Seven Dials (5 page)

“At three in the morning?” Pitt said with disbelief. He did not add reasons for the absurdity of that.

For the first time Ryerson showed some trace of anger. “I have no idea, Mr. Pitt! I agree it is ludicrous-but he was unarguably there! And since he is dead, and no one we know spoke to him, I cannot think of any way to learn what he hoped to achieve.”

Pitt had a sudden awareness of the power of the man, the inner intellectual strength and the will which had taken him to the peak of his profession and kept him there for nearly two decades. His vulnerability with regard to Ayesha Zakhari, and the fact that he was involved, in whatever way, with a murder and therefore in personal danger, had made him temporarily forget it. When Pitt spoke again it was with a new respect, even though it was unintentional. “What did you do then, sir?”

Ryerson colored. “I said that we must move the body. That was when I knew that it was her gun.”

“It was your idea to move Mr. Lovat’s body?”

Ryerson’s face set a fraction harder, altering the planes of his cheek and jaw. “Yes, it was.”

Pitt wondered if he was trying to protect the woman, but he had no doubt whatever that if it was a lie, it was one Ryerson was not going to retract. He had committed himself, and it was not in his nature to go back, whether it was pride or honor that held him, or simply the truth.

“I see. Did you fetch the wheelbarrow or did she?”

Ryerson hesitated. “She did. She knew where it was.”

“And she brought it back to where the body was?”

“Yes, and the gun. I helped her lift him in. He was heavy, and extremely awkward. His body was limp. He kept sliding out of our grasp.”

“Did you take the head or the feet?” Pitt already knew the answer, but he was interested to see if Ryerson would tell the exact truth.

“The head, of course,” Ryerson said a trifle tartly. “It was heavier, and the wounds were in his chest, so that was where he bled. Surely you know that?”

Pitt was annoyed to find himself embarrassed, and wished he had not asked the question. “You put him in the barrow, then what did you intend to do with him?” he continued.

“Take him to Hyde Park,” Ryerson answered. “It’s less than a hundred yards away.”

“In the barrow?” Pitt said in surprise.

Temper flashed across Ryerson’s face. “No, of course not! We could hardly wheel a corpse around the streets in a garden barrow, even at three in the morning! I had gone to harness up the gig and Ayesha was going to bring him to the mews. That was when the police arrived. As soon as I heard the voices I came back. Lovat’s blood didn’t show on my dark suit; the constable assumed I had only just come. Ayesha immediately confirmed him in that assumption, to protect me. I was about to argue, then I saw the sense in remaining free to do whatever I could to help her.”

Again, Pitt was surprised. From any other man he would have doubted that, but from Ryerson he accepted it. He had not once attempted to cover over either his presence or his involvement, and he had to know that attempting to move a body from the scene of a crime was itself an offense.

“And what are you doing to help her?” Pitt asked unblinkingly.

Suddenly desperation filled Ryerson’s eyes and terror flooded up inside him for a moment beyond control. “Trying to think what the devil really happened!” he said hoarsely. “Who did kill him, and why? Why at Eden Lodge, and why in the middle of the night?” He spread his hands slightly, strong but finely sculpted for so large a man. “What was he doing there at all? Did someone follow him? Did someone meet him there? For what? That makes no sense either. You don’t arrange a quarrel in someone else’s back garden in the middle of the night!” He was staring at Pitt, willing him to believe. “Ayesha wouldn’t have opened the door to him. Was he planning to break in? Or create a scene and waken the neighbors?” His face was now ashen pale. “I know she would not have killed him, but for the life of me I can’t imagine any credible answer as to what did happen.” He did not even pretend to mask his feelings.

Narraway had told Pitt to keep Ryerson out of it if it were humanly possible. Given Ryerson’s emotions, perhaps the only way to do that would be to learn the truth, in the hope that it proved Ayesha Zakhari less guilty than she looked now.

“I’ll try to find the answers,” Pitt said aloud. “But it will require a certain cooperation from you, sir.”

