Seven Dials - Anne Perry [59]
Narraway sat deep in thought, his dark face pinched and smudged with weariness, but now there was something like a flicker of hope there as well, though he struggled to mask it.
“And you think she believed Lovat was one of these?” he said skeptically, leaning back in his chair and regarding Pitt through heavy, half-closed eyes, as if he had been up all night.
“It makes more sense than her knowing it was Lovat and shooting him,” Pitt replied.
“No, it doesn’t,” Narraway said bitterly. “If Lovat was blackmailing her and he called for payment, she took the chance to shoot him and put an end to it. That makes perfect sense, and will to any jury.”
“Blackmailing her over what?” Pitt asked.
“For God’s sake, Pitt! Use your imagination! She’s a young and beautiful woman of unknown origin. Ryerson is twenty years older than she is, highly respected, vulnerable . . .” He drew in his breath silently. “He may know perfectly well that she has had other lovers—in fact, he’d be a fool to imagine otherwise . . . It doesn’t mean he can bear being told about them, perhaps in detail.”
Pitt tried to put himself in Ryerson’s place. He could not. If you choose a woman for her physical beauty, her exotic culture, and her willingness to be a mistress rather than a wife, surely you also accept it as a fact that you are not the first, nor will you be the last. The arrangement will survive as long as it suits you both.
But looking at Narraway he saw nothing of that understanding in his eyes, only an intense, unreadable emotion which warned Pitt that if he were to challenge Narraway now, the quarrel which resulted might not easily be overcome. He had no idea why the subject should touch a raw nerve in Narraway, only that it did.
“And you think Lovat might have blackmailed her in order to keep him silent about something in Egypt?” he said aloud.
“It is what the prosecution will assume,” Narraway replied. “Wouldn’t you?”
“If nothing else is suggested,” Pitt agreed. “But they have to prove it—”
Narraway jerked forward, his shoulders tense, his body rigid. “No, they damned well don’t!” he said between his teeth. “Unless we come up with something better, it will go by default. Use your wits, Pitt! An old lover with no money or position is found dead in her garden at three in the morning. She has the corpse in a wheelbarrow and her gun beside it. What in God’s name else is anyone to think?”
Pitt felt the dark weight of the facts settle on him, almost like a physical crushing. “You mean we are merely going through the motions of looking for a defense?” he said very quietly. “Why? So Ryerson thinks he hasn’t been abandoned? Does that matter so much?”
Narraway did not meet his eyes. “We are asked by men who know a different set of realities from ours,” he answered. “They don’t care in the slightest about Ayesha Zakhari, but they need Ryerson rescued. He’s served this country long and well. A lot of the prosperity of the Manchester cotton industry, which means tens of thousands of jobs, is his doing. And if someone doesn’t find an agreement on the prices they face the strong possibility of a strike. Do you have any idea how much that will cost? It won’t only cost the cotton workers in the mills; it will affect all those whose businesses depend on them—shopkeepers, small traders, exporters—in the end, just about anyone from the men who sell houses to the crossing sweeper looking for a few halfpennies.”
“It’ll be embarrassing for the government if Ryerson is found guilty of abetting her after the fact,” he agreed. “But if he is, they’ll have to appoint someone else to handle trade with Egypt. And to judge from Ryerson’s handling of Lovat’s murder, I would rather that no national crisis were in his hands.”
Temper flared up Narraway’s sallow cheeks and his hand clenched on the desk, but he swallowed any outburst back with an effort so intense it was clearly visible. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Pitt!” he