Seven Dials - Anne Perry [4]
Talbot looked slightly discomfited. “She won’t say,” he replied.
Pitt raised his eyebrows. “And what about Mr. Ryerson?”
“I haven’t asked!” Talbot snapped. “And I don’t want to know! He wasn’t on the scene when the police got there. He arrived a few moments afterwards.”
“What?” Pitt said incredulously.
Talbot colored. “He arrived a few moments afterwards,” he repeated stubbornly.
“He just happened to be passing at three in the morning, saw the light of the constable’s bull’s-eye shining on a woman with a corpse in a wheelbarrow, so he stopped to see if he could help?” Pitt said with heavy sarcasm. “He did arrive in a carriage, from the street, I assume? He didn’t by any chance come out of the house—in his nightshirt!”
“No, he did not!” Talbot retorted hotly, his thin face flushing. “He was fully dressed, and he walked over from the direction of the street.”
“Where his carriage was waiting, no doubt?”
“He said he came by hansom,” Talbot answered.
“Intending to call on the lady, only to find her conspicuously unprepared!” Pitt observed waspishly. “And you believe him?”
“What choice do I have?” Talbot raised his voice for the first time, his desperation ragged through his rapidly slipping composure. “It’s idiotic, I know that! Of course he was there. He was actually coming from the mews, where I imagine he’d gone to harness up a horse and hitch it to a trap, or whatever she has, to take the body somewhere and get rid of it. They’re only a stone’s throw from Hyde Park. That would do. It would be found, of course, but there would be nothing to connect it with either of them. But we got there too soon. We didn’t see him with her, and she isn’t saying anything.”
“And you don’t ask him because you don’t want to know,” Pitt finished for him.
“Something like that,” Talbot admitted, his eyes hot and wretched. “But if you want to, then Special Branch is very welcome. Have it! Have it all! Go and ask him. He lives in Paulton Square, Chelsea. I don’t know the number, but you can ask. There can’t be many cabinet ministers there.”
“I’ll see the Egyptian woman first. What is her name?”
“Ayesha Zakhari,” Talbot replied. “But you can’t see her. That’s my orders from the top, and Special Branch or not, I’m not letting you in. She hasn’t implicated Mr. Ryerson, so you’ve no brief here. If her embassy says anything it’ll be a matter for the Foreign Office, or the Lord Chancellor, or whoever. But so far they haven’t. She’s just an ordinary woman arrested for the murder of an old lover, and there’s no reasonable doubt that she did it. That’s how it is, sir—and that’s how it’s staying, as far as I’m concerned. If you want to make it different, you’ll have to do it somewhere else, ’cos you’re not doing it here.”
Pitt pushed his hands into his trouser pockets, finding a small piece of string, half a dozen coins, a bull’s-eye sweet wrapped in paper, two odd lumps of sealing wax, a penknife, and three safety pins. In the other were a notebook, a stub end of pencil, and two handkerchiefs. It flicked through his mind that that was too much.
Talbot stared at him. For the first time Pitt saw in his face that he was frightened. He had cause to be. If he were wrong, either for Ryerson or against him, not a matter of fact but of judgment, he would be ruined. He would take the blame, possibly for others’ mistakes, men of greater power and with more to lose.
“So Mr. Ryerson is at home?” Pitt asked.
“As far as I know,” Talbot said. “He certainly isn’t here. We asked him if he could help us, and he said he couldn’t. He said he thought Miss Zakhari was innocent. He didn’t believe she would have killed anyone, unless they were threatening her life, in which case it wouldn’t be a crime.” He shrugged. “I could have written it all down without bothering to ask him. He said the only thing he could—he doesn’t know anything about it, he only just arrived—to protect her honor, and all that. Decent men don’t say a woman’s a whore, even if she is and we all know it. He said she wouldn’t have killed anyone without a reason, but