Seven Dials

chapter FOUR
ON THE DAY THAT CHARLOTTE undertook to help Gracie, and thus Tilda, Pitt returned to Narraway's office and found him pacing the floor, five steps and then turn, another five, and back again. He spun around as Pitt opened the door. His face was pinched and tired, his eyes too bright. He stared at Pitt questioningly.

Pitt closed the door behind himself and remained standing. "Ryerson was there," he said bluntly. "He doesn't deny it. He helped her move the body and he didn't attempt to call the police. She hasn't said that, but he will if the police ask him. He'll protect her, at his own cost."

Narraway said nothing, but his body seemed to become even more rigid, as if Pitt's words had layers of meaning deeper than the facts they knew.

"Her story doesn't make sense," Pitt went on, wishing Narraway would answer, say anything at all to make the talking easier. But Narraway seemed to be so charged with emotion that he was unable to exercise his usual incisive leap of intelligence. He was waiting for Pitt to lead.

"If she had no involvement, why would she try to move the body?" Pitt continued. "Why not call the police, as anyone else would?"

Narraway glared at him, his voice cracking when he spoke. "Because she set up the situation. She wanted to be caught. She might even have been the one who called the police. Have you considered that?"

"To incriminate herself?" Pitt said with total disbelief.

Narraway's face was twisted with bitterness. "We haven't come to trial yet. Wait and see what she says then. So far, if Talbot's telling the truth, she hasn't said anything at all. What if she turns around and, with desperate reluctance, admits that Ryerson shot Lovat in a jealous rage?" His voice mimicked savagely the tone he imagined she would use. "She tried to conceal it, because she loves him and felt guilty for having provoked him-she knew he had an uncontrollable temper-but she cannot go on protecting him any longer, and will not hang for him." His look challenged Pitt to prove him wrong.

Pitt was stunned. "What for?" he asked, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth, hideous possibilities danced before him, violent, personal, political.

Narraway's stare was withering. "She's Egyptian, Pitt. Cotton comes to mind to begin with. We've got riots in Manchester over prices already. We want them down, Egypt wants them up. Ever since the American Civil War cut off our supply from the South and we've had to rely on Egypt, the balance has been different. European industry is catching up with us and we need the empire not only to buy from but to sell to."

Pitt frowned. "Don't we buy most of Egypt's cotton anyway?"

"Of course we do!" Narraway said impatiently. "But a bargain that leaves one side unhappy serves neither in the end, because it doesn't last. Ryerson is one of the few men who can both see further than a couple of years ahead and negotiate an agreement that will leave both the Egyptian growers and the British weavers feeling as if they have gained something." His face tightened. "Apart from that, there's Egyptian nationalism, and for God's sake we don't want to send the gunboats in again! We've bombarded Alexandria once in the last twenty years." He ignored Pitt's wince. "And there's religious fervor," he went on. "I hardly need to remind you of the uprising in the Sudan?"

Pitt did not reply; everyone remembered the siege of Khartoum and the murder of General Gordon.

"Other than that," Narraway finished, "personal profit, or common or gender hatred. Do you need more?"

"Then we need to learn the truth before it comes to trial," Pitt answered. "But I don't know that it will help."

"You must make it help!" Narraway said between his teeth, his voice thick with emotion. "If Ryerson is convicted, the government will have to replace him with either Howlett or Maberley. Howlett will give in to the mill workers here and drive the prices down so far it will break the Egyptians. We'll have a few years of wealth and then disaster-poverty-Egypt will have no cotton to sell and no money to buy anything. Possibly even rebellion. Maberley will give in to the Egyptians and we'll have riots all over the Midlands here, police forced to suppress them with violence, maybe even the army out." He drew in breath to add more, then changed his mind and swung around with his back to Pitt.

"So far everything incriminates his woman, with Ryerson as a willing accomplice." He jabbed the air with his hand. "We need another answer. Find out more about Lovat. Who else might have killed him? Who was he? What was his relationship with the woman? I suppose one might hope there was some justification for her killing him?" There was no lift of hope in him, and yet Pitt had the intense feeling that, beneath the bitterness, Narraway was clinging on to a thread of belief that there could be another, better explanation.

"You know Ryerson, sir," Pitt began. "If the woman comes to trial, will he really allow himself to be implicated? If he has any kind of guilt, won't he resign first, so at least he isn't a government minister at the time?"

Narraway kept his back to him, his face hidden.

"Probably," he agreed. "But I am not yet prepared to ask the man to do that until I can see beyond doubt that he has any guilt in Lovat's death." There was dismissal in his tone and in the rigid set of his shoulders, the light from the narrow window on his dark head. "Report to me tomorrow," he said finally. He swung around just as Pitt reached the door.

"Pitt!"

"Yes, sir?"

