Long Spoon Lane: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel

by Anne Perry

  She thanked him, and as he turned towards the street again he saw Victor Narraway outlined against the flames. He was lean, all tense angles, his hair wildly on end, his face smeared with soot and lit red in the reflection.

  Pitt’s first reaction was disbelief. “How did you get here?” he had to shout above the noise. “So soon? Did you know about it?”

  “Of course I didn’t, you fool!” Narraway snapped, coming closer to him. “I was following you!”

  “You were?” Pitt could scarcely grasp it. “Why? Didn’t you think I’d do it?”

  Another house collapsed inward, sending fire belching upwards like the roar of a volcano. The blast knocked both Pitt and Narraway backwards, the heat searing their hair and faces. Pitt stumbled, tripping over timber and the dead body of a man. Only Narraway catching his arm and almost twisting it out of its socket prevented him from falling. He righted himself with difficulty.

  The first fire engine arrived, its horses panting and rolling their eyes, the driver steadying them with difficulty. Another followed immediately behind, but a glance was enough to show them it was useless trying to control any of the fires here. Only in the surrounding streets was there any chance of trying to keep it from spreading.

  A young man with a bag in his hand was picking his way through the rubble, and every now and then he bent down.

  Narraway shouted something, but Pitt could not hear the words. He shook his head and started towards where the man, presumably a doctor, was assisting someone onto his feet, but the weight was too much for him.

  Pitt worked for as long as there was anything more he could do. He was aware of Narraway coming and going. Several times they searched the rubble together, for more people still alive, tearing off timber and broken bricks and glass. Narraway was stronger than Pitt would have expected, looking at his lean body, but he knew how to balance himself, and his will drove him on.

  Finally the flames died down and the noise of the crashing and falling abated. There were more people helping. There seemed to be vans and wagons taking the injured away, and perhaps the dead as well. Many times Pitt saw the red light glare on polished buttons or the familiar tall shape of a police helmet. It was not until he stood still at the outside edge of the wreckage that he realized with dismay that it was not as comforting a sight as it had been only a few weeks before.

  He stood beside a cart with rubble piled high, and Narraway was a couple of yards to the other side. Wordlessly he held out a tin mug with water in it. Pitt tried to speak but the sounds were strangled. He took the cup and drank. “Thank you,” he said at last. It was completely dark now, and all he could see was the red glow of the fires that were still burning in two of the houses. The fire brigade had soaked the roofs farther over, and it had not spread.

  Narraway took the cup back and raised it to his lips. Pitt was startled to see that his hand was trembling. His skin was smeared with blood and ash, and for the first time that Pitt had seen, there was fear in his eyes.

  It was not physical fear. Narraway was not foolhardy, but he had gone towards the flames without hesitation, even close enough to the crumbling and exploding walls, in order to pull people out. Pitt didn’t need to be told that it was the escalation of violence that frightened him, and the reaction there would be to this destruction. Almost the whole street was damaged beyond any further use. It would all have to be demolished and the ground cleared, and then new houses built.

  Far worse than that, there were at least five people dead, and another twenty or more injured, some badly. They might yet die. This time there had been no warning, and there had obviously been at least three times as much dynamite as in Myrdle Street. They had no idea who had done it.

  Pitt looked at Narraway, exhausted and filthy. No doubt his body ached just as much, his skin stung, his head felt pummeled and his lungs were tight and sore every time he took a breath. Most of all he would feel a sick overwhelming knowledge of failure. People would expect him to have prevented this. They hadn’t even captured anyone to show for it. They had not a clue or a thread to follow. Nowhere to start, nothing to say it would not happen again, and again, as often as the anarchists had a mind to do it.

  Narraway looked back at him. Both of them wanted to say something, but the truth did not need words, and lies of comfort were pointless and stupid, a shattering of what little there was left.

  Narraway drank some more water and handed the mug back to Pitt, who finished the last of it.

  “Go home,” Narraway said, clearing his throat. “There’s nothing anyone can do here tonight.”

  Pitt could think of nothing to do even tomorrow, but he ached to be back in Keppel Street and the safety of it. He was suddenly overwhelmingly sorry for Narraway that he had no such place to go, no one who loved him with unquestioning certainty. He did not want Narraway to know that he had seen it. “Thank you,” he accepted quietly. “Good night.”

  He had not realized it was so late. It was nearly midnight when he opened the front door. By the time he had closed it, Charlotte, still dressed, was in the passage, the light in the parlor behind her.

  “I’m all right!” he said too loudly, seeing the horror in her face. “It’s only dirt! It’ll all wash off.”

  “Thomas! What…” she gasped, her eyes wide, her cheeks almost bloodless. “What happened?”

  “Another explosion,” he answered. He wanted to take her in his arms now, immediately, but he was filthy. He would not only stain her clothes but pass on the stench of the fire.

  She gave the matter no such thought. She flung her arms around him and held him fiercely, and kissed him. Then she buried her head in his shoulder and clung to him as if he might escape her were she to let go her grip.

  He found himself smiling, touching her more gently because he was safe, and she was in his arms. Her hair had fallen out of its pins. He pulled out the remaining few and dropped them on the floor. Her hair fell down over her shoulders and he ran his fingers through it, feeling the softness of it. It was cool, like loose silk, so slippery and smooth it could almost have been liquid. And it smelled sweet, as if all the burning and the rubble and the blood had been in his imagination.

  He was sorry for Narraway, and, if he had thought about it, he would even have been sorry for Voisey.

