Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [136]
It was a powerful motive for murder.
“What are we going to do, Mr. Pitt?” Innes said quietly. “You want me ter go ter Mr. Drummond, like?”
It was a generous offer, made at some cost, and Pitt felt a tiny spark of warmth because of it.
“No,” he said with a bleak smile. “Thank you. I’ll go.”
“Yes sir.”
9
PITT MADE NO OBJECTION whatever when Charlotte said she would like to attend Emily’s musical evening towards the end of that week. Indeed when she explained, by the way, as though she had assumed he knew it already, that the Carswells would be there, he was quite openly pleased.
They had no time to discuss it because he was leaving early to go to Clerkenwell. He and Innes must work on the very last of the debtors on Weems’s first list. Little by little Innes had whittled it down, but there were still a dozen or so left who were not accounted for beyond doubt. It was still possible one of them might have gone to Cyrus Street late in the evening, been admitted, and seized the blunderbuss, found the powder, and loaded the gun. But neither of them believed it. Weems may have despised his clients, but he surely knew despair when he saw it, and over the years had learned that desperate people can be dangerous.
Today they planned to question Weems’s errand runner, Windy Miller, yet again, although they expected little useful from him, and later perhaps his housekeeper, in case there were any details they had overlooked, any thread of knowledge however frail. But both of them were convinced that Weems’s killer was someone on the second list—or else Byam himself, although Innes had not said so, because of course he still did not know of Byam, a fact which weighed heavily on Pitt’s mind and disturbed his conscience increasingly.
Charlotte kissed him good-bye, and when he was gone immediately set about that housework which could not wait, so that she could leave in the late afternoon with a clear mind and no housewifely guilt.
By six o’clock she was sitting on the Hepplewhite chair in Emily’s withdrawing room, wearing a rose-colored gown spread around her elegantly, and surrounded by about thirty other people also sitting upright, facing the grand piano where a very earnest young man was playing some extraordinarily beautiful, dark and sad music by Franz Liszt. Indeed it was so lovely Charlotte’s attention was entirely taken by it and she forgot even to glance at Addison Carswell, Regina, one of the Misses Carswell, or at Herbert Fitzherbert and Odelia Morden, or Fanny Hilliard, whom she was surprised to see present. Then she realized precisely what political value Fanny had in the possible fall from grace of Herbert Fitzherbert and Emily’s so gentle part in it.
However at the first interval Charlotte remembered her own reason for being here, cast aside self-indulgence and began to observe other people. One of the first she noticed was the Miss Carswell present; she did not know her name as she could not tell one from another. She was no more than seventeen or eighteen, a girl pretty in a usual sort of way, clear complexion, all pink and white, fair hair tending a little towards mouse, and an agreeable, good-tempered face of no particular character. No doubt if one knew her one would find the individuality, the beliefs and emotions which made her unique, the humor, the dreams, the small kindnesses.
She now stood a few yards away from her mother, effectively unchaperoned, and was speaking with some animation to a young man Charlotte could not remember seeing before; but obviously Miss Carswell had. Her face was full of interest, instead of the usual rather simpering response many young women had to a first approach from an eligible and attractive man. And the man was responding with warmth and a total involvement of his attention.
Charlotte smiled. It was a most promising situation, and she imagined it might well progress into a happy relationship, most young girls’ profoundest ambition. So much the better if it could accompany a genuine affection as well, and this looked, from their faces,