Belgrave Square (18 page)

They traveled up Westminster Bridge Road and Pitt could see couples out walking, the women in pastels and flowers and laces in the late afternoon sunshine. One or two carried parasols, more for elegance than to protect them from the soft light, and the heat was gone. He wondered who Carswell’s gifts were for. The married daughter in the pictures in
Curzon Street? She might live south of the river. But it seemed more likely Carswell would visit her later, with his wife and in his own carriage, not alone in a hired vehicle.

They turned into Kennington Road. It was full of people taking the evening air, open carriages, street peddlers with all manner of food: pies, eels, peppermint water, fruit sherbets, cordials, sandwiches. Girls offered bunches of flowers, matches, packets of lavender, little dolls. An organ grinder played hurdy-gurdy music and in the summer street it sounded unexpectedly pleasing, all its harshness and tawdriness sweetened by the open air, the clopping of horses’ feet and the hiss of wheels.

Pitt’s cab stopped and the driver leaned out.

“Yer fare’s got out, sir,” he said quietly. “ ’E went inter the coffee’ouse on yer left.”

“Thank you.” Pitt climbed out and paid him. “Thank you very much.”

“Who is ’e?” the cabby asked. “Is ’E a murderer?”

“I don’t know,” Pitt said honestly.

The other cab had moved away so presumably Carswell intended remaining where he was for some time. “Thank you, that’s all,” Pitt said, dismissing the cabby, to his acute disappointment. He moved away reluctantly, still giving the occasional glance backwards over his shoulder to see what was happening.

Pitt smiled to himself and pulled his coat even further open and took his tie off altogether, then followed Carswell into the coffeehouse.

Inside was warm, stuffy and full of chatter, clinking glass and rustling skirts, and the smell of coffee beans, pastry and sugar. On the walls were colorful theater posters, and now and again someone roared with laughter.

In a corner over to the right Addison Carswell was being greeted by a slender, pretty girl with a mass of soft honey-brown hair which was piled on her head in the very latest fashion, the short ends curling onto her neck as only nature can and no art has learned to imitate. In spite of her youth her features were strong and her face full of vitality, her eyes wide and clear. Pitt judged her to be in her early twenties.

Carswell was looking at her with a smile he could not mask and an anticipation in his eyes as he gave her the hatbox
and the parcel containing the parasol. She opened them with quick fingers, tearing at the paper, every few moments glancing up at him, then down again. When she finally took off the last pieces and let them flutter to the ground she held up the parasol with unfeigned delight, and then the hat.

Carswell put out his hand and touched her wrist, restraining her before she could swing the hat up and try it on. She smiled, blushing as if she suddenly remembered her foolishness, and put her hand down again.

Carswell’s face reflected an extraordinary tenderness, an emotion so transparently genuine it startled Pitt and made him uncomfortably aware of being not merely a detective, but at this moment a voyeur.

He watched them for another thirty minutes. They sat at the table, the hatbox and the parasol at the girl’s feet, leaning forward speaking to each other one minute earnestly, the next lightly and with laughter, but it was not loud, neither did the girl have any of the mannerisms of flirting. Rather it seemed an affection of two people who have known each other some time and shared many experiences which have given them a treasury of understanding from which to draw.

When Carswell arose and left after having bade the girl farewell, Pitt did not follow him, but turned his face away just in case Carswell should glance his way. But as it happened he looked neither to right nor left, but with a smile on his face and a spring in his step, he went out into Kennington Road. Pitt paid his bill and went out onto the pavement. He watched Carswell march away down towards Westminster Bridge where he might find a hansom, and presumably return home to Curzon Street and his wife. Perhaps before then he would have taken the jauntiness out of his stride and the dreaming from his face.

A few moments later when the girl left also, Pitt was waiting for her. She did not look for a cab, but walked along the pavement carrying the hatbox and the parasol, holding them close to her, also. Her step too was quick and light, almost as if she would have skipped, had it not been absurd and likely to draw attention to herself.

