Seven Dials Page 0,3

expression tightened, his eyes bright and pale. "Takes a lot of explaining, doesn't it?"

Pitt said nothing. What on earth did Narraway expect him to do? If Ryerson's mistress had shot this man, there was no reason why Special Branch should even think of protecting her, much less lie to do it.

"Who was he?" he said aloud.

Talbot leaned back against the wall. "I was wondering when you'd ask that. Edwin Lovat, ex-army officer and minor diplomat with an apparently good record behind him, and until last night, a promising future ahead. Good family, no enemies that we've found so far, no debts that we know of yet." He stopped, waiting for Pitt to ask the next question.

Pitt concealed his irritation. "So why should this Egyptian woman shoot him, in or out of her house? I assume there was no question of his trying to break in?"

Talbot's eyebrows shot up, wrinkling his forehead. "Why on earth should he do that?"

"I've no idea," Pitt replied tersely. "Why should she be outside in the garden with a gun? None of it makes any sense!"

"Oh, yes it does!" Talbot retorted fiercely, sitting forward and putting his elbows on the desk. "He served with the army in Egypt. Alexandria, to be precise. Which is where she comes from. Who knows what goes on in the minds of women there? They're not like white women, you know. But she's definitely moved up a bit now. She's the mistress of a cabinet minister, Member of Parliament for a Manchester constituency, where all the trouble is over cotton at the moment. She's not got time for the likes of an ex-soldier who's only on the bottom rung of the diplomatic ladder. I daresay he was less keen in taking no for an answer, and she didn't want him interfering in her new affair and upsetting Mr. Ryerson with tales of her past."

"Any evidence of that?" Pitt asked. He was angry, and he wanted to prove Talbot prejudiced and inaccurate, but he could not dislike him totally; in fact, he could not seriously dislike him at all. The man was faced with a task in which he could not satisfy his superiors and still keep any kind of honor. Neither would he keep the confidence of the men he commanded, and with whom he would have to work for months and years after this affair was over. What would Pitt have done in the same circumstances? He honestly did not know. He would have been angry as well, casting around for answers, his thoughts leaping ahead of facts.

"Of course there isn't!" Talbot responded. "But I'll lay you a pound to a penny that if Special Branch, or someone like them, doesn't charge in and prevent me, I will have such evidence in a day or two. The crime's only four hours old!"

Pitt knew he was being unfair.

"How did you identify him?" he asked.

"He had cards on him," Talbot said simply, sitting back upright again. "She was going to dispose of the body. She hadn't even bothered to remove them."

"Is that what she said?"

"For God's sake, man!" Talbot exploded. "She was caught in the garden with his body in a wheelbarrow! What else was she going to do with him? She wasn't taking him to a doctor. He was already dead. She didn't call the police, as an innocent woman would have done; she fetched the gardener's barrow, heaved him into it, and started to wheel him away."

"To go where?" Pitt asked, trying to imagine what had been in the woman's mind, apart from hysteria.

Talbot looked slightly discomfited. "She won't say," he replied.

Pitt raised his eyebrows. "And what about Mr. Ryerson?"

"I haven't asked!" Talbot snapped. "And I don't want to know! He wasn't on the scene when the police got there. He arrived a few moments afterwards."

"What?" Pitt said incredulously.

Talbot colored. "He arrived a few moments afterwards," he repeated stubbornly.

"He just happened to be passing at three in the morning, saw the light of the constable's bull's-eye shining on a woman with a corpse in a wheelbarrow, so he stopped to see if he could help?" Pitt said with heavy sarcasm. "He did arrive in a carriage, from the street, I assume? He didn't by any chance come out of the house-in his nightshirt!"

"No, he did not!" Talbot retorted hotly, his thin face flushing. "He was fully dressed, and he walked over from the direction of the street."

"Where his carriage was waiting, no doubt?"

"He said he came by hansom," Talbot answered.

"Intending