Bedford Square - Anne Perry [130]
On the shore people picnicked on stretches of grass. He thought idly that a few of them were going to be burned by this evening. At the water’s edge they did not realize how strong the sun was.
He was wasting his time going to an orphanage. Even if there had been petty pilfering, and Balantyne had suspected it, it was not the same degree of crime as the sort of blackmail they had been dealing with. It could only be a few hundred pounds at the very most, and that would have to have been over years or it would have been noticed long before now.
Why had Balantyne questioned it instead of requiring an audit of the books? He had written to Cadell about his concerns. Cadell would hardly be blackmailing him with something as extreme as a murdered man on the doorstep in order to stop him from pursuing such a request.
But that did raise a genuine question to which Pitt had seen no satisfactory answer … who had moved the body of Josiah Slingsby from Shoreditch to Bedford Square? Who had put Albert Cole’s receipt for socks in Slingsby’s pocket? How had he had it in the first place?
For that matter, where was Albert Cole now? If he was alive, where had he gone and why? And if he was dead, why had Slingsby’s body been left on Balantyne’s step and not Cole’s body? Had he coincidentally died of natural causes?
That seemed to be stretching unlikelihood too far.
And it did not answer the questions about Slingsby’s body and how Cadell had even heard of it, let alone how he’d moved it to Bedford Square.
Did any of it matter now, except that it was a puzzle?
A pleasure steamer went by, its passengers shouting and waving, its wake setting the ferry rocking. The sun was dazzlingly bright on the water.
Was he being self-indulgent, expecting every case to have a complete solution, wanting to understand exactly what had happened? Or was he being diligent, making sure of the truth?
What he was really doing was taking a trip up the river instead of sitting in Bow Street doing his paperwork, and trying to help Vespasia a little … although she would have to accept in the end that Leo Cadell was the blackmailer. He had confessed it … in a letter exactly like all the others. Possibly he had gained his knowledge of the lives of the other victims through knowing them in the Jessop Club. One could learn a great deal about people from casual conversation, expanded by a little questioning as if from interest or admiration. The rest he could have gleaned from public records; army and navy details he could easily have asked for on the pretext of having some need to know in his position at the Foreign Office.
But the question remained, how did he know Slingsby at all, let alone remark his resemblance to Cole?
Pitt put it out of his mind for a while and enjoyed the river and the brilliance of the day. All around him people were having fun.
The orphanage at Kew Green was a large, rambling old house with a garden walled around and overhung with trees. It looked spacious enough to house fifty or sixty children, at the very least, and the appropriate number of staff to look after them.
He walked up to the front door, noticing the clean scrubbed step, and pulled the bell. It was answered within minutes by a girl of about seventeen. She was wearing a dark blue cotton dress, starched apron and cap.
“Yes sir?” she said helpfully.
Pitt explained who he was and asked if he might speak to whoever was in charge. He conveyed in his manner that refusal was not to be tolerated.
She conducted him to a very pleasant room facing the front entrance and invited him to sit in one of the threadbare but surprisingly comfortable seats while she went for Mr. Horsfall.
When he arrived, closing the door behind him with a snap, he was taller even than Pitt, very rotund around the middle, and with a genial face, as if he smiled