Seven Dials (2 page)

“Any evidence of that?” Pitt asked. He was angry, and he wanted to prove Talbot prejudiced and inaccurate, but he could not dislike him totally; in fact, he could not seriously dislike him at all. The man was faced with a task in which he could not satisfy his superiors and still keep any kind of honor. Neither would he keep the confidence of the men he commanded, and with whom he would have to work for months and years after this affair was over. What would Pitt have done in the same circumstances? He honestly did not know. He would have been angry as well, casting around for answers, his thoughts leaping ahead of facts.

“Of course there isn’t!” Talbot responded. “But I’ll lay you a pound to a penny that if Special Branch, or someone like them, doesn’t charge in and prevent me, I will have such evidence in a day or two. The crime’s only four hours old!”

Pitt knew he was being unfair.

“How did you identify him?” he asked.

“He had cards on him,” Talbot said simply, sitting back upright again. “She was going to dispose of the body. She hadn’t even bothered to remove them.”

“Is that what she said?”

“For God’s sake, man!” Talbot exploded. “She was caught in the garden with his body in a wheelbarrow! What else was she going to do with him? She wasn’t taking him to a doctor. He was already dead. She didn’t call the police, as an innocent woman would have done; she fetched the gardener’s barrow, heaved him into it, and started to wheel him away.”

“To go where?” Pitt asked, trying to imagine what had been in the woman’s mind, apart from hysteria.

Talbot looked slightly discomfited. “She won’t say,” he replied.

Pitt raised his eyebrows. “And what about Mr. Ryerson?”

“I haven’t asked!” Talbot snapped. “And I don’t want to know! He wasn’t on the scene when the police got there. He arrived a few moments afterwards.”

“What?” Pitt said incredulously.

Talbot colored. “He arrived a few moments afterwards,” he repeated stubbornly.

“He just happened to be passing at three in the morning, saw the light of the constable’s bull’s-eye shining on a woman with a corpse in a wheelbarrow, so he stopped to see if he could help?” Pitt said with heavy sarcasm. “He did arrive in a carriage, from the street, I assume? He didn’t by any chance come out of the house-in his nightshirt!”

“No, he did not!” Talbot retorted hotly, his thin face flushing. “He was fully dressed, and he walked over from the direction of the street.”

“Where his carriage was waiting, no doubt?”

“He said he came by hansom,” Talbot answered.

“Intending to call on the lady, only to find her conspicuously unprepared!” Pitt observed waspishly. “And you believe him?”

“What choice do I have?” Talbot raised his voice for the first time, his desperation ragged through his rapidly slipping composure. “It’s idiotic, I know that! Of course he was there. He was actually coming from the mews, where I imagine he’d gone to harness up a horse and hitch it to a trap, or whatever she has, to take the body somewhere and get rid of it. They’re only a stone’s throw from Hyde Park. That would do. It would be found, of course, but there would be nothing to connect it with either of them. But we got there too soon. We didn’t see him with her, and she isn’t saying anything.”

“And you don’t ask him because you don’t want to know,” Pitt finished for him.

“Something like that,” Talbot admitted, his eyes hot and wretched. “But if you want to, then Special Branch is very welcome. Have it! Have it all! Go and ask him. He lives in Paulton Square, Chelsea. I don’t know the number, but you can ask. There can’t be many cabinet ministers there.”

“I’ll see the Egyptian woman first. What is her name?”

“Ayesha Zakhari,” Talbot replied. “But you can’t see her. That’s my orders from the top, and Special Branch or not, I’m not letting you in. She hasn’t implicated Mr. Ryerson, so you’ve no brief here. If her embassy says anything it’ll be a matter for the Foreign Office, or the Lord Chancellor, or whoever. But so far they haven’t. She’s just an ordinary woman arrested for the murder of an old lover, and there’s no reasonable doubt that she did it. That’s how it is, sir-and that’s how it’s staying, as far as I’m concerned. If you want to make it different, you’ll have to do it somewhere else, ’cos you’re not doing it here.”

Pitt pushed his hands into his trouser pockets, finding a small piece of string, half a dozen coins, a bull’s-eye sweet wrapped in paper, two odd lumps of sealing wax, a penknife, and three safety pins. In the other were a notebook, a stub end of pencil, and two handkerchiefs. It flicked through his mind that that was too much.

