Bedford Square Read Online Free PDF Page B

friendship he valued and who was obviously in profound need of uncritical help.
    “Do you have the letter?”
    Cornwallis took it out of his pocket and passed it over. Pitt read the pasted-on letters, most of them cut out singly, some in twos and threes or where a whole word had been found as the writer wished to use it.
    I know all about you, Captain Cornwallis. Others think you are a hero, but I know differently. It was not you who was so brave on the HMS Venture, it was Able Seaman Beckwith, but you took the credit. He’s dead now and he cannot tell the truth. That is all wrong. People should know. I know.
    Pitt read it again. There was no explicit threat, no request for money or any other form of payment. And yet the sense of power was so strong it leapt off the creased paper as if the thing had a malign life of its own.
    He looked across at Cornwallis’s pale face and saw the muscles clenched in his jaw and the faint, visible pulse in his temple.
    “I suppose you have no idea who it is?”
    “None at all,” Cornwallis replied. “I lay awake half lastnight trying to think.” His voice was dry, as if he had held himself rigid so long his throat ached. He breathed in deeply. His eyes did not waver from Pitt’s. “I’ve gone over and over the incident I think he’s referring to, to remember who was there, who could have misinterpreted it to believe it that way, and I don’t know the answer.” He hesitated, acute embarrassment naked in his face. He was a private man who found emotion difficult to express; he vastly preferred the tacit understanding of action. He bit his lip. He wanted to look away, so he forced himself not to. He was obviously sensitive to Pitt’s discomfort and unintentionally made it worse. He was aware of foundering, of being indecisive, the very sorts of things he had meant to avoid.
    “Perhaps you had better tell me about the incident,” Pitt said quietly. He moved to sit down, indicating his intention to stay.
    “Yes,” Cornwallis agreed. “Oh … yes, of course.” He turned away at last, his face towards the window. The sharp daylight emphasized the depth of the lines about his eyes and mouth. “It happened eighteen years ago … eighteen and a half. It was winter. Bay of Biscay. Weather was appalling. I was a second lieutenant then. Man went up to shorten the mizzen royal—”
    “The what?” Pitt interrupted. He needed to understand.
    Cornwallis glanced at him. “Oh … three-masted ship.” He moved his arms to illustrate what he was saying. “Middle mast, middle sail … square-rigger, of course. Injured by a loose rope. His hand. Got it jammed somehow.” He frowned, turning towards the window again, away from Pitt. “I went up after him. Should have sent a seaman, of course, but the only man near me was Beckwith, and he froze. Happens sometimes.” He spoke jerkily. “No time to look for someone else. Weather was getting worse. Ship pitching around. Afraid the injured man up on the mast would lose his grasp, tear his arm out of its socket. Heights never bothered me in particular. Didn’t really think about it. Been up often enough as a midshipman.” His mouth tightened. “Got him free. Had to cut the line. He was almost dead weight. Managed to get him backalong the yard as far as the mast, but he was damn heavy and the wind was rising all the time, ship pitching around like a mad thing.”
    Pitt tried to imagine it, Cornwallis desperate, frozen, trying to hang on to a swaying mast forty or fifty feet over a wild sea, one minute above the heaving deck, the next, as the ship keeled, out over the water, and carrying another man’s helpless body. He found his own hands were knotted and he was holding his breath.
    “I was trying to readjust his weight to start down the mast,” Cornwallis went on, “when Beckwith must have unfrozen and I found him just below me. He helped take the man’s weight, and we got down together.
    “By that time there were half a dozen other