Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [169]
It was a good idea. It made sense.
“One of the larger debtors,” Pitt elaborated slowly. “Someone who knew about Fanny Hilliard and Cars well, and that Urban was working at the music hall in Stepney—and Latimer was taking payoffs from the bare-knuckle fighters, and gambling on them …”
“Not necessarily one person.” Drummond was enthusiastic now. “It could have been several people. Once Weems got the idea of accepting repayment in information he may have suggested it to other people himself. It would be a permanent source of income for him—never repayable in capital, always interest.”
“Makes you wonder why no one killed him sooner, doesn’t it?” Pitt said harshly.
“But how to find these sources of information, or at least prove they exist, other than by deduction.” Drummond pulled a face. “Not that it necessarily brings us any closer to finding out who killed him. There are times when I would dearly like to abandon the whole case—I really don’t care who killed the miserable swine.”
“Did we ever?” Pitt said grimly. “All we set out to do was to prove it was not Byam, didn’t we?”
Drummond’s face tightened, but it was guilt, not anger. There was no need for him to reply, and denial was impossible. He looked up at Pitt.
“What are you going to do?”
“Go and see Byam again, and try to find out more about this letter and precisely where it came from.”
“You think it matters?”
“It might. I should have paid more attention to it in the beginning. I’d like to find this servant who gave it to Weems and see who else might have known about it, and why we didn’t find it among Weems’s possessions. It was worth far too much for him to have parted with it.”
“Maybe he sold it,” Drummond suggested. “It could have got him a nice profit. Or more likely the murderer took it, along with his record of Byam’s dealings. He would very probably have kept the two things together, since they were part of the same business.” He bit his lip. “I know—that points to Byam again.”
“Except that if he had both the original letter and Weems’s notes, he would not have come to you—and who is blackmailing him now, and with what?”
“With having murdered Weems, of course,” Drummond said miserably. “Don’t creep all ’round it, Pitt.”
Pitt said nothing, but stood up off the desk. He glanced at Drummond from the doorway.
“Tell me,” Drummond asked.
“I will,” Pitt promised, and went out into the corridor and downstairs.
It was pointless expecting to find Byam at home before the early evening. Accordingly it was after six when Pitt arrived at Belgrave Square and the footman let him in. Byam received him within a few minutes; there was no pretense that he had better or more important things to take his time.
They stood together in the library, Pitt by the window with his back to the light, Byam against the mantel facing him. Even the golden glow of early evening could not entirely soften the lines of fear and sleeplessness and the shadows around his eyes.
“What have you learned?” he asked, still with the same courtesy in his voice, although it was strained and his body was stiff under his immaculate clothes. He looked thinner.
“A great deal, sir.” He felt sorry for the man because his suffering was so plainly visible in spite of all his efforts to appear normal, and even though he knew Byam might well be guilty of bringing most of it upon himself, indeed he might even have caused it directly. “But there are still facts missing before we can fit it all together to make sense of it,” he went on.
“You don’t know who killed Weems?” There was a flicker of hope in Byam, but it died almost before he had finished speaking.
“I’m not sure, but I think I am far closer than before.”
Byam’s face tightened but he did not ask again.
“What can I do to help?” he said instead.
“You told me in the beginning, or at least you told Mr. Drummond, that Weems’s original weapon against you was a letter written by Lady Anstiss to you, which unfortunately had fallen into the hands of a maid, who was related to Weems.”
“That’s right. Presumably