Seven Dials Page 0,44
cannot afford less than the best. Cornwallis tells me you are the best." He did not make it a question, but there was a very slight lift in his voice as if he wanted Pitt to confirm it for him, assure him he had done everything he could.
Pitt was disconcerted to find himself embarrassed. He was angry with Cornwallis, although he knew he would have spoken only with honesty; Cornwallis had probably never lied in his life. His transparency was both his greatest virtue, along with his moral and physical courage, and at the same time his most acute disadvantage in the politics of police administration.
He was utterly unlike Victor Narraway, who was the ultimate sophisticate in subtlety, the art of deceiving without lies, and of keeping his own counsel in everything. If he had any vulnerabilities at all, Pitt had not seen them. He understood emotion in others, but Pitt had no feeling that it was other than with the brilliance of his intellect, his power of observation and deduction. He could not even guess at what Narraway felt himself, or if he felt anything at all, if he had unfilled dreams anywhere in the secret recesses of his heart, wounds unhealed or fears that drowned his solitary moments awake in the night.
Ryerson was watching Pitt now, waiting for some reply.
"Yes, I have investigated in many places," he answered aloud. "Enough to know that some things are just as simple as they appear, and some are not. It seems as if Miss Zakhari had an assignation of some kind with Mr. Lovat, or why did she go out to meet him, and why did she take the gun with her? Had she simply heard an intruder she would have sent her manservant, not gone out herself. And why would Lovat make a noise, if he was walking on grass?"
"Yes," Ryerson conceded tersely. "You have justification for your reasoning. Possibly someone followed him, and killed him at Eden Lodge in order to lay the blame on someone else. Which they seem to have done with great success."
Pitt said nothing. He was thinking of Ayesha Zakhari's gun, lying next to Lovat on the damp ground in the darkness. He looked up at Ryerson, and saw in an instant that exactly the same thought was in his mind. He knew it from the faint flush on his cheeks and the way the understanding flashed between them, and then Ryerson lowered his glance.
"Did you know Lovat?" Pitt asked.
Ryerson moved towards the window and looked out at the leaves turning in the wind. "No. I never met him. The first time I saw him was on the ground at Eden Lodge, at least as far as I know."
"Did Miss Zakhari ever mention him?"
"Not by name. She was a little upset one afternoon when we met, and she said a past acquaintance was being a nuisance. That could have been Lovat, but I suppose not necessarily." He moved his hands restlessly. He stood with his shoulders and neck stiff. "Find out the truth," he said quietly, his voice so soft it was as if he were speaking to himself, and yet the intensity in him made it obvious that he was begging Pitt, he simply did not use the words.
"Yes, sir, if I can." Pitt rose to his feet. There was a great deal more he wanted to know, but it was too ephemeral to put into words. It was ideas, emotions, things for which he had no name, and he needed to find Narraway before the end of the day.
"Thank you," Ryerson answered, and Pitt hesitated, wondering if it would be fair to warn him that the truth could be painful, and not at all what he was now forcing himself to believe. But there was no point. Time enough for that if it had to be. Instead, he simply excused himself and went out.
"WHAT HAVE YOU?" Narraway looked up from the papers he was studying and regarded Pitt with challenge. He too looked tired, his eyes red rimmed, his cheeks a little sunken.
Pitt sat down uninvited and tried to make himself comfortable, but it was impossible; the tension inside him made his back ache and his hands stiff.
"Nothing in which I can see any hope of a more satisfactory answer," Pitt replied, deliberately using words sharp enough to hurt Narraway, and himself. "Lovat was a womanizer, and careless enough to use young, unmarried and respectable women who could be ruined by his attentions,