The Hyde Park Headsman - Anne Griffin Perry [30]
“Good afternoon, Pitt.” He closed the door behind him and remained standing.
Pitt came around the desk. “Good afternoon, sir.”
“This damned Winthrop business,” Farnsworth said, his mouth pulled tight with distaste. “What have you done so far? We can’t let this one stand around. Police reputation is bad enough. We’ve never recovered from the Ripper and all the harm that did us. We can’t afford another episode like that!”
“No reason to suppose we will have one again—” Pitt began.
Farnsworth’s temper was intent and savage. “Good God, man! Of course it will happen again if we’ve got a criminal lunatic loose in Hyde Park. Why on earth would he be satisfied with one dead body?” He jerked his head angrily. “And if it’s a gang of robbers come from God knows where, they’d do it as long as they can get away with it! We’ll have panic in the streets again, people terrified to go out of their own doors, half the city paralyzed …”
“Captain Winthrop was not robbed.”
“Then it’s a madman!”
“Neither did he put up any struggle.” Pitt kept his tone calm with an effort. He understood why Farnsworth was afraid. The political situation was tense. The Whitechapel affair had shown ugly manifestations of anarchy, a violence simmering frighteningly close to the surface. There was unrest in many of the major cities, the old sore of the Irish question was as painful as ever. The popularity of the monarchy was at its lowest ebb. It would not take much to spark the underlying fear into a blaze of destruction which would carry many of them away with it. “He was killed in the pleasure boat while leaning over the side, and with one clean stroke,” Pitt said aloud.
Farnsworth stood still, his face tight and bleak.
“What are you saying, Pitt? That it was someone he knew? He must have known him well. Why on earth does a naval captain get into a pleasure boat on the Serpentine, at midnight, with another man carrying an ax? It’s absurd. It’s very, very ugly, Pitt.”
“I know that, sir.”
“Who is it? What was the man’s private life? What about the wife? If it’s scandalous, you are going to have to cover this up, if you can. I trust you know that?” He fixed Pitt with a sharp stare.
“I never expose people’s private griefs and sins voluntarily,” Pitt replied, but it was an equivocation, and Farnsworth knew it.
“Winthrops are an important family, connections all over the place,” Farnsworth went on, moving his weight restlessly from one foot to the other. “For Heaven’s sake be discreet. And don’t pull faces, man! I know you’ve got to solve the case!” He bit his lip, looking at Pitt hard and obviously turning over something in his mind.
Pitt waited.
“It’s going to be difficult,” Farnsworth said again.
The remark was so obvious Pitt did not reply.
Farnsworth looked Pitt up and down closely, still cogitating. “You’ll need connections yourself,” he said slowly. “Not impossible. Self-made man, but that doesn’t rule out influence, you know.”
Pitt felt a sudden stab of fear, but still he said nothing.
“Just a few friends can make the world of difference,” Farnsworth went on. “If they are the right ones.”
The fear subsided. It was not what Pitt had dreaded. He found himself smiling.
Farnsworth smiled as well.
“Good man,” he said with a nod. “Opens a lot of doors for you, furthers your career. Drummond was, you know?”
Pitt went cold. It was the Inner Circle he was referring to after all, that secret society, outwardly benevolent, inwardly malign, which Drummond had joined in his innocence and regretted so bitterly afterwards. The price of brotherhood was the surrender of loyalties, the forfeit of conscience so that an unknown army helped you, and could call on your help, at whatever cost, whenever it chose. The price of betrayal was ruin, sometimes even death. One knew only a half dozen or so other members, as the need arose. There was no way to tell to whom your loyalty might be pledged, or in what cause.
“No.” Pitt blurted out the word before realizing how foolish it would be, but he felt cornered, as if a darkness were