Anne Perry - Traitors Gate

Charlotte was making a shopping list.

“Are you going to be late again this evening?” she asked, looking up at him.

“I doubt it,” he replied with his mouth full. “Although we still haven’t found the hansom driver yet….”

“Then he’s involved,” she said with certainty. “If he were innocent he would have come forward by now. If he doesn’t want to be found, how will you get him?”

He finished the rest of his tea. “By the long, slow process of questioning every driver in London,” he assured her. “And proving whether they were where they say. And if we are lucky, by someone informing. But we don’t know where she went into the water. It could have been upriver or down. All we do know is that she seems to have been dragged some distance by her clothes being caught in something.” Charlotte winced. “I’m sorry,” he apologized.

“Have you found her cloak?” she asked.

“No, not yet.”

He ate the last of his toast with satisfaction.

“Thomas …”

He pushed out his chair and stood up. “Yes?”

“Do bodies often wash up at Traitors Gate?”

“No-why?”

She took a deep breath and let it out

“Do you think it is possible that whoever it was intended her to end up there?”

The idea was puzzling, and one which had not occurred to him before.

“Traitors Gate? I should doubt it. Why? It’s more likely that he cared where he put her in, close to where he killed her, and unobserved. It would be chance, tide and the currents which took her to the slipway at the Tower. And, of course, whatever dragged her.”

“But what if it wasn’t?” she insisted. “What if it was intended?”

“It doesn’t honestly make a lot of difference, except that he would have had to find the right place to put her in, which might have meant moving her. But why would anyone care enough to take the risk?”

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “Only because she betrayed someone.”

“Who? Not her husband. She was always loyal to him, not as a matter of course, but because she truly loved him. You told me that yourself.”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed. “I didn’t mean that kind of betrayal. I thought perhaps it might be back to the Inner Circle again.”

“There are no women members anyway, and I’m convinced Chancellor is not a member either.”

“But what about her brother-in-law, Francis Standish?” she pressed. “Could he not be involved in Sir Arthur’s death, and somehow she found out? Susannah was very fond of Sir Arthur. She wouldn’t keep silent, even to protect her own. Perhaps that was what troubled her so much.”

“Family loyalty … and betrayal,” Pitt said slowly, turning the idea over in his mind. Harriet Soames’s face was sharp in his inner eye, in passionate defense of her father, even knowing his guilt. “Possibly …”

“Does it help?”

He looked at her. “Not a lot. Intentional or not, she will have been put in at the same place.” He pushed his chair back in, kissed her cheek before going to the door. His hat was on the rack in the hall. “It’s something I shall search for with more diligence today. I think it is time I forgot the hansom driver and concentrated on finding a witness to her body being put into the water.”

“Nothing except what didn’t happen,” Tellman said with disgust when Pitt asked him to report his progress so far. They were standing in Pitt’s office in the early light, the noise from the street drifting up through the half-open window.

Tellman was tired and frustrated. “No one has seen the damned hansom, either in Berkeley Square or Mount Street, or anywhere else,” he went on. “At least, no one who has it in mind to tell us. Of course all London is crawling with cabs, any one of which could have had Mrs. Chancellor in it!” He leaned against the bookcase behind him. “Two were seen in Mount Street about the right time, but both of them have been accounted for. One was a Mr. Garney going out to dine with his mother. His story is well vouched for by his servants and hers. The other was a Lieutenant Salsby and a Mrs. Latten, going to the West End to dine. At least that is what they said.”

“You disbelieve them?” Pitt sat down behind his desk.

“‘Course I disbelieve them!” Tellman smiled. “Seen his face, and you would have too. Seen hers, and you’d know what they were going to do! She’s no better than she should be, but not party to abducting a cabinet minister’s wife. That’s not how she makes her living!”

“You know her?”

Tellman’s face registered the answer.

“Anything else?” Pitt asked.

“Don’t know what else to look for.” Tellman shrugged. “We’ve spent days trying to find the place she went in. Most likely Limehouse. More discreet than upriver. It’d be eleven or so before he put her into the water, maybe. That’d be four hours before she was found. Don’t really matter whether she hit the slipway on the incoming tide or went past farther into the current and was washed up on the outgoing. Still means she put in somewhere south.” He breathed out slowly and pulled a face. “And that’s a long stretch of river with a dozen wharves and steps, and as many streets that lead to them. And you’ll get no help from the locals. The people that spend their time waiting around there aren’t likely to speak to us if they can help it. Slit your throat for the practice.”

“I know that, Tellman. Have you a better idea?”

“No. I tried them all and they don’t work, but I’m known ’round there. Used to be at that station. You might do better.” His expression and his voice both denied it.

But Pitt was not satisfied. According to the river police, if she had been put into the water within an hour or so of having been killed, which the medical examiner had said could be no later than eleven, or at a stretch half past, then the incoming tide could only have carried her from the Limehouse area, at the farthest It was more likely to have been closer, except that that made it Wapping, right on the Pool of London.

Tellman had already tried the Thames police, whose station was on the river’s edge. They were extremely helpful, in an utterly negative way. Their patrols were excellent. They knew every yard of the waterfront, and they were sure no woman of Susannah Chancellor’s description and status had been put into the river there that night. It was an extravagant claim, but Pitt was inclined to believe them. The Port of London was always busy, even as late as midnight. Why should anyone take such a risk?

Which always brought him back to the question as to why anyone should murder Susannah Chancellor anyway. Was it an abduction that had gone tragically wrong?

Then was it simply greed, imagining Chancellor would pay a fine ransom? Or was the motive political … which brought him back to Peter Kreisler again.

Tellman had already spent fruitless days in Limehouse and learned nothing of use. If anyone had seen a body put into the water, they were not saying so. If they had seen a hansom, and a man carrying a woman, they were not saying that either. He had even been south of the river to Rotherhithe, but that yielded no conclusion, except that it was not impossible that someone could have taken a small boat from one of the hundred wharves or stairs and carried a body in it. He had even considered if Tellman could be part of the conspiracy, a subtle and brilliant Inner Circle member. But looking at the anger in his face, hearing the brittle edge in his voice, he could not believe his own judgment to be so wrong.

“What now?” Tellman said cynically, interrupting Pitt’s thoughts. “You want me to try the Surrey Docks?”

“No, there’s no point.” An idea was forming in Pitt’s mind from what Charlotte had said about betrayals and Traitors Gate. “Go and see what you can find out about her brother-in-law.”