Bedford Square - Anne Perry [101]
Pitt scrambled for anything to say that would be of comfort. Everything would be lies. He could not say the man would have understood or would have forgiven. Does one forgive for being considered a blackmailer, even for an instant? If Cornwallis had suspected Pitt, Pitt could never have liked him the same way afterwards. Something irreparable would have been broken. He should know Pitt better than that. Blackmail was an abysmal sin, cruel, treacherous, and above all the act of a coward.
Cornwallis laughed abruptly. “Thank you at least for not replying with some platitude that it doesn’t matter, or that he would never know or do no better himself.” He was still staring at the street below, his back to the room. “It does matter, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to forgive. I couldn’t forgive any man who thought me capable of such a thing. And worst of all, whether anyone else knows, I know it of myself. I’m not what I thought I was … I haven’t the judgment or the courage. That’s what I hate the most.” He turned to face Pitt, his back against the light. “He’s shown me part of myself I would rather not have known, and I don’t like it.”
“It has to be someone who knows you,” Pitt answered quietly. “Or how would he have learned of that event sufficiently to twist it as he has?”
Cornwallis stood with his feet slightly apart, braced as if against the pitch of a quarterdeck.
“I’ve thought of that. Believe me, Pitt, in the small hours I’ve walked the bedroom floor or lain on my back staring at the ceiling and thought of every man I’ve ever known from schooldays to the present. I racked my brains to think of anyone to whom I might have been unjust, intentionally or not, anyone whose death or injury I could even have been perceived to have caused or contributed to.” He spread his hands jerkily. “I can’t even think of anything I have in common with the others. I barely know Balantyne to speak to. We are both members of the Jessop Club, and of a Services Club in the Strand, but I know a hundred other people at least as well. I don’t suppose I’ve spoken to him directly above a dozen times.”
“But you know Dunraithe White?” Pitt was searching his mind also.
“Yes, but not well.” Cornwallis looked mystified. “We’ve dined a few times. He’s traveled a little, and we fell into conversation about something or other. I can’t even remember what now. I liked him. He was agreeable. Fond of his garden. I think we spoke of roses. His wife is clever with space and color. He was obviously devoted to her. I liked it in him.” Cornwallis’s face softened for a moment as he recalled the incident. “I dined with him again another time. He was held in town late, some legal matter. He would have preferred to go home, but he couldn’t.”
“His decisions have been erratic lately,” Pitt said, remembering what Vespasia had told him.
“Are you sure?” Cornwallis was quick to question. “Have you looked into it? Who says so?”
With anyone else Pitt would have hesitated to answer, thinking discretion better, but with Cornwallis he had no secrets in this.
“Theloneus Quade.”
“Quade!” Cornwallis was startled. “Surely he is not another victim? God in heaven, what are we coming to? Quade is as honorable a man as any I know of—”
“No, he’s not a victim!” Pitt said hastily. “It was he who noticed White’s opinions lately and became concerned. Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould approached White because of it.”
“Oh … I see.” Cornwallis bit his lip. He frowned, walking back towards the desk and staring moodily at the tossed piles of paper. He turned to Pitt. “Do you think his erratic judgments are born of his anxiety over the blackmail, for fear of what will happen next, what he will be asked for? Or could it be the price he is paying to the blackmailer, and somewhere among the eccentric decisions is the one that matters, the one this is all about?”
Pitt considered it seriously.