Seven Dials (37 page)

“Who are you?” Her voice jolted him back to the present. It was low and a little husky, but with hardly any accent he could place, only a slightly more precise diction than an Englishwoman would have had, other than perhaps Great-aunt Vespasia.

“I apologize,” he said without thinking. “My name is Thomas Pitt. I need to speak with you, Miss Zakhari, before the court resumes on Monday morning. Certain things have transpired of which you may not be aware.”

“You may tell me whatever you wish,” she replied levelly. “I have nothing to tell you, beyond what I have already said. And since I cannot prove it, there is little purpose in my repeating it. You are wasting your time, Mr. Pitt, and you are wasting mine also. And I think perhaps I do not have very much of it left.” It was said without self-pity, and yet he could see in her face that underneath the effort of courage there was immeasurable pain.

He remained standing because there was nowhere to sit, except the cot, and to reach that he would have had to walk past her, and then look up where she stood.

“I went to Alexandria about three weeks ago,” he began, and saw the start of surprise in her, the stiffening of her body, but she did not speak. “I wanted to learn more about you,” he went on. “I admit that what I found surprised me.”

The ghost of a smile crossed her face, and vanished. She had a gift of stillness which was more than a mere lack of movement; it was an inner control, a peace of the spirit.

“I believe you came here to England to try to persuade Ryerson to influence the cotton industry, so more Egyptian cotton could be woven where it was grown, so that the factories could be started up again, as they were in the time of Mohammed Ali.”

Again she was surprised. It was no more than a hesitation in her breathing; he felt it rather than saw it.

“So your own people could prosper from their work,” he added. “It was naive. If you had understood how much money was vested in the trade, how many people’s power, I think you would have realized that no one man, even with Ryerson’s office, could have had any effect.”

She drew in her breath as though she was going to argue, then she let it out silently and turned half away from him. The light on her smooth face shone like polished silk. Her skin was blemishless, her cheekbones high, her nose long and straight, her eyes a little slanted upwards. It was a face of passion and immense dignity, but oddly, it was not without humor. The tiny lines, visible because he was close to her, spoke of laughter, not easy as of mere good humor, but of intelligence and irony as well.

“I think that the man who sent you knew that you could not succeed,” he went on. He was not certain whether it was a shadow that moved, or if her body stiffened a trifle under the silk of her dress. “I believe his purpose was different,” he continued. “And that cotton was only the reason he gave you, because it is one you could serve with all your effort, whatever the cost to yourself.”

“You are mistaken,” she replied, without looking at him. “If I was naive, then I have paid a high price for it, but I did not kill Lieutenant Lovat.”

“But you are prepared to hang for it?” he said with surprise. “And not only yourself, but Mr. Ryerson as well.”

She flinched as if he had struck her, but she did not make any sound, nor move her position.

“Do you think perhaps because he is a minister in the government that they will let him off?” he asked.

She turned to face him at last, her eyes wide and almost black.

“Have you not realized yet that he has enemies?” he said more loudly than he wished to, but he could not afford gentleness. She might back away, evade the truth again. “And whoever sent you has far bigger aims than cotton, in Egypt or Manchester.”

“That is not true.” She stated it as a fact. There was certainty in her eyes, then, even as he was watching, it wavered before she could master it.

“If you did not kill Lovat, then who did?” he said far more quietly. He had not yet made up his mind whether to say anything of the massacre to her, or even to hint at it. He watched her, searching for anything in her expression, however fleeting, to betray the hatred that could lie behind a murder of revenge. So far he had seen nothing at all, not even a shadow.

“I don’t know,” she said simply. “But you said it was not to do with cotton. What, then?”

It was almost impossible to believe she knew. And if she did not, and he told her, might her love of her country, and of justice, then impel her to speak, perhaps even to make her crime seem justified? Would a judge mitigate her sentence because of such provocation? Pitt would have. “Other political reasons,” he said evasively. “To expose old wrongs with a view to inciting violence, even rebellion.”

