He drew in his breath and met Tellman’s eyes without flinching. “Turning a blind eye because you don’t want to know is not compassion, it’s cowardice, and it’s a betrayal of the good men. It’s not them you’re guarding, it’s your own feelings, because you don’t want to deal with them.”
“And is that what you think I’m doing?” Tellman’s voice was high and tight, his eyes blazing.
“I hope not. But you’d better tell me…”
“So what? So you can have me put in prison?” Now it was just raw anger.
That stung Pitt into temper as well. “Maybe so I can save you from being blown up by a bloody bomb!” he shouted back. “Or didn’t you think of that?”
Tellman was silent. Pitt could see in his face the pain of a reality he had long refused to look at, refused to believe was anything but the lies of those who resented the police, or were afraid of them, for just cause.
“You’re branding them all because of a few, one in a hundred, that’s rotten,” he said bitterly. “Damning the good with the bad!”
Pitt tried to grasp control of the situation. He did not want this quarrel.
“We’ve got to find the bad, before they sink us all,” he told Tellman, but he lowered his voice as well. “None of us wants to think the people we work beside are corrupt, but looking the other way condemns us all. For heaven’s sake, Tellman, choosing not to see something because it’s ugly, or it damages your peace of mind, is deliberately allowing it. It’s collusion. And you know that as well as I do. We can’t prosecute it in people who witness and then refuse to testify, who walk by on the other side, carefully not looking. But we despise it, and we require better of each other!”
“You pompous bastard!” Tellman said furiously. “You think you know every damn thing…and you know nothing! Nothing of what a man thinks or believes…nothing that really matters!” And choking on his own grief, he turned and walked out of the room.
Pitt did not call him back. This was not going to heal easily. It had nothing to do with him, he knew, although Tellman would not forget that Pitt had seen the wound of disillusion in him, nor would he be able to forgive him easily for that.
Chapter 5
Emily Radley sat by the fire in her boudoir, that lady’s sitting room where she received her closest women friends in comfort. There was tea on a tray on the carved cherrywood table, and small sandwiches of white bread, with wafer-thin slices of cucumber from the glasshouse. She stared at her sister, Charlotte.
“Oh dear,” she said quietly. “Yes, I do know Cecily Duncannon, but not very well.”
“Then please get to know her better,” Charlotte said gravely. “This is a terribly serious matter. I need to know for Tellman, and even more for Thomas.”
Emily’s mind was racing. Years ago, when Pitt had been a regular policeman and not in Special Branch, where so much was secret, she and Charlotte had both meddled in his cases. Sometimes they had been at the core of solving them. Of course it had also been dangerous, now and then, and they had made mistakes. But still she missed the passion of those days and the involvement. It gave a sharpness to life. What they did had mattered, in fact, more than the social niceties to which she gave so much time now, the surface rules that hid deep tides of intrigue and emotions guessed at but seldom seen.
“I like her,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to do this…”
“Then let Thomas tell you what their bodies were like!” Charlotte replied. “Or how the injured men are-”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t!” Emily responded quickly. “I just…I just don’t like it! How does Thomas do it every day?”
“Choosing not to look at it doesn’t make it go away,” Charlotte told her. “Please…just find out what you can. Maybe Alexander’s innocent? Wouldn’t it be worth something to prove that?”
Part of Emily did not want to touch it, but there was another part that ached to be involved again, to search and disentangle the truth, to live in a reality that was both beautiful and painful but shorn of the shallow pretense that gave such a superficial comfort.
“Of course I’ll help,” she said firmly. “How could you think I wouldn’t? Do you think I’ve lost all heart?”
Charlotte smiled, quick to apologize. “Of course not, or I would hardly have come.” She took a sandwich. “Thank you.”
Emily took a sandwich herself. “How is Gracie?”
“Expecting another child, and desperate to protect Samuel.”
“From disillusion?” Emily smiled back and felt a sudden stab of fear herself. Her own husband, for all his ease and confidence of manner, was desperately vulnerable too. If Alexander Duncannon was guilty, then his father would be jeopardized also, and with him the China contract and Jack’s career. Jack could not afford another diplomatic failure, however much it was in no way his fault. Misjudgment could ruin a reputation, no matter how innocent, and it would not be the first time he had misjudged.
“Yes,” Charlotte replied to the question about Tellman, but it was about Jack too, and they both knew it.
“I’ll begin tonight,” Emily promised. “I have a perfect opportunity.”
A few hours later Emily sat in front of her dressing table looking glass and regarded herself critically. She was Charlotte’s younger sister, delicately fair, with hair that curled naturally about her face. Her complexion was like porcelain; it always had been; but she noticed now the tiny lines around her eyes and mouth as she rapidly approached forty. Character and wit lasted far longer than beauty. In the last year or two she had been obliged to accept that. To age with grace was the only attitude that made sense and Emily had always been the pragmatic one. She had never been the idealist, the passionate dreamer that Charlotte was. Tonight she thought of the past and the adventures they had shared, and determined that she would do all she could to help.
She was wearing a gown in one of her favorite shades of soft green, a color that always suited her. She had emeralds and pearls in her ears, and around her slender throat.
Jack stood behind her, meeting her eyes in the glass. For a moment there was a flash of admiration in them, just long enough for her to see it and be satisfied. At the beginning of the year she had had a bleak few months when she feared it was gone. He had seemed distant, even a little bored. She had realized with a blow hard enough to bruise that she had taken his devotion for granted.
She must learn from how much that had hurt, and make sure she was never so cavalier with him again. To be comfortable, take the sweetness as if it were hers by right, was not only arrogant, it was also dangerous.
Now she smiled back at him in the glass.
“Are you ready?” she asked. She was not referring to his appearance. As always, he was immaculately dressed. She was referring to his preparation for a gathering in which his position as member of Parliament and junior minister at the Foreign Office was going to be tested in relation to this contract, on which many fortunes rested.
He swallowed before replying. She knew him well enough to see small signs of tension in him others would not have noticed.
“Yes.” He always spoke positively. It was a habit gained in his earlier days when everything rested on chance and uncertainty, and a brave face was part of his armor. Charm was a mixture of many things but always included a subtle blending of modesty with confidence, and an air of belief in the good. “There’s everything to play for,” he added. “Godfrey Duncannon is the perfect man to guide this through.”