Anne Perry - Seven Dials

He remained standing because there was nowhere to sit, except the cot, and to reach that he would have had to walk past her, and then look up where she stood.

“I went to Alexandria about three weeks ago,” he began, and saw the start of surprise in her, the stiffening of her body, but she did not speak. “I wanted to learn more about you,” he went on. “I admit that what I found surprised me.”

The ghost of a smile crossed her face, and vanished. She had a gift of stillness which was more than a mere lack of movement; it was an inner control, a peace of the spirit.

“I believe you came here to England to try to persuade Ryerson to influence the cotton industry, so more Egyptian cotton could be woven where it was grown, so that the factories could be started up again, as they were in the time of Mohammed Ali.”

Again she was surprised. It was no more than a hesitation in her breathing; he felt it rather than saw it.

“So your own people could prosper from their work,” he added. “It was naive. If you had understood how much money was vested in the trade, how many people’s power, I think you would have realized that no one man, even with Ryerson’s office, could have had any effect.”

She drew in her breath as though she was going to argue, then she let it out silently and turned half away from him. The light on her smooth face shone like polished silk. Her skin was blemishless, her cheekbones high, her nose long and straight, her eyes a little slanted upwards. It was a face of passion and immense dignity, but oddly, it was not without humor. The tiny lines, visible because he was close to her, spoke of laughter, not easy as of mere good humor, but of intelligence and irony as well.

“I think that the man who sent you knew that you could not succeed,” he went on. He was not certain whether it was a shadow that moved, or if her body stiffened a trifle under the silk of her dress. “I believe his purpose was different,” he continued. “And that cotton was only the reason he gave you, because it is one you could serve with all your effort, whatever the cost to yourself.”

“You are mistaken,” she replied, without looking at him. “If I was naive, then I have paid a high price for it, but I did not kill Lieutenant Lovat.”

“But you are prepared to hang for it?” he said with surprise. “And not only yourself, but Mr. Ryerson as well.”

She flinched as if he had struck her, but she did not make any sound, nor move her position.

“Do you think perhaps because he is a minister in the government that they will let him off?” he asked.

She turned to face him at last, her eyes wide and almost black.

“Have you not realized yet that he has enemies?” he said more loudly than he wished to, but he could not afford gentleness. She might back away, evade the truth again. “And whoever sent you has far bigger aims than cotton, in Egypt or Manchester.”

“That is not true.” She stated it as a fact. There was certainty in her eyes, then, even as he was watching, it wavered before she could master it.

“If you did not kill Lovat, then who did?” he said far more quietly. He had not yet made up his mind whether to say anything of the massacre to her, or even to hint at it. He watched her, searching for anything in her expression, however fleeting, to betray the hatred that could lie behind a murder of revenge. So far he had seen nothing at all, not even a shadow.

“I don’t know,” she said simply. “But you said it was not to do with cotton. What, then?”

It was almost impossible to believe she knew. And if she did not, and he told her, might her love of her country, and of justice, then impel her to speak, perhaps even to make her crime seem justified? Would a judge mitigate her sentence because of such provocation? Pitt would have. “Other political reasons,” he said evasively. “To expose old wrongs with a view to inciting violence, even rebellion.”

“Like the dervishes in the Sudan?” she said bleakly.

“Why not? Knowing what you do now, do you really believe you ever had a chance of changing the cotton industry, before the political and financial tides have changed, no matter what Mr. Ryerson might believe or wish for?”

She thought about it for several moments before conceding. “No,” she said almost under her breath.

“Then surely it is possible that whoever sent you also knew that, and had in mind another plan altogether?” he pressed.

She did not answer, but he saw that she had understood.

“And he does not care if you hang for a murder you did not commit,” he went on. “Or that Ryerson should also.”

That hurt her. Her body stiffened and some of the richness of color faded from her skin.

“Could he have killed Lovat?” he asked.

Her head moved fractionally, but it was an assent.

“How?” he asked.

“He… he poses as my servant…”

Of course! Tariq el Abd, silent, almost invisible. He could have taken her gun and shot Lovat, then called the police himself to make sure they came, and found Ryerson. He could easily have organized the whole thing, because she would naturally have given him any letter to deliver to Lovat. No one would question it; in fact, they would have questioned anybody else. It was perfect.

“Thank you,” he said with sudden depth of feeling. It was at least a resolution of the mystery, even if it did not solve the problem. And he had not realized until this moment how much it mattered to him that she was not guilty. It was almost like a physical weight removed from him.

“What are you going to do, Mr. Pitt?” Her voice was edged with fear.

“I am going to prove that you have been used, Miss Zakhari,” he replied, aware that his choice of words would remind her of that other time, years ago, when she had been used and betrayed before. “And that neither you nor Mr. Ryerson is guilty of murder. And I am going to try to do it without soaking Egypt in blood. I am afraid the second aim is going to take precedence over the first.”

She did not answer, but stood motionless as an ebony statue while he smiled very slightly in parting, and knocked on the door to summon the warder.

He debated for only moments whether to go alone or to find Narraway and tell him. If Tariq el Abd was the prime mover behind the plan to expose the massacre and set Egypt alight, then he would not meekly accept arrest from Pitt or anyone else. By going to Eden Lodge alone, Pitt might do no more than warn him, and possibly precipitate the very tragedy they dreaded.

He stopped a hansom in the Strand and gave Narraway’s office address. Please God, he was there.

“What is it?” Narraway said as soon as he saw Pitt’s face.

“The man behind Ayesha is the house servant Tariq el Abd,” he replied. He saw from Narraway’s expression that no more explanation was necessary.

Narraway breathed with a sigh of comprehension, and fury with himself because he had not seen it before. “Our own bloody blindness!” he swore, rising to his feet in a single movement. “A servant and a foreigner, so we don’t even see him. Damn! I should have been better than that.” He yanked a drawer open and pulled a gun out of it, then slammed the drawer shut again and strode ahead of Pitt. “I hope you had the wits to keep the cab,” he said critically.

“Of course I did!” Pitt retorted, striding after him out of the door and down the steps to the pavement, where the cab was standing, the horse fidgeting from one foot to the other, perhaps sensing the driver’s tension.

“Eden Lodge!” Narraway said tersely, climbing in ahead of Pitt and waving the man forward as Pitt was scrambling in behind him.

Neither of them spoke all the way through the crowded streets, around squares and under fading trees until the hansom stopped outside Eden Lodge.