“As far as I am able,” Ryerson replied. He was not so desperate he would play into anyone’s hands with an open promise. Pitt found that faintly comforting. At least the man had some balance and judgment left. “But I will not see her blamed for my acts, nor will I swear falsely to protect my reputation. It would serve me ill anyway, and Mr. Gladstone knows it. A man who would lie to serve his own ends will eventually lie for anything.”

“Yes, sir,” Pitt agreed. “I had no intention of asking you to lie, rather that you tell me all the truth you know, and keep silent as to your being at Eden Lodge unless it is inescapable that you answer the police. But I think they will refrain from asking you for as long as they can.”

Ryerson’s smile was bittersweet. “I imagine they will,” he agreed. “What will Victor Narraway ask you to do, Mr. Pitt?” There was a change in his expression so minute Pitt could not have described it, but he knew without question it reflected a darkness inside.

“Find the truth,” he answered with a slight grimace, knowing both that he had set himself a huge task, perhaps an impossible one, and that even if he succeeded the truth he found would very probably be one he would hate-and might not be able to conceal without even worse pain.

Ryerson did not answer him, but rose to his feet to show him to the front door himself, ignoring the services of the waiting footman.

IT TOOK PITT the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon to find the police surgeon and obtain his attention. He was a large man with heavy shoulders and quivering chins that settled into his neck without noticeable distinction. He had an apron tied around his vast girth, and his hands were scrubbed pink, presumably to get rid of the evidence of his day’s work, if not the smell of carbolic and vinegar. He greeted Pitt with indignant good humor.

“Thought I’d got rid of you when you left Bow Street,” he observed in a remarkably attractive voice. It was the only physically pleasing quality about him, apart from his hair, which was thick and curling and so clean as to shine in the gaslight from the lamps above him as they stood in his office. His eyebrows rose. “What do you want now? I don’t know any bombers or anarchists. My ignorance of such things is precious to me, and I intend to keep it until I die peacefully of old age, sitting in the sun on some park bench. I can’t help you-but I suppose I can try, if you insist.”

“Lieutenant Edwin Lovat,” Pitt replied. He liked McDade and he had nothing pleasanter or more useful to do than extract information from him a piece at a time.

“Dead,” McDade said simply. “Shot through the chest-heart, actually. Small handgun, close range. Very neat.”

“Great skill required?” Pitt asked.

“Only for a blind man with a moving target!” McDade looked at Pitt sideways. “Haven’t seen the body, have you.” That was a statement, not a question.

“Not yet,” Pitt agreed. “Should I?”

McDade shrugged his massive shoulders, setting his chins quivering. “Not unless you need to know what he looked like, which is much the same as any other well-built young English soldier with a comfortable style of living, plenty of good food, and not much exercise lately. He’d have run to fat in another ten years, when the muscle went soft.” His expression became rueful. “Handsome, I should think, when he was alive. Good features, good head of hair, all his teeth, which in his early forties isn’t bad. Mind, it’s intelligence and humor that make you like a man, and it’s hard to tell that when you’ve only seen him dead.” He looked away from Pitt as he spoke those words, and there was the very faintest shred of self-consciousness in him. Was he excusing his own massive size, defending himself from critical thought even though nothing had been said?

“Exactly,” Pitt agreed. He had never considered himself handsome either. He smiled suddenly.

McDade colored. “Well, what else do you want?” he demanded, swinging around. “He was shot! Through the heart. I’ve no idea whether that was luck or skill. Killed him on the spot-it would do!”

“Thank you. I suppose there’s nothing else you can tell me?”

“Like what?” McDade’s voice rose incredulously. “That he was shot by a left-handed man with a walleye and a limp? No, I can’t! Shot by somebody a couple of yards away who could hold a gun steady and see what they were doing. Is that any help?”

“None at all. Thank you for your time. May I see him?”

McDade waved a short, fat arm indicating the general area beyond the door. “Help yourself. He’s on the third table along. But you shouldn’t have any trouble finding him. The other two are women.”

Pitt forbore from remark and went out as directed.

