The Angel Court Affair (Thomas Pitt 30) (20 page)

‘Neither can I,’ Pitt agreed. ‘But he doesn’t like Teague. Maybe he doesn’t want us to know why, but if he wants me to damage Teague for him he’s wasting his time,’ Pitt said irritably. ‘I don’t particularly like Teague, but I’ve got nothing against him, and I’m not picking Laurence’s chestnuts out of the fire for him. Anything more on Barton Hall?’

‘Yes, sir. On your desk.’ This time Stoker went out and Pitt sat down and began to study the papers Stoker had left.

Pitt alighted from the hansom and paid the driver, then walked across the pavement to the entrance of the bank. It was magnificent, a flight of marble steps up to colonnades of pillars and a door fit to have graced a Renaissance palace. He went into a hushed anteroom and was met by a footman who enquired politely how he might be of assistance. Pitt told him that he had called to see Mr Barton Hall. The footman accompanied him up another flight of stairs and along a hushed passageway to a large door.

The knock was answered immediately. Barton Hall stood up from behind his magnificent desk and inclined his head very slightly. He looked perfectly in place in this austere, expensively furnished office with its leather-bound volumes on the shelves, its Chippendale chairs and Adam fireplace.

‘Good morning,’ Hall said almost expressionlessly. He was formally dressed, his hair combed back off his brow revealing where it was thinning a little. He looked tired, although it was only half-past nine in the morning.

‘Good morning, sir,’ Pitt replied.

‘I am not sure how I can be of any help,’ Hall continued. ‘If I knew anything at all of these terrible events, I would have told you already. I can only suppose you have some news of Sofia that you feel you must tell me in person. That is courteous of you, but unnecessary. No manner of breaking the news will make it any different.’

Pitt felt a momentary pity for the man. He was very clearly in some distress, but the cause of it could have been any of a number of things, including guilt, or fear that his part in the events was about to be discovered and perhaps made public.

‘I have no news, Mr Hall,’ Pitt told him. ‘Of course the regular police are doing all they can to discover who is responsible for the appalling deaths of the two women in Inkerman Road. And we are making our own investigation. But my reason for speaking with you again is to learn more about Sofia Delacruz.’

‘I have no idea what I can tell you,’ Hall said sharply, waving his hand for Pitt to sit down, and doing so himself behind the desk so it formed a considerable barrier between them. ‘She said nothing to me that gave me the slightest idea that she was in any danger. There were always the sort of petty squabbles over authority that you would expect in any organisation of highly strung people from many different backgrounds, drawn together by a single wild idea.’ He moved uncomfortably, as if he would have stood up and paced the floor were it not so impolite in front of a guest.

‘Please let us start with her contacting you to say that she was coming from Spain to see you, especially,’ Pitt replied. ‘You must have asked her why.’

Hall hesitated just long enough to betray that he was weighing his answer before giving it.

‘Most financial questions are confidential, Mr Pitt . . .’ he began.

‘She was consulting you financially?’ Pitt said with disbelief.

‘No, of course not!’ Hall snapped. ‘But the matter had to do with money. She said it was a very considerable amount involved, but refused to clarify it. I pressed her, but she insisted that we speak face to face. I could not persuade her otherwise. And as you know, I never did see her.’

‘What is “considerable”?’ Pitt asked.

‘I assumed she was not naïve enough to be speaking of a few thousands,’ Hall retorted.‘As I have already told you, I did not see her and I know no more than that.’

‘And yet you offered Melville Smith the use of your house on Inkerman Road for Señora Delacruz and two of her women to hide in. From what, Mr Hall?’

Hall was very pale. ‘For whatever religious zealots she had outraged by her crazy preaching!’ Hall snapped back at him. ‘What else?’

‘You went to her the night of her first and only sermon, finding her to be in such danger that Angel Court was not safe for her?’ Pitt said in open disbelief. ‘You offered her the use of your house on Inkerman Road, and she accepted it, but you told no one else? Did you think it was her own people she had to fear? Why? What happened that day to give you such an idea?’

