Anne Perry - Death On Blackheath

‘You did not ask to see me as an excuse to dine,’ Narraway said at last, the gravity back in his face. ‘ I might have done, but you have never needed to prevaricate.’ He was smiling very slightly as he said it, but his concern was real and it would be a rebuff to pretend she did not hear it.

‘I can though,’ she admitted. ‘I think there are strong currents beneath the surface of this. I feel them, but I don’t know what they are. In fact, the more details I discover, the less can I make sense of it. It seems an absurd mixture of trivia and tragedy.’

He watched her without interrupting. His eyes looked almost black in the candlelight from the chandeliers.

‘A maid running off with a suitor is very inconvenient, but it happens quite often,’ she continued. ‘I think I have lost at least three that way, perhaps four, if you count a scullery maid. But a woman beaten to death and her body left in a public but deserted place, to be scavenged by animals, is both grotesque and tragic.’

He nodded. ‘And they appear to be connected. I presume Pitt was called in because the missing maid worked for a man of great importance to the navy, and thus to the safety of the country. What else?’

‘Kynaston, by his own admission, is having an affair, which is grubby, but far from unique …’

‘By his own admission?’ Narraway interrupted.

‘Yes. When Thomas taxed him with it, he did not try to evade it.’

‘Which does not mean it is necessarily true,’ he pointed out.

She was startled, and about to argue when she suddenly realised what he meant. ‘Oh! You think it is something worse? That an affair would be preferable to the truth?’

He gave a small, slight smile. ‘I don’t know, only that we should not assume anything for which we have no proof.’

‘Of course not. You are quite right,’ she agreed. ‘So that is another strange contrast, an admitted affair, which may conceal something worse, or at least something he has a greater desire to keep secret. Victor, what do you know of this man Talbot? Why does he so desire to be rid of Thomas? Is it something as simple as prejudice because Thomas has no family background or military experience? That too is grubby, and completely irrelevant, but it is not uncommon, and it is certainly not a crime. Or is there something of which he is afraid?’

‘He has the Government’s confidence,’ Narraway said thoughtfully. ‘But the Government has no experience of criminal deviousness as opposed to moral or political.’ He sighed. ‘You may be right, Talbot dines at the right clubs and Pitt doesn’t. He will never be one of them; you have to be born to it, and of course go to the right schools.’

‘Pitt is better as he is, right schools and clubs or not,’ she said sharply. Then she felt the colour hot in her cheeks as she saw the laughter in his face.

He leaned forward across the table. ‘I know that, my dear. I am as aware of Pitt’s worth as you are, professionally even more so. And in my own way, I am also fond of him.’

She looked down, avoiding his eyes. ‘I apologise. Of course you are. I did not mean to doubt you. This conflict has me … wrong-footed.’

He touched her hand where it lay on the table, gently, and only for a moment.

‘How charmingly you understate it. You make confusion about violence and murder sound like a missed step in a dance. I fear we shall run out of music before we reach that point. May I say what I think is really troubling you?’

‘Could I prevent you?’ she asked. Her voice was soft, but the words were a trifle defensive.

‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘Just tell me that you are not yet ready to trust me with it — or perhaps that you do not wish to.’

‘Victor, I’m sorry. I am behaving with a discourtesy you do not deserve. I am evading the issue because I am afraid of it.’

‘I know,’ he said so quietly she barely heard him above the murmur of conversation around them. ‘It is Somerset Carlisle, isn’t it?’ he continued.

‘Yes …’

‘Would Pitt have let it go had Carlisle not asked the question about Kynaston in the House?’

‘I think so. That made it impossible,’ she agreed.

‘And what are you afraid of — exactly?’ he pressed.

She must now either answer him honestly, or deliberately refuse to.

He moved very slightly back again, no more than an inch, but she saw the shadow in his eyes. It was a moment of decision about far more than the admission as to what she feared regarding Carlisle: it was a moving closer, or apart, between Narraway and herself.

It seemed to stretch endlessly, isolated as if it were unreal, an island in time. She was afraid because where it led to might be painful. The chance to prevaricate was slipping out of her hands.

He moved back an inch further.

‘I am afraid that Somerset might have engineered the whole thing,’ she said huskily. ‘I don’t mean that he killed anyone,’ she amended. ‘I can’t believe that any cause, however intense, would make him do that …’ She took a deep breath. ‘But I think he may have used the police finding that tragic corpse; the continued disappearance of Kitty Ryder; the whole absurd episode of the hat with the red feather, which could have been hers and wasn’t; and the man who supposedly put it there, and found it, and so opened up the whole case again.’

‘And then blew it apart, and rescued Pitt?’ he asked curiously, but the shadow had gone from his face and his eyes were grave, and gentle. ‘For heaven’s sake, why?’

‘That is what troubles me,’ she confessed. ‘It is the mountain that is filling the sky, too big to see its boundaries, and yet too far away to touch. He is manoeuvring Pitt, Victor. That is what I am afraid of. And I have no idea why, so I can’t help.’

‘Have you warned him?’ he asked.

‘Thomas? Of what? He can remember Resurrection Row, and the bodies all over the place, not to mention various other … irregularities since.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘Irregularities! What a wonderful term for them! Yes, my dear, Somerset Carlisle has an art for irregularities that amounts to genius. What injustices does he care about enough to do this?’

‘I don’t know: murder, betrayal, corruption at the highest level, treason?’ The moment she said that last word she wished she had not. ‘Or perhaps some personal debt of honour. He wouldn’t tell me, and place me in the position of having to betray his trust in order to stop him.’

‘But he would use Pitt, who showed him such unwise compassion before?’

‘Maybe that’s why Somerset rescued him from Talbot?’ she suggested.

‘You are being too idealistic,’ Narraway replied sadly. ‘He is perfectly prepared to use Pitt because he needs him, but I wish we knew for what purpose.’ He looked at her steadily and this time she did not look away. It was an admission of something, a difference in the relationship between them and she was not as afraid of it as she had expected to be. In fact she felt a relaxing of tension inside herself, almost a warmth.

‘We are going to do something about it, aren’t we?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ she answered. ‘I think we have to.’

Again his fingers touched hers across the table, just tip to tip. ‘Then you must begin,’ he told her, ‘with Carlisle. I shall find out a great deal more about Mr Talbot.’

She smiled. ‘Indeed.’

The following morning over breakfast Vespasia returned her mind to the question of Kynaston and his involvement in Pitt’s case. She was concerned primarily for Pitt, because she was troubled by a fear that there was some element in it far more dangerous than a simple illicit affair. However, she had no idea yet what it was, except that it was ugly enough to provoke a particularly grotesque murder.