"I accepted you into Special Branch because Cornwallis told me that you were his best detective and that you know society. You know how to tread carefully but still find the truth." It was a statement, but it was also a question, even a plea. For an instant, Pitt felt as if Narraway were asking for help in some way which he could not name or explain.

Then the impression vanished.

"Get on with it," Narraway ordered.

"Yes, sir," Pitt said again, then left, and closed the door behind him.

He went straight to the offices where Lovat had worked for the year or so before his death. Naturally the police had already been there. The information was so public it had been printed in Lovat's obituary, so when Pitt arrived he was received with weary resignation by Ragnall, an official in his early forties who had obviously already answered all the predictable questions.

Ragnall stood in the quiet, discreetly furnished office overlooking Horse Guards Parade and regarded Pitt patiently but with very little interest.

"I don't know what else I can tell you," he said, gesturing for Pitt to sit down in the armchair opposite the desk. "I can offer no explanation except the obvious one-he pestered the woman until she grew desperate and shot him... either in what she construed to be self-defense or more likely because he threatened to disrupt her present arrangements." A slight expression of distaste crossed his face. "And before you ask me, I have no idea what they might be."

Pitt had little hope of learning much from the interview, but he had no better place to begin. He settled into the chair and looked across at Mr. Ragnall.

"You think he may have pestered Miss Zakhari to the point that she felt a simple rebuff was not adequate to make him desist?" he asked.

Ragnall looked surprised. "Well, it seems to have been the case, doesn't it? Are you suggesting that she deliberately encouraged him, for some reason, and then killed him? Why, for heaven's sake? Why would any woman do such a thing?" He frowned. "You said you were from Special Branch..."

"Special Branch has no knowledge of Miss Zakhari prior to the death of Mr. Lovat," Pitt answered the implied question. "I wanted your judgment of Mr. Lovat as a man who would continue to pursue a woman who has told him that she has no desire for his attentions."

Ragnall looked very faintly uncomfortable. His smooth, rather good-looking face flushed, so slightly it could have been no more than a change of the light, except that he had not moved.

"I suppose I am saying that-yes." He made it sound like an apology. "I believe Miss Zakhari is very beautiful. At least that is what I have heard. One can become... obsessed." He pursed his lips, giving himself a moment to seek exactly the right words to make Pitt understand. "She is Egyptian. There are unlikely to be many other Egyptian women in London. It is not as if she were ordinary, and easily replaceable. Some men are attracted to the exotic."

"You saw Mr. Lovat regularly." Pitt too was feeling his way. "Did you gather the impression that he was 'obsessed,' as you put it?"

"Well..." Ragnall drew in his breath and then let it out again.

"Your protection of his reputation may condemn another man," Pitt said grimly.

Ragnall looked puzzled for a moment.

"Another man?" Then his confusion cleared. "Oh... this nonsense in the newspapers about Ryerson? Surely it's just..." He opened his palms to indicate a helplessness to describe exactly what he was thinking.

"I hope so," Pitt agreed. "Was Lovat obsessed with her?"

"I... I really have no idea." Ragnall was obviously uncomfortable. "I never knew of him being serious about a woman... at least for more than a short time. He..." Now there was distinct color in his face. "He seemed to find it rather easy to attract women and then... move on."

"He had many affairs?" Pitt concluded.

"Yes... yes, I'm afraid he did. He was usually reasonably discreet, of course. But one does get to know." Ragnall was acutely aware of discussing intimate subjects with a social inferior. Pitt had placed him in the position of betraying his own class, or his ethics. Either would be hard and cut across his deep convictions as to who and what he wished to be.

"With what sort of women?" Pitt asked, his voice still light and courteous.

Ragnall's eyes widened.

Pitt maintained his steady gaze. "Mr. Lovat has been murdered, sir," he reminded him. "I am afraid the reasons for such a crime are not often as simple as we should like, or as far from shame. I need to know more about Mr. Lovat and the people he knew well."

"Surely the Egyptian woman, Miss Zakhari, killed him?" Ragnall said, his composure regained. "He may have been foolish in pursuing her when his attentions would seem to have been unwelcome, but there is no need to drag anyone else into it, is there?" He regarded Pitt with a look of distaste.

"It appears as though she did," Pitt conceded. "Although she denies it. And as you say, it seems an extremely violent and unnecessary way to refuse an unwanted suitor. From what I have heard of her so far, she was a woman of more finesse. She must have had unwanted suitors before. Why was Lovat different?"

Ragnall's face tightened, and there was a dull color in his cheeks again and a stiffness in his manner. "You are right," he said grudgingly. "If she made her living that way, and I had assumed such was the case, then she must have been better at discarding the old, in order to improve her situation, than this would suggest."

"Exactly," Pitt agreed with feeling. For the first time a point had been made in Ayesha Zakhari's favor. He was startled by how much it pleased him. "What was Lovat like? And you are not giving his obituary. Only the truth can be fair to all."

Ragnall thought for several moments. "Frankly, he was a womanizer," he said reluctantly.

