Bedford Square - Anne Perry [93]
He began early the following morning by looking again at what he knew of Balantyne’s military record. He needed to know something of the man in order to understand his weaknesses, why he might have created enemies and who they would be. According to what little Tellman had learned by following him since the discovery of the corpse in Bedford Square, he was a cold, precise man whose few pleasures were solitary.
Tellman squared his shoulders and increased his pace along the footpath. He was absolutely certain there was a great deal more to learn, more that was actually relevant to the blackmail and whoever had moved the body of Josiah Slingsby and left it on the General’s doorstep. Perhaps as far as the law was concerned it did not matter a great deal. Tellman had arrested and charged Wallace with the murder. But blackmail was also a crime, whoever the victim was.
He did not want to speak to officers, men of Balantyne’s own background and situation in life, who also had purchased their commissions and would close ranks against enquiry as naturally as against any other enemy attacking the quality of their comfortable, privileged lives. He wanted to speak to ordinary soldiers, who would not be too arrogant to answer him man to man and to praise or criticize with honesty. He could speak to them as equals and press them for detail, opinion, and names.
It took him three hours to find Billy Treadwell, who had until five years before been a private in the Indian army. Now he kept a public house down by the river. He was a thin man with a large beak of a nose and a ready smile with crooked, very white teeth, the middle two of which were chipped.
“General Balantyne?” he said cheerfully, leaning on a barrel in the yard of the Red Bull. “Well, Major Balantyne as ’e were then. ’Course, it’s goin’ back a fair bit, but yeah, I remember ’im. ’Course I do. Wot about it?” It was not said aggressively but with curiosity. Years in India had burned his skin a deep brown, and he seemed not to find this extraordinary heat wave in the least uncomfortable. He narrowed his eyes against the reflection of the sun on the water, but he did not look for shade.
Tellman sat down on the low edge of the brick wall that divided the yard from the small vegetable garden. The sound of the river was a pleasant background just out of sight. But the heat burned his skin, and his feet were on fire.
“You served with him, didn’t you? In India?” he asked.
Treadwell looked at him with his head a little on one side. “You know that, or you wouldn’t be ’ere askin’ me. Wot about it? Why fer d’yer wanna know?”
Tellman had weighed in his mind how to answer this question all the way there on the steamer he had taken up the river. He was still uncertain. He did not want to prejudice the man’s answer.
“That’s hard to say without breaking confidences,” he said slowly. “I think there’s a crime going on, and I think the General might be one of the intended victims. I want to stop it happening.”
“So why don’t you just warn ’im?” Treadwell said reasonably, glancing over his shoulder at a steamer as it passed close to shore, wondering if it might be likely custom.
“It isn’t that simple.” Tellman had prepared himself for that. “We want to catch the criminal as well. Believe me, if the General could help, he would.”
Treadwell turned back to him. “Oh, I believe that!” he said with feeling. “Straight as a die, ’e were. Always knew where you stood with ’im … not like some as I could name.”
“Strict for law and order, was he?” Tellman asked.
“Not special.” He gave his full attention now, business forgotten. “ ’E’d bend the rules if ’e could see the reason. ’e understood that men ’ave got ter believe in a cause if yer asking ’em ter die for it. Just like they gotter believe in a commanding officer if they’re gonna obey ’im w’en they don’t see the reason why ’e gives an order.”
“You don’t question an order?” Tellman said with disbelief.
“No, ’course not,” Treadwell answered disdainfully.