Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [140]
“Who?” Her voice rose close to panic. “Who has used you? I don’t understand what you mean. Why is Mr. Pitt here? Why did you call in the police? If someone has defrauded you, can he help? Would it not be better to … I don’t know … to deal with it privately?” She looked from her father to Pitt, and back again. “Was it much money?”
Soames seemed incapable of a coherent explanation. Pitt could not bear the agony any longer. To see him at once struggling and despairing was an intrusion into the man’s shame which was unnecessary. A clean blow would be more merciful.
“Mr. Soames has been passing secret information to a spy,” he said to Harriet, “in his belief that the man was using it to help Britain’s interests in Africa by falsifying it before relaying it to the Germans. However the plan was not approved by either the Colonial Office or the Foreign Office. On the contrary, they had called me and empowered me to investigate where the information was coming from.”
She looked at him with disbelief.
“You are wrong! You must be wrong.” She swung around to her father, her mouth open, to ask him to explain; then she saw the full depth of his distress. Suddenly she knew that in some terrible way there was truth in it. She turned back to Pitt. “Well whatever happened,” she said furiously, “if my father has been deceived by someone, it was not a dishonorable act, and you should be very careful what you say to him.” Her voice shook and she stepped closer to Soames, as if he needed some physical protection and she would give it.
“I have not made an accusation of dishonor, Miss Soames,” Pitt said gently. “At least not on your father’s part.”
“Then why are you here? You should be looking for whoever it is that lied to him and passed on the information.”
“I did not know who, until your father told me.”
Her chin came up. “If you didn’t know who it was, then how could you know it had anything to do with my father? Perhaps it hasn’t. Have you thought of that, Superintendent?”
“I had thought of it, Miss Soames, and it is not so.”
“Prove it,” she challenged, staring at Pitt with brilliant eyes, her face set, jaw tight, her remarkable profile as stiff as if carved in almond-tinted stone.
“It’s no use, Harriet,” Soames interrupted at last. “The Superintendent overheard my conversation when I was passing the information. I don’t know how, but he was able to recite it back to me.”
She stood as if frozen. “What conversation? With whom?”
Soames glanced at Pitt, a question in his eyes.
Pitt shook his head.
“With the man at the Colonial Office,” Soames replied, avoiding using his name.
“What conversation?” Her voice was strangled in her throat. “When?”
“On Wednesday, late afternoon. Why? What difference can it make now?”
She turned very slowly to look at Pitt, horror in her eyes and disgust so absolute and so terrible her face was made ugly with it.
“Matthew,” she whispered. “Matthew told you, didn’t he?”
Pitt did not know what to say. He could not deny it, and yet neither could he bear to confirm that her charge was true. It would be fatuous and unbelievable to suggest that Matthew might not have understood the meaning of what he said, or what the result would be.
“You can’t deny it, can you!” she accused him.
“Harriet …” Soames began.
She swung around to him. “Matthew betrayed you, Papa … and me. He betrayed both of us for his precious Colonial Office. They’ll promote him, and you’ll be ruined.” There was a sob in her voice and she was so close to tears she barely had control.
Pitt wanted to defend Matthew, even to plead his cause, but he knew from her face that it would be useless, and anyway, Matthew had the right to say what he could to explain himself. Pitt should not preempt that, no matter how intensely he felt. He met Harriet’s eyes,