He looked up at her. “Yes, I should think so,” he agreed. He could see the fear in her face, and ached to be able to comfort her with some assurance that it would not be so, even a hope of something they could do to fight against it, but there was nothing. The desire to protect was deep, and yet oddly there was a sweetness for him in being able to share his thoughts with her. She understood. The gratitude inside him was almost overwhelming that she was not a woman who had to be sheltered from truth, or even who wished to be. He did not know how any man bore the loneliness of that. One shielded a child, but a wife was a companion, one who walked beside you-in the easy paths and the hard.
“I suppose Mr. Narraway will warn the defense lawyer,” she said, her eyes wide in question. “Or… or is it the defense lawyer who will call him, do you suppose?” The ugliness of that thought was plain in her eyes. It was an alien thought in the comfort of this familiar room, with its slightly worn furniture, the cats asleep by the hearth, the firelight flickering on the walls.
But was she right? Had the lawyer who had been so ardent in defending Ryerson known this from the beginning? Pitt had no idea. The knowledge that it could be so was uniquely chilling. There was a brutality to the entire plan which had nothing of the mitigating passion of a more personal crime. If it was true, there was in it a depth of deliberate betrayal.
It was a little before three o’clock when the doorbell rang. Gracie was still out, so Pitt went to answer it. The moment he saw Narraway’s face he knew something extraordinary had happened.
“He’s dead,” Narraway said even before Pitt could ask him.
Pitt was momentarily confused. “Who’s dead?”
“Tariq el Abd!” Narraway said tartly, stepping in past Pitt and shaking himself. Although it was not raining at that moment, the wind was cold and a bank of heavy cloud was racing in from the east. He stared at Pitt, his eyes tense, filled with hard, biting fear. “The river police found his body hanging under London Bridge. It looks as if he did it himself.”
Pitt was stunned. In a few words Narraway had shattered the case. Was it the solution, or did it merely make things worse?
“Suicide?” Pitt asked with disbelief. “Why? He was winning. Tomorrow morning he would have achieved everything.”
“And the rope as his reward,” Narraway said.
“Lost his nerve?” Pitt asked with disbelief.
Narraway looked totally blank. “God knows.”
“But it makes no sense,” Pitt protested. “He had manipulated everything to the exact point where he could come into court as a surprise witness and tell the world about the massacre.”
Narraway frowned. “You spoke to Ayesha Zakhari yesterday. She knew that you now understood el Abd had killed Lovat-”
“Even if she told him that,” Pitt interrupted him, “he would hardly have gone off and taken his own life. She couldn’t have proved it. All he had to do was get into the witness stand and say that it was she who had lost relatives in the massacre-or friends, a lover, whatever you like-and that was why she shot Lovat. Even if she had denied it and claimed it was he who did, there’s no proof. His death looks like an admission, and leaves the massacre a secret.”
They were standing in the hall, and both turned as the parlor door opened and Charlotte stood in the entrance looking at them anxiously. She saw Narraway just as he turned, and the gaslight in the passage caught the momentary softening of his face.
“Miss Zakhari’s house servant has been found dead,” Pitt said to her.
She looked from him to Narraway, to see if she was being protected from some deeper meaning.
“It appears to be suicide,” Narraway added. “But we can see no reason why.”
She stepped back, tacitly inviting them in, and they followed her into the warmth of the parlor, Pitt closing the door behind them and poking the fire before putting more coal on. It was not that it was cold so much as the desire for the brightness of new flame.
“Then either there is something we do not know,” she said, sitting down again on the sofa next to her sewing. “Or he did not take his own life, but someone else did.”
Pitt looked at Narraway. “I said nothing to Ayesha about the massacre. If she didn’t know about it before, then she still doesn’t.”
“I beg your pardon,” Narraway apologized, sitting in Pitt’s chair close to the fire, shivering a little. “I should not have assumed you would be so careless.”
“Why would anyone kill the house servant?” Charlotte asked, looking from one to the other of them. “That kind of death couldn’t be an accident, nor was it intended to look like one.”
“You are right, Mrs. Pitt,” Narraway agreed grimly. “Therefore it was someone who knew who he was, in relation to Lovat’s murder and the entire plan to set Egypt alight.” He faced Pitt. “El Abd was not the prime mover in this. There is someone else behind him, and for some reason we don’t yet know, he killed el Abd.” His hand clenched unconsciously. “But why? Why now? They were on the brink of victory.”
Pitt stood in front of the fire, as if he too were cold.
“Perhaps el Abd lost his courage and was not going to testify?” he suggested. Then the moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew he did not believe them. “But that makes no sense either. Why would he not? He had nothing to lose. It is not as if he intended to take the blame-he was going to make her connection certain by giving her the perfect motive.”
Charlotte looked at Narraway. “Will this help Ryerson? Will you be able to show that el Abd killed Lovat, without exposing that massacre? Surely you can? He could have had any number of motives for it, dating back to Lovat’s time in Alexandria… couldn’t he?”
“Yes,” Narraway said thoughtfully. “Yes… one result of it is that we should be able to exonerate Ryerson and Ayesha Zakhari completely… as long as we allow el Abd’s death to be taken as suicide.”
The tiny germ of an idea stunned Pitt’s mind, ugly and painful, and he refused to look at it.
“Is that what you are going to do?” Charlotte asked.
Pitt did not answer.
“It is all we can do, for the meantime,” Narraway replied.
They sat a little longer, warming themselves. Charlotte fetched tea. They spoke of the news for half an hour or so, even the very recent death of Lord Tennyson, and wondered who would be the next poet laureate, before Narraway rose and took his leave.
But as soon as he had gone, Pitt, restless and unhappy, also went out. He gave Charlotte no explanation because the fear inside him was too painful to give words to, even to her. It was as if, still unspoken, he could deny it a little longer.
He took an omnibus south to the Thames Embankment and the offices of the river police. There was only a sergeant on duty, but he told Pitt which morgue the hanged man had been taken to, and half an hour later Pitt was standing in the offensively clean tiled room with the familiar smell of carbolic and death filling his throat. He stared down at the swollen, purplish face of Tariq el Abd.
The mark of the rope was burned deep into his neck, crooked, high under one ear, and his head lay at an awkward angle.
Pitt touched the head to move it very slightly, searching for other marks, bruises, anything to indicate beyond doubt whether he had been struck before death.
He heard footsteps behind him and swung around more quickly than he had meant to, as if he felt himself in danger. His heart was knocking in his chest and it was difficult to draw breath into his lungs.
McDade looked at him with wry surprise.
“Jumpy, aren’t you, Pitt? What do you want to know? He died sometime during last night. Difficult to say when; the water affected the temperature of the body.”
“Tides?” Pitt asked.