The Angel Court Affair (Thomas Pitt 30) (12 page)

Pitt drew in breath to argue that Cromwell had been one man, and nothing like others. Then before he could speak, he realised that he had no idea how many other people might care as much. They may not even know it themselves, until the certainties beneath them shifted violently, like the ground in an earthquake, opening up fissures in the earth’s crust and bringing mountains down. No one could count the millions slaughtered in religious wars. To imagine it could happen only in the past was naïve to the point of irresponsibility.

The Reformation, with all its dreams, its slaughter and martyrdoms, was born in the minds of individual people, visionaries convinced they were acting for the greater good. Was Sofia one of those? The idea that one could know someone of that passionate vision and belief was strange. They belonged in history, not reality.

Charlotte interrupted his thoughts.

‘Do you think Sofia is still alive?’ There was urgency in her face. She cared about his answer.

‘I have no idea,’ he admitted. ‘I think her own people may have hidden her in order to keep her safe. But if she doesn’t reappear soon, with an excellent explanation, then she will have destroyed her own reputation.’

‘Could that be the purpose?’ Charlotte asked quietly. ‘To let someone more moderate take over? Like Melville Smith? He’s turning the message much more into being not a break from tradition but merely an addition to it.’

‘That’s what Frank Laurence is writing.’

‘Is he supporting Smith?’ There was a look of distaste in her face.

‘I doubt it,’ he said seriously. ‘He’s probably just commenting in a way most likely to stir up more controversy.’

‘He’s right.’ She did not hesitate. ‘There’s not much point in crusading to agree. Besides, Smith hasn’t the passion for it, the blazing light that stops you in your tracks and makes you suddenly see a new way. It’s steep, but you can climb it if you want to enough.’

‘Do you?’

She laughed suddenly, breaking the tension. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’ Then she was desperately serious again. ‘But I’m happy. I have all I love and want. All I need is to keep it . . . but that’s a big thing, perhaps the biggest. I’d like to have the chance to choose. And I don’t want Melville Smith, or anyone else, to deny it to me.’

The next day was the fourth since Sofia Delacruz had disappeared, and there was new speculation in the newspapers that she was either dead, or had intentionally run off to escape the responsibility of the position she had chosen as leader of a cult in which she had lost faith. Perhaps she had even eloped with some lover no one knew about.

Neither Pitt nor Brundage commented on the articles, but both were aware that there could be truth in them. Instead they studied new threatening letters they had been given by those still at Angel Court. Some were warnings to Sofia not to bring her foreign heresies across the Channel into a Christian and Protestant country. One even referred to Queen Mary’s marriage to the Catholic King of Spain, and then to the Spanish Armada and the attempt to conquer England in the time of Queen Elizabeth. Memories were long, and fears easily woken.

The current war between Spain and America was brought unpleasantly back to Pitt’s mind, and the possibility of it spreading.

‘She’s not preaching Roman Catholicism,’ Brundage said in disgust. ‘I should think the Catholics dislike her even more than we do.’

‘Did you see this one?’ Pitt passed across the letter in his hand, watching Brundage’s face as he read it.

Brundage went through it twice, then turned it over and looked at it carefully. ‘It’s different,’ he said at last. ‘There’s something wrong with it, but I don’t know what. It seems the same as some of the others, but not quite.’

‘Read it again,’ Pitt requested. He did not want to prompt Brundage in case he put the idea into his mind, and then his answer would have no value.

Brundage obeyed, and then looked up again, frowning. ‘All the phrases are right, falling exactly in line with others, but that’s it . . . they’re all picked from other letters.’

‘Exactly,’ Pitt agreed. ‘Which means it was written by someone who had access to all the others.’

‘One of her followers at Angel Court.’ Brundage spoke the obvious conclusion. ‘Why? To frighten her into taking more care? Or to make it easier to kidnap her, perhaps for her own safety?’

‘Then why the devil didn’t they tell us?’ Pitt said angrily.

Brundage stared at him. ‘Because if it’s against her will, it is still a crime. And maybe they don’t trust us anyway.’