“Like the dervishes in the Sudan?” she said bleakly.

“Why not? Knowing what you do now, do you really believe you ever had a chance of changing the cotton industry, before the political and financial tides have changed, no matter what Mr. Ryerson might believe or wish for?”

She thought about it for several moments before conceding. “No,” she said almost under her breath.

“Then surely it is possible that whoever sent you also knew that, and had in mind another plan altogether?” he pressed.

She did not answer, but he saw that she had understood.

“And he does not care if you hang for a murder you did not commit,” he went on. “Or that Ryerson should also.”

That hurt her. Her body stiffened and some of the richness of color faded from her skin.

“Could he have killed Lovat?” he asked.

Her head moved fractionally, but it was an assent.

“How?” he asked.

“He… he poses as my servant…”

Of course! Tariq el Abd, silent, almost invisible. He could have taken her gun and shot Lovat, then called the police himself to make sure they came, and found Ryerson. He could easily have organized the whole thing, because she would naturally have given him any letter to deliver to Lovat. No one would question it; in fact, they would have questioned anybody else. It was perfect.

“Thank you,” he said with sudden depth of feeling. It was at least a resolution of the mystery, even if it did not solve the problem. And he had not realized until this moment how much it mattered to him that she was not guilty. It was almost like a physical weight removed from him.

“What are you going to do, Mr. Pitt?” Her voice was edged with fear.

“I am going to prove that you have been used, Miss Zakhari,” he replied, aware that his choice of words would remind her of that other time, years ago, when she had been used and betrayed before. “And that neither you nor Mr. Ryerson is guilty of murder. And I am going to try to do it without soaking Egypt in blood. I am afraid the second aim is going to take precedence over the first.”

She did not answer, but stood motionless as an ebony statue while he smiled very slightly in parting, and knocked on the door to summon the warder.

He debated for only moments whether to go alone or to find Narraway and tell him. If Tariq el Abd was the prime mover behind the plan to expose the massacre and set Egypt alight, then he would not meekly accept arrest from Pitt or anyone else. By going to Eden Lodge alone, Pitt might do no more than warn him, and possibly precipitate the very tragedy they dreaded.

He stopped a hansom in the Strand and gave Narraway’s office address. Please God, he was there.

“What is it?” Narraway said as soon as he saw Pitt’s face.

“The man behind Ayesha is the house servant Tariq el Abd,” he replied. He saw from Narraway’s expression that no more explanation was necessary.

Narraway breathed with a sigh of comprehension, and fury with himself because he had not seen it before. “Our own bloody blindness!” he swore, rising to his feet in a single movement. “A servant and a foreigner, so we don’t even see him. Damn! I should have been better than that.” He yanked a drawer open and pulled a gun out of it, then slammed the drawer shut again and strode ahead of Pitt. “I hope you had the wits to keep the cab,” he said critically.

“Of course I did!” Pitt retorted, striding after him out of the door and down the steps to the pavement, where the cab was standing, the horse fidgeting from one foot to the other, perhaps sensing the driver’s tension.

“Eden Lodge!” Narraway said tersely, climbing in ahead of Pitt and waving the man forward as Pitt was scrambling in behind him.

Neither of them spoke all the way through the crowded streets, around squares and under fading trees until the hansom stopped outside Eden Lodge.

“ ’Round the back!” Narraway ordered, moving swiftly ahead of Pitt.

But there was no one in Eden Lodge. The entire house was deserted. The stove in the kitchen was cold, the ashes in the fires gray, the food in the pantry already going stale.

Narraway swore just once, with white-hot fury, but there was nothing he or anybody else could do.

NO TRACE WAS FOUND of Tariq el Abd by the police, or any of the men upon whom Narraway could call. Sunday was a wretched day, cold and windy, almost as if the weather itself fretted with the same sense of impending disaster as Pitt, cooped all day at home because he had nowhere to go and nothing to do that was of use. The trial would resume in the morning, and presumably Tariq el Abd would reappear and drag out the whole violent and dreadful truth of the massacre. It would be the beginning of the end of any kind of peace in Egypt, certainly of British rule and all that Suez meant for the empire.