"He liked women?" Pitt attempted to reach after exactly what Ragnall meant. "He fell in love? He used them? Might he have made enemies?"

Ragnall was distinctly unhappy. "I... I really don't know."

"What gives you the impression that he was a womanizer, sir?" Pitt said bluntly. "Men have been known to exaggerate their conquests to impress others. A lot of loose talk does not necessarily mean anything."

A flick of temper crossed Ragnall's face. "Lovat didn't talk, Mr. Pitt, at least not that I heard. It is my own observation, and that of colleagues."

"What sort of women?" Pitt repeated. "Ones like Ayesha Zakhari?"

Ragnall was slightly taken aback. "You mean foreigners? Or..." He did not wish to use the word whore. It spoke not only of the women but of the men who used them. "Not that I am aware of," he finished abruptly.

"I meant women who have no husbands or families in London," Pitt corrected. "And who are past the usual age of marrying, possibly who make their way as mistresses."

Ragnall took a deep breath, as if reaching a decision that was difficult for him.

Pitt waited. Perhaps finally he was on the brink of something that did not implicate Ryerson.

"No," Ragnall said at last. "I gathered he did not particularly care, and... and he had not the means to support a mistress, not in any style." He stopped, still reluctant to commit himself any further.

Pitt stared at him. "Other men's wives? Their daughters?"

Ragnall cleared his throat. "Yes... at times."

"Who were his friends?" Pitt asked. "What clubs did he belong to? What were his interests, sports? Did he gamble, go to the theater? What did he do in his leisure time?"

Ragnall hesitated.

"Don't tell me you don't know," Pitt warned. "The man was in the diplomatic service. You could not allow yourself to be unaware of his habits. That would be incompetent. You must know his associates, his problems, his financial status."

Ragnall looked down at his hands, spread on the desk, then up at Pitt again. "The man is dead," he said quietly. "I have no idea whether that was pure misfortune or if he contributed to it in some way himself, greatly, or very little. He was good at his job. I am unaware of him owing anyone money or, as far as I know, favors. He came from a good family, and he kept his word once he had given it. He had an honorable career in the army and he never lacked either physical or moral courage. I never caught him in a lie, nor do I know anyone who did. He was loyal to his friends, and he knew how to conduct himself as a gentleman. He had a certain charm, and there was nothing mean-spirited in him."

Pitt felt the wave of regret he always did when investigating a murder. Suddenly the truth of detail was overwhelmed by the loss of a life, the passion, the vulnerability, the virtues and the idiosyncrasies. The vitality of being was ended, not naturally in age, but without warning, and incomplete. The fault or the contributing sins of the person concerned seemed so unimportant as to be forgotten.

But emotion would cripple his analytical mind, and his job was to find the truth, easy or difficult, complicated and however painful.

"The names of his friends," he said aloud. "I may find him innocent of all blame, Mr. Ragnall, but I cannot assume. If Miss Zakhari, or anyone else, is to be hanged for his murder, it will be because we know what happened, and why."

"Yes, of course." Ragnall pulled a piece of paper towards himself and picked up a pen, dipped it in the ink and began to write. He blotted it and pushed it towards Pitt.

"Thank you." Pitt took it, glanced at it and read the names, and the clubs at which they might be found, then took his leave.

PITT SAW ONE or two of the people Ragnall had suggested, and learned very little more. No one was comfortable discussing a colleague who was dead, and unable to defend himself. It was not a matter of affection so much as loyalty to their own ideals, perhaps in the belief that to betray was to invite a similar betrayal yourself, when your own weaknesses were questioned.

By midafternoon Pitt had given up the hope of finding anything useful this way, and decided to go and see his brother-in-law, Jack Radley, who had now been a Member of Parliament for a number of years, some of it with particular interest in the Foreign Office.

He was not in the House of Commons, and Pitt caught up with him just after four o'clock, walking in the sun across St. James's Park, a slight breeze sending a few early yellow leaves fluttering down over the grass.

Jack stopped and turned when he heard Pitt call his name. He was surprised to see him, but not displeased.

"The Eden Lodge case?" he said wryly as Pitt fell into step with him.

"Sorry," Pitt apologized. They had a genuine liking for each other, but their social circles as well as their professions kept them apart almost all the time. Jack had no money of his own, but he had always managed to live as well as his good birth invited. To begin with, it had been by liberal use of his great personal charm. Since marrying Emily, it was on the fortunes she had inherited from her first husband.

For the first year or two he had been content to continue merely enjoying himself in society. Then, with Emily's pushing, and some example of Pitt's, and possibly the respect he had observed both his wife and her sister had for achievement, he had taken up a vivid interest in politics. That did not alter the fact that he and Pitt met seldom.

"I don't know Ryerson," Jack said regretfully. "Bit above my political reach... for the time being." He saw Pitt's face. "I mean I intend to climb," he corrected quickly, "not that I think he is going to fall. Is he?" Now his expression was suddenly very serious.

