Bethlehem Road (5 page)

The fair-haired man’s face was tight and his blue eyes blazed. “Parthenope! You are becoming absurd!” he hissed. “I forbid you to stand out here and argue this in public any longer. We are going home, where you should have been all the time!”

“Of course.” Still she did not shout, but her whole body was rigid with fury. “Perhaps once you have me there you would care to lock the door.”

He put out both his hands and held her arms, but she did not yield in the slightest.

“Parthenope, I have no desire to curtail your pleasures or to be harsh with you. For heaven’s sake, you know that! And you are excellent—no, brilliant—at running the house. I have always said so, and I am profoundly grateful for all you do. You are a perfect wife in every way—” He could see he was still losing; she did not want flattery, not even acknowledgment. “Damn it, madame, you are not selecting a housemaid! At that you are unequaled, but choosing a member of Parliament is utterly different!”

“Indeed?” Her eyebrows rose sharply. “Pray how? Would you not wish your member of Parliament to be honest above question, of sound moral character, discreet about what he knows that is confidential, loyal to his cause, and competent in the skills of his job?”

“I don’t want him to dust the furniture or peel the potatoes!”

“Oh Cuthbert!” She knew she had won the argument, and lost the issue. He had not changed his mind in the slightest, nor was he likely to. His urgency was still all bent on getting her to climb into the cab and leave the areaway before someone came who might recognize one of them. Reluctantly she yielded and allowed him to hand her up. Charlotte saw her sensitive, stubborn face for a moment as she turned on the step, and the confusion in it; the new ideas could not be extinguished, nor could the old loyalties be denied. Parthenope looked at her husband with a sharp, unresolved anxiety.

Then he climbed up beside her and pulled the door shut, leaving Charlotte to come out of the shadows and walk along the footpath as if she had only this moment come out of the exit.

B
Y MIDAFTERNOON
P
ITT WAS
back in Bow Street. It was one of those vivid spring days when the air is sharp and the sun falls clean and pale on the pavement stones, and there was still a tingle of coldness in the wind, keen-edged and bringing a smell of dampness up from the river. A string of carriages clattered by along the Strand, harnesses polished and jingling, horses stepping high, and the crossing boys swept up behind them, cleaning away the droppings. A barrel organ churned out a popular music hall song. Somewhere out of sight a street vendor called his wares—“Hot plum duff, hot plum!”—and gradually his voice faded away as he moved towards the embankment. A newspaper boy was shouting his “extra”—“ ‘ ’Orrible Murder on Westminster Bridge! M.P. Dead—Throat Cut!’”

Pitt climbed the steps and went into the station. It was a different sergeant on duty, but he had obviously been fully caught up on the case.

“Arternoon, Mr. Pitt,” he said cheerfully. “Mr. Drummond’s in ’is office. Reckon there’s a bit in—not much. Found a cab or two, for wot it’s worth.”

“Thank you.” Pitt strode past him and into the corridor, which smelled of clean linoleum, a comparatively new invention. He went up the stairs two at a time and knocked on the door to Drummond’s office. His memory went back to a few months ago, when Dudley Athelstan had occupied it. Pitt had found Athelstan pompous and, with the insecurity of the socially ambitious, never sure which master to serve. Athelstan had resented Pitt’s impertinence, his untidiness—but above all his impudence in marrying Charlotte Ellison, so much his social superior.

Drummond was a totally different man, having sufficient family background and private means not to care about either. He called his permission to enter.

“Good afternoon, sir.” Pitt looked round the room, full of mementos of past cases, many of which he had worked on himself; tragedies and resolutions, darkness and light.

“Come in, Pitt.” Drummond waved him towards the fire. He fished among papers on his desk, all handwritten in copperplate of varying degrees of legibility. “Got a few reports, nothing very helpful so far; a cabby crossing the bridge who noticed nothing at a quarter past midnight, except perhaps a prostitute at the north side, and a group of gentlemen coming up from the House of Commons. Hamilton could have been one of them; we’ll have to ask around tonight when the House rises. No good looking now. We’ll find out which members live on the south side of the river and might have gone home that way. Got a man on it now.”

Pitt stood by the fire, the warmth delicious up the backs of his legs. Athelstan always used to monopolize it.

“I suppose we have to face the remote possibility it was one of his colleagues?” he said with regret.

