Anne Perry - Bedford Square

“Do you know who he is?” Cornwallis asked, placing his elbows on the desk and making a steeple of his fingers.

“Not yet, but Tellman is working on it,” Pitt answered. “There was a receipt for three pair of socks in his pocket. There’s a chance it might help. They were bought only two days before he was killed.”

“Good.” Cornwallis seemed to be unconcerned over the matter, or perhaps he was occupied with something else.

“The snuffbox in his pocket belonged to General Balantyne,” Pitt repeated.

Cornwallis frowned. “Presumably he stole it. Doesn’t mean he met his death in Balantyne’s home. I imagine-” He stopped. “Yes, I see what you mean. Unpleasant … and puzzling. I … know Balantyne, slightly. A good man. Can’t imagine him doing anything so … stupid.”

Pitt had a strong sense of Cornwallis’s anxiety, but it seemed to have been present since before Pitt had come in, as if something else held his attention so strongly he was unable to put his mind fully to what Pitt was saying.

“Nor I,” Pitt agreed.

Cornwallis jerked his head up. “What?”

“I can’t imagine General Balantyne doing anything so stupid as putting a corpse outside his own front door rather than simply calling the police,” Pitt said patiently.

“Do you know him?” Cornwallis looked at Pitt as if he had walked into the middle of a conversation and was aware he had missed the beginning.

“Yes. I investigated two previous cases in which he was concerned … indirectly. As a witness.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

“Is there something troubling you?” Pitt liked Cornwallis, and while aware of his lack of political knowledge, he had a profound respect for his honesty and his moral courage. “It’s not this Tranby Croft business, is it?”

“What? Good heavens, no!” For the first time since Pitt had come in, Cornwallis relaxed, on the verge of outright laughter. “I’m sorry for them all. I’ve no idea whether Gordon-Cumming was cheating or not, but the poor devil will be ruined now, either way. And my opinion of the Prince of Wales, or anyone else who spends his time drifting from one house party to another, doing nothing more useful than playing cards, is better unexpressed, even in private.”

Pitt was uncertain whether to ask again, or if that had been a polite way of evading the issue. Yet he was certain that Cornwallis was worried to a degree that it intruded into his thoughts even when he wished to put his entire mind to a present issue.

Cornwallis pushed back his chair and stood up. He walked over to the window and pulled it closed sharply.

“Terrible noise out there!” he said with irritation. “Keep me informed how you progress with this Bedford Square case.”

It was dismissal. Pitt stood up. “Yes sir.” He walked towards the door.

Cornwallis cleared his throat.

Pitt stopped.

“I …” Cornwallis began, then hesitated.

Pitt turned around to look at him.

There was a faint flush of color in Cornwallis’s lean cheeks. He was profoundly unhappy. He made the decision.

“I’ve … I’ve received a blackmail letter ….”

Pitt was astonished. Of all the possibilities that had come to his mind, this seemed the most outlandish.

“Words cut out from the Times,” Cornwallis went on in the prickling silence. “Pasted on a piece of paper.”

Pitt scrambled his thoughts together with difficulty.

“What do they want?”

“That’s it.” Cornwallis’s body was rigid, his muscles locked. He stared at Pitt. “Nothing! They don’t ask for anything at all! Just the threat.”

Pitt loathed asking, but not to would be to walk away from a man whose friendship he valued and who was obviously in profound need of uncritical help.

“Do you have the letter?”

Cornwallis took it out of his pocket and passed it over. Pitt read the pasted-on letters, most of them cut out singly, some in twos and threes or where a whole word had been found as the writer wished to use it.

I know all about you, Captain Cornwallis. Others think you are a hero, but I know differently. It was not you who was so brave on the HMS Venture, it was Able Seaman Beckwith, but you took the credit. He’s dead now and he cannot tell the truth. That is all wrong. People should know. I know.

Pitt read it again. There was no explicit threat, no request for money or any other form of payment. And yet the sense of power was so strong it leapt off the creased paper as if the thing had a malign life of its own.

He looked across at Cornwallis’s pale face and saw the muscles clenched in his jaw and the faint, visible pulse in his temple.

“I suppose you have no idea who it is?”

“None at all,” Cornwallis replied. “I lay awake half last night trying to think.” His voice was dry, as if he had held himself rigid so long his throat ached. He breathed in deeply. His eyes did not waver from Pitt’s. “I’ve gone over and over the incident I think he’s referring to, to remember who was there, who could have misinterpreted it to believe it that way, and I don’t know the answer.” He hesitated, acute embarrassment naked in his face. He was a private man who found emotion difficult to express; he vastly preferred the tacit understanding of action. He bit his lip. He wanted to look away, so he forced himself not to. He was obviously sensitive to Pitt’s discomfort and unintentionally made it worse. He was aware of foundering, of being indecisive, the very sorts of things he had meant to avoid.

“Perhaps you had better tell me about the incident,” Pitt said quietly. He moved to sit down, indicating his intention to stay.

“Yes,” Cornwallis agreed. “Oh … yes, of course.” He turned away at last, his face towards the window. The sharp daylight emphasized the depth of the lines about his eyes and mouth. “It happened eighteen years ago … eighteen and a half. It was winter. Bay of Biscay. Weather was appalling. I was a second lieutenant then. Man went up to shorten the mizzen royal-”

“The what?” Pitt interrupted. He needed to understand.

Cornwallis glanced at him. “Oh … three-masted ship.” He moved his arms to illustrate what he was saying. “Middle mast, middle sail … square-rigger, of course. Injured by a loose rope. His hand. Got it jammed somehow.” He frowned, turning towards the window again, away from Pitt. “I went up after him. Should have sent a seaman, of course, but the only man near me was Beckwith, and he froze. Happens sometimes.” He spoke jerkily. “No time to look for someone else. Weather was getting worse. Ship pitching around. Afraid the injured man up on the mast would lose his grasp, tear his arm out of its socket. Heights never bothered me in particular. Didn’t really think about it. Been up often enough as a midshipman.” His mouth tightened. “Got him free. Had to cut the line. He was almost dead weight. Managed to get him back along the yard as far as the mast, but he was damn heavy and the wind was rising all the time, ship pitching around like a mad thing.”

Pitt tried to imagine it, Cornwallis desperate, frozen, trying to hang on to a swaying mast forty or fifty feet over a wild sea, one minute above the heaving deck, the next, as the ship keeled, out over the water, and carrying another man’s helpless body. He found his own hands were knotted and he was holding his breath.

“I was trying to readjust his weight to start down the mast,” Cornwallis went on, “when Beckwith must have unfrozen and I found him just below me. He helped take the man’s weight, and we got down together.

“By that time there were half a dozen other men on deck, including the captain, and it must have looked to them as if Beckwith had rescued me. The captain said as much, but Beckwith was an honest man, and he told the truth.” He turned back to meet Pitt’s eyes, the light behind him now. “But I can’t prove it. Beckwith died a few years after that, and the man up the mast hadn’t the faintest idea who else was there, let alone what happened.”