Anne Perry - Silence in Hanover Close

Then how high did it go, this corruption, this treason?

No, he could not believe Ballarat had done it knowingly. He was too smug, too small in imagination. He had not the courage to play such a high game. He was complacent, insensitive, lacking imagination, a moral coward, a social climber, but he was English to the bone. In his own stubborn way he would have died before committing treason. If there were no England, what would be left for him to enjoy? What else was there to aspire to? No, Ballarat was being used.

But by whom?

“Are you all right, Mr. Pitt?” the constable said anxiously. “You look awful-taken back.”

“You’re sure about the calluses?” Pitt said slowly, trying to keep the despair out of his voice. “What about her face? Was it beautiful? At least, could you imagine she might have had grace, a kind of loveliness?”

The constable shook his head slowly. “ ’Ard ter say, Mr. Pitt.”

“The bones!” Pitt leaned forward impatiently. “I know about the swelling, the discoloration. But her bones. I can’t remember.” He waited, eyes fixed on the constable’s face.

“I’m sure about the calluses,” he said carefully. “And as well as I can reckon, sir, she were more or less ordinary, quite good, not plain, as yer might say, but nothin’ special neither. Why, Mr. Pitt? What is it you’re thinking?”

“That it wasn’t Cerise, Constable, it was some poor creature dressed in her clothes and murdered to implicate me. Cerise is still alive.”

“Gor’ blimey!” The constable breathed out slowly. There was only the faintest skepticism in his voice, a mere shadow of doubt in his plain, round face. “What do yer want me ter do, Mr. Pitt?”

“I don’t know, Constable, God help us. At the moment I have no idea.”

Charlotte’s thoughts were running parallel to Pitt’s, although at this point, of course, she did not know it. She began by assuming that Pitt was telling the absolute truth. He had looked for Cerise quite openly, and after dogged police work had been approached by someone who had led him to the house in Seven Dials, where he had arrived at precisely the right time to find her with her neck broken, and thus be caught in the appearance of having killed her himself.

Was that a coincidence, or had the killer organized her death to fall just that way, in one act silencing Cerise and disposing of Pitt? A stroke of superb fortune, or genius?

What had Cerise known that was worth the extraordinary risk of killing Dulcie to keep Pitt from her? Surely that had been a far more impulsive and dangerous murder. It must be something damning: the truth about Robert York’s death, or the identity of the spy-which were probably the same thing.

It still seemed most likely that Robert York had been Cerise’s lover, and she had tricked or seduced him into giving her secrets, which she had taken back to her master. Then she and Robert had quarreled, and he had threatened to tell the truth. Either Cerise or her master had murdered Robert to protect themselves.

Then why had Cerise been killed? Had she regretted Robert’s death? Perhaps she had not bargained for murder. Or had she cared for him in her own way? By all accounts he was handsome, elegant, and witty, and apparently had a reserved character that might make him unusually attractive to women. Or had Cerise simply lost her nerve and become a risk to her master, a liability? Had this master figure in the background learned that Pitt knew of Cerise through Dulcie, and attempted to get rid of all those close to him?

Her heart sank with a misery that was becoming familiar. The murderer could be anybody! There was no clue whatsoever as to who had broken the library window and murdered Robert York. Anyone could have gone to the house in Seven Dials if they knew Cerise was there.

But only members of the three families in Hanover Close could have pushed Dulcie out of the window! Charlotte had met them all, had sat and talked with them politely, and one of them was continuing the slow, deliberate, judicial murder of Pitt.

She got up abruptly from her seat by the kitchen stove. It was dark now. Gracie had long ago gone upstairs to bed. There was nothing more she could do tonight; she had twisted her mind round every fact or supposition she knew and the realization was undeniable: she would not solve it by thinking.

They would not let her see Pitt again for another four days. It was useless to ask Ballarat to help, but she might find the person who was actually working on the case, the constable who had questioned the brothel owner, who had seen Cerise’s body. And she must go back to Hanover Close, because that was where the answer was, if only she could find the first thread that would begin the unraveling.

Even though she was weary with anxiety and exhausted from doing all the heavy housework herself, still she slept badly and was awake long before the cold dawn. By seven she was in the kitchen, riddling out the fire herself and building it up. When Gracie came down at quarter past she found it done and the kettle boiling. She opened her mouth to object, then saw Charlotte’s pale face and thought better of it.

By late morning Charlotte was walking briskly in the icy sunlight under the bare trees on the edge of Green Park looking for Constable Maybery. The duty officer at Bow Street had informed her, unhappily, that Maybery was investigating the death of the woman in pink. He had been loath to tell her, but he was even more unwilling to face the prospect of dealing with a hysterical woman in the police station. He hated scenes, and from the look of her flushed face and brilliant eyes, this one might very soon fall into that category.

Charlotte saw the blue figure in his tall hat and cape just as he emerged from Half Moon Street into Piccadilly. She dashed across the road, heedless of oncoming carriages, infuriating the drivers, and caught up with him in a most unseemly run.

“Constable!”

He stopped. “Yes, ma’am? You all right, ma’am?”

“Yes. Are you Constable Maybery?”

He looked puzzled, his round face wrinkled in apprehension.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m Mrs. Pitt, Mrs. Thomas Pitt.”

“Oh.” Conflicting emotions crossed his face: embarrassment followed by sympathy, then an eagerness to speak. “I went an’ saw Mr. Pitt yesterday, ma’am. ’E didn’t look too badly, considerin’.” His eyes flickered doubtfully for a moment. There was no guilt in his expression, however.

Charlotte’s courage returned. It was just possible he did not believe Pitt was guilty. Perhaps that relief in his face was a sign that they were on the same side.

“Constable-you are investigating the death of the woman in pink? What do you know about her? What was her name? Where was she before she came to Seven Dials?”

He shook his head very slightly, but his eyes remained perfectly steady. “We don’t know nothin’ at all about ’er, ma’am. She got to the ’ouse in Seven Dials only three days before she was killed, an’ she gave the name o’ Mary Smith, an’ nobody ever ’eard of ’er before. She said nothin’, and they didn’t ask. O’ course, in that kind o’ business people don’t. But one thing, ma’am, Mr. Pitt seemed very certain as she was-’e said a ‘courtesan,’ very expensive an’ pickin’ ‘er own custom. But I saw the body, beggin’ yer pardon for discussin’ it, ma’am, but the body as I saw in Seven Dials ’ad calluses on ’er ’ands, an’ on ’er knees. Not ’eavy, like, but I seen ’em enough to know ’em. She weren’t livin’ like no expensive kept woman. I reckon as ’e must be wrong about that.”

“But she was!” Charlotte was nonplussed. Whatever she had expected, it was not this! “She was a great beauty! Oh, not traditional, certainly, we knew that. But she was extraordinary; people noticed her. She was very graceful, she had style, panache. She could never have scrubbed floors!”