The Angel Court Affair (Thomas Pitt 30) (17 page)

A flicker crossed Smith’s face, hard to read, but he was not impervious to flattery. ‘Of course,’ he agreed.

‘She confided in you?’ Pitt asked, implying that he knew the answer already. ‘Or Ramon?’

‘No,’ Smith answered quickly. ‘Ramon is . . . very loyal, a good man, but his admiration of her is intense, greater than his judgement. I regret saying this, but this is a time for honesty. His need to believe her doctrine, for his own intensely personal reasons, did not leave him room for doubt, or . . . or acknowledgement of the reality of her strengths and . . . weaknesses. She knew that, and she would not have burdened him either with her own fallibility, or with the very real fear that something might happen to her.’

‘But you knew.’ Pitt made it a statement, investing his voice with a touch of respect.

‘I’m afraid so,’ Smith agreed.

Pitt nodded gravely. ‘It must have been very distressing for you?’

‘Yes . . . I wish . . .’ Smith floundered for words, studying Pitt’s expression, trying to ascertain how much he knew, or guessed.

‘I’m sure you did all you could,’ Pitt said gently. ‘Even in the short time I knew her I could see that she was a difficult woman to persuade . . . even in her own interests.’

‘Very . . .’ Smith agreed quickly. ‘I . . .’ Again he stopped.

‘They were brutal killings.’ Pitt kept his voice level, his eyes on Melville Smith’s face. He saw the fear, naked for an instant before the mask was replaced. It was a consuming terror, but was it imagination or knowledge? There was guilt in it. But anyone would feel to blame, simply because they had not prevented the whole disaster. The mutilated bodies of the two women were lying in the police morgue, and Smith was sitting here in his office, alive and well, preparing speeches so he could take over Sofia’s position as leader of a brave and persecuted people. But was that accident or design?

He looked at Smith, now ashen pale, sweat beading on his brow. Had this happened to anyone Pitt knew well, he would have felt the same. In fact there was a guilt growing inside him, because he had been in charge of Sofia’s safety, and he had failed. He had not foreseen anything like this horror. Whether he could have prevented it or not did not change the emotion.

What had Smith known before it happened?

‘Had she really no idea?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘She did not come here to preach, Mr Smith,’ Pitt elaborated. ‘She came to see Barton Hall about something so secret she could not tell any of the others, and so urgent that it could not wait. Everyone agrees that she gave help, sanctuary perhaps, to many people in trouble. But shortly before you all came here there was someone in a different kind of trouble. Far bigger than some sin of faith or domestic betrayal. You may hate those whose preaching you abhor, but you do not follow them into another country and hunt them down in the quiet streets, break into their houses and tear their entrails out on to the floor! This is something far greater. Perhaps the lives of thousands may be affected.’

Smith gasped and for a moment Pitt thought he was going to vomit.

‘I have no idea!’ Smith protested, his voice strangled in his throat. ‘I told you before, she came to see Barton Hall, and nothing I said could dissuade her. Of course it was more than to make peace with him over an old quarrel. It was something so urgent she could not allow it to wait even another week! But she would not tell me. I swear I did all I could to learn so I could help, but you cannot argue with her!’

‘I know that,’ Pitt agreed. ‘I tried and failed too. You would have to take matters into your own hands.’ He watched Smith as the colour flooded back into his face, his eyes evaded Pitt’s gaze, then came back again.

‘I did,’ Smith said very quietly, his face scarlet. ‘And perhaps what happened was my fault. I don’t know who did it, or why! Dear God, all I meant was to keep her safe!’

‘So you sent her to the house in Inkerman Road,’ Pitt concluded. ‘Who else knew?’

‘No one!’ Smith said fiercely. ‘Unless she told them! I don’t know if she was ever afraid. She thinks she’s invincible, God help her! She’s . . .’

‘A fanatic?’ Pitt suggested.

‘Yes! She . . . she doesn’t look at reality. It makes her a great preacher, but an impossible woman to work with. She doesn’t listen to anything she doesn’t want to hear.’

The man was deeply afraid, but Pitt needed to find out exactly what he feared, and why. ‘What did you tell her?’ he asked.

‘That the danger might be real,’ Smith answered so quickly that Pitt was certain it was in some way less than the truth. It was a prepared answer.

‘How did you know of the house in Inkerman Road?’ Pitt asked innocently.

