Anne Perry - Silence in Hanover Close

“Good God-are you saying young Danver was her master?” Ballarat exploded.

“No.” For once Pitt could deny it honestly. “I don’t see why he should need to be. Isn’t he in the Foreign Office as well?”

“Another traitor?” Ballarat’s jaw set. His cigar was crumbling away to little rings of ash unnoticed.

“Maybe?”

“All right! All right!” Ballarat’s voice rose. “Find out who she was! The security of the empire may be involved. But if you want to keep your job, Pitt, be discreet. If you’re clumsy I can’t and won’t protect you. Do you understand me clearly?”

“Yes, thank you, sir,” Pitt said with open sarcasm. It was the first time he had called Ballarat sir in years; he had always managed to evade it without being downright rude.

“My pleasure, Pitt,” Ballarat replied, showing his teeth. “My pleasure!”

Pitt left the Bow Street station and stepped out into a pea soup fog feeling savage and determined. There was always Charlotte, and he would certainly rely upon her judgment as much as possible. He had to admit now that he was glad she had been able to connive an invitation to the Yorks’ and the Danvers’. At least she might give him an informed opinion of Veronica York’s character, and whether she had been devastated by her husband’s death or freed by it to marry Julian Danver. If the latter were true, then the woman had remarkable control to have waited a full three years and behaved throughout with such apparent decorum. Or had Julian insisted upon that, in order to keep his career? All the same, it was remarkable if there had been no indiscretion, no self-indulgence in all that time. Especially if Veronica had been the woman who dressed dramatically in cerise for her assignations.

Or perhaps she still did, and that had made waiting bearable for her.

The fog in the Strand was so thick he could not see across to the opposite pavement. It hung, thick and yellow-gray, full of the fumes from thousands of smoking chimneys, as the film suspended in the dampness rose up from the wide coils of the river that laced through the suburbs, past Chelsea, the Houses of Parliament, the Embankment, Wapping, and Limehouse, down to the Pool of London, Greenwich, and the Arsenal, and finally the estuary.

If Cerise, whoever she was, had dressed as glamorously as Dulcie said, then she had not done it merely to flit around landings in the middle of the night. She had gone out somewhere in public. It was a disguise, an alter ego for some woman who would be known in Society; or else she was a courtesan with whom neither the Yorks nor the Danvers would be seen by their own friends. So where would she have been able to meet her lovers?

He stood on the curb as carriages, hansoms, and carts clopped by him slowly in the yellow mist, looming suddenly and disappearing, swallowed up, the horses only dark shapes and muffled sounds. The road was slimy and more spattered with dung than usual. This was the sort of weather when crossing sweepers got knocked over, sometimes even killed. There was a one-legged sweeper in Piccadilly who had lost his limb that way.

Pitt knew there were hotels, restaurants, and theaters where such assignations could be kept, places where if a gentleman saw an acquaintance both men would have enough tact to overlook the meeting, neither wishing it referred to. These places were dotted round the borders of fashionable London, in the Haymarket, Leicester Square, Piccadilly. He knew where to find them and the touts and doormen to ask.

“Cabbie!” he shouted into the street, catching his breath as the fog threatened to choke him, making him cough. “Cabbie!”

A hansom slowed up and stopped, harness dripping, horse’s head down, driver’s voice disembodied in the gloom.

“Haymarket,” Pitt requested, and climbed in.

It was the following day, the fog still clamped heavily over the city, acrid in the throat, sharp to the nose, before he found his first success. He was in a private hotel a little off Jermyn Street near Piccadilly. The doorman was a richly mustached ex-soldier, with liberal ideas on morality and an injury from the Second Ashanti War which prevented him from doing any physical labor. He was also illiterate, which precluded any clerical work. He was quite amenable to answering Pitt’s questions, for a consideration. Ballarat had been very little help with information or influence, but he had given Pitt as much financial license as he could.

“You’re goin’ back a bit, guv,” the doorman said cheerfully. “But sure I remember ’er. Right ’andsome she was, an’ always wore them sort o’ colors. Looks wicked on most people, but suited ’er summink marvelous. Black ’air and dark eyes she ’ad, an’ graceful as a swan. Tall woman, not a lot o’ shape to ’er, but she ’ad summink special all the same.”

“What sort of something?” Pitt said curiously. He wanted to know what this man thought, his judgment; even with his limited vocabulary, his opinion would be worth a great deal. He knew street women, he watched them every night, and he saw their clients too. He would see them working and yet not be part of it. Few of them would fool him.

The man pulled a slight face as he considered. “Quality,” he said at last. “She ’ad a quality about ’er; never acted like she was ’ustling people, anxious like; it was always them as was after ’er; she didn’t give a cuss.” He shook his head. “It were more’n that, though. It were-it were like she were doin’ it fer fun. Yeah, that’s it-she ’ad fun! She never laughed, not out loud, she ’ad too much class for that. But she were laughing inside, like.”

“Did you ever talk to her?” Pitt pursued.

“Me?” He looked a little surprised. “No, I never did. She didn’t say a lot, and always spoke quiet like. Only saw ’er, oh, maybe ’alf a dozen times.”

“Can you remember who she was with?”

“Different blokes. Elegant-she liked ’em real elegant, didn’t like any scruff. And money o’ course, but then so do they all. No one without a bit o’ real money comes ’ere.” He gave a short laugh.

“Can you describe any of them?”

“Not so’s you’d know ’em again, no.” He smiled.

“Try a little,” Pitt pressed him.

“You couldn’t pay me that much, guv. You goin’ ter give me another job when they throw me out of ’ere an’ black me name?”

Pitt sighed. He had known before he started that describing the woman was very different from being indiscreet about her clients. Clients had money, position, they expected privacy and no doubt bought it for a generous price. Selling the secrets of one would lose the trust of all. “All right,” he conceded. “Be general. Old or young, dark, fair or gray, what sort of height and build?”

“Yer goin’ ter search all London, guv?”

“I can eliminate a few.”

The doorman shrugged. “If yer like. Well, those as I can recall was older, above forty. Don’t think she took ’em fer the money; dunno why, but I ’ad the feelin’ she could afford ter pick and choose.”

“Gray?”

“None I recalls. An’ none ’efty-all on the slim side.” He moved closer to Pitt. “Look, guv, for all I know it could ’ave bin the same gent. It don’t pay me ter peer into their faces! They comes ’ere discreet-that’s what they pays for! Like I said, she could afford ter pick. I always ’ad the feelin’ she was doin’ it fer fun.”

“Did she always wear that color?”

“Shades of it, yeah; it was like-’er trademark. Why you so keen ter know about ’er anyway? She ain’t bin ’ere in, oh, two or three years.”

“Which? Two, or three?”

“Well if yer want it that precise, guv, three, I reckon.”

“And you’ve not seen or heard of her since then?”