He had told Charlotte what he knew. There was no point in keeping it from her because the only part that was dangerous she had known before he had.

They ate Sunday dinner together. It was the most formal meal of the week, and Daniel and Jemima found it both daunting and exciting, rather like being grown-up. They very much wanted it, it was part of life, but not necessarily today.

Afterwards Pitt sat by the fire, pretending he was reading, but actually he did not turn the pages of his book. Charlotte sat and stitched, but it was a straight hem on the edge of a sheet, and required no attention at all. Gracie and the children had put on coats and gone for a walk.

“What will he do?” Charlotte asked when the silence had become more than she could bear. “Arrive as a witness for the defense and say that he killed Lovat in revenge for having lost all his family, or something of that sort? And then describe the massacre?”

He looked up at her. “Yes, I should think so,” he agreed. He could see the fear in her face, and ached to be able to comfort her with some assurance that it would not be so, even a hope of something they could do to fight against it, but there was nothing. The desire to protect was deep, and yet oddly there was a sweetness for him in being able to share his thoughts with her. She understood. The gratitude inside him was almost overwhelming that she was not a woman who had to be sheltered from truth, or even who wished to be. He did not know how any man bore the loneliness of that. One shielded a child, but a wife was a companion, one who walked beside you-in the easy paths and the hard.

“I suppose Mr. Narraway will warn the defense lawyer,” she said, her eyes wide in question. “Or… or is it the defense lawyer who will call him, do you suppose?” The ugliness of that thought was plain in her eyes. It was an alien thought in the comfort of this familiar room, with its slightly worn furniture, the cats asleep by the hearth, the firelight flickering on the walls.

But was she right? Had the lawyer who had been so ardent in defending Ryerson known this from the beginning? Pitt had no idea. The knowledge that it could be so was uniquely chilling. There was a brutality to the entire plan which had nothing of the mitigating passion of a more personal crime. If it was true, there was in it a depth of deliberate betrayal.

It was a little before three o’clock when the doorbell rang. Gracie was still out, so Pitt went to answer it. The moment he saw Narraway’s face he knew something extraordinary had happened.

“He’s dead,” Narraway said even before Pitt could ask him.

Pitt was momentarily confused. “Who’s dead?”

“Tariq el Abd!” Narraway said tartly, stepping in past Pitt and shaking himself. Although it was not raining at that moment, the wind was cold and a bank of heavy cloud was racing in from the east. He stared at Pitt, his eyes tense, filled with hard, biting fear. “The river police found his body hanging under London Bridge. It looks as if he did it himself.”

Pitt was stunned. In a few words Narraway had shattered the case. Was it the solution, or did it merely make things worse?

“Suicide?” Pitt asked with disbelief. “Why? He was winning. Tomorrow morning he would have achieved everything.”

“And the rope as his reward,” Narraway said.

“Lost his nerve?” Pitt asked with disbelief.

Narraway looked totally blank. “God knows.”

“But it makes no sense,” Pitt protested. “He had manipulated everything to the exact point where he could come into court as a surprise witness and tell the world about the massacre.”

Narraway frowned. “You spoke to Ayesha Zakhari yesterday. She knew that you now understood el Abd had killed Lovat-”

“Even if she told him that,” Pitt interrupted him, “he would hardly have gone off and taken his own life. She couldn’t have proved it. All he had to do was get into the witness stand and say that it was she who had lost relatives in the massacre-or friends, a lover, whatever you like-and that was why she shot Lovat. Even if she had denied it and claimed it was he who did, there’s no proof. His death looks like an admission, and leaves the massacre a secret.”

They were standing in the hall, and both turned as the parlor door opened and Charlotte stood in the entrance looking at them anxiously. She saw Narraway just as he turned, and the gaslight in the passage caught the momentary softening of his face.