Drummond looked up sharply, instant disagreement on his face. Then reason overtook distaste. “Not yet, but it may have to be considered,” he conceded. “First we’ll look at personal or business enemies and—God help us—the possibility it was some lunatic.”

“Or anarchists,” Pitt added glumly, rubbing his hands down the back of his coat where the fire warmed it.

Drummond regarded him, a bleak and not unsympathetic humor in his eyes. “Or anarchists,” he agreed. “Unpleasant as it is, we had better pray it is personal. Which is the line you must pursue today.”

“What have we so far?” Pitt asked.

“Two cabbies, the one at a quarter past midnight who noticed nothing, one at approximately twenty past, seen by Hetty Milner, who also says he saw nothing; but since Hetty saw him immediately before she spoke to Hamilton, that doesn’t mean much. Poor devil must have been there then, possibly before. But it shouldn’t be hard to establish what time he left the House, so we have a space of twenty minutes or so. Might help with determining where suspects were, but I doubt it: if it was family they may well not have committed the crime personally.” He sighed. “We’ll probably be looking at movement of money, bank withdrawals, sales of jewelry or pictures, acquaintances of unusual nature.” He rubbed his hands over his face wearily, only too aware of the closing of ranks that scandal inspired among the upper classes. “Look into his business affairs, will you, Pitt? Then you’d better see what political matter he was involved with. There’s always Irish Home Rule, slum clearance, poor law reform—heaven knows what else someone might feel violent about.”

“Yes sir.” It was what he would have done anyway. “I suppose we’ve got someone checking on all the known agitators?”

“Yes, all that is being done. At least we’ve got only a narrow space of time to cover. Might get something from the other people who came running when Hetty Milner screamed. So far they’ve given us nothing useful, but memory does sometimes dredge up a face or a sound afterwards, something seen out of the corner of the eye.” Drummond pushed forward a sheet of paper with a name and address on it. “That’s Hamilton’s business partner. You could start with him. And Pitt ...”

Pitt waited.

“For heaven’s sake be tactful!”

Pitt smiled. “I assume that is why you chose me for the case—sir.”

Drummond’s mouth quivered. “Get out,” he said quietly.

Pitt took a hansom along the Strand, Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill past St. Paul’s and up to Cheapside, along Cheapside and down Threadneedle Street past the Bank of England to Bishopsgate Street Within and the offices of Hamilton and Verdun. He presented his card, an extravagance he had indulged in a while ago and indeed found useful.

“ ‘Inspector Thomas Pitt, Bow Street,’ ” the clerk read with patent surprise. Policemen did not carry calling cards, any more than did the ratcatcher or the drain man. Standards had declined appallingly lately! What was the world coming to?

“I would like to speak with Mr. Charles Verdun, if I may,” Pitt continued. “About the death of Sir Lockwood Hamilton.”

“Oh!” The clerk was considerably sobered—and a little elated, in spite of himself. There was a certain grisly glamor in being connected with a famous murder. He would tell Miss Laetitia Morris all about it this evening, over a glass of stout at the Grinning Rat. That should make her sit up and take notice! She would not find him boring after
this.
Harry Parsons would not seem half so interesting with his common bit of embezzlement. He looked at Pitt.

“Well if you wait ’ere, I’ll see what Mr. Verdun says. ’E don’t see people just for the askin’, you know. Perhaps I could tell you somethin’? I saw Sir Lockwood reg’lar. I ’ope you’re well on your way to catchin’ the criminal what done this. Per’aps I saw ’im—without knowin’, like?”

Pitt read him like one of the clerk’s own copperplate ledgers. “I shall know better what to ask you after I’ve seen Mr. Verdun.”

“Course. Well I’ll go and see wot ’e says.” And dutifully the clerk retired, to come back in a few moments and usher Pitt into a large untidy room with a good fire, which was smoking a little, and several armchairs in green leather, comfortable and polished to a shine by use. Behind an antique and battered desk piled with papers sat a man of anything between fifty and seventy, with a long face, tufted gray eyebrows, and a benign and whimsical expression. He composed his features into an expression of suitable gravity and waved his hand towards a chair, inviting Pitt to sit down. Then he wandered over himself, took a look at the fire, and swung his arms round as if to dispel the smoke.

“Damn thing!” He glared at it. “Can’t think what’s the matter with it! Maybe I’d better open a window?”

Pitt prevented himself from coughing with difficulty and nodded his head. “Yes sir. A good idea.”