"Too early to say," Pitt replied. "No, I'm not being discreet. I really don't know." He pushed his hands into his pockets, a dramatic contrast to Jack, who would never have dreamed of doing so. It would ruin the line of his clothes, and he was far too innately elegant to do that.

"I wish I could help," Jack said with implied apology. "It all seems ridiculous, from what I've heard."

A small black-and-white dog was charging around, wagging its tail with excitement. It did not seem to belong to the courting couple near the trees, or to the nursemaid in starched uniform, the sun shining on the fair hair escaping her white cap as she pushed a perambulator along the path.

Pitt bent and picked up a piece of stick and threw it as far as he could. The dog hared after it, barking with excitement.

"Did you know Lovat?" he asked.

Jack glanced sideways at him, unhappiness in his eyes. "Not well."

Pitt could not afford to let him escape so lightly. "He's been murdered, Jack. If it were not important I wouldn't ask."

Jack looked startled. "Special Branch?" he said with disbelief. "Why? Is there something in the Ryerson speculation? I thought it was just the newspapers."

"I don't know what it is," Pitt retorted. "And I need to know, preferably before they do. Did you know Lovat? Without the censorship of decency toward the dead."

Jack's mouth tightened and he stared into the distance.

The dog came galloping up to Pitt and dropped the stick, dancing backwards in anticipation, gazing up at him.

He bent, picked up the stick and pitched it far again. The dog hurtled after it, ears and tail flying.

"A difficult man," Jack said at last. "An ideal candidate for murder, I suppose, in a way. Actually, I'm damned sorry it happened." He turned to look at Pitt. "Tread softly, Thomas, if you can. There are a lot of people who could be hurt, and they don't deserve it. The man was a bastard where women were concerned. If he'd stayed with the sort of married women who've had their children and now play the field a bit, no one would have minded a lot, but he courted women as if he loved them, young women expecting marriage, needing it, and then once he had them, he suddenly cried off. Left everyone wondering what was the matter with them. The conclusion was usually that they had lost their virtue. Then, of course, nobody else wanted them either." He did not need to paint a further picture. They both knew what lay ahead for an unmarriageable woman.

"Why?" Pitt said miserably. "Why court a decent woman you have no intention of marrying? It's cruel... and dangerous. I'd-" He stopped, but in his mind he thought for a moment of Jemima, trusting, eager, so easy to hurt. If a man had done that to her, Pitt would have wanted to kill him, but not shoot him cleanly in someone else's garden in the middle of the night. He would have wanted to beat him to a pulp first, feel the crack of bone on bone, the impact of his fist on flesh, see the pain, and the understanding of why it was happening. It was probably primitive, and would be of no help at all to Jemima, except to let her know she was of infinite value to someone and that she was not alone in her pain. And it would serve the point at least that the man would be a great deal less inclined to do it again.

He looked sideways at Jack, and saw something of the same raw anger in his face. Perhaps he was thinking of his own daughter, barely more than a baby.

"You know it for certain?" Pitt asked quietly.

"Yes. I suppose you want names?"

"No. I don't want them," Pitt replied. "I would far rather let the poor devils keep their pain secret, but I have to. If we don't get the right person, then the wrong man... or woman, will be hanged."

"I suppose so." Jack listed off four names, and what he knew of where they might be found.

Pitt did not need to write them down. He wished he did not even need to hear them or make enquiries; he could understand their emotions too easily. Imagination was necessary to his job, but it was also a curse.

The dog came back, quivering with excitement and delight, dropping the stick at Pitt's feet and dancing around waiting for him to throw it again. It did not often meet people so willing to play, and who obviously understood the game.

Pitt obliged and the animal went racing off again. He really would like to have a dog. He would tell Charlotte the cats would just have to accommodate it.

"You could ask Emily," Jack said suddenly, looking at Pitt and biting his lip. He looked slightly abashed to be saying it. "She notices things about people..." He left it hanging. They were both aware of past cases where Charlotte and Emily had interfered, sometimes dangerously, but their acute discretion and understanding of nuances of meaning had been key to the solution.

"Yes," Pitt agreed, surprised that he had not thought of it for himself. "Yes, I'll do that. Will she be at home?"

Jack smiled suddenly. "I've no idea!"

ACTUALLY, IT TOOK PITT two hours to catch up with Emily. Her butler told him that she had gone to a newly opened art exhibition, and after that she expected to return home only for the time it took her to change for the evening, and dinner at Lady Mansfield's home in Belgravia. Tomorrow morning she would be riding in the park, and then visiting her dressmaker before taking an early luncheon and making the usual afternoon calls. The evening would be spent at the opera.

Pitt thanked the butler, asked for directions to the exhibition, and took himself there immediately.

The gallery was crowded with women in beautiful gowns, and a few men escorting them, flirting a little, and passing grave and wordy comments on the paintings.

