Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [99]
“Whose injustices?” Pitt asked quickly. “Who decides what is just or unjust?”
Urban’s face registered the difference with a flash of irony.
“They do, of course.”
“If its aims are so fine, why is it secret?”
Urban sighed. “Some things are hard to accomplish, and those who resent it can be very obstructive, at times very powerful. Secrecy gives you some safety from them.”
“I see. But what has this to do with you and Weems—and Osmar?” Pitt asked.
“I am a member of the Inner Circle,” Urban explained. “I joined some time ago, when I was a young and rising man in Rotherhithe. An officer in power then thought I was a promising man, just the sort who would one day be a fine member of the Circle, a brother.” He looked self-conscious. “I was a lot younger then. He flattered me, told me all the good works and the power I might have to help people. Not the superintendent they have now. He wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”
He leaned still further forward. “I joined. To begin with it was all very simple stuff, a little gift to a good cause and a few hours of my time, nothing remarkable.”
Pitt remained silent.
“It was several years before I came up against anything that worried me,” Urban continued, “and even then nothing was said. I simply declined certain tasks I was asked to do. Six months ago the first real discipline came. I was asked to favor a man in a case. He was not accused, simply a witness, but he did not wish to testify, and I was supposed to overlook it, in the name of brotherhood. I refused. I had heard of other members of the Circle being disciplined for such acts, finding themselves suddenly unwelcome where they used to be respected, or unaccountably blackballed from clubs, when no charge had been made and no known offenses committed, criminal or social.”
“The Inner Circle disciplining its errant members,” Pitt said slowly.
“I think so. There wasn’t anything you could call proof, but the people concerned usually understood. And what may be more to the point, other members hovering on the brink of disobedience decided against it.”
“Effective,” Pitt said. A mass of thoughts whirled in his mind, possibilities connecting Weems and Addison Carswell, and Horatio Osmar, explaining the dismissal of charges—brothers of the Inner Circle. And Urban—and presumably Latimer too? A web of tacit understandings, favors, obligations, unspoken threats, and for rebels a swift and effective discipline: a warning to others.
Was that why Micah Drummond had been so willing to help Lord Byam, and why it made him so profoundly uncomfortable, and yet unable to explain? And of course that was why Byam had been told of Weems’s death in the first place, and why the Clerkenwell station had handed over the case when they were asked: all in the name of the Inner Circle, a secret brotherhood of power—used for what?
Micah Drummond!
How strong were the bonds of this brotherhood? Stronger than duty? Where did brotherhood end and corruption begin?
“And you defied them?” he said, looking at Urban again.
“I misbehaved,” Urban admitted. “I think my name on Weems’s list is a warning to others. But I can’t prove that.”
“Then the question is,” Pitt said slowly, “did Weems’s murderer leave the second list there for us to find, and so embarrass you, and Carswell …” He deliberately left off Latimer’s name. “Or was it there anyway, a precaution to be used at another time, and Weems’s murder unforeseen?”
“I don’t know,” Urban admitted. “I don’t even know beyond question that Carswell is a brother, but it would explain his dismissing the charge against Osmar. I know Osmar is. And Carswell’s name was also on your list.”
Pitt said nothing. His mind had grasped what Urban had said, and he knew it was very possibly true, but crowding it out and hurting far more was the memory of Micah Drummond’s face as he told him of Weems’s murder, and how they were going to help Byam. There were all sorts of questions springing from that. Was that why Micah Drummond agreed, and had the power to do it so easily? Why was Byam’s name not there? Could he have left