Smith flushed. ‘It was offered by a . . . a friend.’

‘Offered for what purpose?’ Pitt persisted.

‘As extra accommodation, if we required it,’ Smith said, looking so unwaveringly at Pitt that he knew it was a lie.

‘So if Señora Delacruz were not here at Angel Court, then this friend might assume that she would be at Inkerman Road.’ It was conclusion, not a question.

Colour drained from Smith’s cheeks, leaving him grey. ‘He is above reproach,’ he said firmly. ‘A good and decent man. He must be as appalled as we are.’ His normally beautiful voice was hoarse. ‘If I thought it was possible, let alone likely that he had had any hand in this whatsoever, I would have told you immediately.’

‘Barton Hall,’ Pitt said bitterly. ‘A man who profoundly disagrees with her teachings, but I imagine would find your amendments less . . . extreme, dismissing as they do the whole notion of anarchy against the order of God.’

Smith sat paralysed, as if staring at a snake. He struggled for the right words of denial, indignation, anything at all, and failed.

‘I don’t care about your religious ambitions, Mr Smith,’ Pitt said very quietly. ‘I do care very much what you have done to realise them. Whatever you believe, if it professes to be any form of Christianity, it does not justify the terror and the pain of those women . . .’

‘I didn’t have anything to do with their deaths!’ Smith cried out desperately, lurching forward in his chair. ‘All I wanted was . . .’ he stopped, sweat running down his face, ‘. . . to keep her safe and silent for a while. She has no idea what trouble she is causing, completely unnecessarily. Teach slowly! Not . . . everything at once. People will reject it because the change is too big! She has no patience, no . . . no understanding of people’s fears—’

‘I know,’ Pitt cut across him. ‘That doesn’t matter now. If Barton Hall knew where she was, then either he is responsible, or he has told someone else who is. Do you know who?’

‘No . . .’

Pitt stood up. ‘It would be very much in your interest, Mr Smith, to be honest with me. It is more than your own credibility that is at stake. If you want to emerge from this a free man, never mind one with any honour left, then you will do everything you can to see that Sofia Delacruz returns to Angel Court alive and well. Except, of course, if she is already dead, and you had part in it. Then you might be better to get in my way by any means you can.’

Smith’s horror was so palpable it was unnecessary for him to make any protest at all. He sat in the chair as though his legs would not support him, and perhaps they would not.

Pitt walked out quietly and closed the door behind him.

He spoke briefly with Ramon, assuring him that there was no further bad news and every reason still to hope. He felt like a hypocrite, but the man’s loyalty was so earnest there seemed no purpose in causing him pain not yet inevitable.

Pitt was sitting in his office with Stoker across the desk from him. It was littered with reports from the local police and from the few men Pitt could spare for the case, plus a few messages from Dalton Teague.

‘You going to face him, sir?’ Stoker asked when Pitt told him of his visit to Angel Court, and Smith’s admission of his arrangement with Barton Hall to use the house in Inkerman Road. ‘There’s got to be something pretty black that we don’t know about. Hall’s a pompous sort of man, a bit cardboard, but he wouldn’t rip a couple of women apart simply because they disagree with him religiously. And it wasn’t even Sofia . . .’ He bit his lip and winced. ‘At least we don’t know that she’s dead, too. Even if murder wasn’t morally unthinkable to him, the sheer risk of it is terrifying.’ He pulled his face into an expression of bleak acceptance. He had been in Special Branch far longer than Pitt, although he was several years younger. His previous experience had been in the navy rather than the police.

‘Then who? And what the devil did she want to see him about?’ Pitt said it as much to himself as to Stoker.

This time Stoker had no ready answer. He turned to the papers on the desk.

‘The police have come up with nothing,’ he said unhappily. ‘They spoke to all the other households in the area, cab drivers, delivery boys, tradesmen. Nobody saw anything unusual. No strangers reported. Those that even noticed the women said they were quiet and polite.’ He shook his head. ‘Of course the speculation is running wild, most of it incredibly vulgar, right from prostitution to devil worship.’

Pitt did not bother to reply.

‘You going to see Hall?’ Stoker asked.

Pitt was not yet ready with his answer. ‘Has Dalton Teague come up with anything useful?’ he said instead.

Stoker’s bony face was unreadable. Emotions flashed over it and were gone too rapidly to register. ‘No, sir,’ he said, then picked up the police reports and went to the door.

