Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [163]
“Thank you, Lily, that’s all.”
“Yes sir.”
As soon as Lily had gone the footman appeared from the recess beyond the stairs. No doubt he had been waiting there in order to conduct Pitt to his master.
“Mr. Chancellor asked me to take you to the study, Superintendent,” he instructed Pitt, leading the way through a large oak door, along a passage into another wing of the house, and knocking on another door. As soon as it was answered, he opened it and stood back for Pitt to enter.
This was very different from the more formal reception rooms leading off the hall where Pitt had seen Chancellor before. The curtains were drawn closed over the deep windows. The room was decorated in yellows and creams, with touches of dark wood, and had an air of both graciousness and practicality. Three walls had bookcases against them, and there was a mahogany desk towards the center, with a large chair behind it. Pitt’s eyes went straight to the humidor on top.
Chancellor looked strained and tired. There were shadows around his eyes, and his hair was not quite as immaculate as when Pitt had first known him, but he was perfectly composed.
“Further news, Mr. Pitt?” he said with a lift of his eyebrows. He only glanced at Pitt’s grimy clothes and completely disregarded the odor. “Surely anything now is academic? Thorne has escaped, which may not be as bad as it first appears. It will save the government the difficulty of coming to a decision as to what to do about him.” He smiled with a slight twist to his mouth. “I hope there is no one else implicated? Apart from Soames, that is.”
“No, no one,” Pitt replied. He hated doing this. It was a cat-and-mouse game, and yet there was no other way of conducting it. But he had no taste for it, no sense of achievement.
“Then what is it, man?” Chancellor frowned. “Quite frankly, I am not in a frame of mind to indulge in lengthy conversation. I commend you for your diligence. Is there anything else?”
“Yes, Mr. Chancellor, there is. I have learned a great deal more about the death of your wife….”
Chancellor’s eyes did not waver. They were bluer than Pitt had remembered them.
“Indeed?” There was a very slight lift in his voice, an unsteadiness, but that was only natural.
Pitt took a deep breath. His own voice sounded strange in his ears when he spoke, almost unreal. The clock on the Pembroke table by the wall ticked so loudly it seemed to echo in the room. The drawn curtains muffled every sound from the garden or the street beyond.
“She was not thrown into the river and washed up by chance of tide at Traitors Gate….”
Chancellor said nothing, but his eyes did not leave Pitt’s.
“She was killed before, early in the evening,” Pitt went on, measuring what he was saying, choosing his words, the order in which he related the facts. “Then taken in a carriage across the river to a place just south of London Bridge, a place called Little Bridge Stairs.”
Chancellor’s hand closed tight above the desk where he was sitting. Pitt was still standing across from him.
“Her murderer kept her there,” Pitt continued, “for a long time, in fact until half past two in the morning, when the tide turned. Then he placed her in the small boat which is often tied up at the steps, the boat he had seen when crossing London Bridge. It is a few hundred yards away.”
Chancellor was staring at him, his face curiously devoid of expression, as if his mind were on the verge of something terrible, hovering on the brink.
“When he had rowed out a short way,” Pitt went on, “he put her over the stem, tied across her back and under her arms with a rope, and rowed the rest of the way, dragging her behind, so her body would look as if it had been in the water a long time. When he got to the far side, he laid her on the slipway at Traitors Gate, because that was where he wished her to be found.”
Chancellor’s eyes widened so imperceptibly it could have been a trick of the light.
“How do you know this? Do you have him?”
“Yes, I have him,” Pitt said