Talbot stared at him. For the first time Pitt saw in his face that he was frightened. He had cause to be. If he were wrong, either for Ryerson or against him, not a matter of fact but of judgment, he would be ruined. He would take the blame, possibly for others’ mistakes, men of greater power and with more to lose.

“So Mr. Ryerson is at home?” Pitt asked.

“As far as I know,” Talbot said. “He certainly isn’t here. We asked him if he could help us, and he said he couldn’t. He said he thought Miss Zakhari was innocent. He didn’t believe she would have killed anyone, unless they were threatening her life, in which case it wouldn’t be a crime.” He shrugged. “I could have written it all down without bothering to ask him. He said the only thing he could-he doesn’t know anything about it, he only just arrived-to protect her honor, and all that. Decent men don’t say a woman’s a whore, even if she is and we all know it. He said she wouldn’t have killed anyone without a reason, but then he wouldn’t say she had, would he? Apart from anything else, it would make him look like he was betraying her-and that his mistress, which we all know that she is, was a likely murderess and he knew it. And as I said, she didn’t deny the gun was hers. We asked the manservant she has, and he admitted it as well. He kept it clean and oiled, and so on.”

“Why did she have a gun?”

Talbot spread his hands. “God knows! She did, that’s all that matters. Look, sir-Constable Black found her in the garden with the murdered body of an old lover of hers stuck in a wheelbarrow. What more do you want of us?”

“Nothing,” Pitt conceded. “Thank you for your patience, Inspector Talbot. If there’s anything further I’ll come back.” He hesitated a moment, then smiled. “Good luck.”

Talbot rolled his eyes, but his expression softened for a moment. “Thank you,” he said with a touch of sarcasm. “I wish I could walk away from it so easily.”

Pitt grinned, and went to the door with a feeling of overwhelming relief. Talbot, poor man, was welcome to what was almost certainly no more than a domestic tragedy after all, cabinet minister notwithstanding.

All the same, Pitt decided that he would walk past Eden Lodge and look at it before going back to report to Narraway. Connaught Square was less than ten minutes away and it was now a very pleasant early morning. More deliverymen were out and the clip of horses’ hooves was sharp in the air. In the areaway of one large house a between-stairs maid of about fourteen was whacking a red-and-blue rug with enthusiasm and sending a fine cloud of dust up into the sunlight. He wondered if it was just exuberance or if the rug stood in for someone she disliked.

He crossed the road, cobbles still gleaming in the dew, and threw a penny to one of the small boys who swept away the manure when the need arose. It was too early for the boy to have much to do yet, and he leaned on his broom, his flat cap a couple of sizes too big for him, and resting on his ears.

“Ta, mister!” he called back with a grin.

Eden Lodge was an imposing house facing the open space of Connaught Square, and with a further wide view of St. George’s Burial Ground behind it, beyond the mews. It might be interesting to find out whether Miss Zakhari owned it or rented it, and if the latter, from whom? Or possibly they had not bothered to be so discreet, and it was simply owned by Ryerson in the first place.

But of more importance now was to see the garden where Miss Zakhari had been found with the corpse. For that it would be necessary to walk the short distance to the end of the block and around to the back.

There was a constable on duty in the mews, and Pitt identified himself before being permitted to go through the gate beside the stables and into the leafy, damp garden. He kept to the path, although there was little to mask or spoil in the way of evidence. The wooden wheelbarrow was still there, smears of blood down the right side, from where the person pushing it would have stood, and a dark pool, almost congealed, in the bottom. The dead man must have been laid across it with his head on that side and his legs over the other.

Pitt bent and looked more closely at the ground. The wheel was sunk almost an inch deep in the loam, witnessing the weight of the load. The rut it had caused was deep for about three yards, and from that point there were tracks from where it had come, empty, been turned around and loaded. He straightened up and walked the few yards. Faint scuff marks, indistinct, showed where feet had stood and swiveled, but it was impossible even to tell how many, let alone whether they were a man’s or woman’s, or both. The earth was scattered with fallen leaves and twigs and occasional small pebbles, leaving only rough traces of passage.

However, when Pitt looked more closely the rusty mark of blood was clear enough. This was where Lovat had been when he fell.

