Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [180]
“Hathaway!” she shouted.
“What?” He ignored the man passing by them who looked at Charlotte in alarm and disapproval, and increased his pace.
“Hathaway!” she said, grasping him in turn. “What if the extra steward was Hathaway? What a perfect way to murder someone. As a steward he would be practically invisible! As himself, he goes to the cloakroom saying he is not feeling well. Once in there he changes into a steward’s jacket, then returns to the pantry, collects a tray and brandy into which he puts the laudanum, serves it to Sir Arthur, saying it is a gift from someone. Then he says that Mr. Hathaway has been taken unwell in the cloakroom and has rung for assistance, so he establishes that Hathaway was in the cloakroom all the time.” Her voice was rising with excitement. “He goes out, changes back into himself, then further to establish that, he leaves directly from the cloakroom. He calls the attendant and has him fetch a hansom and assist him out into it. He has established his own whereabouts, with witnesses, and become invisible long enough to give Sir Arthur a fatal dose of laudanum, virtually unseen. Uncle Eustace, you are brilliant! You have solved it!”
“Thank you.” Eustace blushed scarlet with pleasure and satisfaction. “Thank you, my dear.” For once he was even oblivious of the giggles and words of a group of ladies in an open landau. Then the brilliance of his smile faded a little. “But why? Why should Mr. Hathaway, an eminent official of the Colonial Office, wish to poison Sir Arthur Desmond, an erstwhile eminent official of the Foreign Office?”
“Oh—” She caught her breath. “That is regrettably easy. By a process of deduction, he must be the executioner of the Inner Circle….”
Eustace’s expression froze. “The what? What on earth are you talking about, my dear lady?”
Her face changed. The victory fled out of it, leaving only anger and a terrible sense of loss. It alarmed him to see the fierceness of the emotion in her.
“The executioner of the Inner Circle,” she repeated. “At least one of them. He was detailed to kill Sir Arthur, because—”
“What absolute nonsense!” He was appalled. “The Inner Circle, whose name you should not even know, is a group of gentlemen dedicated to the good of the community, the protection of the values of honor and wise and beneficent rule, and the well-being of everyone.”
“Balderdash!” she retorted vehemently. “The junior new recruits are told that, and no doubt sincerely believe it. You do, Micah Drummond did, until he learned otherwise. But the inner core of it is to gain power and to use it to preserve their own interests.”
“My dear Charlotte …” He attempted to interrupt, but she overrode him.
“Sir Arthur was speaking out against them before he died.”
“But what did he know?” Eustace protested. “Only what he may have imagined.”
“He was a member!”
“Was he? Er …” Eustace was confounded, a worm of doubt creeping into his mind.
“Yes. He found out about their intentions to use the Cecil Rhodes settlement of Africa to gain immense wealth for their own members, and he tried to make it public, but no one would listen to the little he could prove. And before he could say any more, they killed him. That’s what they do to members who betray their covenants. Don’t you know that?”
With a sudden sickening return of memory, Eustace thought of the covenants he had been obliged to make, the oaths of loyalty he had taken. At the time he had thought them rather fun, a great adventure, something like the vigil of Sir Galahad before receiving his spurs, the weaving of good and evil that belongs to high romance, the ordeals of those who dare the great adventures. But what if they had meant them truly? What if they really did mean that the Circle was to come before mother or father, wife or brother or child? What if he had pledged away the right to choose on pain of his life?
She must have seen the fear in his eyes. Suddenly there was gentleness, almost pity, mixed with her anger. Neither of them was even aware of the world around them, the pedestrians who passed within a yard