Pitt looked at them only briefly, which he regretted. He thought them not only beautiful but of great interest. The style was impressionist in a manner he had not seen before, blurred and hazy, and yet creating a feeling of light which pleased him enormously.

But he was not here for interest. He must find Emily before she left, and that would require concentration, and even considerable physical effort merely to keep on excusing himself and pushing between groups of chattering people, women with skirts which brushed up against each other and blocked the way for several feet in every direction.

He received several angry and imperious glances and heard mutters of "Well, really!" on more than one occasion, but he could not afford the time to wait until they moved on and allowed him to pass of their own accord.

He found Emily in the third room, in idle conversation with a young woman in a cornflower-blue dress and an extravagant hat which he thought was most becoming. It lent her a drama which she did not otherwise possess.

He was wondering how to attract Emily's attention without being rude when she noticed him, perhaps because he was conspicuously out of place in the rest of the crowd. Her face filled with consternation. She excused herself urgently from the woman in blue, and came straight over to Pitt.

"There is nothing wrong," he assured her.

"I had not thought there was," she said, without altering her expression in the slightest. "My fear was of being so bored I fell asleep and lost my balance. There is nothing whatever here to hold me up."

"Don't you like the pictures?" he asked.

"Thomas, don't be so pedestrian. Nobody comes to look at the paintings, not really look. They only glance at them in order to make remarks they think are fearfully deep, and hope someone will repeat. Why have you come? They're not stolen, are they?"

"No, they're not." He smiled in spite of himself. "Jack suggested that you might be able to help me."

Her face quickened with interest. "Of course!" she said eagerly. "What can I do?"

"All I want is information, and perhaps your opinion."

"About whom?" She linked her arm in his and turned towards one of the pictures as if she were studying it intently.

It was not really the situation in which to hold a hotly discreet conversation, but if he spoke softly it would probably be neither overheard nor remarked by anyone.

"About Lieutenant Edwin Lovat," he replied, also staring at the picture.

She stiffened, although not a flicker crossed her face. "Are you dealing with that case?" Her voice was sharp with excitement. She did not mention Special Branch, she was far too aware of putting even a word out of place to say that aloud, but he knew the thoughts and possibilities racing through her imagination.

"Yes, I am," he answered almost under his breath. "What do you know about him, Emily? Or what have you heard... and make plain the difference."

She kept her eyes fixed on the painting. It was a scene of light shining through trees onto a patch of water. It had an extraordinarily restful beauty, as of solitude on a windless, summer day. One expected to see the shimmer of dragonfly wings.

"I know that he was a dangerously unhappy man," she answered him. "He seemed to keep falling half in love, and then, the moment he had won someone's commitment, to run away as if he were terrified of allowing anyone to know him. He caused a great deal of pain, and he never regretted it enough not to go and do it again straightaway. If it was not the Egyptian woman who murdered him, then you have plenty of other possibilities to look at."

"Dangerously unhappy?" He repeated her phrase curiously.

"Well, you don't behave like that unless something is corroding inside you, do you?" she challenged, still without more than glancing up at him. "If you are merely selfish, or greedy, you might marry for money, for title, or for beauty, but what he was doing gained him nothing except enemies. And he was apparently not so stupid as to be unaware of that. Nobody could be. He was quite as intelligent as most people, and yet he behaved in a way which any fool could see would bring him nothing but grief."

He thought about it in silence for a while, turning it over in his mind. It was a concept he had not considered.

She waited.

"Do you believe he had thought as deeply as that?" he said at length.

"You didn't ask me to be logical, Thomas, you asked me what I thought of Lieutenant Lovat."

"You are quite right. Thank you. Can you give me the names of these people?"

"Naturally!" she said, raising her hand to indicate the light in the picture, as if she were remarking on it, then she reeled off half a dozen names, and he wrote them down, with at least a general idea of their addresses and a rough guide to their social pastimes. It was an ugly catalogue of hope and humiliation, embarrassment and hurt feelings, some lighter, others profound.

Pitt thanked her and left the gallery.

THAT EVENING and all the next day Pitt enquired discreetly into the whereabouts of the people whose names Emily had given him, but all of them could account for their whereabouts, or else the moral or emotional injury was too old, or too delicate, for revenge now to hurt Lovat any more than it would also hurt them. Every rational thought led Pitt back to Ryerson and Ayesha Zakhari.

The day after that he went to the records of Lovat's time in the army in Egypt, just in case they shed any new light on his character or his relationships with other soldiers, or offered an avenue to pursue another Egyptian connection that could lead back to Ayesha Zakhari and make more sense of what had happened at Eden Lodge. He realized with something of a jolt how much he wanted to discover something that would justify what he could not avoid believing... that Ayesha had shot Lovat, and Ryerson was so inextricably involved with her that he had been prepared to help conceal the crime.

