him beyond any human power to rescue. Any man who fell into that would be gone forever, as completely as if he had never existed, never had life or laughter or hope.

There was no sense of what manner of men they had been, brave or cowardly, wise or foolish, honest or lying. Pitt knew Cornwallis, at least knew him as he was now, an assistant commissioner in the police force, taciturn, painfully honest, out of his depth with politicians, having no conception of their deviousness.

But he did not know how he had been fifteen years before as a lieutenant, faced with physical danger, the chance of admiration and promotion. Had this been an otherwise honorable man’s one mistake?

He did not believe that. Such deceit would surely have left a deeper mark. If Cornwallis had profited from stealing another man’s reward, praise for someone else’s act of courage, would it not have stained everything else he touched? Would he not have spent the rest of his career looking backward over his shoulder, fearing Beckwith’s telling of the truth? Would
he not have built guards for himself against just this eventuality, knowing there was always a chance? And would that not have shown in all else that he did?

Would he have allowed Pitt to know of it?

Or was he so arrogant he thought he could use Pitt, and Pitt would never realize?

That was such a distortion of the man Pitt perceived that he discarded the notion as close to impossible.

That left the question, did the blackmailer believe it was true or did he simply know that Cornwallis could not prove its untruth?

Beckwith was dead, according to Cornwallis. But had he relatives alive, someone to whom he had told the story, perhaps boasting a little, elaborating on his own part until he appeared the hero, and this person had taken him at his word, as perhaps a son or a nephew might do?

Or for that matter, a daughter. Why not? A woman was as capable as any man of cutting out letters from newspapers and framing a threat.

While he was there, Pitt decided, he should find all he could of the rest of Cornwallis’s naval career, and all there was available on Samuel Beckwith as well, particularly if he had a family still alive, and where they might be now.

More argument and more persuasion were necessary before he was given a very abbreviated summary of Cornwallis’s career, only those things which were largely a matter of public knowledge anyway, such as any other naval personnel might know from their own observation.

He had been promoted and changed ship within two years. In 1878 and 1879 he had been in the China Seas, involved with distinction in the bombardment of Borneo against the pirates.

Within a year after that he had had his own command. He had sailed in the Caribbean and been involved in several actions of a minor nature, largely skirmishes to do with slavers still operating out of West Africa.

He had retired from the sea in 1889 with distinction and an
unblemished record. There was a list of ships on which he had served and the ranks he had held, nothing more.

Pitt compared it with Samuel Beckwith’s career, which had been cut short by death at sea, carried overboard by a spar broken loose in a gale. He had never married, and left behind a sister, living in Bristol at the time of his death. His effects and his back pay had been sent to her. She was listed as a Mrs. Sarah Tregarth. Her address was given.

But Beckwith had been unable to read or write. The letter sent to Cornwallis was quite articulate and contained several complex words. Had Sarah Beckwith learned such an art in spite of her brother’s inability?

A discreet letter to the Bristol police would confirm that.

Now Pitt looked at the names of the ships on which Cornwallis had served and copied down a dozen or so names of other men who had served at the same times, including the captain of the
Venture
and the first lieutenant.

Next he showed his list to the man who had so far assisted him and asked for the addresses of all those who were not currently at sea.

The man looked at Pitt narrowly, then read through them.

“Well, he was killed in action about ten years ago,” he said, biting his lip. He moved to the next one. “He’s retired and gone to live in Portugal or somewhere. He’s in Liverpool. He’s here in London.” He looked up. “What do you want all these men for, Superintendant?”

“Information,” Pitt replied with a tight smile. “I need to know the truth about an incident in order to avert a considerable wrong … a crime,” he added, in case the man should miss the urgency of it or doubt his right to involve himself.

“Oh. Oh, yes sir. It’ll take me a little while. If you’d come back in an hour or so?”

Pitt was hungry, and even more he was thirsty. He was delighted to accept the suggestion and go out and buy himself a ham sandwich from a stall, and a cup of strong tea. He stood in the sun on the street corner enjoying them, watching the passersby. Nursemaids in starched aprons wheeled perambulators. Their older charges rolled hoops or pretended to ride
sticks with horses’ heads. A small boy played with a spinning top and would not come when he was told. Little girls in frilly pinafores mimicked their elders, walking daintily, with heads high. He thought with a wave of tenderness of Jemima and how quickly she had grown up. Already she was beginning to be self-conscious, aware of coming womanhood. It felt like only months ago she had been struggling to walk, and yet it was years.

When he had first met Balantyne she had not even been born. And she had been stumbling with speech, often unintelligible to anyone but Charlotte, when Balantyne had lost his only daughter in the most fearful way possible.

Memory of that turned the sandwich in his mouth to sawdust. How could a man bear such grief and survive? He wanted to rush home and make doubly, triply sure Jemima was all right … even hold her in his arms, watch her all the time, make any decisions for her, decide where she should go and who befriend.

Which was ridiculous. It would make her hate him—rightly so.

How did anyone endure having children and watching them grow up, make mistakes, get hurt, perhaps even destroyed, suffer pain worse, more inexplicable, than death? Had Augusta been any help to Balantyne, any comfort at all? Had their common grief brought them closer together at last or merely driven them each into greater isolation, even more alone in their grief?

What was this new tragedy? Perhaps he shouldn’t have left it to Tellman to investigate. And yet he could not abandon Cornwallis.

He threw away the rest of his sandwich, drank the last of his tea, and strode back to the Admiralty. There was no time for standing around.

He began with Lieutenant Black, who had served as first officer with Cornwallis in the China Seas. He was home on shore leave and might be called back to sea quite soon. He lived in South Lambeth, and Pitt took a hansom over the river.