Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [167]
“But you will still stand?”
“Of course. But independently, if that is the price.” His smile was a little bleak. Perhaps already he had some idea that indeed that was the price, and in the end without the help of Anstiss and people like him, he would have no better a chance than Fitz.
Charlotte felt an overwhelming rush of sadness for all that he might have accomplished, and a pride in him that he would not do it at such a cost. She glanced across at Emily, and saw the answering pride in her eyes, and a happiness that was brighter than ambition, even for the opportunity to serve.
“I’m glad,” Charlotte said quietly. “No one can please everyone. It is very important indeed to know whose approval matters in the end.”
11
PITT STOOD in Micah Drummond’s office in the hazy sun. It was mid-afternoon and he had come to the point in his thoughts when he could no longer put off asking Drummond further about Byam. He was sinking in a morass of facts and suppositions, few of which he could fit into any coherent order. He did not even know fully how Weems had been killed, let alone by whom. Someone had visited him that night, found the blunderbuss and the powder, either seen or brought with him the coins, and had loaded the gun and fired it. But why had Weems sat still and permitted him to do that? From all he had learned, it seemed that Weems was a cautious man and well familiar with the danger he might be in from desperate clients pushed beyond endurance.
Drummond was standing by the window as he so often did. Pitt, hands in his pockets, was close to the desk, his thoughts still racing.
Surely Weems’s other occupation as a blackmailer would have made him even more careful still? The bars on the door to the single entrance testified to that. Who would he permit to visit him at that hour, and for what purpose?
If they knew that, Pitt felt they would be a great deal closer to knowing who killed him.
And why? Was it debt? That seemed less and less likely. Or blackmail? If blackmail, then was it Byam, in a double bluff, or Carswell, or Urban, or Latimer? He thought not Urban, for all the excellent motive. Or was that simply because he liked the man? He had not yet told anyone about the picture frame in the Stepney music hall.
Charlotte was convinced it was not Carswell, and he was disposed to agree. Latimer? Or Byam himself, after all?
Or was it not blackmail, but some other motive, a more deep and ugly personal reason to do with Weems. Or perhaps his death was simply a necessary part of some other plan, and someone else was the real victim.
If that was true, they might be as far from a solution now as they had been when Byam first sent for them, which was a frightening thought.
“What is it?” Drummond said aloud, his face creased with anxiety. This case troubled him as very few before, and in an entirely different way. Pitt understood it, but he could do nothing to ease it; in fact it was probable he would make it worse.
He hitched himself sideways a little to sit on the desk. It was a very disrespectful attitude, but neither of them noticed. Drummond was sitting on the windowsill, his back to the sun.
“What if the motive was not debt or blackmail, but something else?” Pitt said aloud. “What if it was part of something personal …”
Drummond frowned. “But you said you had already investigated that, and you could find no personal relationships at all. He had no family of any sort, his only employees were the errand runner and the housekeeper, neither of whom seemed suspects, and no connection with any woman that you could find. Who would feel violently enough about him to kill him? There isn’t even an heir.”
“He must have had a collaborator of some sort,” Pitt pointed out. “He didn’t learn all his blackmail information himself. Someone told him.”
Drummond looked up quickly, his eyes sharp.
“A backer? Perhaps Weems was only the person who actually contacted the victims and took the money, but he paid it on to someone else?” He straightened up a fraction as new hope caught him. “And that person murdered him?