Long Spoon Lane: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel

by Anne Perry

  Narraway did not look at him. “And I should like to demonstrate to Mr. Welling that one of his own people is responsible for the death of his leader,” he added. “We don’t shoot people we need to get rid of. We hang them.” With that he turned and walked out of the room leaving Pitt to follow him. Welling stared after them, his eyes scalding in tears of helplessness.

  Narraway had to make several inquiries and it took him until the middle of the afternoon before he walked up the steps of the Atheneum at 107 Pall Mall to speak to Lord Landsborough. Narraway was a member, or of course he could not have entered, Special Branch or not.

  “Yes, sir,” the steward said quietly, his voice little more than a whisper. “Shall I inform his lordship you are here?”

  “A private room,” Narraway instructed him. “I am afraid I have very bad news for his lordship. You might see that there is a decent brandy and glasses on the table.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m very sorry, sir.” The steward conducted him along the silent corridor to such a room as he had requested, and left him there. Two minutes later another steward brought a silver tray with Napoleon brandy and two delicately engraved balloon glasses.

  Narraway stood in the middle of the Aubusson carpet and tried to compose his thoughts. This was the heart of the most civilized place in Europe: a gentlemen’s club where impeccable manners were observed at all times. Voices were not raised. A man could sit here and discuss art and philosophy, sport or governments of the earth, exploration of the Empire and beyond, the history of the world itself, and meet with intimate wit and disciplined intelligence.

  And he had come here to tell a man that his son had been murdered in an anarchist gun battle a handful of miles away.

  Pitt might have been better at this. He was used to it. He might have some form of words that made it at least dignified. He had children himself. His imagination would lend an eloquence to his pity. Narraway could only struggle after it. He had no wife, no children, not even a younger sibling. His job had taught him how to survive alone even more than fate had dictated for him. He lived in his mind, his brilliant, subtle, instinctive brain, caring but never caring too much. Deliberately, he had no hostages to fortune.

  The door opened and he found himself standing rigidly, gulping air. Lord Sheridan Landsborough came in and closed it softly behind him. He was a tall man, a trifle stooped now. He looked past seventy, with a wry, gentle face, which must have been handsome in his youth, and still held unusual charm and intelligence.

  “Mr. Narraway?” he said courteously.

  Narraway inclined his head in a slight bow of acknowledgment. “My lord. Perhaps you would like to sit down?”

  “My dear fellow, I am not as fragile as all that! Or is the news you have brought so very terrible?” There was already a shadow in his eyes.

  Narraway felt himself color slightly.

  Landsborough saw it.

  “I’m so sorry,” he apologized. “Of course it is. You would not have come personally were it something trivial.” He sat down, but more to oblige Narraway than because he felt required to. “What has happened?”

  Narraway sat also, to avoid looking down at him. “There was an anarchist bombing in the Mile End area this morning,” he said quietly. “We were warned of it, and arrived in time to pursue those who caused it. We ran them down in Long Spoon Lane and laid siege to the house. There was a brief gun battle before we took it. When we went in we found two anarchists alive, and the body of a third. He had been shot. We don’t yet know by whom, except that it was from inside the room, not outside.” Looking at Landsborough’s face he could see that he already knew what Narraway would say next. “I’m sorry,” he continued gravely. “The signet ring on his hand, as well as the statements by one of the men we caught, identify him as Magnus Landsborough.”

  Landsborough might have been half expecting it, but still the color bleached from his face leaving his skin almost gray. He hesitated a long, agonized moment, fighting to control his voice, then he answered. “I see. It was considerate of you to come in person. I suppose you wish me to identify…” He was unable to continue. His throat simply closed up and he gasped to draw air into his lungs.

  Narraway felt utterly helpless. He had just inflicted appalling pain on a man, and was obliged to sit by without even averting his eyes as Landsborough struggled to maintain his dignity.

  “Unless there is a close relative you would prefer to send,” he offered, knowing Landsborough would not accept, even were there such a person.