‘Stoker!’ Pitt said abruptly.

Stoker froze, and then turned around to face the desk. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘Have Teague’s men done anything at all?’ Pitt demanded.

‘Oh, yes, sir. They’re everywhere already, like fleas on a hairy dog.’

‘Your choice of comparison is highly suggestive,’ Pitt said drily. ‘They getting in your way?’

Stoker smiled, showing his teeth. ‘No, sir. Wouldn’t allow that. Just ask a lot of questions about Special Branch. I respect people wanting to know who we are and what we do. Too often they don’t understand and don’t want to. They see us as nuisances, worse than the police, because we’re not investigating crimes they can see. But I haven’t got time to be answering them, and frankly I don’t think they should know everything about the way we work, even if they’re trying to be helpful.’

‘What sort of things are they asking?’ Pitt said curiously, a small nail of anxiety digging at him. Teague was a man of fame, reputation and great wealth. But it was Teague’s sporting achievements that made him admired. He typified everything that an English gentleman was believed to be: generous with his wealth, a brave and effortless winner on the sports field, discreet in his private life. In Dalton Teague’s case, he was also tall, handsome and casually elegant.

‘Detail,’ Stoker replied, watching Pitt’s face. ‘All supposed to be good manners, I suppose. Make us feel as if they care about what we do.’ He hated to be patronised, and it showed in every angle of his body. He could take orders, or even criticism; he could not abide condescension.

‘Awkward,’ Pitt judged. ‘Want to be helpful and don’t know how to.’

Stoker gave him a sour look and went out of the door.

Pitt had a brief, late lunch of bread, cheese and pickle away from his office, and he was walking towards the main thoroughfare to catch a hansom to speak with Barton Hall when he was aware of someone falling into step beside him. It was Frank Laurence, looking well-dressed and politely interested. His shirt was immaculate, his suit remarkably well tailored. He was actually far tidier than Pitt. For a start, he had nothing in his pockets to drag them out of shape, nor was he overdue a haircut, as Pitt seemed to be most of the time.

‘I have nothing additional to say,’ Pitt told him without preamble.

‘Of course not,’ Laurence agreed. ‘You don’t know anything, and if you did, you would not tell me.’

Pitt was stung, as he knew Laurence meant him to be, but he would not rise to take the bait. He smiled. ‘You are quite right, I would not.’

‘Are you finding Mr Teague helpful?’ Laurence was undaunted. ‘I know he has vast resources. His family owns half of Lincolnshire.’

‘How is that helpful?’ Pitt asked curiously.

‘Oh, it isn’t,’ Laurence said with a laugh. ‘But you have to be enormously wealthy to own half of anything. It gives one an air of assurance, as you will have noticed. He is used to people considering it a privilege to oblige him. He is definitely a good man to have on your side.’

‘Is that a warning that he is a bad one to have against you?’ Pitt asked, keeping his voice level and affable, as if they were discussing the weather.

Laurence laughed again. ‘My dear Commander, if you need me to tell you that then you are not the man for the job you have.’

Pitt did not answer.

‘Did Mr Teague tell you that he has known Barton Hall most of his life?’ Laurence managed to look both innocent and amused. ‘Or did he omit that piece of information?’

Pitt froze, and he knew instantly that Laurence was waiting for just such a reaction from him, and he was angry with himself for giving it to him.

‘You did not know,’ Laurence observed. ‘Since schooldays, to be exact. Teague did not mention it. My dear fellow, it is written across your face.’

‘Your investigations found this?’ Pitt asked him.

‘Oh, no, not at all. I happen to have been at the same school myself, a few years later, of course, but things don’t change a great deal. Same rules, you know? Same kind of people who break them. We all have our heroes.’

‘And Teague was one of yours?’ Pitt asked. For some reason it surprised him.

For an instant there was a curious kind of anger in Laurence’s face, all the humour vanished.

‘Oh, hardly,’ he replied. ‘I was several years behind him. But no one ever forgot the way he played on the cricket field.’ He gave a slight shrug. ‘I hated cricket. Not a team player!’ He smiled. ‘Rather good at chess and fencing, though.’

Pitt could imagine him at both very easily. The thrust and parry, move and counter-move would appeal to him, a honing of natural skills. Were he anything other than a journalist Pitt would have liked him.