He looked at the body of Edwin Lovat, hoping it would give him a sense of the man’s reality. He stared at the waxen features, a little sunken now, and tried to imagine him alive, laughing and talking, filled with feeling. Without movement, sound, anything of the thoughts or passions that had made Lovat unique, his body told Pitt nothing more than McDade had already said. A slender woman could not possibly have lifted him. Had he suspected any violence he would presumably not have stood so close to whoever it was who shot him, which meant that either the murderer was known to him as a friend or he had not seen his assailant until the moment before the shot was fired. Either possibility answered the facts, and there was no way to tell which was the case. It was probably irrelevant anyway. The woman had killed him. Pitt’s only hope to save Ryerson was to find some mitigating reason why.

He spent the remainder of the afternoon learning what he could about Ryerson: his present responsibilities, which were largely to do with trade both within the empire and beyond; and the constituency he represented, which was in Manchester, the heart of the cotton-spinning industry in England. It was the second largest city in Britain, and also the home of the prime minister, Mr. Gladstone.

He was back in Keppel Street in time for dinner.

“Can you do anything to help?” Charlotte asked, looking up from her sewing as they sat together in the parlor afterwards.

“Help whom?” Pitt asked. “Ryerson?”

“Of course.” She kept on weaving the needle in and out, the light flashing on it like a streak of silver, the head of it clicking very softly against her thimble. He found it a uniquely pleasing sound; it seemed to represent everything that was gentle and domestic, and there was an infinite safety in it. He had no idea what she was mending, but it was clean cotton and the faint aroma of it drifted across the short space between them.

“Can you?” she pressed.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, feeling the weight of it sink on him as if the room were suddenly darker. “I’m not sure he’s prepared to help himself.”

She stared at him, her needle motionless in her hand, her face puzzled. “What do you mean? Are you saying he’s guilty?”

“He says he’s not,” Pitt replied. “And I’m inclined to believe him.” He pictured Ryerson’s face in his mind as he had defended Ayesha Zakhari, and heard again the emotion in Ryerson’s voice. “At least I think so,” he added. “He’s willing to admit he was there, and that he actually helped her lift Lovat’s body into the barrow, intending to take it to Hyde Park.”

“Then he is an accessory!” she said in amazement. “After the murder, even if not before.”

“Yes, I know that,” he agreed.

“And the prime minister wants you to protect him?” she asked, struggling with the idea.

He stared at her. Her expression contained too many emotions for him to be certain which was the most powerful: incredulity, anger, dismay, anxiety.

“I’m not sure,” he said honestly. “I don’t know which is the greatest ill.”

She was confused. “What do you mean? It wouldn’t bring the government down, not so soon after the election. Ryerson would have to go, that’s all. And if he helped his mistress to murder a past lover, then so he should.”

“The Manchester cotton workers are threatening to strike,” he pointed out. “That’s Ryerson’s department, his constituency. He’s possibly the only man who has a chance of settling the problem without ruining heaven knows how many people, workers and mill owners alike, and the shopkeepers, businesses and artisans of the nearby towns as well.”

“I see,” she said soberly. “What can you do? You can’t conceal his involvement, can you? Would you?” She had put her sewing down now and her attention was undivided, her eyes dark and troubled.

“I don’t suppose the question will arise,” he answered, hoping profoundly that that was true. “The Egyptian embassy knows he was there.”

Her eyebrows rose in amazement. “How do they know that? She told them?”

“Apparently not, she hasn’t had the opportunity. But it’s a most interesting question. She seemed to be willing to protect him when she was arrested. She behaved as if she was surprised to see him, and he’d only just arrived, although he says he had been there several minutes at least, and was the one who actually lifted the heavier part of the body into the barrow. Somebody certainly helped her. Lovat was far too heavy for her to have done it alone, and there was no blood on her dress.”

“You need to know a lot more about him,” she said with concern shadowing her eyes. “I mean not what everybody knows, but something personal. You need to know what to believe. Have you thought of asking Aunt Vespasia? If she doesn’t know him herself, she’ll know someone who does.” She was referring to Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, actually her sister Emily’s great-aunt by marriage, but both Charlotte and Pitt had grown to care for her deeply, and treated her as their own.

“I’ll see her as soon as I can,” Pitt agreed immediately. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Do you think it’s too late to telephone and ask her if tomorrow morning is convenient?” He was halfway to his feet already.