But the records yielded nothing. Lovat seemed to have been more than adequate at his profession. He had had a natural ease with people and knew how to conduct himself in society.

His military service had been without serious blemish, and he had been honorably discharged when his health was broken after a bout of fever while stationed in Alexandria. There was no suggestion of cowardice or shirking his duty in any way. He had been a good soldier and well liked.

Was it an honest summary, or one carefully censored of any facts that would prejudice a subsequent career? It would not be the first time Pitt had come across a tacit agreement to place loyalty before truth in the concept that the highest honor lay in protecting the reputation of the service.

He had no way of knowing from the printed word, and the clerks he saw knew nothing personally and were far too well trained to speculate. They looked at him blandly and gave away nothing.

It seemed to be in Lovat's personal life that he had incurred enemies. According to those who had known him, he had been a pleasant-looking man, not traditionally handsome, but with a good physique, a fine head of hair, and a smile of great charm. He could dance well and found conversation easy. He liked music, and sang with enthusiasm, carrying a tune and remembering the words of all the sentimental ballads of the day.

"Don't know what was wrong with him," an elderly gentleman said sadly, shaking his head as he sat opposite Pitt in the Army and Navy Club in Pall Mall that evening, sipping a Napoleon brandy, his feet stretched out against the fender, scorching the soles of his boots. "Any amount of agreeable young women who would have made a decent wife. But the moment he looked as if he'd a chance of their hand, he got bored, or dissatisfied, or whatever it was... cold feet, I daresay... and went after someone else." He pushed out his lower lip in a grimace. "None too particular about who he chose either. Morals of an alley cat, sorry to say."

Pitt inched a little farther from the fire, which was burning with a brilliant glow and far more heat than was needed on a mild September day. Colonel Woodside seemed to be oblivious to it, and to the hot smell emanating from his boots.

"Did you know the Egyptian woman, Miss Zakhari?" Pitt asked, uncertain whether the colonel would consider that an improper question to a gentleman.

"Of course I didn't know her!" Woodside said testily. "And if I had, I'd not be likely to own it to the likes of you! But I saw her, certainly. Beautiful creature, quite beautiful. Never seen an Englishwoman walk with a grace like that. Moved like weeds in the water... sort of... fluid..." He held up his hand as if to demonstrate, then stopped abruptly and glared at Pitt. "If you want me to say Lovat pestered her... I can't! I've no idea. A man doesn't do that sort of thing in public."

Pitt changed direction. "Did Mr. Lovat know Mr. Ryerson?" he asked.

"No idea! Shouldn't think so. Damn!" Colonel Woodside jerked his feet off the fender, put them down on the floor, then took them up again even more quickly, and with a grimace.

Pitt kept his face perfectly straight, but with difficulty.

"Hardly frequent the same places," Woodside added, crossing his ankles gingerly to keep the soles of both feet off the floor. "Generation between them, not to mention status, money, and taste. You're thinking about the woman? For God's sake, man! Beautiful, but no better than she should be. Neither man's going to marry her. Of course she'd choose Ryerson." He looked across at Pitt with a frown. "He's got wealth, position, reputation, polish. Apart from that, he has a charm young Lovat could never achieve. And heaven knows why he never married after his wife was killed... bad business, that... but he won't do now. I daresay an heiress could pick and choose a lot better." He gave a little grunt. "Still, Egyptian women might not know that. Much wiser to play it safe."

"You don't think Ryerson would consider marrying her?" Pitt asked, more to see Woodside's reaction than because he expected a possible answer in the affirmative. He was so touched by a sense of pity for her that it was not even a real question. She was to be used, enjoyed, but never even considered as belonging. There were millions like that, for all sorts of reasons, money, appearance, things they could not change, but it still made him angry. He knew what it was like to be excluded, even if it had not happened to him very often.

Woodside stared at his feet. "Ryerson never got over the death of his wife. Don't really know why. Takes some men that way, but I hadn't thought he was one of them. Never seemed that close, but I suppose you can't tell. Pretty woman, but restless, always looking for some new taste or experience. Couldn't be bothered with her, myself. Don't mind a woman with no brains-easier sometimes-but no patience with one who's downright silly."

Pitt was surprised. He had not imagined Saville Ryerson falling in love with a woman who was markedly unintelligent. He tried to visualize her, the kind of beauty or demureness she must have possessed to capture his emotions to the degree that a quarter of a century after her death he was still mourning her too profoundly to marry again.

"Was she so very..." he began, then found that he did not know how he intended to finish.

"No idea," Woodside said unhelpfully. "Never understood Ryerson. Brilliant chap, at times, but devil of a temper when he was young. Only a fool would cross him, I'll tell you that!"

Again, Pitt was slightly taken aback. This was not the man he had observed a couple of days ago-calm, self-controlled, concerned only for the woman.

