Seven Dials Page 0,17

doing there at all? Did someone follow him? Did someone meet him there? For what? That makes no sense either. You don't arrange a quarrel in someone else's back garden in the middle of the night!" He was staring at Pitt, willing him to believe. "Ayesha wouldn't have opened the door to him. Was he planning to break in? Or create a scene and waken the neighbors?" His face was now ashen pale. "I know she would not have killed him, but for the life of me I can't imagine any credible answer as to what did happen." He did not even pretend to mask his feelings.

Narraway had told Pitt to keep Ryerson out of it if it were humanly possible. Given Ryerson's emotions, perhaps the only way to do that would be to learn the truth, in the hope that it proved Ayesha Zakhari less guilty than she looked now.

"I'll try to find the answers," Pitt said aloud. "But it will require a certain cooperation from you, sir."

"As far as I am able," Ryerson replied. He was not so desperate he would play into anyone's hands with an open promise. Pitt found that faintly comforting. At least the man had some balance and judgment left. "But I will not see her blamed for my acts, nor will I swear falsely to protect my reputation. It would serve me ill anyway, and Mr. Gladstone knows it. A man who would lie to serve his own ends will eventually lie for anything."

"Yes, sir," Pitt agreed. "I had no intention of asking you to lie, rather that you tell me all the truth you know, and keep silent as to your being at Eden Lodge unless it is inescapable that you answer the police. But I think they will refrain from asking you for as long as they can."

Ryerson's smile was bittersweet. "I imagine they will," he agreed. "What will Victor Narraway ask you to do, Mr. Pitt?" There was a change in his expression so minute Pitt could not have described it, but he knew without question it reflected a darkness inside.

"Find the truth," he answered with a slight grimace, knowing both that he had set himself a huge task, perhaps an impossible one, and that even if he succeeded the truth he found would very probably be one he would hate-and might not be able to conceal without even worse pain.

Ryerson did not answer him, but rose to his feet to show him to the front door himself, ignoring the services of the waiting footman.

IT TOOK PITT the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon to find the police surgeon and obtain his attention. He was a large man with heavy shoulders and quivering chins that settled into his neck without noticeable distinction. He had an apron tied around his vast girth, and his hands were scrubbed pink, presumably to get rid of the evidence of his day's work, if not the smell of carbolic and vinegar. He greeted Pitt with indignant good humor.

"Thought I'd got rid of you when you left Bow Street," he observed in a remarkably attractive voice. It was the only physically pleasing quality about him, apart from his hair, which was thick and curling and so clean as to shine in the gaslight from the lamps above him as they stood in his office. His eyebrows rose. "What do you want now? I don't know any bombers or anarchists. My ignorance of such things is precious to me, and I intend to keep it until I die peacefully of old age, sitting in the sun on some park bench. I can't help you-but I suppose I can try, if you insist."

"Lieutenant Edwin Lovat," Pitt replied. He liked McDade and he had nothing pleasanter or more useful to do than extract information from him a piece at a time.

"Dead," McDade said simply. "Shot through the chest-heart, actually. Small handgun, close range. Very neat."

"Great skill required?" Pitt asked.

"Only for a blind man with a moving target!" McDade looked at Pitt sideways. "Haven't seen the body, have you." That was a statement, not a question.

"Not yet," Pitt agreed. "Should I?"

McDade shrugged his massive shoulders, setting his chins quivering. "Not unless you need to know what he looked like, which is much the same as any other well-built young English soldier with a comfortable style of living, plenty of good food, and not much exercise lately. He'd have run to fat in another ten years, when the