Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [116]
Was he a member of the secret brotherhood, the Inner Circle? He was just the sort of man who would join: young, ambitious, desirous of social status and preferment. Pitt would need not proof that he was, but proof that he was not before he would alter his belief.
He went outside in the hot, close midday to find himself some luncheon. In a noisy public house with a thick sandwich and a glass of cider he sat and watched the faces of the men coming and going, recognizing each other, exchanging whispers and nods, doing quick, secretive business, making acquaintances.
Was it any use trying his underworld sources? If Latimer were assisting the Inner Circle, they would not be the petty thieves and forgers, the pickpockets, fences and pimps of the criminal world, but the practitioners of fraud in business, the corrupt lawyers, the men who gave and took bribes, the financial deceivers and embezzlers of thousands.
He looked at the narrow, foxy face of the man at the table next to his. He was dirty and his teeth were stained, his hands cracked and nails black. He very possibly stole to make his life a little more comfortable. He would almost certainly not be above taking advantage of those weaker or slower-witted than himself, and might well have abused his wife, if he had one, or his children.
Still Pitt found him less of an offense against his code than the rich men who stole indirectly from strangers in order to become richer still, and who corrupted others to escape the consequences.
He returned to Scotland Yard and his poky little room with the pile of papers, and resumed his study, concentrating on the crimes that involved men he thought likely to be members of the Inner Circle, or to be of interest to its members.
Here at last he found what he had dreaded: lines of inquiry dropped for no accountable reason, prosecutions not proceeded with even though they might well have succeeded, curious omissions of diligence for a man otherwise exacting in his standards. Any individual one might have been explained easily enough as simple misjudgment. Latimer was no more infallible than any other man and it would be unreasonable to expect him to be right every time. He, like anyone else, could guess wrongly, be overtired, miss a connection, a link in the chain of evidence, leap to a wrong conclusion, have his prejudices and his blind sides. But taken all together they formed a very faint pattern, and the more he looked at them the more definite the pattern became. There was no way he could find out; the society was secret and the punishment for betraying a brother was severe. So Urban had said, and if he was right, Weems’s list proved it. But Pitt believed all the unaccountable omissions and strange misjudgments were with cases where the interests of the Inner Circle were concerned, and Latimer had been an instrument to their ends.
Had there been one he had refused to hide, one crime that had offended him more than he could bear, and he had at last refused? And the brotherhood had punished him by putting his name on Weems’s list, so he would eventually be discovered, and ruined? It was a heavy price to pay, and he would then be of no further use to them. Pitt shivered, cold in the stuffy room. But the other brothers would know, the waverers would be brought up sharply against the reality of what it meant to betray the Inner Circle, and every other brother would be strengthened in his loyalty.
What about Micah Drummond? His name had not appeared on the list. Did that mean he had never defied them, never refused their orders? Certainly he had responded quickly enough to help Sholto Byam, and the case was murder.
The thought was so intensely ugly Pitt found himself feeling sick. He liked Drummond as much as any man he knew, and a week ago he would have staked his own career that Drummond was utterly honest.
Perhaps Latimer’s juniors felt like