Verdun strolled back behind the desk and yanked on the lower half of the sash window. It shot up with a thump, letting in a gust of cool air.

“Ah,” he said with satisfaction. “Now, what can I do for you? Police fellow, eh? About poor Lockwood’s death. Shocking thing to happen. I suppose you’ve no idea who did it? No, you wouldn’t have—too soon, eh?”

“Yes sir. I understand Sir Lockwood was in business partnership with you?”

“Yes, in a manner of speaking.” Verdun reached for a humidor and took out a cigar. He lit it with a spill from the fire and blew out a smoke so pungent it made Pitt gasp.

Verdun mistook his expression entirely.

“Turkish,” he said with satisfaction. “Have one?”

Camel dung, Pitt thought. “Very kind of you, but no thank you, sir,” he replied. “In what manner of speaking, sir?”

“Ah.” Verdun shook his head. “Wasn’t in here much. Keener on his politics—had to be. Parliamentary Private Secretary, and all that. One has a duty.”

“But he had a financial interest in the company?” Pitt persisted.

“Oh yes, yes. You could say that.”

Pitt was puzzled. “Was he not an equal partner?” His name had been first on the plate outside the door.

“Certainly!” Verdun agreed. “But he didn’t come here more than once a week at most, often less.” He said it without the slightest resentment.

“So you do most of the work?” Pitt asked. He wanted to be tactful, but with this man it was difficult. Obliqueness seemed to be misunderstood altogether.

Verdun’s eyebrows shot up. “Work? Well, yes, I suppose so. Never thought of looking at it like that. Fellow’s got to do something, you know! Don’t like hanging around clubs with a lot of old fools talking about cads, the weather, who said what, and how everybody dresses—and who’s having an affair with whose mistress. I always find it too easy to see the other chap’s point of view to get heated about it.”

Pitt hid a smile with difficulty. “So you deal in property?” he prompted.

“Yes, that’s right,” Verdun agreed. He puffed at his cigar. Pitt was profoundly glad the window was open; it really smelled appalling. “What’s this got to do with poor old Lockwood being killed on Westminster Bridge?” Verdun went on, puckering up his face. “Don’t think it was over some property deal, do you? Hardly seems likely. Why should anybody do that?”

Pitt could think of several reasons. He would not be the first slum landlord to charge exorbitant rents and cram fifteen or twenty people into one damp and rat-infested room. Nor would he be the first to use his properties as brothels, sweatshops, and thieves’ kitchens. There was the possibility Hamilton had been doing this and had been killed for revenge or from outrage—or that Verdun had done it, and when Hamilton found out and threatened to expose him, Verdun killed him to keep him silent.

Or it might simply have been someone acting out of fury at having been evicted from a home, undersold, or beaten to a lucrative deal. However, Pitt did not speak any of these thoughts aloud.

“I imagine there’s a good deal of money involved,” he said instead, as innocently as he could.

“Not a lot,” Verdun replied candidly. “Do it to keep busy, you know. Wife dead twenty years ago. Never felt like marrying again. Couldn’t ever care for anyone as I did for her... .” For a moment his eyes were gentle, faraway, seeing some past happiness that still charmed him. Then he recalled himself. “Children all grown up. Got to do something!”

“But it brings a good income?” Pitt looked at the quality of Verdun’s clothing. It was shabby, worn into comfort, but his boots were excellent, and the cut of his jacket Savile Row, his shirts probably Gieves and Son. He did not look fashionable; he looked as if he was sufficiently sure of himself and his place in society that he did not need to. His was old money, quiet money.

“Not terribly,” Verdun interrupted Pitt’s thoughts. “No need. Hamilton made his income from something to do with railway carriages, in Birmingham or somewhere like that.”

“And you, sir?”

“Me?” Again the wispy, tufted eyebrows shot up, and the round gray eyes beneath were bright with irony and suppressed humor. “Don’t need it; got enough. Family, you know.”

Pitt had already known it; in fact he would not have been surprised had there been an honorary title Verdun declined to use.

There was a rattling outside, a steady arrhythmical clatter.

“You can hear it!” Verdun said quickly. “Horrible contraption! A typewriter, if you please! Got it for my junior clerk—boy can’t write so anyone but an apothecary can read it. Hideous thing. Sounds like twenty horses sliding round a cobbled yard.”