‘I did not see her, I saw Melville Smith.’ Hall was lost, struggling for an answer. He clenched and unclenched his hands. ‘I . . . am . . . I am very loath to tell you so much, Mr Pitt. It is not Special Branch’s business, but the amount of money she mentioned ran into millions. I don’t know if she was speaking the truth, or hopelessly exaggerating. I don’t trust Smith. I wanted her away from him, for her own safety. Smith is . . . adequate but no more. He has ambitions he can never achieve. Sofia may be simply hysterical, she was always prone to dramatising everything. But in the slightest chance that she is right, then I had to protect her.’

‘Right about what, Mr Hall?’ Pitt insisted.

‘For God’s sake, man, I don’t know!’ Hall shouted. ‘That’s the point! I don’t know!’

Pitt started to speak, but Hall cut him off. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘This whole terrible business has distressed me profoundly. Those . . . poor . . . stupid women! Nobody deserves to be killed in that way, no matter how foolish they are.’ He stared at Pitt. ‘I should not be angry with Sofia,’ he said with an effort. ‘Perhaps she was as troubled as they.’

‘That’s very compassionate of you,’ Pitt said; the silence seemed to demand it.

Hall shrugged. ‘It is easy to allow anger at the fearful results to blind you to the fact that beforehand those committing the offences may have had little idea of what they were provoking.’ He sat still, his eyes almost closed. ‘This is the worst time for Sofia.’ His voice shook with the vehemence of his dismay. ‘One wonders if she can possibly be stupid enough to be unaware of what fears she is awakening in the minds of people already facing deep changes in peace and security that they used to take for granted. The world is changing very rapidly, Mr Pitt. In fact one might say it is careering towards the edge of the cliff, as if blind.’

Pitt felt pity for the man, but he wanted to find out what Hall was imagining, and the only way to do that was to allow him to continue.

Hall leaned a little forward across the desk. ‘Perhaps because she is in Spain, hiding from reality in her religious fantasy, she doesn’t realise what dangerous times these are,’ he said with his eyes wide, brows raised. ‘She used not to be a foolish woman, but people change. I have no idea what this Spanish man is like that she married except, of course from the obvious! He is abominably irresponsible, and has no control over himself. God knows what his political beliefs are. He could be an anarchist! She’s crazy enough to have chosen such a man.’ He waited for Pitt to challenge him.

Pitt nodded, as if he understood.

Hall was staring at Pitt, his face very grave. ‘You must be even more aware than I am of the gathering momentum of anarchy and rebellion in Europe,’ he said grimly. ‘In Russia it is appalling. The Tsar has all kinds of plans about peace conferences, but he hasn’t the faintest idea what he is doing. His leaders nod and smile and agree with it all, and then go on doing exactly what they were doing before – preparing to build up their armies till they outnumber all the rest of us put together.’

Pitt felt cold at the thought, but he believed Hall was wildly overstating the case. Special Branch was far more concerned about the build-up of armaments in Germany, which was very much closer and openly more belligerent. The vast machinery of manufacture there was creating ironclad monsters that would crush the old-fashioned cavalry so effective in the past. A small force of British soldiers had defeated three thousand Sudanese cavalry this year! But that was not Europe.

‘Money,’ Hall went on gravely. ‘Attack and defence both depend upon money. Ours most especially rests with our navy. America has begun to see that, which of course is why they are building warships like mad. They intend to dominate the entire Pacific from San Francisco to Manila, and all the Caribbean, hence the Spanish-American war for Cuba.’

Pitt did not argue. He knew perfectly well that the idea of liberating Cuba from Spain was irrelevant. All the intelligence he had heard said that Cuba had no wish to be liberated and pass from one Imperial power to what they saw as simply another.

‘It looks as if they have learned a few of our tricks,’ he observed.

Hall looked blank for a moment, then he understood. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he conceded reluctantly. ‘But more to the point is the chaos in Europe. That is on our doorstep. If this Dreyfus case goes against the French army, and the Government falls, then we are on the edge of a precipice. We must re-arm, get up to date. We still carry delusions that we can fight Trafalgar and Waterloo again! Some people think modern machines of war are so overwhelmingly destructive that they will never be used. Would God it were true, but it’s a complete fallacy.’

Pitt knew nothing to contradict what Hall was saying, and if he did, he should not reveal it. Hall might have deduced all sorts of things from international banking circles, but he was not privy to information of the British Government or the secret services.

