Bedford Square - Anne Perry [144]
Balantyne clasped Pitt’s hand warmly, but he said nothing further.
Pitt walked home in the warm twilight, still filled with unease, trivial questions unanswered, pricking his mind, leaving him no sense of completion.
12
FIND ALBERT COLE, Pitt had said to Tellman. Alive or dead. If he is alive, find out why he disappeared from his lodgings and from Lincoln’s Inn Fields; and if he is dead, find out how he died, naturally or otherwise. If he was killed, who killed him and why, and also when. And where.
Tellman had made a sarcastic reply, wondering why Pitt had bothered to trail all the way out to Kew and what on earth an orphanage, very satisfactorily run, could have to do with any of it.
Pitt had had no answer for that, and left Tellman to go about his search. He himself had begun with more about Cadell’s movements. Could he have transported Slingsby’s body from Shoreditch himself, and if not, which was probably the case, then who had? He had told Tellman of his intention to visit Cadell’s widow and enquire from the valet and coachman, and see if he could trace Cadell to Shoreditch from that end.
Tellman acknowledged the instruction tersely, but if he were honest, he was not unwilling to obey. He thought that suicide was a frustrating way to conclude a case. Too much was unexplained. They would probably never learn what had made a man like Leo Cadell jeopardize everything he had, which was a vast amount, wealth and happiness beyond Tellman’s dreams … although his dreams had included some happiness lately, and he blushed hot at the thought.
But he did not expect to understand the man, only the facts of the case, the logical, material details. And finding Albert Cole was part of that. He set out with a profound determination.
Pitt addressed himself to the task of learning how Slingsby’s body had been moved from Shoreditch to Bedford Square, and more importantly, by whom. Naturally, he began with Cadell. Since he was dead, the Foreign Office would not protect him in the way it had previously.
Pitt had little trouble in tracing Cadell’s movements on the day before the body had been found. He had worked either in his office or at various meetings with officials from the German embassy. At the time Slingsby and Wallace were fighting in Shoreditch, Cadell had actually been in negotiation with the German ambassador himself.
Like almost anyone else, he could have gone to Shoreditch in the small hours of the morning, presuming someone had moved Slingsby’s body from the street where it had fallen, kept it in a safe place, and Cadell had known where that was. Which would be to assume a great deal, including that Slingsby had been murdered intentionally and that Wallace had conspired with Cadell to that end because Slingsby resembled Albert Cole.
How did Cadell know a ruffian like Wallace?
He quickened his pace, striding along the footpath between the crowds of shoppers, clerks and errand boys and sightseers. He must go and talk to Wallace again, before he stood trial and was in all probability executed. Why had he not said he had moved the body when Tellman questioned him before? It would hardly make any difference to his sentence to plead that it had been a fight rather than a deliberate attack. He would be hanged either way.
Or did he expect to come up before Dunraithe White … and believe he would be acquitted? Was that why White was a victim?
And why kill anyone to have Balantyne suspected? Why was the blackmail over the Abyssinian affair not enough? What extra was wanted from Balantyne more than the others?
Pitt found himself almost running, and he hailed a cab with waving arms, shouting at the driver as he leapt in, “Newgate Prison!” He felt the cab thrust forward, throwing him against the seat.
But by the time he reached Newgate he had changed his mind. He leaned forward and rapped on the cab wall, raising his voice.
“Sorry! Forget about Newgate. Take me to Shoreditch.”
The driver grunted something unintelligible, which, considering its nature, may have been as well, and changed direction