Belgrave Square (50 page)

“He must have had a collaborator of some sort,” Pitt pointed out. “He didn’t learn all his blackmail information himself. Someone told him.”

Drummond looked up quickly, his eyes sharp.

“A backer? Perhaps Weems was only the person who actually contacted the victims and took the money, but he paid it on to someone else?” He straightened up a fraction as new hope caught him. “And that person murdered him? Maybe he got greedy, or even threatened a little pressure of his own, do you think?”

“He may have got greedy,” Pitt said slowly. “He’d be a fool to try twisting the arm of whoever it is; and I don’t have the feeling that Weems was a fool. He wouldn’t have lasted long in that business if he were.”

Drummond bit his lip. “No—but greedy. He wouldn’t have been in the business in the first place otherwise.”

Pitt smiled. “I’ll grant you that.”

Drummond went on thoughtfully. “But if as you say Weems got his information from someone else, we have to find out who it was. In fact we ought to find out anyway. That someone will surely take up the blackmail—” He stopped, comprehension of something coming into his face and as quickly being masked.

But Pitt saw it.

“Again,” he finished for him. “And is he? Is someone being blackmailed again?”

Drummond hesitated.

Pitt saw his indecision and understood it. He had every compassion with Drummond’s feelings for Eleanor Byam, and thus the complex emotions over Byam himself, but he could not permit it to interfere with their pursuit of the truth.

“Byam,” he said aloud.

“I believe so.” Drummond did not look at him.

Pitt thought for a few moments before continuing.

“Byam,” he said at last. “I wonder why him, and so far as we know, not the others.”

Drummond lifted his face. “You have an idea?”

“Perhaps …”

“Well what is it? For heaven’s sake don’t equivocate. It’s not like you, and it doesn’t serve anyone.”

Pitt smiled for an instant, then was totally serious.

“What if Anstiss did not forgive him as openly and generously as Byam supposed? What if in fact he never got over Laura’s death, and above all her betrayal of him—and he is taking a subtle and vicious revenge on Byam for it?”

“But why now?” Drummond asked, his brows drawn together in doubt. “Laura Anstiss has been dead for twenty years, and Anstiss himself always knew the truth about it.”

“I don’t know,” Pitt confessed. “Perhaps something happened that they haven’t told us.”

“What, for example? A quarrel Byam would know about himself, and then he would hardly have drawn us in.”

“If he realized Anstiss was behind it,” Pitt argued. “Perhaps Weems was used as a cover precisely to prevent that.”

“Have you found any connection between Anstiss and Weems?” Drummond asked slowly. “Anything at all?”

“No—but it occurs to me that we may have been looking in the wrong area for the motive to murder Weems. It’s worth considering.”

Drummond remained silent for several moments, his face dark with thought.

Pitt waited some time before he interrupted him.

“Is it still money?” he said at last.

“What?”

“That Byam is being blackmailed for this time?”

“I think not,” Drummond said miserably. He drew in a deep breath then let it out. “I think this time it is influence in office—a matter of changing his mind over certain foreign investments and loans. At least it seems likely, from what Lady Byam says. I don’t know.”

“You asked him?”

“Of course I asked him.” Drummond colored very faintly. “He said it was partly a political decision, pressed upon him by fellow members of the Inner Circle, and for reasons he could not explain to me, but he said he was persuaded by them. He denied it was blackmail.”

“But you did not believe him?”

“No—I don’t think so. I’m not sure. But you’ll have to prove some connection between Anstiss and Weems, to make that even remotely believable. I can’t see Lord Anstiss as a petty blackmailer behind a wretch like Weems. How would he even come to know Weems in the first place?”

Pitt hitched himself a little further onto the desk.

“Maybe Weems found him. After all Weems had the love letter Laura Anstiss wrote to Byam. Maybe he tried to sell it to Anstiss first.”

“Then surely Anstiss would have killed him then, if he were going to do it at all,” Drummond reasoned. “No Pitt, I can’t see it. I agree there is someone behind Weems, apart from the servant who came up with the letter, someone who provided his other information.” He looked up suddenly.
“Maybe one of Weems’s debtors? Perhaps some wretched beggar was desperate and paid off his debts in information?”

