Anne Perry: Seven Dials

“It’s not the Inner Circle again, is it?” Charlotte said with an edge of fear in her voice.

Gracie stood frozen, the dishes in her hands. No one had forgotten that dreadful, secret organization which had cost Pitt his career in the Metropolitan Police-and very nearly his life also.

“No,” Pitt said immediately and with certainty. “It’s a simple domestic murder.” He saw the disbelief in her face. “Almost certainly committed by a woman who is the mistress of a senior government minister,” he added. “Equally certain he was there, if not at the time, then immediately afterwards, and helped her attempt to get rid of the body.”

“Oh!” she said with instant perception. “I see. But they didn’t get away with it?”

“No.” He sat down on one of the straight-backed wooden chairs and stretched out his legs. “The alarm was raised by someone who heard the shots, and the police arrived in time to catch her in the back garden with the corpse in a wheelbarrow.”

She stared at him in a moment’s disbelief, then saw from his eyes that he was not joking.

“Must be a bleedin’ idjut!” Gracie said candidly. “I ’ope ’e in’t in charge o’ summink wot matters in the gov’ment, or we’ll all be in the muck!”

“Yes,” Pitt agreed with feeling. The cat leapt up onto his knee and he stroked it absently, fingers gentle in the deep fur. “I’m afraid we will.”

Gracie sighed and started to sort out the dishes he would need for breakfast, and to make him a cup of tea first. Charlotte went to the stove to begin cooking, her face eloquent of the trouble she could foresee.

THE EVENING NEWSPAPERS had carried a brief account of the finding of Edwin Lovat’s body at Eden Lodge; however, the following morning they were full of the murder in detail.

“There you are!” Gracie said, presenting the Times and the London Illustrated News to Pitt at the breakfast table. “All over the place, it is. Says the foreign woman did it, an’ the man wot’s dead was real respectable, like, an’ all.” Charlotte had taught her to read, and it was an accomplishment of which the maid was extremely proud. A door had been opened into new worlds previously beyond even her imagination, but more important than that, she felt she could face anyone at all on an intellectually, even if not socially, equal footing. What she did not know, she would find out. She could read, therefore she could learn. “Doesn’t say nothin’ ’bout the gov’ment man at all!” she added.

Pitt took both papers from her and looked at them for himself, spreading the pages wide over half the table. Charlotte was still upstairs. Jemima came in looking very grown up with her hair in pigtails and her school pinafore on over her dress. She was ten years old, and very self-possessed, at least on the surface. She was growing tall, and the slight heels on her buttoned-up boots added to her height.

“Morning, Papa,” she said demurely, standing in front of him and waiting for his reply.

He looked up, ignoring the newspaper, aware that she required his attention, more especially lately, since their adventure in Dartmoor, when their lives had been in danger and for the first time he had been unable to protect them himself. His sergeant, Tellman, had done an excellent job, at considerable risk to his own career. He was still at the Bow Street station, now under a new superintendent, a man named Wetron. Wetron was cold and ambitious, and with good cause; they believed him to be a senior member of the Inner Circle, possibly even with eyes on the leadership.

“Good morning,” he replied gravely, looking up at her.

“Is there something important in there?” she asked, glancing for a moment at the paper spread across the table.

He hesitated only a moment. His instinct was always to protect both his children, but especially Jemima, perhaps because she was a girl. But Charlotte had told him that evasion and mystery were far more frightening than all but the very worst facts, and being excluded, even for the best of reasons, hurt. And Jemima especially nearly always understood if she were being shut out. Daniel was two years younger, and far more self-contained, happier to go about his own affairs, less reflective of Pitt’s mood. He watched and listened, but not as she did.

“I don’t think it will be,” he said frankly.

“Is it your case?” she pressed, watching him solemnly.

“It’s not a dangerous one,” he assured her, smiling as he said it. “A lady seems to have shot someone, and an important man might have been there at the time. We have to do what we can to see that he doesn’t get into trouble.”

“Why?” she asked.

“That is a good question,” he agreed. “Because he is in the government, and it would be embarrassing.”

“Should he have been somewhere else?” she said, seeing the point immediately.

“Yes. He should have been at home in bed. It happened in the middle of the night.”

“Why did she shoot him? Was she afraid of him?” It was the obvious thought to her. A few months ago she had known what it was like to get up in the middle of the night, pack all your belongings and run away in a pony cart along the edge of the moor in the dark.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said, putting out his hand and touching her smooth, blemishless cheek. “She hasn’t said anything yet. We still have to find out. It’s just like police work, the way I used to do it a year ago, before I went to Whitechapel. There’s nothing dangerous in it at all.”

She looked at him steadily, deciding if he was telling her the truth or not. She concluded he was, and her face lit with satisfaction. “Good.” Without waiting any longer she sat down in her own place at the table. Gracie put her porridge in front of her, with milk and sugar, and she began to eat.

Pitt returned his attention to the newspaper. The Times article was unequivocal. It gave a glowing obituary to Edwin Lovat, lauding him as a distinguished soldier before illness had obliged him to return to civilian life, where he had used his skills and experience in the Near East to great effect in the diplomatic service. A bright future had lain ahead of him until he was cruelly cut down by an ambitious and ruthless woman who had grown tired of his attentions and desired to seek richer and more influential patronage.

Saville Ryerson’s name was not mentioned, even by implication. Exactly what patronage the murderess had sought was left to the imagination of the reader. What was spelled out very clearly was her unquestionable guilt of the crime, and the fact that she should be tried for it, and hanged without argument or delay.

Pitt found the ease of assumption behind the paper’s account disquieting, even though he knew far more than the writer of the article. There was an essential absurdity in denying the story, given that the murder weapon was Ayesha Zakhari’s gun and she was discovered actually trying to dispose of the body. She knew the man, and had offered no excuse at all, reasonable or otherwise, for anything that had occurred.

Perhaps it was the failure to mention Ryerson which galled him, and the fact that the writer had not even enquired into the case, but had leapt to his conclusions rather than simply reporting the evidence.

Jemima looked at Pitt solemnly, and he smiled at her. He saw the tension ease in her shoulders, and she smiled back.

He finished his breakfast and stood up as Charlotte and Daniel came into the kitchen. The conversation turned to other things-the school day, what there would be for dinner, and the question of whether they would go to watch the cricket match on Saturday afternoon, as long as it was not rained off, or to the local outdoor theater, also if the weather permitted. An argument ensued as to what one could do in the rain, and ended only when both children left for school and Pitt set out to go to Narraway’s office.