Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [64]
“Weems was also a blackmailer.” Pitt stood perfectly still.
“Indeed? How unpleasant.” A look of distaste crossed Cars well’s face, but there was no start of anxiety or sudden fear. “I grieve for his death still less,” he said tersely. “But I did not know him, sir. I have already said so, and do not intend to waste my valuable time repeating it to you. You may believe me or not, as you choose, but since it is the truth, you will not find proof of anything different. Now if you please, prosecute your inquiries somewhere else!”
“Are you quite sure you do not care to tell me where you were that night?”
Carswell half rose from his seat, his face deep pink.
“I do not, sir! Now do you leave like a gentleman, or do I summon the ushers and remove you like a felon?”
Pitt sighed and took a deep breath. He did not dislike Carswell, and he hated having to do this to him.
“Perhaps Miss Hilliard was acquainted with him, and gave your name as collateral for a loan?” he suggested quietly and very levelly. “Neither she nor her brother are in such fortunate circumstances—”
Carsweirs face went white as the blood fled from it, and then blushed scarlet again, and his legs seemed to fold under him. He collapsed back into his chair and stared helplessly, unable to clear his thoughts or muster any argument to deny.
“Did Miss Hilliard know Weems?” Pitt repeated, not because he thought Theophania Hilliard guilty of murder for an instant, but he did not want to prejudice Carswell’s answers by suggesting them in the form of his questions.
“No! No—” Carswell’s voice sank again. “No, of course not. It is—” He took a deep, shuddering breath and let it go. “It is I—it—” He looked up at Pitt, his eyes anguished. “I did not kill Weems.” He pushed the words between his teeth. “I had no occasion to. Before God, I swear to you, I never knew the man, and I was not there that night!”
“What is your relationship with Miss Hilliard, sir?”
Carswell seemed to hunch inside himself, almost to grow smaller in his chair.
“She is—she is—my mistress.” It was so hard for him to say it came out in a whisper.
Was there any point in asking if Weems was blackmailing him? The cause for it was only too obvious. And what would a denial be worth? It would surely be instinctive, a man protecting himself, denying guilt automatically.
“And Weems knew?”
Carswell’s face tightened.
“I am saying nothing more, except that I did not kill him. And if you have any humanity in you, any justice at all, you will not involve Miss Hilliard. She knows nothing whatever of any part of it—please—” The word was almost strangled in his throat. It was a measure of his distress that he could bring himself to speak it at all. His hands were clenched on the desk top and his body looked hunched and beaten.
“Miss Hilliard is under no suspicion,” Pitt said before he considered the wisdom of telling him. “It is not a crime a woman might have committed, nor is there anything to connect Miss Hilliard with Weems.” Then to salvage something of his advantage, “It was your name we found on his books.”
Carswell sat back in his chair, pale, tired, his body slowly relaxing into limpness. He opened his mouth to say something, perhaps even thanks, then changed his mind and closed it again.
Pitt inclined his head in a small bow, and excused himself. There was nothing more to say and it was a pointless cruelty to stand and watch the man’s embarrassment. He would learn nothing new from it. He would like to have asked him why on earth he had ruled as he had on the case of Horatio Osmar, but that was a privileged decision which Pitt had no authority to investigate. There were no grounds to suppose it was corrupt, only eccentric and inexplicable.
“What?” Micah Drummond was incredulous. “Carswell dismissed it?”
“Yes sir,” Pitt agreed, standing in Drummond’s office in the sun. “He threw it out. Allardyce and Crombie could hardly believe it.”
“Did you say Horatio Osmar?” Drummond