Pitt studied the letter again. ‘Where can she be? These people were all in Spain a week ago. Barton Hall? He would find it easy enough to provide a place to hide his cousin, or he might already have one.’

‘We looked into that before,’ Brundage reminded him. ‘When we thought it could be him, but out of enmity rather than to protect her.’

‘Look again, harder,’ Pitt insisted. ‘See if there’s some old family place, under a different name. What was her name, before she married Delacruz?’

Brundage stood up. ‘I’ll have it within half an hour, sir.’

It was barely a few minutes more than that when he returned and handed an address to Pitt.

‘Do you want to go alone, sir? I don’t think we should warn anyone.’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ Pitt replied. He put away the reports he was reading and stood up. He walked over towards the door and took his coat from the stand. ‘The two of us should be sufficient.’

Brundage followed eagerly, matching his pace to Pitt’s down the hall and out into the windy street. Neither of them even noticed the first spots of rain. They took a hansom to the address Brundage had provided, and sat silently for the short distance. It was mid-morning and the traffic was light.

Pitt’s mind raced over what he would say to Sofia if she were there. What excuse would she give for not having told Special Branch that she was safe? Was she there of her own will, or was she kept prisoner, unable to communicate? Did she understand the reason, the fear and the loyalty that had driven Smith to do such a thing? Pitt still thought that Ramon might not have been involved, nor Henrietta either. If the letter had been written by Melville Smith, as he now believed it had, was it simply to convince Sofia, or to convince the others as well?

He refused to believe yet that Sofia herself had had a willing part in her disappearance. Or if she had, then there was a reason dark enough that she had felt there to be no choice.

They pulled up at the kerbside and alighted at number 17 Inkerman Road. Pitt paid the driver but told him to wait. It was a quiet residential area and some distance from any main thoroughfare. He followed Brundage across the pavement and up the short footpath to the front door. There were a few pink and blue lupins blooming in the garden, and pink tulips under the front window. The garden looked cheerful, and also well-tended. There were no weeds at all and the earth was damp and rich.

Brundage glanced at Pitt, then lifted the polished brass knocker and let it fall.

There was no answer, and even after waiting, no sound of movement from inside. None of the lace curtains across the windows twitched.

Brundage tried again.

Still no answer.

Pitt did not insult Brundage by asking if this was the right house. Instead he gestured for them to walk around the end of the short block and go to the back. If they needed to break in, rear windows were less observed. Pitt had already taken the decision not to ask the neighbours. According to Brundage’s check with the local police, the house was unoccupied.

They opened the back gate into the garden. Brundage walked rapidly up the narrow path past the woodshed, across the paved yard to the back doorstep and the scullery. He peered in the window, then stepped back, missed his footing and stiffened. When he turned towards Pitt, his face was ashen.

Pitt pushed forward past him and stared in through the glass, his heart beating so hard in his chest he struggled for breath. Then he saw what Brundage had seen. There was a woman lying on the bare wooden floor, skirts crumpled around her, flies crawling across her face and a massive dark stain covering the lower part of her body.

Pitt felt the sweat break out on his skin and a wave of nausea swept over him. It took all his strength not to stagger back as Brundage had, and he succeeded only because he had been forewarned. Slowly he swivelled round, keeping his balance.

‘We have to go in. I expect the back door lock will hold. The window over there looks comfortably large enough to climb in through, with a bit of effort.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Brundage straightened up, pulling his shoulders back. His face was almost grey. He walked over towards the shed with an effort not to stumble. He kicked the door open and came out a moment later with a long-handled garden spade. Within moments he had broken the pantry window and cleared away all the glass from the frame so they could climb in without the loose shards stabbing them.

Even before Pitt opened the pantry door into the kitchen the smell caught in his throat, making him gag. The buzzing of flies was louder. He took a deep breath and pulled the door open.

The body on the floor was that of a young woman. A glance at her face was enough to know she had been dead for at least twenty-four hours, and the heavy odour suggested at least that long. Her eyes were wide and glazed, her whole body slack. It was not Sofia Delacruz.