She crossed the road a hundred yards further along, passing the organ grinder and giving him a coin. He spoke to her cheerfully, touching his hat as if perhaps he knew her, and
redoubled his efforts at the music. She turned off at St. Albans Street and a short way along, at number 16, stopped, fished from her reticule a latchkey, and went in.

Pitt stood on the pavement staring. It was a very ordinary house, small, narrow fronted, without a garden, but at least on the outside, eminently respectable, even if there was no servant to answer the door. It was the sort of house lived in by a petty clerk, a small trader or a teller in a bank, or perhaps the mistress of a man of means just sufficient to keep two establishments.

Then why did Carswell meet her in a coffeehouse, where they could do no more than talk and perhaps hold hands?

The obvious answer was that she did not live alone. Either she was married, although there had been no ring on her hand, or she shared her home with a parent or a brother or sister.

He turned away and retraced his steps to Kennington Road. It was not difficult to invent some trivial story, and learn from the shopkeeper on the corner that since poor Mrs. Hilliard became an invalid, number 16 was occupied by Miss Theophania Hilliard and her brother, Mr. James, and a very nice couple they were, always polite and paid all their bills on time. Never any trouble to anyone.

Pitt thanked him and left with an intense feeling of depression. He also walked down towards the bridge where he could find a cab which would take him home. But even when one passed him he felt an urge to continue on foot; he wanted to use the energy, as if the anger and disappointment inside him could be burned away in physical effort. There was everything here for tragedy: a middle-aged man of public respectability, a wife and daughters at home, who chose to buy expensive and highly feminine gifts and cross the river alone to give them to a young and pretty girl for whom he very obviously had intense feelings. In many ways it would have been less serious had it simply been a visit to a brothel; such things were more readily understood, and hardly worth blackmailing anyone over, certainly not worth committing murder to hide.

But Theophania Hilliard was not a casual appetite, and the hat and parasol did not seem to be bribes for favors past or future, rather gifts for someone towards whom he felt the most profound emotions. But had they been those of a nature
he could acknowledge, why had he come furtively, going to such lengths to avoid being seen by anyone he knew? He had risked being killed, in careering across the road as he had, just to avoid being seen by an acquaintance. And why a coffee shop on the Kennington Road, if it were acceptable to her brother? Presumably he also objected to the liaison, or else he was entirely ignorant of it.

How much was this relationship costing Carswell? Did he bring her gifts often, or was this an isolated time? She had not seemed particularly surprised, at least looking back on it Pitt thought not. Had he brought such things for Charlotte she would have shown more amazement, more—he visualized her face if he were able to spend money on such pretty luxuries. She would have cried out, tried them on immediately, paraded up and down in them and twirled around for him to admire, her eyes would have danced, her voice would have been high, lifted with excitement. He wished with a sharp, almost hurting intensity that he could do such a thing for her, something extravagant and totally unnecessary, just beautiful, feminine, endlessly flattering. There must be a way he could save enough, something he could do without, or put off paying for.

It was so painfully easy to understand Addison Carswell—especially the first time, and this was assuredly not the first. Theophania Hilliard was accustomed to receiving pretty things from him—but once begun how could he stop, whatever it cost?

Was that it? Was he borrowing to finance his desire to please her? He would not readily admit it.

Or was it far uglier than that? Had Weems been blackmailing him too? And had he been driven beyond the point of reluctant compliance and into violent escape from a pressure he could no longer bear? Was it Carswell’s innate sense of justice which had loaded some gun with gold coins and shot away half Weems’s head?

Had he been with Theophania Hilliard that night which he refused to account for—or had he been in Clerkenwell, in Cyrus Street?

The next morning Pitt went to the police court early, intending to speak to Carswell at the first break from duty. It
was a confrontation he was dreading, but it was unavoidable. The man must be given the opportunity to reconsider his silence and explain where he was the night Weems was murdered, and his relationship with Theophania Hilliard. It was just conceivable there was an innocent answer to it—not innocent of all culpability, but innocent of murder.

