Bedford Square - Anne Perry [96]
“So wot d’yer want ter know about the Colonel for, then?” Sturton burst across his thoughts. “I in’t gonna tell yer nuffink agin ’im. In’t nothing ter tell. If yer think as ’e done suffink wrong, yer daft … even dafter an’ more iggerant than I took yer for, an that’s saying a lot.”
Tellman took the reproach without argument, because he was too confused to justify himself.
“No …” he said slowly. “No, I don’t think so. I’m looking for someone who is trying to hurt him … an enemy.” He saw the look of anger on Sturton’s face. “Possibly from the Abyssinian Campaign, perhaps not.”
“Yer got any idea wot yer doin’?” Sturton said disgustedly. “Wot kind o’enemy?”
“Someone vicious enough to try to attempt blackmail with a false story,” Tellman answered, then was afraid perhaps he had betrayed too much. He felt as if any step he took he was on uncertain ground. Suddenly everything was shifting beneath his feet.
“Then yer’d better find ’im!” Sturton said furiously. “An’ soon! I’ll ’elp yer!” He stiffened as if to move and begin straightaway.
Tellman hesitated. Why not? He could use any expert help he could obtain. “All right,” he accepted. “I need to know anything you find out about the attack on the supply train at Arogee. That’s the event that’s being lied about.”
“Right!” Sturton agreed. “Bow Street, yer said. I’ll be there.”
Tellman spent the next two days discreetly following Balantyne himself. It was not difficult, since Balantyne went out very little and was so deep in thought as never to look to either side of himself, far less behind. Tellman could have been striding step by step with him and probably not have been noticed.
The first time the General went out in a carriage with his wife, a dark, handsome woman Tellman found intimidating. He was very careful not to catch her eye, even by accident. He wondered what had made Balantyne choose her … and then realized that perhaps he had not. Maybe it was an arranged marriage, family links, or money. She was certainly elegant enough as she walked across the pavement past the General, barely looking at him, and accepted the coachman’s hand up into the open carriage.
She arranged her skirts with a single, expert movement and stared straight ahead. She did not turn as Balantyne got in beside her. He spoke to her. She replied, again without looking at him. She told the coachman to proceed before he moved to do so.
Tellman felt vaguely embarrassed for the General, as if he had been somehow rebuffed. It was a curious sensation, and one that took him entirely by surprise.
He followed them to an art exhibition where he was not permitted inside. He waited until they emerged a little over an hour later. Lady Augusta looked bright and hard—and impatient. Balantyne was speaking with a white-haired man, and they seemed deep in conversation. They regarded each other with respect which bordered on affection. Tellman remembered that the General painted in watercolors himself.
Lady Augusta tapped her foot.
Balantyne was some minutes more before he joined her. All the way home she ignored him, and back in Bedford Square she alighted from the carriage and went to the front door without waiting for him or looking back.
On the second occasion he went out alone, pale-faced and very tired. He walked quickly. He gave a threepenny piece to the urchin who swept the crossing over Great Russell Street, and a shilling to the beggar on the corner of Oxford Street.
He walked to the Jessop Club and disappeared inside, but he came out less than an hour later. Tellman followed him back to Bedford Square.
Then Tellman returned to Bow Street and went to Pitt’s old files to read the case of the murders in the Devil’s Acre and the startling tragedy of Christina Balantyne. It left him with a feeling of horror so intense the helplessness to affect it knotted inside his stomach, the anger at the pain he could not reach, the willful destruction and the loss.
He ate a brief supper without any pleasure in it, his imagination in the dark alleys of the Devil’s Acre, the blood on the cobbles, but every now and