Anne Perry - Belgrave Square

Valerius grinned. “Of course tonight. In a hurry, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Then I’ll see you in Bow Street.” And with a wave he swung around and raced off down Half Moon Street and disappeared.

With a new sense of hope Pitt made his way to Bow Street.

Once there he went straight up to Micah Drummond’s office and knocked on the door. As soon as he was inside he knew something was wrong. Drummond looked profoundly unhappy. His face was pale, his features drawn, and there was fury in every angle of his body.

“What is it?” Pitt said immediately. “Byam?”

“No, Latimer, the swine. The man is a complete outsider!”

From a man like Drummond that was the ultimate condemnation. To be an outsider was to be lost beyond recall. Pitt was taken aback.

“What has he done?” His mind raced through possibilities and came up with nothing damning enough to warrant such contempt.

Drummond was staring at him.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

“I think I may be close to the end of the Weems case,” Pitt replied. “It’s nothing to do with Latimer.”

“I didn’t think it was.” Drummond turned back to the window. “Damn him!”

“Is it about the bare-knuckle fighting?”

Drummond turned around, his face lifting with hope. “What bare-knuckle fighting?”

“He gambles on it. That’s where his money comes from-not from Weems. Didn’t I tell you?”

“No you didn’t! Don’t be this ingenuous, Pitt. Nor did you tell me about Urban’s moonlighting at a music hall in Stepney, and having possible stolen works of art.”

Pitt felt a sudden coldness inside him. “Then how do you know?”

“Because Latimer told me, of course!”

“About Urban? Why, for-” But before he could finish the questions, he understood. The Inner Circle. Latimer had showed his ultimate obedience by betraying Urban, becoming his executioner for the brotherhood. Drummond knew it, and this was the reason for his rage. “I see,” Pitt said aloud.

“Do you?” Drummond demanded, his face white, his eyes blazing. “Do you? It’s that hellish Inner Circle.”

“I know.”

For moments they stood staring at each other, then Drummond’s eyes dulled into misery again and the fire went out of him.

“Yes-of course you do.” He sat down behind the desk and waved towards the chair opposite. “There’s one good thing. That self-important idiot Osmar has done it again, and been caught beyond question this time-in a public railway carriage on the Waterloo line, of all things.” His eyes held a flash of humor. “And by an elderly lady of unquestionable reputation and veracity. No one will doubt the Dowager Lady Webber when she says his behavior was unpardonable and his dress inadequate for public wear. And the young woman likewise, and her profession only too apparent. He’ll have no defense this time.” In other circumstances Pitt would have laughed. Now all he could raise was a hard smile.

“What did you come for?” Drummond asked.

Pitt told him all he either knew or believed about Lord Anstiss, his suppositions about Weems and the letter, Charlotte’s information concerning venture capital and his subsequent meeting with Peter Valerius.

“Do you have this letter?” Drummond asked, frowning.

Pitt drew it out of his pocket and passed it to him.

Drummond took it and read it slowly, his brows drawing down, his face darkening as he came to the end. He looked up, puzzled and oddly disappointed.

“Somehow this is not how I imagined Laura Anstiss.” He smiled very briefly. “Which is foolish. It hardly matters, but I…” He seemed unable to find the words, or else was embarrassed by his emotion and its irrelevance.

“Nor I,” Pitt agreed. “It’s a forceful letter, and perhaps even a little indelicate.”

“That’s it,” Drummond agreed quickly. “And it seems Byam was a good deal less than honest with us. From this it sounds as if they were indisputably lovers, which he said they were not. I’m not surprised he still feels guilt over her.”

Pitt looked at Drummond’s face, the letter lying on the desk between them. He knew Drummond was faintly repelled by it, as he had been himself, and had not wished to say so.

“I think Weems may have decided to try his hand with Anstiss as well,” Pitt said. “After all, it had worked successfully for him with Byam. For two years he had had a nice little addition to his income.”

Drummond regarded him steadily without interruption.

“But this time he found a very different mettle of man,” Pitt went on. “Anstiss lost his temper and struck him with his stick. If we go to Anstiss’s house and find his cane, I think there may well be blood or hair on it.”

Drummond pursed his lips but there was agreement in his eyes.

“And then when Weems was temporarily unconscious,” Pitt continued, “he saw the opportunity-probably Weems had already let him know he was blackmailing Byam-so he loaded the blunderbuss and killed Weems. Then he took the papers incriminating Byam, and Weems’s half of the letter, perhaps not even realizing there was another half. He left the second list incriminating the errant members of the Inner Circle, of which he is a master, in order to discipline them. I daresay he knew their secrets through the Inner Circle as well. With this situation he would take over the blackmail of Byam himself, and force him to change his Treasury decisions and allow Anstiss to step in with his venture capital. The profit would be enormous.”

Drummond sat without speaking for several moments, then at last he looked up. There was no conviction in his eyes.

“It seems to me you are trying too hard, Pitt. There are too many motives for Anstiss, and all of them too small to move an intelligent and self-controlled man to murder, especially one who already has power, wealth and position. I can easily believe he would take advantage of Weems’s death and Byam’s vulnerability to extend the blackmail and force Byam to change his political decisions on African loans. But I can’t see him committing cold-blooded murder to bring it about. And honestly, even with proof that he profited, I don’t think we would convince any jury of it. In fact I don’t think we’d even get the public prosecutor to bring the charge.”

Pitt refused to give up.

“Perhaps Anstiss had not seen the letter until Weems showed it to him,” he suggested. “And we don’t know what was in his half, but if it was in the same vein as the half we have, he may have struck out in rage then, and his prime motive might have been to have revenge on Byam. Especially if Byam told him what he told you-that he was never Laura Anstiss’s lover, that it was simply a sudden infatuation she had for him, and he broke it off when he realized how serious she was. If Anstiss had accepted that all these years and forgiven him in that belief, to see proof in Laura’s own hand, if he was also deeply in love with her…”

He stopped. It was not necessary to fill in the rest. Infatuation was one offense; to be cuckolded in one’s own house quite another.

Drummond’s face tightened.

“That I can believe. If he had always accepted Byam’s innocence, and his wife’s virtue, if not her love, then it would come as a very violent shock to him, enough to make him lose all control, at least for long enough to strike out at Weems’s smiling face, and then kill him, and get rid of the one other person who knew of it-and destroy Byam as the perpetrator. But can you prove any of it?”

“I don’t know.” Pitt shook his head. “Valerius will bring proof of the financial connection, which will be sufficient to go and question him. Then we can find the stick, or prove he has recently lost one. I don’t suppose we’ll ever find the blunderbuss, or that he will have kept Weems’s half of the letter.”