The first case to be heard was a clerk who had embezzled a few shillings from his employers. He might, as the defense claimed, simply have been careless with figures, and have miscalculated the funds. It was just possible, although Pitt thought, looking at the man’s pale intelligent face, he was more probably struggling to pay a bill and had taken his first step into crime. Or as the prosecutor maintained, he might have been testing the water preparing for a career of theft. Carswell inclined towards the last view, and sentenced him to a short term of imprisonment. Having found him guilty there was little alternative open to him and Pitt thought it was probably an accurate judgment, and not overharsh.

The second case came to him as a surprise. The accused’s name was familiar even before his portly figure and angry face appeared in the dock. Horatio Osmar. Beside him, buxom, fair hair gleaming, but very scrubbed and demure, was Miss Beulah Giles, also accused.

The clerk of the court read out the charges, to wit that they had both been behaving in an unseemly manner likely to offend against public decency, and the time and place of the offense added to make the issue perfectly plain. Somehow such details made it sound even more down-to-earth, and indescribably small and grubby.

Horatio Osmar stood very stiff, balancing on the balls of his feet. His coat was immaculate, if a trifle lopsided at one shoulder, as if he had struggled with his escort and snatched himself away from a restraining grip. His face was overpink, his shapeless nose shone and his whiskers bristled, his eyes glared at everyone who chanced to catch his glance.

Miss Giles stood motionless with eyes downcast, and her dress, on this very different occasion from the one when Pitt had first seen her, was buttoned right up to her throat, and of a sober shade of blue-gray, with a touch of teal in it so at moments one was not sure whether it was entirely blue, or
perhaps green. It could not have been gentler or more designed to make one think well of her.

The lawyer stood respectfully to plead for them, in both cases, not guilty.

Pitt leaned forward, startled even more. The man was a Queen’s Counsel, one of that highly select group of lawyers who had taken silk and now dealt only in the most prestigious cases. What on earth was a Q.C. doing in a magistrate’s court arguing a case of indecent behavior in a public park? It was natural Osmar should want to be found not guilty, but the facts were overwhelmingly against him, and to have such eminent counsel would only draw the press’s attention to an incident which might otherwise have gone unreported.

The prosecution began by calling a very self-conscious P.C. Crombie, who took the witness stand and swore to his name and occupation, and that together with P.C. Allardyce he had been on duty in the park at the relevant time and place.

“And what did you see, Constable Crombie?” the prosecution asked, raising bushy eyebrows in inquiry.

P.C. Crombie stood to attention.

“I saw the accused sitting on the bench together with their arms ’round each other, sir.”

“And what were they doing, Constable?”

Osmar snorted so fiercely it was audible in the body of the court.

P.C. Crombie swallowed. “ ’Ard to say exact, sir. They looked like they was struggling over something, not fighting, like, just rocking back and forth—” He stopped, the color rising up his face with embarrassment.

“And what did you do, Constable?” the prosecution persisted, his face lugubrious as if his interest were barely engaged.

“P.C. Allardyce and me went up to them, sir,” Crombie answered. “And as we got close the gentleman rose to ’is feet and started to rearrange ’is clothes—sir—”

Again Osmar grunted loudly and Carswell glared at him. There was a murmur around the room among the few spectators.

“Rearrange?” the prosecutor asked. “You must be more specific, Constable.”

P.C. Crombie’s face was scarlet. He looked straight ahead of him at some point in the woodwork on the far wall.

“ ’Is trousers was undone, sir, and ’is shirt was ’anging out at the front. ’E tucked it in and did up ’is buttons, sir.”

“And the young lady, Constable?” The prosecutor was merciless, his beautifully modulated voice cutting the silence like a silver knife.

P.C. Crombie closed his eyes.

“She was doin’ up ’er blouse, sir, at the—” He raised his hands and held them roughly where his bosom would have been, had he one. He was a young man, and not married.

“Are you saying she was in a state of indecency, Constable?”

The Q.C. rose to his feet and there was a sharp rustle of interest around the room. Osmar smiled.

“My lord, the prosecution is leading the witness,” the Q.C. said with injured gentility. “He did not say Miss Giles was indecently dressed, merely that she was fastening her blouse.”