“Miss Zakhari’s house servant has been found dead,” Pitt said to her.

She looked from him to Narraway, to see if she was being protected from some deeper meaning.

“It appears to be suicide,” Narraway added. “But we can see no reason why.”

She stepped back, tacitly inviting them in, and they followed her into the warmth of the parlor, Pitt closing the door behind them and poking the fire before putting more coal on. It was not that it was cold so much as the desire for the brightness of new flame.

“Then either there is something we do not know,” she said, sitting down again on the sofa next to her sewing. “Or he did not take his own life, but someone else did.”

Pitt looked at Narraway. “I said nothing to Ayesha about the massacre. If she didn’t know about it before, then she still doesn’t.”

“I beg your pardon,” Narraway apologized, sitting in Pitt’s chair close to the fire, shivering a little. “I should not have assumed you would be so careless.”

“Why would anyone kill the house servant?” Charlotte asked, looking from one to the other of them. “That kind of death couldn’t be an accident, nor was it intended to look like one.”

“You are right, Mrs. Pitt,” Narraway agreed grimly. “Therefore it was someone who knew who he was, in relation to Lovat’s murder and the entire plan to set Egypt alight.” He faced Pitt. “El Abd was not the prime mover in this. There is someone else behind him, and for some reason we don’t yet know, he killed el Abd.” His hand clenched unconsciously. “But why? Why now? They were on the brink of victory.”

Pitt stood in front of the fire, as if he too were cold.

“Perhaps el Abd lost his courage and was not going to testify?” he suggested. Then the moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew he did not believe them. “But that makes no sense either. Why would he not? He had nothing to lose. It is not as if he intended to take the blame-he was going to make her connection certain by giving her the perfect motive.”

Charlotte looked at Narraway. “Will this help Ryerson? Will you be able to show that el Abd killed Lovat, without exposing that massacre? Surely you can? He could have had any number of motives for it, dating back to Lovat’s time in Alexandria… couldn’t he?”

“Yes,” Narraway said thoughtfully. “Yes… one result of it is that we should be able to exonerate Ryerson and Ayesha Zakhari completely… as long as we allow el Abd’s death to be taken as suicide.”

The tiny germ of an idea stunned Pitt’s mind, ugly and painful, and he refused to look at it.

“Is that what you are going to do?” Charlotte asked.

Pitt did not answer.

“It is all we can do, for the meantime,” Narraway replied.

They sat a little longer, warming themselves. Charlotte fetched tea. They spoke of the news for half an hour or so, even the very recent death of Lord Tennyson, and wondered who would be the next poet laureate, before Narraway rose and took his leave.

But as soon as he had gone, Pitt, restless and unhappy, also went out. He gave Charlotte no explanation because the fear inside him was too painful to give words to, even to her. It was as if, still unspoken, he could deny it a little longer.

He took an omnibus south to the Thames Embankment and the offices of the river police. There was only a sergeant on duty, but he told Pitt which morgue the hanged man had been taken to, and half an hour later Pitt was standing in the offensively clean tiled room with the familiar smell of carbolic and death filling his throat. He stared down at the swollen, purplish face of Tariq el Abd.

The mark of the rope was burned deep into his neck, crooked, high under one ear, and his head lay at an awkward angle.

Pitt touched the head to move it very slightly, searching for other marks, bruises, anything to indicate beyond doubt whether he had been struck before death.

He heard footsteps behind him and swung around more quickly than he had meant to, as if he felt himself in danger. His heart was knocking in his chest and it was difficult to draw breath into his lungs.

McDade looked at him with wry surprise.

“Jumpy, aren’t you, Pitt? What do you want to know? He died sometime during last night. Difficult to say when; the water affected the temperature of the body.”

“Tides?” Pitt asked.

“I did think of that.” McDade’s lips thinned fractionally. “I have been aware for some time that the water in the Thames goes up and down with monotonous and predictable regularity. However, what I cannot say is whether he was caught up in the wash of a passing boat that soaked him higher than the actual water level, or even if he slipped and got wetter than he intended.”