He stared around him. He was about five yards into the garden, between laurel and rhododendron bushes, and in the dappled shade of birches towering a great deal higher. He was completely concealed from the mews, and obviously from the street, by the bulk of the house itself. He was a good five yards from the stone wall which concealed the back entrance to the scullery and areaway, and ahead of him across a strip of open lawn edged by flowers was a French door to the main part of the house.

What on earth had Edwin Lovat been doing here? It seemed unlikely he had arrived through the mews and was intending to enter this way, unless by prior arrangement, and she had been waiting for him inside the French doors. If she had not wished to see him, it would have been simple enough not to have answered. Servants could have dismissed him, and thrown him out if necessary.

If he were indeed arriving, it looked unpleasantly as if she had lured him here deliberately, with the intent of killing him, since she was in the garden with a loaded gun.

Or else he had been leaving, they had quarreled, and she had followed him out, again with the gun.

When had Ryerson really arrived? Before the shooting or after? Had she lifted the dead man into the wheelbarrow by herself? It would be interesting to find out his size and weight, and hers. If she had lifted him, then there would be blood, and perhaps earth, on her white dress. These were questions he needed to ask Talbot, or perhaps the constable who had actually been first on the scene.

He turned and walked back through the gate to the mews and found the constable standing fidgeting from one foot to the other in boredom. He turned as he heard the gate catch.

“Were you on duty here last night?” Pitt asked. The man looked tired enough to have been up many hours.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you see the arrest of Miss Zakhari?”

“Yes, sir.” His voice lifted a little with the beginning of interest.

“Can you describe her for me?”

He looked startled for a moment, then his face puckered in concentration. “She was quite tall, sir, but very slender, like. And foreign, o’ course, very foreign, like. She was… well, she moved very graceful, more than most ladies-not that they aren’t-”

“It’s all right, Constable,” Pitt answered him. “I need honesty, not tact. What about the dead man? How large was he?”

“Oh, bit bigger than most, sir, broad in the chest, like. Difficult ter say ’ow tall ’cos I never saw ’im standin’ up, but I reckon a bit taller ’n me, but not as tall as you.”

“Did the mortuary wagon take him away?”

“Yessir.”

“How many men to carry him?”

“Two, sir.” His face filled with understanding. “You thinkin’ as she couldn’t ’ave put ’im in that barrer by ’erself?”

“Yes, I was.” Pitt tightened his lips. “But it might be wiser not to express that opinion to others, at least for the time being. She was wearing white, so I’m told. Is that correct?”

“Yessir. Very sort o’ close-fittin’ dress it were, not exactly like most ladies wear, least wot I’ve seen. Very beautiful…” He colored faintly, considering the propriety of saying that a murderess was beautiful, and a foreign one at that. But he refused to be cowed. “Sort o’ more natural, like,” he went on. “No…” He put one hand on his other shoulder. “No puffs up ’ere. More wot a woman’s really shaped like.”

Pitt hid a smile. “I see. And was it stained with mud, or blood, this white dress?”

“Bit o’ mud, or more like leaf dirt,” the constable agreed.

“Where?”

“Around the knees, sir. Like she knelt on the ground.”

“But no blood?”

“No, sir. Not that I saw.” His eyes widened. “You’re sayin’ as she didn’t put ’im in that barrer ’erself!”

“No, Constable, I think you are. But I’d be very obliged if you did not repeat that, unless you are asked to do so in a situation where not doing so would require you to lie. Don’t lie to anyone.”

“No, sir! I’ll ’ope as I’m not asked.”

“Yes, that would definitely be the best,” Pitt agreed fervently. “Thank you, Constable. What is your name?”

“Cotter, sir.”

“Is the manservant still in the house?”

“Yessir. No one’s come out since they took ’er away.”

“Then I shall go and speak to him. Do you know his name?”

“No, sir. Foreign-looking person.”

Pitt thanked him again and walked across the short distance to the back door. He knocked firmly and waited several minutes before it was opened by a dark-skinned man dressed in pale, stone-colored robes. Most of his head was covered with a turban, but his beard was turning gray. His eyes were almost black.

“Yes, sir?” he said guardedly.

“Good morning,” Pitt replied. “Are you Miss Zakhari’s manservant?”

“Yes, sir. But Miss Zakhari is not at home.” It was said with finality, as if that were the end of any possible discussion. He was obviously preparing to close the door.