  Landsborough tried to smile, and failed. “No.” His voice cracked. “There is no one else.” He did not say that he would not ask it of Lady Landsborough. Such a thought would not enter his mind.

  Narraway wanted to apologize again, but to do so would only require Landsborough to wave it away. Instead he used the moment to ask the painful question he was obliged to. It was still just possible that Magnus had been some kind of hostage, although he did not believe that. Welling had said he was their leader, and for all his naïveté, his passionate, ignorant, and one-sided philosophy, Narraway felt that Welling was speaking what he perceived to be the truth.

  “What were Mr. Landsborough’s political ideals, my lord?” he asked. “As far as you know.”

  “What? Oh?” Landsborough thought for a moment, when he answered there was a softer tone to his voice, on the edge of self-mockery, and tears. “I am afraid he followed some of my own liberal ideas, and took them rather too far. If you are trying a little delicately to ask me if I knew he had espoused more violent means of persuasion, I did not. But perhaps I should have expected it. Had I been wiser, I might have done something to prevent it, although precisely what escapes me.”

  Narraway was wrenched with an unexpected pity. Had Landsborough railed against fate or society, or even Special Branch, it might have been easier. He could have defended himself. He knew all the reasons and the arguments for what he did, the necessity of it. Most of them he actually believed, and he had never allowed himself to care whether others did or not. He could not afford to. But the silent, uncomplaining woundedness of the man opposite him struck where he had no armor prepared.

  “We cannot force other men to adopt our convictions,” he said quietly. “Nor should we. It is always the young who rebel. Without them there would be little change.”

  “Thank you,” Landsborough whispered. Then he coughed several times and took a few moments to master himself again. “Magnus felt passionately about individual liberty, and he said he believed it to be under far more threat than I did,” he continued. “But then I have seen tides of opinion ebb and flow more than he has. The young are so impatient.” He climbed stiffly to his feet, using the armrests of the chair to propel himself upright. He seemed a decade older than when he had sat down less than ten minutes earlier.

  There was no answer for Narraway to make. He followed him out of the door, retrieved their hats from the steward, and went to the front steps where there seemed always to be a hansom waiting. He gave the driver the address of the morgue where the body had been taken, and they rode in silence. It was not that Narraway was ignoring Landsborough, or even did not know what to say; rather he wished to allow him to grieve without the necessity of having to disturb himself to find the words to be courteous.

  And yet at some point Narraway would have to ask him more about his son: questions of associates, of money, names, places that might lead to other anarchists that he could not afford to let pass, however painful.

  The morgue had the smell of wet stone, carbolic, and the indefinable odor of death familiar to Narraway but perhaps alien to Landsborough. Most people died at home, and a sick room, whatever the illness, never had this cloying, over-scrubbed dampness to it. This building was not designed for the living.

  The attendant met them with a professional mask of solemnity. He knew how to conduct himself in the presence of overwhelming pain without intruding upon it. He took them along the corridor to the room where the body was lying on
a table. It was covered by a sheet, even the head.

  Narraway remembered how damaged the face was, and strode over ahead of Landsborough, interposing his body between him and the table. He pulled up the side of the sheet exposing the dead man’s hand. The signet ring had been replaced and would be sufficient for Lord Landsborough to identify the body.

  “Is he really so badly disfigured?” Landsborough said with faint surprise.

  “Yes.” Narraway diverted his gaze to the hand.

  Landsborough looked down at it. “Yes, that is my son’s ring. And I believe that is his hand. I would still like to see his face.”

  “My lord…” Narraway started to protest, then changed his mind. He was being foolish. Without looking at the face it was not a full identification. He stood aside.