It was a good idea. It made sense.

“One of the larger debtors,” Pitt elaborated slowly. “Someone who knew about Fanny Hilliard and Cars well, and that Urban was working at the music hall in Stepney—and Latimer was taking payoffs from the bare-knuckle fighters, and gambling on them …”

“Not necessarily one person.” Drummond was enthusiastic now. “It could have been several people. Once Weems got the idea of accepting repayment in information he may have suggested it to other people himself. It would be a permanent source of income for him—never repayable in capital, always interest.”

“Makes you wonder why no one killed him sooner, doesn’t it?” Pitt said harshly.

“But how to find these sources of information, or at least prove they exist, other than by deduction.” Drummond pulled a face. “Not that it necessarily brings us any closer to finding out who killed him. There are times when I would dearly like to abandon the whole case—I really don’t care who killed the miserable swine.”

“Did we ever?” Pitt said grimly. “All we set out to do was to prove it was not Byam, didn’t we?”

Drummond’s face tightened, but it was guilt, not anger. There was no need for him to reply, and denial was impossible. He looked up at Pitt.

“What are you going to do?”

“Go and see Byam again, and try to find out more about this letter and precisely where it came from.”

“You think it matters?”

“It might. I should have paid more attention to it in the beginning. I’d like to find this servant who gave it to Weems and see who else might have known about it, and why we didn’t find it among Weems’s possessions. It was worth far too much for him to have parted with it.”

“Maybe he sold it,” Drummond suggested. “It could have got him a nice profit. Or more likely the murderer took it, along with his record of Byam’s dealings. He would very probably have kept the two things together, since they were
part of the same business.” He bit his lip. “I know—that points to Byam again.”

“Except that if he had both the original letter and Weems’s notes, he would not have come to you—and who is blackmailing him now, and with what?”

“With having murdered Weems, of course,” Drummond said miserably. “Don’t creep all ’round it, Pitt.”

Pitt said nothing, but stood up off the desk. He glanced at Drummond from the doorway.

“Tell me,” Drummond asked.

“I will,” Pitt promised, and went out into the corridor and downstairs.

It was pointless expecting to find Byam at home before the early evening. Accordingly it was after six when Pitt arrived at Belgrave Square and the footman let him in. Byam received him within a few minutes; there was no pretense that he had better or more important things to take his time.

They stood together in the library, Pitt by the window with his back to the light, Byam against the mantel facing him. Even the golden glow of early evening could not entirely soften the lines of fear and sleeplessness and the shadows around his eyes.

“What have you learned?” he asked, still with the same courtesy in his voice, although it was strained and his body was stiff under his immaculate clothes. He looked thinner.

“A great deal, sir.” He felt sorry for the man because his suffering was so plainly visible in spite of all his efforts to appear normal, and even though he knew Byam might well be guilty of bringing most of it upon himself, indeed he might even have caused it directly. “But there are still facts missing before we can fit it all together to make sense of it,” he went on.

“You don’t know who killed Weems?” There was a flicker of hope in Byam, but it died almost before he had finished speaking.

“I’m not sure, but I think I am far closer than before.”

Byam’s face tightened but he did not ask again.

“What can I do to help?” he said instead.

“You told me in the beginning, or at least you told Mr. Drummond, that Weems’s original weapon against you was
a letter written by Lady Anstiss to you, which unfortunately had fallen into the hands of a maid, who was related to Weems.”

“That’s right. Presumably she showed it to him, or told him of it, and he saw the financial possibilities for himself.”

“And Weems took it from her, because presumably you knew he had it or you would not have paid him?” Pitt went on.

Byam was very pale. “Yes. He had half of it. He showed it to me.”

“We didn’t find it.”

“No. I assume if you had you would not be asking me these questions. What can I tell you that is of any purpose now?”

“Do you know the name of this servant?”

Byam was quite motionless, but his eyes widened. “No—can it matter?”

“It may.”

“For heaven’s sake why?”

