Anne Perry - Belgrave Square

“I am also Fanny’s friend,” Charlotte said with chill.

He blushed. “I’m sorry. That was appallingly rude, and quite unjustified. I have no one to blame but myself, for any of it. And I’ve treated Odelia abominably. I hope her father will break off our engagement officially, and say that I have consorted with an unsuitable woman and proved myself unworthy of his daughter. Otherwise her reputation…” He left the rest unsaid. They both knew the ugly speculations that followed when a man jilted a young woman. There was the inevitable whisper that he had discovered she was not above suspicion.

“That will damage your own reputation,” Charlotte pointed out. “And untruly.”

“Not untruly. I have consorted with totally unsuitable women.”

“Have you?”

“Fanny…”

“You haven’t consorted with her-you have met her only socially in a way we all have.”

“I will have consorted with her by then-if you will be good enough to tell me where I may find her? You said across the river.”

“I don’t know where, but I can find out, if you are sure. She did not deny her relationship with Mr. Carswell, you know.”

He was very pale.

“I know.”

A few yards to the left a large gentleman in a hussar’s uniform gave a roar of laughter and slapped the shoulders of a slender young man with a large mustache. Behind them two ladies laughed vacuously.

“What Lord Anstiss says is true,” Charlotte went on carefully. But there was a growing hope in her, quite unreasonable and against all her common sense. What happiness could there be for Fitz and Fanny Hilliard? Even if he was rash enough to marry her, and she accepted him, that would not lift her to his social status. His friends would never look upon her as one of them. Whatever they supposed the truth to be, they would remember the charges, and that she had not denied them. She was a loose woman, and he a fool for marrying her. And Anstiss had made it plain that selection for Parliament was ended. Fanny would have to realize what it would cost him. And knowing Fanny better than Fitz did, Charlotte thought she would not marry him at that price.

The hussar hailed someone he knew and went striding over, crying out loudly.

“And consider it from Fanny’s view,” Charlotte went on. “If she loves you, she will not accept you at such a price to you. What happiness would that give her?”

He stared at her, not with the derision she had expected, but with suddenly candid eyes and a dawning brilliance in them.

“You think she loves me? You do. And far more to the point, Mrs. Pitt, you think her a woman of selflessness and such honor that she would prize my welfare and my reputation above her own, and her security as my wife.” Impulsively he put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Bless you, Mrs. Pitt, for a devious and unconventional woman. Now you will find out for me where I may call upon Fanny, because having gone this far you cannot now abandon me. And you will do your brother-in-law a favor, because he is an excellent fellow, and will make a fine member of Parliament, thoroughly acceptable to his lordship, having a wife above criticism, intelligent, tactful, charming and I suspect extremely clever. And her reputation is spotless.”

“I will find out,” she agreed with a rueful smile. “But I will ask Fanny if she wishes to receive you.”

“No-don’t do that. She will refuse. Allow me to press my own suit. I give you my word I will not harass her. And she has a brother to protect her-just tell me where I may call. For heaven’s sake, Mrs. Pitt, I am gentleman enough not to pay my attentions where they are unwanted.”

Charlotte bit her lip to suppress her amusement.

“Have they ever been unwanted, Mr. Fitzherbert?”

A little of the natural color returned to his face. He was being teased, and he could see it.

“Not often,” he admitted with a spark of the old humor. “But I think I’ll know it if I see it. Promise me.”

“I promise,” she conceded. “Now I must return to Emily and see what progresses. I shall send the address to her, and you may fetch it there.”

And with that he was content. He thanked her again and she excused herself and threaded her way back to where Emily was talking about climate to a retired colonel with a bristling mustache and stentorian opinions about India.

While Charlotte was attending the garden party, Pitt returned to the job he hated of further investigating Samuel Urban. It was something he could not avoid, whatever his personal liking for the man or his desire to believe him guilty of no more than misjudgment, and seeking a second and forbidden income in a manner which would have been perfectly legal had he not been in the police. It was far preferable in his mind to Latimer’s gambling and condoning of bare-knuckle fistfighting. But bitter experience had taught him that people otherwise law abiding and in many ways likable could, when frightened enough, caught without time to think, commit murder. And often men he despised for cruelty, indifference to others’ pain or humiliation, were nevertheless capable of coolness of thought which avoided the need for violence. Not that they abhorred it but because they understood the terrible consequences for themselves.

It was little use retracing his steps over Urban’s old cases until he knew of something else to look for. He had found no unexplainable irregularities the first time, and he knew where the extra money came from. Whether he had used his office to further the cause of the Inner Circle or not could wait for another time. Pitt thought not. He remembered how angry Urban had been over the Osmar case, and the influence he believed the Circle had brought to bear on that. And the very fact that he had betrayed them so far as to tell Pitt of their existence and his own membership was proof which way his loyalties lay.

In fact the more Pitt thought of him, the deeper was his liking for Urban personally, and his conviction that the Inner Circle had not succeeded in corrupting him to its uses. His disobedience had been the reason his name was on the list in the first place.

Then why was Carswell’s name there? He had succumbed. He had dismissed Osmar’s case. And what about Latimer? He needed to know more.

Where to find it?

He began with the music halls where Urban might have been seeking more remunerative employment, if he was telling the truth about the night Weems was killed. They were tawdry in the daylight: stages dusty, backdrops unreal; all the glamour lent by music, shadows and spotlights was gone, leaving a curious nakedness. It took him all day tramping from one hall to another, questioning reluctant management, which was very much on its dignity, protesting uprightness, moral probity and reputations not helped by having the like of Pitt hanging around asking questions. Yes of course they inquired into the backgrounds of everyone they hired. It was regrettably necessary to employ people to keep order, human nature being as it was, but they took on only men of the best character. It was grossly unfair that anyone should suggest otherwise.

Pitt brushed aside their arguments. He was not on this occasion interested in the general excellence of the establishment, only had they recently interviewed a man answering the description he gave.

Unfortunately three managers said they had. But in each case the description was so general it could have been Urban, or any of a thousand others. It only highlighted the impossibility of proving Urban innocent, unless the managers were faced with the actual man, and their memories were clear enough to make a positive identification.

Finally he went back to the hall in Stepney where he knew Urban had worked and asked to see the manager. A large man with thin hair scraped across the top of his head, and graying at the temples, came out to see him. He was well dressed, and it flashed through Pitt’s mind that he possibly owned the building as well as ran it.