Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [93]
Ewart turned to face him. “Implicated?” he asked slowly. He seemed almost too tired, too stunned by blow after blow to think.
“If FitzJames has enemies so virulent they would put evidence at the scene of the murder to incriminate him,” Pitt started to explain, “then …”
Ewart straightened up a little, realization in his face.
“Oh yes. Of course. Do you want me to do that? I’ll start tomorrow.”
“Good,” Pitt agreed. “I’ll continue with Ada.” It was all ugly, and confusing. He must, as he had said, go right back to the beginning.
Pitt arrived home late, and was startled to find Emily’s great-aunt by her first marriage, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, sitting in his parlor sipping a tisane and talking to Charlotte. He had flung the door open, about to speak, until he saw her, and he stopped.
“Good evening, Thomas,” Aunt Vespasia said coolly, her silver eyebrows raised. As always, she looked exquisite; her face, with its marvelous bones and hooded eyes, had been refined by time and her character marked into it. It was no longer the mere loveliness of youth but a beauty which was the whole structure of a life, fascinating and unique.
She had given him permission to call her by name as a relative. He used it with pleasure.
“Good evening, Aunt Vespasia. How very pleasant to see you.”
“And surprising also, to judge by the expression upon your face,” she retorted. “No doubt you are hungry, and would like to dine. I believe Gracie has your meal prepared.”
He closed the door and came into the room. He was hungry and extremely tired, but he was not willing to forgo the pleasure of her company, nor the interest of her conversation. She would not simply have called because she was passing by. Vespasia never did anything casually, and she did not pass by Bloomsbury on the way to anywhere. He sat down, glanced at Charlotte, then faced Vespasia.
“Are you acquainted with Augustus FitzJames?” he said candidly.
She smiled. “No, Thomas, I am not. I should be offended if you imagined I had called upon you because I was a friend of his and aware that you were investigating that sordid affair in Whitechapel which seems to implicate his son.”
“No one who knew you would suppose you would try to exert influence, Aunt Vespasia,” he said honestly.
Her silver-gray eyes widened. “My dear Thomas, no one who knew me would suppose me a friend of a nouveau riche bully like Augustus FitzJames. Please do sit down. I find it most uncomfortable staring up at you.”
He found himself smiling in spite of his weariness and the confusion in his mind, the sense of having achieved nothing in all the time and effort he had spent. He sat down opposite her.
“But I do have some compassion for his wife,” she went on. “Although that is not why I called. My principal interest is in you, and after that, in John Cornwallis.” She frowned very slightly. “Thomas, if you charge Finlay FitzJames, be extremely careful that you can prove your case. His father is a man of great power and no clemency at all.”
Pitt had judged as much, but it was chilling to hear it from Vespasia. She was not a woman too arrogant or too foolish to be afraid, but it was a very rare occurrence indeed, and when he had seen it in the past, it had been of the power of secret societies rather than of individuals. It increased his sense of misery and the darkness of thought which surrounded the murder in Pentecost Alley.
Charlotte was looking at him anxiously.
“It begins to appear,” he began carefully, “as if Finlay FitzJames may not be guilty. Certainly the evidence against him has largely been withdrawn, or explained away.”
“That is very unclear. I think you had better say what you mean,” Vespasia commanded.
He told her about the badge, and then finding the second one in Finlay’s possession, and his inability to obtain any of the other original ones with which to compare them to identify the copy. He did not