“Do you believe that whoever stole the letter did so by chance, sir?”

Byam’s face drained of every last vestige of blood. He swayed on his feet so that for a moment it seemed almost as if he might fall. He put his tongue over dry lips and made no sound.

Pitt waited, wondering if he would say something, anything at all to reveal what terrible thought had come to him. But the seconds ticked by and still he said nothing.

“The maid?” Pitt prompted at last. “She may have told someone else. Perhaps if she married, her husband might be a greedy or ruthless man?”

“I—I have—I have no idea,” Byam said at last. “It was twenty years ago. You will have to ask in Lord Anstiss’s house. Perhaps his butler has some record of past servants—or the housekeeper? Do you really think it could be that? It seems … farfetched.”

“It is farfetched that a man like Weems should have the means to blackmail a person of your position and standing,” Pitt pointed out. It was somewhat less than honest, but he did not wish Byam to have any idea that he suspected Anstiss, even as a remote possibility.

Byam smiled bitterly, but he seemed to accept it as an answer.

“Then you’d better go and see Lord Anstiss’s butler,” he said, as if weariness had suddenly overcome him and he were exhausted with it all. “I presume you know his address?”

“Not of the country house, sir, which is where I suppose I will find the appropriate butler?”

“No, not at this time of the year. Some domestic staff stay in the country, housekeepers probably, and maids, and so on, and a cook of sorts, and naturally all the outside staff, but the butler and valet travel with his lordship. You’ll find the butler in London.”

“Thank you. I shall call upon him and see if he has any record.”

“Please God you find something useful! This matter is—” he stopped, either not wanting to put words to it, or not finding any powerful enough to express his emotions.

“Thank you, sir,” Pitt said quietly.

“Is that all?”

“Yes, thank you sir, for the time being.” And Pitt excused himself and left Byam standing by the cold grate, staring outside at the garden and the fading light.

He preferred to visit Anstiss’s house during the day, when his lordship would more probably be out. He was not an easy man to bluff, or a man who would accept a partial explanation.

However on this occasion, although it was ten o’clock in the morning, Anstiss was at home, and he received Pitt in the morning room of his very elegant and imposing house. The style was Queen Anne, gracious and substantial, but with all the clean brilliance of that period. The curtains were forest-green velvet, the wood mahogany, and the one ornament Pitt had time to observe was an Irish silver chalice of utter simplicity and a beauty so exceptional he found it hard to refrain from staring at it, in spite of the urgency of his business and the fact that Anstiss made him less sure of himself than usual.

Anstiss stood beside a mahogany table with a large bronze of horses and surveyed Pitt with mild curiosity.

“What can I do for you, Inspector?” His blue-gray eyes
were unflinching and he seemed vaguely amused. Certainly there was no apprehension in him at all. He was a spectator of this petty tragedy, no more.

Pitt had to treat him as if he knew nothing whatever about any part of the affair, except what anyone might know from the headlines in the newspapers.

“I am investigating the murder of a blackmailer, my lord,” Pitt began.

“How unpleasant. But I imagine such people frequently come to an untimely end.” Anstiss was still only very superficially interested. He was being polite, but it would be safe to assume that his courtesy would last only briefly if there were not something a great deal more relevant following soon.

“They don’t often press their fortune far enough to endanger their own lives,” Pitt answered. Ridiculously he found his mouth dry. “This one was successful for quite a long time. He obtained his information from servants who had chanced to learn something personal about their employers, and chosen to try to take advantage of it.”

Anstiss’s face darkened with contempt.

“If you expect my pity, you will be disappointed, Inspector. Such people deserve to be hoist on their own petard.”

“No sir.” Pitt shook his head. “I find it hard to care who killed him myself. But it is my duty, and we cannot permit private persons to become executioners, no matter how hardly tempted. This judgment may be one we concur with, but what about the next?”

“I take your point, Inspector, you do not need to labor it. What has all this to do with me?”

“One of the servants in question once worked in your country house.” He watched closely to see if there was a flicker in Anstiss’s face, anything that would tell him he had caught a nerve.