Even in his horror and pity, Pitt was drenched with relief. He did not know her. Then he looked further down and realised that the dark mass around the lower part of her body was not an apron crumpled up, but her own intestines, where her belly had been torn open. Then almost with relief he saw the knife buried deep in her chest, and knew that the mutilation could have been done after death.

‘Please God . . .’ he murmured, keeping himself from gagging with difficulty.

‘Cleo Robles,’ Brundage said hoarsely. ‘She was twenty-three.’ His voice choked with anger and grief. ‘She thought she was going to save the world, or at least a good part of it. She believed in everything . . . in God.’ He stopped abruptly and swallowed hard, and then he barged out of the room into the rest of the house.

Pitt followed him, knowing he had to. Elfrida and Sofia were probably lying just like this, somewhere else close by. He needed to be angry too. Grief was no use now; revulsion and fear were even worse, more disabling. Pity could come later. Now they must do their jobs.

Elfrida Fonsecca was in the hall at the bottom of the stairs, curled over against the bloody mess that had been her internal organs. She too had been stabbed to the heart first or at least within moments of the evisceration. She was older than Cleo, perhaps in her forties. There were a few grey threads in the hair unravelled around her face, and her skin was touched with lines at the eyes and mouth.

‘Who the hell would do this?’ Brundage asked blankly, his voice trembling. He had been in the army before joining Special Branch; he was acquainted with violence, but not this obscenity against women. ‘This can’t be religious . . . can it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Pitt admitted. He was trembling himself, his hands slipping on the banister, his legs weak. He pushed past Brundage and went on up to the top landing. It was empty, but a potted plant in a stand had been knocked over and there was soil scattered over the carpet.

His hands stuck on the doorknob, his throat tight, while he opened the first bedroom door. The room had been lived in recently. There were hairbrushes on the dressing table and a nightgown laid out neatly on the bed, the sheets smooth, blankets tucked in.

He walked around slowly, then kneeled down and looked under the bed. There was nothing there but a few pieces of fluff, as if no one had swept for a day or two.

He stood up again awkwardly and looked in the wardrobe and the drawers of the chest. There was a little underwear, clearly a woman’s. Whoever it belonged to had brought at least sufficient to stay for several days. She had not been snatched without warning.

The other bedroom had two beds in it; both had been occupied, but left neatly. Pitt searched from attic to cellar, but there was no sign of Sofia Delacruz.

PITT SENT Brundage to find the nearest telephone and inform the local police. He had considered for a few moments the possibility of not telling them, but eventually they would have to know. Special Branch did not deal with crimes other than those that endangered the state. Police co-operation was critical.

He also told Brundage to send for more of their own men, most specifically Stoker, usually Pitt’s right-hand man. He had not been involved in this so far because it had seemed a trivial case and he had other urgent and important issues to deal with.

These murders were going to make headlines. There was no way to avoid it. And the more he attempted to, the worse it would look. The neighbours would already be wondering what was going on. Any minute now someone would come to look. The first journalists would not be far behind them. He shuddered at the thought of what Frank Laurence would write, not to mention the hordes who would follow after him.

When Brundage was gone he steeled himself to go back and study the bodies. The local police surgeon would be among the first to arrive. Pitt knew he had maybe thirty or forty minutes to learn what he could while the scene was undisturbed.

He would look at Elfrida first. He might deduce more from her. Cleo had obviously been working in the kitchen, but there was no food in preparation, which suggested that she had not been killed shortly before a meal, and definitely not during one or immediately after. The surgeon would give a pretty close approximation of the time of death.

Reluctantly he went back to the hallway and the foot of the stairs. Gazing at the wreck of Elfrida’s body he felt a momentary wave of fury at the flies and lashed out at them, sending them buzzing crazily. Then within seconds they were back again and he felt ridiculous.

When he had learned all he could by studying her, he would find the linen cupboard and put a sheet over her. It was a decency for his own sake. It made no difference to anything else now, certainly not to her.