Seven Dials Page 0,36

it help!" Narraway said between his teeth, his voice thick with emotion. "If Ryerson is convicted, the government will have to replace him with either Howlett or Maberley. Howlett will give in to the mill workers here and drive the prices down so far it will break the Egyptians. We'll have a few years of wealth and then disaster-poverty-Egypt will have no cotton to sell and no money to buy anything. Possibly even rebellion. Maberley will give in to the Egyptians and we'll have riots all over the Midlands here, police forced to suppress them with violence, maybe even the army out." He drew in breath to add more, then changed his mind and swung around with his back to Pitt.

"So far everything incriminates his woman, with Ryerson as a willing accomplice." He jabbed the air with his hand. "We need another answer. Find out more about Lovat. Who else might have killed him? Who was he? What was his relationship with the woman? I suppose one might hope there was some justification for her killing him?" There was no lift of hope in him, and yet Pitt had the intense feeling that, beneath the bitterness, Narraway was clinging on to a thread of belief that there could be another, better explanation.

"You know Ryerson, sir," Pitt began. "If the woman comes to trial, will he really allow himself to be implicated? If he has any kind of guilt, won't he resign first, so at least he isn't a government minister at the time?"

Narraway kept his back to him, his face hidden.

"Probably," he agreed. "But I am not yet prepared to ask the man to do that until I can see beyond doubt that he has any guilt in Lovat's death." There was dismissal in his tone and in the rigid set of his shoulders, the light from the narrow window on his dark head. "Report to me tomorrow," he said finally. He swung around just as Pitt reached the door.

"Pitt!"

"Yes, sir?"

"I accepted you into Special Branch because Cornwallis told me that you were his best detective and that you know society. You know how to tread carefully but still find the truth." It was a statement, but it was also a question, even a plea. For an instant, Pitt felt as if Narraway were asking for help in some way which he could not name or explain.

Then the impression vanished.

"Get on with it," Narraway ordered.

"Yes, sir," Pitt said again, then left, and closed the door behind him.

He went straight to the offices where Lovat had worked for the year or so before his death. Naturally the police had already been there. The information was so public it had been printed in Lovat's obituary, so when Pitt arrived he was received with weary resignation by Ragnall, an official in his early forties who had obviously already answered all the predictable questions.

Ragnall stood in the quiet, discreetly furnished office overlooking Horse Guards Parade and regarded Pitt patiently but with very little interest.

"I don't know what else I can tell you," he said, gesturing for Pitt to sit down in the armchair opposite the desk. "I can offer no explanation except the obvious one-he pestered the woman until she grew desperate and shot him... either in what she construed to be self-defense or more likely because he threatened to disrupt her present arrangements." A slight expression of distaste crossed his face. "And before you ask me, I have no idea what they might be."

Pitt had little hope of learning much from the interview, but he had no better place to begin. He settled into the chair and looked across at Mr. Ragnall.

"You think he may have pestered Miss Zakhari to the point that she felt a simple rebuff was not adequate to make him desist?" he asked.

Ragnall looked surprised. "Well, it seems to have been the case, doesn't it? Are you suggesting that she deliberately encouraged him, for some reason, and then killed him? Why, for heaven's sake? Why would any woman do such a thing?" He frowned. "You said you were from Special Branch..."

"Special Branch has no knowledge of Miss Zakhari prior to the death of Mr. Lovat," Pitt answered the implied question. "I wanted your judgment of Mr. Lovat as a man who would continue to pursue a woman who has told him that she has no desire for his attentions."

Ragnall looked very faintly uncomfortable. His smooth, rather good-looking face flushed, so slightly it could have been no more than a