Seven Dials - Anne Perry [145]
“I don’t understand it,” Pitt said slowly, feeling his way in a darkness of disjointed reason. “Why now? And if the purpose behind her coming to London, drawing in Ryerson, the whole business of trying to get the cotton manufacturing back into Egypt, the murder of Lovat, was in order to expose the massacre . . . then why all that trouble?” He stared at Narraway. “Why not simply make it known in Egypt? The facts are there. The bodies could be found and exhumed. With thirty-odd people shot to death, even after the burning, some of them will have bullet holes, chips in bone to show it wasn’t simply an accidental fire. Why all this murder and trial? Why risk her own life at all? If they know about the massacre, surely the murder of one of the soldiers responsible is trivial, almost an irrelevance, compared with exposing it? It’s ridiculously inefficient like this.”
Narraway stared at him, his eyes widening. “What, exactly, are you saying, Pitt? That she is being used by someone else? Expendable?”
“I think so . . . yes,” Pitt agreed. “What use is it to anyone to involve Ryerson?”
“Publicity,” Narraway said instantly. “The murder of one junior diplomat is neither here nor there. It’s Ryerson’s involvement that has journalists from every country in Europe writing about it. If the massacre comes out in the Old Bailey, you can be sure not only will all Britain know about it, and all Egypt, but most of the rest of the world as well. We wouldn’t have a chance in hell of keeping it quiet. Not only will all of the violence and horror of the event itself come out, but every stupid and ugly thing anyone has done since to conceal it.”
“So she came believing she was trying to help the cotton industry, but whoever it was who sent her intended this all the time?” For Pitt it was now only half a question. At last it made sense of what he had learned of Ayesha in Alexandria. This was the woman he had discovered. And once again she had been betrayed, only this time it would cost her her life. There was only one question now. “What did they tell her to persuade her to kill Lovat?” he said aloud. “Or didn’t she?”
Narraway stared at him, amazement, then comprehension, in his face. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “If she didn’t, then who did?”
Pitt stood up. “I don’t know.” Anger seethed inside him for Ayesha, for Ryerson, who unquestionably had been used, for all the people who were going to be driven into the maelstrom that Egypt would become. The beauty and the warmth of Alexandria would be shattered, as would the lives of the men and women whose faces he had seen when he was there, without even knowing their names. And he hated not knowing, and having his emotions pushed and pulled, and then torn apart by pity for first one, and then another, and not knowing what to believe. “Give me the authority I need to go and see her.” That was a demand, not a request.
“I can’t get it until the morning,” Narraway replied. “You’ll need it in writing,” he added as Pitt hesitated. “She’s not guilty yet, and she has rights. The Egyptian embassy will still protect her. I’ll have it for you by tomorrow afternoon.”
Pitt accepted it because he had no choice.
THE NEXT DAY, after a restless night in which the little sleep he got was filled with dreams of violence and almost unbearable tension, he was at Narraway’s house by noon. He was obliged to wait nearly two hours alone in the morning room until Narraway returned with a piece of paper in an envelope, and gave it to him without explanation.
“Thank you.” Pitt took it, glanced at the few lines of writing on it and was impressed, although he had no intention of allowing Narraway to know that. “I’ll go straightaway.”
“Do,” Narraway agreed. “Before they change their minds. And Pitt . . . be careful. The stakes could be as high as war. The people