“Can you say for certain that he hanged himself?” Pitt asked. Even though it made no sense of anything they knew, he hoped intensely that McDade would tell him it was suicide.

McDade did not hesitate. “No, I can’t,” he said dryly. “He’s been knocked around a bit, bruised under the skin, but it happened either just before death or just after. There’s been no time for the blood to gather, no marks to see. Bit of a gash on his head under the hair, but that’s not necessarily a blow administered by someone else. It could have happened when he dropped, or any of a dozen ways afterwards-water carried him against the arches, struck by a passing boat, or even by driftwood or flotsam.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “It could be murder, but I can’t tell you anything to prove it one way or the other. Sorry.”

Pitt pulled back the sheet and looked at the rest of the torso. There were other marks on it as if it had buffeted to and fro, and been caught by rough objects which had torn the skin in several places. He replaced the sheet and turned away.

“Will anyone see he gets a burial according to his faith?” he asked.

McDade’s eyebrows rose. “No one to claim the body?”

“Not so far as I know. I think the court will decide by now that he was the one who shot Lieutenant Lovat.”

McDade shook his head, his chins quivering. “You say that as if you are not sure it is true,” he observed.

“I’m sure it’s true,” Pitt replied. “I’m just not sure it is all of the truth. Thank you.” He closed the conversation and turned to go. McDade made him uncomfortable; he was too observant. And Pitt needed to speak once more to the river police about exactly where el Abd was found, the state of his clothes, and the precise hours of the tides last night. A time of death mattered to him; in fact, just at the moment the importance of it overrode everything else in his mind.

Two hours later, at a quarter to nine, he had the answers. He stood on the Embankment in the gusty wind, his coat flapping around his legs and his scarf whipping out sideways, staring at the racing water of the flood tide returning. Out on the river, boats churned the water, steamers, barges, a lone pleasure boat with only half a dozen people on deck.

Tariq el Abd had died between one and five in the morning. They could not be more accurate than that. It was a time when most people were at home in bed. Pitt could have proved he was there, because Charlotte always woke if he got up. A man who lived alone would have no such safety.

He realized how little he knew of Narraway’s private life; he had never even wondered about it. For that matter he knew almost nothing of Narraway’s past, his family or his beliefs either. He was private to the point of being secretive. The only thing Pitt was sure of was that Narraway cared passionately about his work, and the causes it served, and that there was a personal relationship between him and Ryerson which caused him deep pain and which he would not discuss, no matter what the circumstances. And it was that which ate at Pitt now with a hard, angry pain that he could no longer ignore. It must be now; there was just time before the court resumed-if Narraway was at home.

Pitt met him on the doorstep, dressed smartly in his usual perfectly tailored dark gray. Narraway stopped abruptly, his eyes wide, his face pale.

“What is it?” He caught his breath, his voice husky.

Pitt had never defied Narraway before, never even challenged him. He knew his own dependence upon Narraway too well, not only for his job in Special Branch, but for the guidance and the protection while he was feeling his way in learning a new skill. But the emotion inside him now had power to override all such careful considerations.

“Inside!” he said abruptly.

The wind was cold and there was a fine rain behind it. Narraway’s face hardened. “This had better be important, Pitt,” he said, now that his initial shock was controlled and the steel was back in his eyes.

“It is,” Pitt answered between his teeth. Perhaps he would have been wiser to say it all out there on the doorstep. He knew it, even as he followed Narraway in and heard the door close. Narraway led the way across the hall into his study and swung around.

“Well?” he demanded. “You have ten minutes. After that I am leaving whether you are finished or not. The trial resumes at ten. I mean to be there.” In the morning light through the large window, his face was ashen, the fine lines of strain and too little sleep marked harshly in the skin around his eyes and mouth.

“But the special new witness is dead,” Pitt replied. “There’ll be no revelations about Ayesha Zakhari’s motive now. El Abd’s suicide is almost as good as a confession.”