‘Do you believe Sofia Delacruz, or her disappearance, has any part in this?’ he said carefully.

Hall sighed and relaxed some of the stiffness in his shoulders.

‘Not intentionally, perhaps,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I don’t think she is wicked, just selfish and a little unbalanced where certain beliefs are concerned, and self-serving, of course. But I dare say she has no idea how unprepared we are. Perhaps the man Delacruz has thoroughly used her? He might be an anarchist, or have some sympathy with them.’ He raised his eyebrows even higher. ‘I had thought him simply irresponsible, a man of selfish and uncontrolled appetites. But of course he could be far more.’

For a moment Pitt was thrown into complete confusion, then a sudden thought bolted across his mind like a shaft of light. He had a dreadful premonition as to what Hall was talking about. How stupid of him not to have seen it before! He was looking at a tiny picture, just as Narraway had said. He was being a policeman instead of being the head of Special Branch.

He looked at Hall again, at his serious, rather academic face, his big hands, the severity of his collar and black tie, the tension of his body in this old-fashioned and magnificent room that spoke of tradition, order and safety.

‘They are all possibilities,’ he agreed. ‘And as you observe, we are unprepared.’

Pitt found himself growing colder inside, as if it were January, not May. His mind flew to H. G. Wells’s recent novel about a Martian invasion of earth and a terrible and total defeat. Of course it was complete fiction, but it mirrored in ways another book called
The Battle of Dorking
, which had shown a successful German invasion in England.

It had been written by Sir George Chesney, with the intention of drawing people’s minds to the fact that Britain was still living in the age of her victories over Napoleon nearly a century ago, as if nothing had changed. But it had made no difference to the apathy and self-satisfaction of those in power.

It was time to change the subject. Hall had very successfully drawn it away from Sofia and into the realm of anarchy and international finance. Threats to the safety of the nation were Pitt’s job. Anarchists threw bombs, assassinated, sabotaged, generally created terror. Sofia’s disappearance had not yet escalated so far.

‘It is time you told me everything you know about Sofia Delacruz,’ he said calmly. ‘It is too late for discretion and family secrets.’

‘I suppose it is unavoidable now,’ Hall agreed with a sigh, at last leaning back in his chair. ‘It is not a pleasant story and I dislike telling it.’

Pitt waited again.

‘In her own way she was a beautiful woman,’ Hall began. ‘But fierce, not every man’s taste. Most men prefer something a little more . . . accommodating, more comfortable. Nevertheless, she received several offers of marriage as she reached about twenty. Her father found one extremely suitable.’

‘But Sofia refused him?’ Pitt asked, already knowing the answer.

‘Yes,’ Hall agreed. ‘And she gave no reason. Instead she travelled as companion to an elderly woman of great distinction, first to Paris, then to Madrid, and finally Toledo, where I understand the woman eventually died.

‘In Toledo she met a young Spanish man, some few years older than herself,’ Hall continued. ‘He was married, with two children. Nevertheless he courted Sofia and the result was even more disastrous than was foreseeable.’ His mouth tightened and curved in a downward line. ‘His wife moved out of the home, taking her young children with her. This did not curb her husband’s behaviour, or Sofia’s. They continued with their affair. A short while later, abandoned and in total despair, the wife killed herself and both her children. Burned themselves to death.’ He stopped abruptly, his skin pale, and pulled tight across the bones of his face.

For moments there was no sound in the room.

‘Are you quite sure of this?’ Pitt said at last, amazed at how revolted he was, and his intense desire to prove it wrong. He thought again of Laurence’s article in
The Times
that morning. Any disillusion was painful, but that of faith eroded the foundations of everything else, all that hope and trust were built on. He had heard a sharp and very personal pain in Laurence’s words. He felt a brush of it now himself and knew with a jolt of surprise that he had cared what Sofia had said. The ideas were beautiful and while he did not consciously accept them, he wanted that chance that they were true. He wished at the very least that they believed it.

Of course he understood falling in love. He had fallen in love with Charlotte when it looked impossible that she would wish to marry him and give up her own comfort and social position to share the home and comparatively negligible income of a policeman.