Silence in Hanover Close - Anne Perry [134]
There was no stillness to think.
With darkness came the illusion of solitude again, and his mind returned to gnaw the question. He turned it over and over and no answer seemed to satisfy him. It still seemed most likely that Robert York had interrupted someone, and he was killed because of his knowledge, as was Dulcie, and, of course, Cerise. But knowledge of what?
The constable returned, graver this time, and he did not mention Ballarat at all.
“So it was the maid, Dulcie, as first told you about this woman in pink, Mr. Pitt?” He frowned, looking at his notebook and then up again. “’Ow did you find ’er in Seven Dials?”
“With a lot of work,” Pitt replied flatly. “I walked the streets asking costers, flower girls, sandwich sellers, theater doormen, prostitutes.”
The constable shook his head slowly. “Must ’a taken a fair while, sir. Weren’t there no better way, nobody as knew nuffink?”
“Nobody who would speak, except Miss Adeline Danver, and she only saw the woman for a moment on the landing in the gaslight.”
“That’d be Mr. Julian Danver’s aunt?”
“Yes. But naturally Miss Danver didn’t know where to find her.”
The constable screwed up his face. “I could check that with ’er, Mr. Pitt.”
“Well, if you do, for God’s sake be careful! The last person to speak to the police about seeing Cerise fell out of a window to her death immediately after.”
The constable sat silently for several moments, then slowly began chewing his pencil. “Who do you reckon she was, this woman you calls Cerise, Mr. Pitt?”
Pitt leaned a little more heavily on his wooden chair.
“I don’t know. But she was beautiful; everyone who saw her said she had style, glamor, a face that one remembered. Felix Asherson admitted there was information missing from his department of the Foreign Office, which is also where Robert York worked.”
The constable took the end of his pencil out of his mouth. There were teeth marks where he had bitten into it.
“Mr. Ballarat didn’t believe that, Mr. Pitt. ’E made some inquiries, very discreet like, in several places, and there’s been no use made of anything that could ’a come from there. And ’e asked them as would know.”
“They don’t have to use it straightaway!” But Pitt felt he was fighting on sinking ground. Ballarat did not want to believe there was treason; he was afraid of facing his superiors and telling them something they would be so loath to believe, something that was frightening and innately a criticism of not only their competence but their honor. He was frightened of their anger, of having to muster arguments to persuade them of such a thing, showing them that the blame would be laid at their door. He wanted to be approved of; he had social ambitions that were far deeper than his professional or financial dreams. He liked good living; he liked petty authority, but he had not the courage for real power: the hazards, the envy, and the unpleasantness that it carried were prices he had no stomach to pay. He had been entrusted to prove there was no treason, or if there had been, that it had been safely covered up, and to discover it now would signal the utmost failure.
The constable was staring at him, chewing his pencil again viciously.
“I dunno much about that, sir. But it all seems a bit unlikely to the. I ’spect what men likes in a lady is as different as what they likes fer their dinner, but she didn’t seem anythink but ordinary ter me: dark ’air, darkish sort o’ skin, bit sallow like—prefer a bit o’ color meself. Not a bad face, but nothin’ special, an’ not much shape to ’er. Not what you’d call ’andsome at all.”
“She had grace,” Pitt said, trying to find words to explain the subtlety Cerise had had in life to this simple, straightforward man. “Spirit. Probably wit.”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Mr. Pitt, but she looked more like a maid who’d lorst ’er character and taken to the streets to me.”
“She was a courtesan.” He looked