Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [153]
The idea was puzzling, and one which had not occurred to him before.
“Traitors Gate? I should doubt it. Why? It’s more likely that he cared where he put her in, close to where he killed her, and unobserved. It would be chance, tide and the currents which took her to the slipway at the Tower. And, of course, whatever dragged her.”
“But what if it wasn’t?” she insisted. “What if it was intended?”
“It doesn’t honestly make a lot of difference, except that he would have had to find the right place to put her in, which might have meant moving her. But why would anyone care enough to take the risk?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “Only because she betrayed someone.”
“Who? Not her husband. She was always loyal to him, not as a matter of course, but because she truly loved him. You told me that yourself.”
“Oh, yes,” she agreed. “I didn’t mean that kind of betrayal. I thought perhaps it might be back to the Inner Circle again.”
“There are no women members anyway, and I’m convinced Chancellor is not a member either.”
“But what about her brother-in-law, Francis Standish?” she pressed. “Could he not be involved in Sir Arthur’s death, and somehow she found out? Susannah was very fond of Sir Arthur. She wouldn’t keep silent, even to protect her own. Perhaps that was what troubled her so much.”
“Family loyalty … and betrayal,” Pitt said slowly, turning the idea over in his mind. Harriet Soames’s face was sharp in his inner eye, in passionate defense of her father, even knowing his guilt. “Possibly …”
“Does it help?”
He looked at her. “Not a lot. Intentional or not, she will have been put in at the same place.” He pushed his chair back in, kissed her cheek before going to the door. His hat was on the rack in the hall. “It’s something I shall search for with more diligence today. I think it is time I forgot the hansom driver and concentrated on finding a witness to her body being put into the water.”
“Nothing except what didn’t happen,” Tellman said with disgust when Pitt asked him to report his progress so far. They were standing in Pitt’s office in the early light, the noise from the street drifting up through the half-open window.
Tellman was tired and frustrated. “No one has seen the damned hansom, either in Berkeley Square or Mount Street, or anywhere else,” he went on. “At least, no one who has it in mind to tell us. Of course all London is crawling with cabs, any one of which could have had Mrs. Chancellor in it!” He leaned against the bookcase behind him. “Two were seen in Mount Street about the right time, but both of them have been accounted for. One was a Mr. Garney going out to dine with his mother. His story is well vouched for by his servants and hers. The other was a Lieutenant Salsby and a Mrs. Latten, going to the West End to dine. At least that is what they said.”
“You disbelieve them?” Pitt sat down behind his desk.
“‘Course I disbelieve them!” Tellman smiled. “Seen his face, and you would have too. Seen hers, and you’d know what they were going to do! She’s no better than she should be, but not party to abducting a cabinet minister’s wife. That’s not how she makes her living!”
“You know her?”
Tellman’s face registered the answer.
“Anything else?” Pitt asked.
“Don’t know what else to look for.” Tellman shrugged. “We’ve spent days trying to find the place she went in. Most likely Limehouse. More discreet than upriver. It’d be eleven or so before he put her into the water, maybe. That’d be four hours before she was found. Don’t really matter whether she hit the slipway on the incoming tide or went past farther into the current and was washed up on the outgoing. Still means she put in somewhere south.” He breathed out slowly and pulled a face. “And that’s a long stretch of river with a dozen wharves and steps, and as many streets that lead to them. And you’ll get no help from the locals. The people that spend their time waiting around there aren’t likely to speak to us if they can help it. Slit your throat for the practice.”
“I know that, Tellman. Have you a better idea?”
“No. I tried them