  “Thank you,” Landsborough acknowledged the gesture. He picked up the sheet and looked in silence at the features—shattered on one side, almost peaceful on the other. Then he replaced the sheet. “That is my son,” he said in a whisper. His voice jerked, as if he had meant to speak aloud, but his body would not obey him. “Is there more you require of me, Mr. Narraway?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. There is.” Narraway turned to lead the way out along the corridor, thanking the attendant briefly, and went outside into the warm air of the street.

  “The anarchists must have had money to finance their arms,” he said as the traffic clattered past them. “Dynamite has to be paid for. If we could trace their purchases we might find the rest of them, before they blow up more people’s homes.” He spoke of the destruction deliberately, ignoring the wince of pain that tightened Landsborough’s face. “We need to find them,” he emphasized. “We need to know Mr. Landsborough’s associates, anything of his movements lately.”

  “Yes, of course you do,” Landsborough agreed, blinking a little in the sun as if its light were suddenly harsher than before. “But I can’t help you. Magnus was seldom home. I was aware of his convictions—although I admit, not of their depth—but I did not know his friends.” He bit his lip. “And as for money, he had a small annuity, but it was not sufficient to buy arms, merely to feed and clothe himself. I paid the rent of a set of rooms for him, off Gordon Square. He wished to be independent.”

  “I see.” Narraway was not certain of how entirely he believed Landsborough, but he was quite sure that it would be pointless to press the issue any further at the moment. “We will require to look at the rooms in Gordon Square, in case he left anything there which could lead us to them.”

  “Naturally. I shall send my man to give you the address and my keys to it.” Landsborough straightened his shoulders. “If that is all, Mr. Narraway, I should like to return to my home. I must inform my wife of what has happened.”

  Pitt returned to Long Spoon Lane with a sense of foreboding. It was still guarded by police and he was stopped by a constable, who took a moment to recognize him before snapping to attention.

  Pitt did not blame him. He did not look like an officer at all, let alone a senior one. He was tall, and walked with the loose-limbed practical grace of a countryman who was accustomed to covering great distances over heath and woodland. His father had been a gamekeeper on a large estate, and as a boy Pitt had gone through the woods or over the heath with him at times. Even now, decades later, Pitt still tended to stuff his pockets full of objects that might one day be of use: handkerchiefs, odd bits of string, coins, sealing wax, a box of matches, pencil stubs, paper, a couple of bull’s-eye sweets in wrappers, two paper clips, a pipe cleaner, half a dozen keys, and odd buttons.

  “How’s the man who was injured?” he asked.

  “Oh, he’ll be all right, sir,” the constable assured him. “Bled a bit, but it’s nothing that won’t heal. He was lucky. You’ll be wanting to see the sergeant.”

  “Yes. And I need to go back into the building and see the room where the young man was killed. Who was at the back stairs first?”

  “I dunno, sir, but I’ll find out. Can you make your own way inside, or would you like someone to go with you?”

  “I’ll make my own way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Pitt walked across the cobbled lane, in through the broken door, and up the stairs. It was only a matter of hours since he had come in here, his heart pounding. The shots were still ringing in his ears. Now it seemed oddly desolate, as if no one alive had been here for weeks. It was not that it had a sense of settled dust, or even the staleness of closed air, but a feeling as if whoever had left it would never return. There were no personal belongings anywhere, nothing valued or intimate: only a broken bottle, the lower half of a cocoa tin, a couple of rags too discolored to be identifiable.

  At the top, in the main room, light streamed in through the broken windows. The dust and grime on the shards still left in the frames made them look almost like frosted or painted glass. The pool of blood where Magnus Landsborough had lain was congealed now and smeared because the body had been moved. Other than that it was exactly as when Pitt had first arrived. The police and the surgeon had been very diligent.

  Pitt leaned over and looked at it long and carefully, studying the outline of the body where it was indicated by footprints, dried blood, and the scuffing of men lifting something heavy and awkward. Magnus had lain full length on the floor. Pitt had a measuring tape among the numerous items in his coat pocket. He took it out and stretched it from the top of where the head had been down to the farthest mark of the feet. Allowing for a little crumpling, the man must have been a trifle over six feet tall. It was not possible to be more accurate.