Had he lost all his ability to judge? Was it possible that Ryerson had shot Lovat himself, in a fit of jealousy, and the woman was shouldering the blame? Why? For love, or in some mistaken belief that he would, or even could, protect her?

"Changed, of course," Woodside went on thoughtfully, still looking at his feet as if afraid he might actually have scorched the leather of his boots. "God knows, with the government he's had enough to test any man's temper over the years. Lonely thing for a man, command, and politicians are a treacherous lot, if you ask me." He looked up suddenly. "Sorry I can't help. No idea who shot Lovat, or why."

Pitt realized it was a dismissal, and he rose to his feet. "Thank you for giving me your time, sir. I'm much obliged to you."

Woodside waved his hand and turned his feet back to the fire.

Pitt went to Ryerson's office in Westminster and requested permission to speak to him for a few minutes. He had waited rather less than half an hour when a secretary in a high wing collar and pin-striped trousers came to collect him and show him in. Pitt was surprised it had taken so short a time.

Ryerson received him in a room of somber opulence, leather-covered furniture, old wood with a polish so deep it seemed like satin beneath glass. There were shelves of morocco-bound books with gold lettering and windows looking out onto the slowly fading leaves of a lime tree.

Ryerson looked tired, dark smudges around his eyes, and his hands constantly fiddled with an unlit cigar.

"What have you found?" he said as soon as Pitt had closed the door, and even before he sat down in the chair Ryerson gestured towards, although remaining standing himself.

Pitt sat down obediently. "Only that Lovat apparently had affairs with many women and no loyalty to any," he replied. "He seems to have hurt many people, some deeply. There is a trail of unhappiness behind him." He watched Ryerson quite openly, but he saw no flicker of either anger or surprise in his face. It was as if Lovat personally did not matter to him.

"Unpleasant," he said with a frown. "But regrettably not unique. What are you suggesting? That some wronged husband could have shot him?" He bit his lip, as if to stop himself from laughing, however bitterly. "That's absurd, Pitt. I wish I could believe it, but what was this wronged man doing at Eden Lodge at three in the morning? What kind of women did Lovat pursue? Ladies? Parlor maids? Prostitutes?"

"Ladies, so far as I have heard," Pitt replied. "Young and unmarried." He did not take his eyes from Ryerson's face and saw the distaste in it. "The sort of women whom scandal would ruin," he added unnecessarily. His remark was driven by anger, not reason.

Ryerson finally threw his cigar into the fireplace, just missing and hearing it strike the brass surround with a thud. He ignored it. "And are you suggesting that the father of one of these women spent the night following Lovat until he caught up with him in the shrubbery of Eden Lodge, and then shot him? You have conducted many investigations of murder which have sooner or later led you to the withdrawing rooms of the aristocracy. You know better than to make such a preposterous suggestion." He looked closely at Pitt, as if to read some motive beyond the apparent absurdity. There was no contempt in his stare, only puzzlement and, very close beneath it, fear, real and biting deep.

Pitt realized something else also, with a sudden lurch of surprise, then instantly knew that he should have expected it.

"You have been enquiring about me!"

Ryerson shrugged very slightly. "Of course. I cannot afford less than the best. Cornwallis tells me you are the best." He did not make it a question, but there was a very slight lift in his voice as if he wanted Pitt to confirm it for him, assure him he had done everything he could.

Pitt was disconcerted to find himself embarrassed. He was angry with Cornwallis, although he knew he would have spoken only with honesty; Cornwallis had probably never lied in his life. His transparency was both his greatest virtue, along with his moral and physical courage, and at the same time his most acute disadvantage in the politics of police administration.

He was utterly unlike Victor Narraway, who was the ultimate sophisticate in subtlety, the art of deceiving without lies, and of keeping his own counsel in everything. If he had any vulnerabilities at all, Pitt had not seen them. He understood emotion in others, but Pitt had no feeling that it was other than with the brilliance of his intellect, his power of observation and deduction. He could not even guess at what Narraway felt himself, or if he felt anything at all, if he had unfilled dreams anywhere in the secret recesses of his heart, wounds unhealed or fears that drowned his solitary moments awake in the night.

Ryerson was watching Pitt now, waiting for some reply.

"Yes, I have investigated in many places," he answered aloud. "Enough to know that some things are just as simple as they appear, and some are not. It seems as if Miss Zakhari had an assignation of some kind with Mr. Lovat, or why did she go out to meet him, and why did she take the gun with her? Had she simply heard an intruder she would have sent her manservant, not gone out herself. And why would Lovat make a noise, if he was walking on grass?"

"Yes," Ryerson conceded tersely. "You have justification for your reasoning. Possibly someone followed him, and killed him at Eden Lodge in order to lay the blame on someone else. Which they seem to have done with great success."

Pitt said nothing. He was thinking of Ayesha Zakhari's gun, lying next to Lovat on the damp ground in the darkness. He looked up at Ryerson, and saw in an instant that exactly the same thought was in his mind. He knew it from the faint flush on his cheeks and the way the understanding flashed between them, and then Ryerson lowered his glance.

