Callander Square - Anne Perry [109]
“I hardly think they’ll do that. Murder is a great deal more important than picking pockets,” Balantyne said tartly.
“Well, I’m not going to help them any more,” Reggie poured himself another sherry from the decanter. “If the fellow comes again I shall refuse to see him. He can talk to the servants, if he wants to. Don’t like to seem uncooperative; but I’m not seeing him again myself. Told him all I know, that’s an end to it.” He swallowed the half glassful and breathed out with a sigh. “Finish!”
Balantyne stared at him.
“Surely you don’t imagine one of the servants killed Freddie?” he said with acid disbelief.
“My dear fellow, I really don’t care any more. Sooner the police give up and clear out, the better.”
“They won’t give up, they’ll stay here until they find out who it was!”
“The hell they will! Been speaking to a few people, at the club, and what not. That Pitt fellow will be put back on the beat if he doesn’t draw his horns in a bit. Just stirring up a whole lot of scandal. Takes pleasure in discomfiting his betters, that’s all. All these working class chaps are the same, give them a little power and they run amok. No, don’t worry, old boy, he’ll be off soon enough. Just poke around a bit, make it look as if he’s trying, then after a decent period, take himself off and look for thieves again.”
Balantyne was furious, a blind, incensed outrage boiled up inside him. This was a mockery of the principles he had believed in all his life: honor, dignity, justice for the living and the dead, the civilized order he had fought for and his peers had died for in the Crimea, in India, Africa, and God knew where else.
“Get out of my house, Reggie,” he said levelly. “And please do not return. You are no longer welcome here. And as far as the police are concerned, I shall move everything I have, speak to every man in power, to see that they ask every question, investigate every clue until they find out the uttermost truth about everything that has happened in Callander Square, and I don’t give a damn whom it hurts. Do you understand me?”
Reggie stared at him, blinking, the sherry glass in his hand.
“Y—you’re drunk!” he stammered, although he knew it was not true. “You’re insane! Have you any idea what harm it could do?” his voice ended in a squeak.
“Please leave, Reggie. It would make you look ridiculous to have to be thrown out.”
Reggie’s face darkened to crimson and he hurled the glass into the fire, splintering it into incandescent pieces. He turned on his heel and marched out, slamming the door behind him so hard the pictures teetered on the shelf and a small ornament fell over.
Balantyne stood alone for several minutes, his mind absorbing what he had done. Finally he rang the bell, and when the butler appeared, asked to have the footman fetch his coat as he was going out to see Sir Robert Carlton.
Carlton was at home, and Balantyne found him in the withdrawing room by the fire opposite Euphemia. He had never seen her look so happy, there seemed to be a warmth about her, as if she were somehow in the sunlight. Balantyne wished he had come for any other reason, but the outrage was still hot inside him.
“Good evening, Carlton; evening, Euphemia, you’re looking uncommonly well.”
“Good evening, Brandon.” There was a slight lift of question in her voice.
“I’m sorry, Euphemia, I need to speak to Robert urgently. Will you be so generous as to excuse us?”
Euphemia stood up, a little puzzled, and obligingly left the room.
Carlton frowned, annoyance flickering across his face.
“What is it, Balantyne? It had better be important, or I will find it hard to excuse your manners. You were something less than courteous to my wife.”
Balantyne was in no mood for trivialities.
“Did you use your influence