The Angel Court Affair (Thomas Pitt 30) (32 page)

Pitt turned back to him. ‘If it’s irrelevant to the case, I really don’t care. It is a lie without a purpose, which suggests to me that you are a man with no respect for the truth. You invent in order to make some story in your mind more interesting . . .’

Laurence blushed. It startled Pitt, who had imagined him incapable of such a thing. For once he was certain that whatever Laurence felt, it was a real emotion, and painful. For all his manipulations, on some level integrity was important to him.

‘I can’t prove them,’ Laurence said quietly. ‘But I know they are true. If I could do, I’d have ruined him years ago.’ For a moment the emotion was naked in his face, both fury, and a dire and extraordinary pain.

Pitt believed him, but was puzzled as to what would have happened in schooldays that would still bite so deeply inside a man like Laurence, with his worldly wisdom, his intelligence and dry wit.

‘Cheating,’ Laurence replied, and this time his eyes were absolutely direct and without pretence. ‘Cheating in games is despicable, a thread woven into the grain of a man’s character, but cheating in the examinations that determine your future career is profoundly more serious. It is a lie to the future, to all the men and women who will trust your ability to practise your skill in their lives. And it is an injury to those who have examined your knowledge and ability and staked their own honour on their word that you have such qualities. You go to a doctor, see his degrees, and believe such an institution of learning has said he is fit to prescribe medicine for you, or even take a knife and cut open your body! Or, with an architect, that the house he designs will stand. If you need a lawyer to defend your life or your liberty, that this man is skilled in the law, and can do so.’ He gave a sharp little gesture with his hands. ‘Or whatever art or science it is.’

Pitt had not thought of it in those terms, but it struck him that Laurence was right. It was a trust one took for granted.

‘You know who cheated?’ he said.

‘Of course I do.’

‘How? If you saw it, why did you not report it then?’ Pitt pressed. ‘Were you afraid you wouldn’t be believed? Or of retribution?’ He said it in a calm tone, but he knew the words would sting. And yet it puzzled him. Laurence was still deeply angered by it, and he had been outspoken enough in his articles to demonstrate that he was not a coward, in any sense. Or was that a result of an old silence, now seeking to be redeemed?

‘No, Commander,’ Laurence said so softly Pitt moved a step closer to be certain of hearing him. ‘I was not afraid. Although perhaps I should have been. I wondered at the time at the odd friendships, the loyalties and favours I couldn’t understand. The main one of which was why a boy like Hall, studious, physically awkward, what is known unkindly as a swot, should be allowed into First Eleven. He was barely adequate, and yet he remained while more skilled boys were passed over . . .’

Pitt wanted to interrupt with the answer, but he had learned from past error that impatience could stifle words that could have offered light on these things, only realised later.

Laurence smiled with a harsh turn to his lips, full of regret. ‘It was a master who saw it and made the mistake of speaking out. At least he told me he had, and I believed him. I still do.’

‘I found no scandal attached to Hall’s name,’ Pitt replied. ‘And we did look.’

‘There was none,’ Laurence said bitterly. ‘The master concerned told me he had been listened to with courtesy, and disbelief. Before he could present his proof there was a fire. His papers were destroyed and he succumbed to the smoke. Died of it. No one was suspicious. He was judged to have let a cigar butt fall into his waste basket, not appreciating that it was still lit.’ His voice was thick with emotion, as if even after all these years he could still have wept, if he would permit himself.

Pitt felt first a wave of sympathy for Laurence. For that instant he liked the man without reservation. The master’s death was a grief he would have felt himself. And then it was an anger he would also have felt, scalding hot inside him, a rage for justice, and he admitted, for revenge on the arrogance that could destroy with impunity, and move on as if nothing had happened.

‘Hall?’ he said.

Laurence heard the fury in Pitt’s voice, perhaps even saw the pity in his eyes, and for an instant he knew he was not alone. Then it vanished and the hard humour returned. ‘Of course,’ he answered.

‘For whom?’ Pitt asked.

Laurence’s smile widened. ‘I am wise enough not to tell you that,’ he replied. ‘You will have to look for yourself. If you can’t deduce it, then I have done Special Branch a favour. You are not fit to lead it.’

‘I imagine he cheated for several people,’ Pitt replied, watching Laurence’s smile. ‘Which opens up some appalling ideas.’

‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ Laurence nodded. ‘The power is appalling, at least potentially. It’s odd how the uselessness one sees in school can dog all one’s adult life, not only in your own memory, but even more dangerously in the memories of others.’

‘But you have one person in mind,’ Pitt pointed out. ‘You would not have come here, to catch me in the street, now, to make a general observation, no matter how enormous.’

‘Of course not,’ Laurence agreed. ‘That is unless your much-praised detective skills will come in. I’ve heard you’re brilliant. Can’t remember who said it, but I’m sure someone must have.’

‘Not recently,’ Pitt let a touch of his own bitterness into his voice.

They matched paces for a dozen yards or so before Laurence spoke again.

‘Can you imagine the hatred between the two of them, the cheat and the man who owes him?’ he said with a curious mixture of relish and disgust. ‘The loathing for their own dependence, which will over the years rot into the hatred for each other. “I was a poorer boy than you, I hadn’t your grace or skill, above all your popularity, so I bought acceptance from you, at the price of becoming a cheat! I prostituted my academic intelligence to buy your friendship!”’ He gave a little shudder of bitter pity and revulsion. ‘“You didn’t make me into this, but you gave me the chance to make myself this way, and I took it.”’

They walked a few more steps before he went on.

‘And from the other man’s view. “I had the skill and grace. I could make almost anyone like me, but I couldn’t pass the damn examinations. I hadn’t the brains. I was obliged to let you see my failure and buy your intelligence to cheat for me and get my degree. I had to walk up there in cap and gown, with you watching me, knowing I hadn’t earned it – you had chosen it for me! All my life I shall look at you, and wonder who you told, who laughed at me because of it!”’

His voice was thick with his own emotions. ‘Can you think of it, Pitt? Can you smell the stench of that hatred, like acid burning in the gut?’

Was that a reference to another murder, or did Laurence’s imagination create that out of a very ordinary tragedy?

Laurence was waiting for a reply.

‘Yes, I can imagine it,’ Pitt answered him. ‘With a lot of different possibilities, all of them ugly. You said he cheated on exams for several boys. Do you think they would know of each other? Or might they all believe they were the only one?’

‘Hadn’t thought of that one,’ Laurence admitted with surprise. ‘I think they might have suspected. You develop a sense of how much a boy has his brains sharpened and applied, and who really are either stupid – or clever enough but lazy. But it’s only a guess. There are surprises, I mean honest ones. Why?’ He glanced sideways at Pitt curiously. ‘You think they would protect one another? I doubt it. Far more likely they’ll lie in their teeth about it, and steer well clear of anyone they think might know. If I knew, I’d take very great care not to show it – at least until I could protect myself, and strike back lethally. Rule of hunting, you don’t wound the prey and leave it to come after you. You either kill it, or leave it alone.’

‘Doesn’t sound like you, Laurence,’ Pitt said with a wry smile. ‘I thought you were the fearless crusader for truth!’

‘Sarcasm ill becomes you, Commander.’ Laurence’s tone was light again, if a little forced. ‘You know perfectly well that this is real, and I have no more wish to be burned alive in my armchair than you have! I have no desire for you to avenge my murder, I want to be alive to taste my . . . “revenge” is such an ugly word, don’t you think? Whatever – I want to survive this, and I would even like to see Sofia Delacruz returned alive too, even if she is touched with a little madness. The world needs a few of its better lunatics, even if only to relieve the tedium of the eminently sane. If forever doing the predictable is actually sanity? I have philosophical doubts about that, at times.’

‘Kill it, or leave it alone,’ Pitt said thoughtfully. ‘Of course if you can find anybody fool enough to fire your bullets for you, then you will be in no danger.’

Laurence laughed. ‘You are a cynic, Commander, and not as innocent as I presumed. Yes, indeed, I would like you to fire my bullets for me, and I would have preferred you not to have realised it. But only because I think your aim is much better than mine.’

‘Really,’ Pitt said with scepticism. ‘Then you’ll have to be a little more honest about where I am to point the gun.’

‘You won’t shoot until you know,’ Laurence said with absolute conviction. ‘That’s my advantage. I trust you.’ He smiled suddenly, a gesture of great charm, then he turned and walked away at surprising speed.