"Did you know Lovat?" Pitt asked.

Ryerson moved towards the window and looked out at the leaves turning in the wind. "No. I never met him. The first time I saw him was on the ground at Eden Lodge, at least as far as I know."

"Did Miss Zakhari ever mention him?"

"Not by name. She was a little upset one afternoon when we met, and she said a past acquaintance was being a nuisance. That could have been Lovat, but I suppose not necessarily." He moved his hands restlessly. He stood with his shoulders and neck stiff. "Find out the truth," he said quietly, his voice so soft it was as if he were speaking to himself, and yet the intensity in him made it obvious that he was begging Pitt, he simply did not use the words.

"Yes, sir, if I can." Pitt rose to his feet. There was a great deal more he wanted to know, but it was too ephemeral to put into words. It was ideas, emotions, things for which he had no name, and he needed to find Narraway before the end of the day.

"Thank you," Ryerson answered, and Pitt hesitated, wondering if it would be fair to warn him that the truth could be painful, and not at all what he was now forcing himself to believe. But there was no point. Time enough for that if it had to be. Instead, he simply excused himself and went out.

"WHAT HAVE YOU?" Narraway looked up from the papers he was studying and regarded Pitt with challenge. He too looked tired, his eyes red rimmed, his cheeks a little sunken.

Pitt sat down uninvited and tried to make himself comfortable, but it was impossible; the tension inside him made his back ache and his hands stiff.

"Nothing in which I can see any hope of a more satisfactory answer," Pitt replied, deliberately using words sharp enough to hurt Narraway, and himself. "Lovat was a womanizer, and careless enough to use young, unmarried and respectable women who could be ruined by his attentions, and then moving from one to another, leaving society wondering what sin he had discovered in them."

Narraway's mouth pulled tight, lips thin in disgust. "Don't be so squeamish, Pitt. You know damned well what sins society attributed to them... rightly or not. They don't care who or what you are, only what other people think you are. A woman's purity is worth more than her courage, warmth, pity, laughter, or honesty. Her chastity means that she belongs to you. It's a matter of ownership." There was a bitterness in his voice that was more than cynicism; Pitt would have sworn it was also pain.

Then he thought of how he would feel if Charlotte were to allow herself to be touched intimately by anyone else, let alone that she should return the passion, and any reason in the argument was overwhelmed.

"It matters." He made it a statement, too hot and sharp to be taken as debate.

Narraway smiled, but he did not meet Pitt's eyes. "Are you speaking generally, or do you know the names of any of these women, and more to the point, their fathers, brothers, or other lovers who might feel like following Lovat around London and shooting him?"

"Of course I do," Pitt responded, glad to be on safer ground, and yet feeling he had left something unsaid which mattered. Was it only his feelings, too powerful to be expressed in so few and simple words, or was there something of reason there also, a fact that momentarily escaped him?

"And from the expression in your face," Narraway observed, "it was all of no use to you."

"To us," Pitt corrected tartly. "None at all."

He was amazed and a little hurt to see the hope die out of Narraway's eyes, as if he had held it as more than a thing of the mind.

Sensing Pitt's gaze on him, Narraway turned half away, shielding something in himself. "So you have learned nothing, except that Lovat was a man courting disaster."

That was a cutting way to have worded it, but it was essentially true. "Yes."

Narraway drew in his breath to say something else, then let it out without speaking.

"I saw Ryerson," Pitt volunteered. "He's still convinced Miss Zakhari is innocent."

Narraway looked back at him, his eyebrows raised.

"Is that an oblique way of saying that he isn't going to help himself by stepping back and admitting that he arrived to find Lovat already dead?" Narraway asked.

"I don't know what he's going to say. The police know he was there, so he can't deny it."

"Too late anyway," Narraway retorted with sudden bitterness. "The Egyptian embassy knew he was there. I've moved everything I can to find out who told them, and learned nothing, except that they have no intention of telling me."

Very slowly Pitt sat up straighter. He had not even been thinking about what Narraway had been doing, but with a charge like electricity shooting through him, he realized the import of what he had said.

Narraway smiled with a downward twist of his mouth. "Exactly," he agreed. "Ryerson may be making a fool of himself, but someone is giving him some discreet and powerful assistance. What I am not yet certain of is what part Ayesha Zakhari is playing, and whether she is aware of it herself. Is she the queen or the pawn?"

"Why?" Pitt asked, leaning forward now. "Cotton?"

"It would seem the obvious answer," Narraway replied. "But obvious is not necessarily true."

Pitt stared at him, waiting for him to continue.

Narraway relaxed back into his chair, but it seemed more a resignation than a matter of ease. "Go home and sleep," he said. "Come back tomorrow morning."

"That's all?"

"What else do you want?" Narraway snapped. "Take it while you can. It won't last."