  What was absolutely certain was that he had fallen forward when the shot had struck the back of his head. There was no way at all in which it could have come from the street below and caused him to fall as he had. Added to that, the shot had struck him in the back of the skull, and emerged through the general area of his left cheekbone. The street was narrow and two stories down. Had it come from below it would have been at a sharp upward angle, in at the back of the neck, and out through the brow. And he would have to have been standing facing the room, looking away from the gunfire.

  Was it possible Welling was speaking the truth, and the first constable up the back stairs had shot him? But why? Rage? Fear that Landsborough had a gun and posed some immediate danger to him? There had been no gun beside the body.

  He heard footsteps on the stairs and a moment later a uniformed sergeant stood in the doorway. He was fresh-faced, probably in his late twenties, and at the moment very sober in demeanor.

  “Linwood, sir,” he said stiffly. “You wanted to see me?”

  Pitt straightened up. “Yes, Sergeant. Were you the first into this room when we broke in?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Describe what you saw, exactly.”

  Linwood concentrated, looking down at the floor. “There were three men in here, sir. One was standing in the far corner, with a gun in his arms, a rifle. He had gingery hair. He was looking straight at me, but not holding the gun to fire. I reckon it could have been empty by then. They’d shot plenty out of the window.”

  That sounded like Carmody, from the description. “Who else?” Pitt asked.

  “Dark man, lots of hair,” Linwood said, screwing up his face in concentration. “He looked pretty shocked. Standing just about there.” He pointed to a place less than a yard from where Pitt was.

  “Beside the body on the floor!” Pitt said in surprise.

  Linwood’s eyes opened wide. “Yes, sir. He had a gun, but he couldn’t have shot him. The bullets had to have come from over there.” He indicated the door at the farther end of the room, going towards the stair to the back, down which the police had pursued the man who had shot Landsborough, and presumably escaped.

  “What else?” Pitt asked.

  “The dead man on the floor,” Linwood answered.

  “You’re sure? How was he lying—exactly?”

  “Just as you found him, sir. That shot killed him outright. Blew his brains out,
poor devil.”

  Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Poor?” he questioned.

  Linwood’s mouth curled down. “I pity any man shot by his own, sir, whatever he believed in. Betrayal turns my stomach.”

  “Mine too,” Pitt agreed. “Are you sure that’s what it was?”

  “I don’t see what else it could have been, sir.” Linwood stared straight back at him. “I heard a shot when I was at the bottom of the stairs. Ask Patterson; he was straight behind me, and Gibbons behind him.”

  “And Welling and Carmody were standing where you said?”

  “Yes. So either one of them shot him, and the other is lying to protect him, or it was one of the ones who escaped,” Linwood replied. “Any way you look at it, it was one of his own.”

  “Yes,” Pitt agreed grimly. “Welling says it was us.”

  “He’s a liar.”

  “Not someone in uniform.”

  “We were all in uniform, sir,” Linwood said stiffly. “The only ones in plainclothes were you and your boss from Special Branch.”

  “I don’t think Welling was lying,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “I think it was someone he didn’t know, or didn’t recognize.”

  “Still one of his own,” Linwood’s face was hard, anger making his voice cutting. “He was shot in the back.”

  “I know. Looks as if anarchy’s an even uglier business than we thought. Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir. Is that all?” Linwood stood to attention, or close to it. He did not consider Special Branch to be real police.

  “For the moment,” Pitt replied.

  Linwood left, but Pitt stood still in the room, picturing in his mind the sequence of events. He had come up the stairs behind Narraway and the three policemen. He had been one flight up when he had heard the shot from the room above, and the shouting.

  When he had got there, seconds after the police, they had been standing still to this side of the gunman. The far door had been swinging. Someone else had just gone out of it. No one had mentioned seeing him, so he must already have disappeared when the first man came in at the front.