Pitt went on towards Lisson Grove, so lost in thought that several times he only just stopped himself going in the wrong direction.

How sincere was Laurence? Surely by now Pitt had more sense than to believe any journalist, particularly one as openly manipulative as Frank Laurence?

Yet there was something honest in him that Pitt did believe, in spite of all the experiences, and the warnings inside him. All that Laurence said made sense. Of course he was far too intelligent to do less than that. All the same, Pitt would have Brundage check on the public facts. Had there been a master who had died in a fire in his lodgings, while Hall was a senior, and Laurence a new boy? Had this master, if he existed, both taught Laurence, and been in a position to know if Hall had helped anyone in their exams in a way that amounted to cheating?

Instinctively he believed Laurence, but he would be a fool not to check.

If
the boy who had cheated had both possessed and kept any proof then the possibilities for blackmail were enormous. Except, of course, that in ruining the boy for whom he cheated, he would also be ruining himself. That would be a very powerful incentive indeed for the boy he cheated for to make very sure indeed either that his benefactor had a rich and successful life, or a very short one! If the master who knew had refused to be bought, then he had probably not imagined the possibility of murder. Maybe that was the warning that the cheater needed, and it had proved horribly effective.

Like the murders of Cleo and Elfrida. The similarity leaped to his mind with a sickening immediacy. He all but gagged at remembrance of the house in Inkerman Road.

Barton Hall might be the next Governor of the Bank of England! Was that the prize he was playing for? But then he wondered what that could possibly have to do with uprisings in Spain, and how Sofia had learned anything of it.

He could think of no way in which that would make sense. Hall was as English as tea and scones, if rather less agreeable.

What could the land purchases in Canada for the Church of England, and a little for the Crown, have to do with it? Probably nothing. Certainly nothing to do with Sofia.

He reached the offices in Lisson Grove and went in to find Brundage waiting for him, looking awkward. Pitt’s heart sank.

‘What is it, Brundage?’ he asked apprehensively.

‘Mr Teague is here to see you, sir,’ Brundage replied. ‘He said he wants to give you his report personally.’

Pitt swore. He was in no mood for Dalton Teague today.

‘He won’t see anyone else.’ Brundage cut off Pitt’s answer. His usually pleasant face was strained, the shadows around his eyes deeper. ‘I think he wants to see what you have to say, sir. He’s here more to ask than to tell . . . I think . . . sir.’ Now Brundage looked worried, as if he thought he might have overstepped the mark.

Pitt smiled reluctantly. ‘I’m sure of it. But before I see him, I’ve got a job here for you.’ Briefly he told Brundage the essence of what Laurence had said.

‘Is that true, sir?’ Brundage said in amazement. ‘It could mean . . .’ He stopped, overwhelmed by the ugly possibilities that opened up before him.

‘That’s what I intend you should find out,’ Pitt answered. ‘And, Brundage!’

‘Yes, sir?’ Brundage stood up straight.

‘For heaven’s sake be discreet.’

Brundage smiled widely, and went out with barely a lifted head in acknowledgement.

Teague was in the room outside Pitt’s office. The door to the office was locked, as he always left it when he was out. As soon as Pitt came in Teague rose to his feet. He did it in a graceful movement as if he gave it no thought, but for the first time since Pitt had met him, he looked tired. He would never be ungroomed, or untidy, his valet would see to that. But there were shadows in his face as if he were strained and his usually thick hair looked a trifle flat, as though the vitality had leached out of it. He held out his hand to Pitt.

‘This must be hellish for you,’ he said with a degree of sympathy Pitt would have preferred not to hear.

‘It’s unpleasant,’ Pitt conceded, taking Teague’s hand briefly, then unlocking his own office door and inviting Teague in.

The moment they were seated Teague began.

‘I never believed that Sofia Delacruz had disappeared of her own will,’ he said earnestly. ‘But of course that avenue had to be explained. We would have appeared absurd if it had been a simple, rather grubby affair.’ Teague’s clear sea-blue eyes never wavered from Pitt’s. ‘I’ve wondered occasionally if some supposed saints have grown tired of their own images and longed to escape them and behave just like anyone else. Are saints allowed to laugh? Or to make mistakes like the rest of us, do you suppose? Or is it a relentless regime of being right, fair, just and sober?’