Seven Dials Page 0,18

muscle went soft." His expression became rueful. "Handsome, I should think, when he was alive. Good features, good head of hair, all his teeth, which in his early forties isn't bad. Mind, it's intelligence and humor that make you like a man, and it's hard to tell that when you've only seen him dead." He looked away from Pitt as he spoke those words, and there was the very faintest shred of self-consciousness in him. Was he excusing his own massive size, defending himself from critical thought even though nothing had been said?

"Exactly," Pitt agreed. He had never considered himself handsome either. He smiled suddenly.

McDade colored. "Well, what else do you want?" he demanded, swinging around. "He was shot! Through the heart. I've no idea whether that was luck or skill. Killed him on the spot-it would do!"

"Thank you. I suppose there's nothing else you can tell me?"

"Like what?" McDade's voice rose incredulously. "That he was shot by a left-handed man with a walleye and a limp? No, I can't! Shot by somebody a couple of yards away who could hold a gun steady and see what they were doing. Is that any help?"

"None at all. Thank you for your time. May I see him?"

McDade waved a short, fat arm indicating the general area beyond the door. "Help yourself. He's on the third table along. But you shouldn't have any trouble finding him. The other two are women."

Pitt forbore from remark and went out as directed.

He looked at the body of Edwin Lovat, hoping it would give him a sense of the man's reality. He stared at the waxen features, a little sunken now, and tried to imagine him alive, laughing and talking, filled with feeling. Without movement, sound, anything of the thoughts or passions that had made Lovat unique, his body told Pitt nothing more than McDade had already said. A slender woman could not possibly have lifted him. Had he suspected any violence he would presumably not have stood so close to whoever it was who shot him, which meant that either the murderer was known to him as a friend or he had not seen his assailant until the moment before the shot was fired. Either possibility answered the facts, and there was no way to tell which was the case. It was probably irrelevant anyway. The woman had killed him. Pitt's only hope to save Ryerson was to find some mitigating reason why.

He spent the remainder of the afternoon learning what he could about Ryerson: his present responsibilities, which were largely to do with trade both within the empire and beyond; and the constituency he represented, which was in Manchester, the heart of the cotton-spinning industry in England. It was the second largest city in Britain, and also the home of the prime minister, Mr. Gladstone.

He was back in Keppel Street in time for dinner.

"Can you do anything to help?" Charlotte asked, looking up from her sewing as they sat together in the parlor afterwards.

"Help whom?" Pitt asked. "Ryerson?"

"Of course." She kept on weaving the needle in and out, the light flashing on it like a streak of silver, the head of it clicking very softly against her thimble. He found it a uniquely pleasing sound; it seemed to represent everything that was gentle and domestic, and there was an infinite safety in it. He had no idea what she was mending, but it was clean cotton and the faint aroma of it drifted across the short space between them.

"Can you?" she pressed.

"I don't know," he admitted, feeling the weight of it sink on him as if the room were suddenly darker. "I'm not sure he's prepared to help himself."

She stared at him, her needle motionless in her hand, her face puzzled. "What do you mean? Are you saying he's guilty?"

"He says he's not," Pitt replied. "And I'm inclined to believe him." He pictured Ryerson's face in his mind as he had defended Ayesha Zakhari, and heard again the emotion in Ryerson's voice. "At least I think so," he added. "He's willing to admit he was there, and that he actually helped her lift Lovat's body into the barrow, intending to take it to Hyde Park."

"Then he is an accessory!" she said in amazement. "After the murder, even if not before."

"Yes, I know that," he agreed.

"And the prime minister wants you to protect him?" she asked, struggling with the idea.

He stared at her. Her expression contained too many emotions for him to be certain which was