Bedford Square - Anne Perry [26]
“Are you certain?” Tellman persisted. “This devil uses other people’s names pretty freely. Was General … Balantyne? Yes … did General Balantyne seem his usual self to you?”
“Well … hard to say.” The steward hesitated.
Tellman had a stroke of genius. “You see, sir,” he said confidentially, leaning forward a little, “I think this bounder may be using General Balantyne’s name … running up bills, even borrowing money …”
The steward’s face blanched. “I must warn the General!”
“No! No sir. That would not be a good idea … just yet.” Tellman swallowed hard. “He would be extremely angry. He might unintentionally warn this man, and we need to catch him before he does the same thing to someone else. If you would be so good as to tell me a little about the real General, then I can make sure that the other places he frequents are not taken in by the impostor.”
“Oh.” The steward nodded his understanding. “Yes, I see. Well, he belongs to one or two services clubs, I believe. And White’s, although I don’t think he goes there so often as here.” This last was added with pride, a slight straightening of the shoulders.
“Not a very social sort of man?” Tellman suggested.
“Well … always very civil, but not … not overfriendly, if you get my meaning, sir.”
“Yes, I do.” Tellman thought of Balantyne’s rigid back, his rapid stride along Oxford Street, speaking to no one.
“Does he gamble at all, do you know?”
“I believe not, sir. Nor drink very much either.”
“Does he go to the theater, or the music hall?”
“I don’t think so, sir.” The steward shook his head. “Never heard him refer to it. But I think he has been to the opera quite often, and to the symphony.”
Tellman grunted. “And museums, no doubt,” he said sarcastically.
“Yes sir, I believe so.”
“Rather solitary sort of occupations. Doesn’t he have any friends?”
“He’s always very agreeable,” the steward said thoughtfully. “Never heard anyone speak ill of him. But he doesn’t sit around talking a lot, doesn’t … gossip, if you know what I mean. Doesn’t gamble, you see.”
“No sports interests?”
“Not that I ever heard of.” He sounded surprised as he said it, as if it had not occurred to him before.
“Pretty careful with money?” Tellman concluded.
“Not extravagant,” the steward conceded. “But not mean either. Reads a lot, and I overheard him once say he liked to sketch. Of course he’s traveled a lot—India, Africa, China too, so I heard.”
“Yes. But always to do with war.”
“Soldier’s life,” the steward said a trifle sententiously and with considerable respect. Tellman wondered if he had the same respect for the foot soldiers who actually did the fighting.
He went on talking to the steward for several minutes more, but little was added to the picture he was forming of a stiff, cold man whose career had been purchased by his family and who had made few friends, learned little of comradeship and nothing of the arts of pleasure, except those he considered socially admirable, like the opera … which was all foreign anyway, so Tellman had heard.
None of it appeared to have anything whatever to do with Albert Cole. And yet there was a connection. There must be. Otherwise how had Cole got the snuffbox? And why was that the only thing taken?
General Brandon Balantyne was a lonely, unbending man who followed solitary pursuits. He had been privileged all his life, working for none of the advantages he possessed, money, rank, position in society, his beautiful house in Bedford Square, his titled wife. But he was also a troubled man. Tellman was a good enough judge of character to know that. And he intended to find out what that trouble was, most especially if it had cost ordinary, poor, underfed and ill-clothed Albert Cole his life. Honest men reported thieves, they did not murder them.
What could Albert Cole, poor devil, have seen in that house in Bedford Square for which he had been killed?
3
PITT WAS CONCERNED with the murdered man who had been found in Bedford Square, but Cornwallis’s problem preyed more urgently