  In the morning he awoke with a jolt, the silence of his bedroom beating in his ears. Memory returned with its violence and pain. Charlotte was already up. Daylight shone bright behind the curtains, and a gold strip crossed the floor where they were not quite closed. He could hear horses’ hooves and wheels in the street.

  He got up quickly. Charlotte had laid out clean clothes for him on the chair. The old clothes from last night were in the scullery, keeping the smell out of the bedroom.

  He shaved and dressed, and was downstairs within a quarter of an hour. His muscles ached from his exertions the previous night and he had more bruises and scratches than he could count, but he felt rested. He had slept without the nightmares he had expected, and he was hungry.

  The kitchen clock said nine, and there were no newspapers on the table. Charlotte turned from the sink where she was drying dishes, and smiled at him.

  Gracie came in from the pantry with a bowl of eggs and bade him good morning. He allowed them to look after him before he asked what the news was.

  “Bad,” Charlotte said at last, when he was finishing his third slice of toast and marmalade and refilling his tea. She went to the pantry and returned carrying three newspapers. She put them on the table in front of him, and took the plates.

  When he saw the headlines, he was glad she had hidden them until he had eaten. Denoon’s paper was the worst. He did not criticize the police; he conceded that they had an impossible task. Even with more men, better arms, and the freedom to arrest people on serious suspicion, they could not be expected to prevent atrocities like this. It required the right to gain information before such things reached the stage of violence. They must know who planned such mass murder and
destruction, who held beliefs that prompted such war against the ordinary people of London and, for all anyone would say, of the whole land.

  The editorial was passionate, simple, and rang with an outrage that would find an echo in half the households in England. The police, Special Branch, the government itself were helpless to tell anyone where or when it would happen again, which row of houses would be the next to shatter into a burning ruin. This was far worse than Myrdle Street.

  No one had been killed there. The warning had given people time to evacuate. No such humanity had been exercised this time. What would be next? More, worse: greater numbers dead, fires that could not be put out? The fire brigades could not control anything much larger. There were not enough men. There were not the resources, even the water, to hand. Whole areas of London could burn. What was there to stop it?

  The possibility of such terrible devastation required extreme measures to prevent it. The government must have the power to protect those who had elected it, and the people had the right to expect that. If the laws were needed, then they must be passed, before it was too late. Honor, patriotism, human decency required it. Survival depended upon it.

  Pitt had expected to read something of the sort, yet seeing it in print now gave it a reality that he realized he had been refusing to face. Denoon had not specified in detail the provision to question household servants without the master or mistress’s knowledge. Even if he had, it is likely that most people would have seen nothing sinister in it. Those with nothing to hide would have nothing to fear. The use of such a power was easy enough to justify. It was the measure of it that was the blackmailer’s charter. It was the ability to question people without having to prove to any authority that there was just cause, and the fact that the man or woman whose actions were being spoken of, whose intimate lives, whose personal habits and belongings, whose correspondence, whose friendships were being discussed, would have no chance to deny or explain or disprove anything that might be said. A servant could be mistaken, have overheard half a conversation, have remembered facts inaccurately or merely be repeating gossip. Worse than that, they could be spiteful, dishonest, ambitious, or simply gullible and easily led. It placed in their hands the power to blackmail any master or mistress with the threat of a betrayal against which they had no defense.

  And the secrecy of it made the possibilities almost endless; there would be no safeguard at all.

  He looked up to see Charlotte watching him.

  “It’s bad isn’t it?” she said quietly.

  “Yes.” He could see in her eyes that she understood the depth of it as far and as clearly as he did. “Yes, it is.”

  “What can we do?”

  He forced a smile at the inclusion of herself. “I’m going to go back and question the anarchists we’ve got in jail, although I don’t suppose they can help,” he answered. “I really don’t believe it is anyone in their group doing this. This time at least five people were killed. It may make them more willing to talk. You are going to do nothing, unless you go and give Emily a little support.” He searched her face. “Jack is one of the few allies we can rely on. It may cost him dearly.”

  “His career?” she asked.

  “Perhaps.”

  She smiled very bleakly; it barely reached her eyes. “Thank you for not pretending. I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d said it wouldn’t.”

  He rose from the table, kissed her lightly, and went to the front door to put on his boots. He knew she was standing in the kitchen, still watching him.

  He went to see Carmody first, and found him pacing the floor, so tense he was unable to sit down. He swung around as soon as he heard the key in the big iron lock, and was facing Pitt when he came in. His hair was matted and his over-pale skin with its rash of freckles looked almost gray.

  “Who did it?” he said accusingly. “That’s murder! Why didn’t you stop them? What’s the matter with you? Who are they? Irish, Russian, Poles, Spaniards? What?”

  “I don’t think so,” Pitt replied as levelly as he could. “Who told you about the explosion?”

  “It’s all over the prison!” Carmody shouted, losing control of his fury. “The warders are counting the hours till we get tried and hanged. It’s nothing to do with us. For God’s sake, we told you, so you would get everybody clear. We wanted to get rid of bloody Grover, and police corruption, not kill a whole street full of people.”

  “All the evidence is that it’s not foreign anarchists, from Europe or anywhere else,” Pitt replied.

  “It’s…not…us!” Carmody roared at him, his voice shaking. “Can’t you hear me? It’s not what we want, or what we believe. It’s bestial! There’s nothing of freedom or the honor or dignity of man in it. It’s just plain murder—and we’re not murderers.”

  Pitt believed him, but he was not ready yet to say so.

  “Magnus Landsborough’s dead,” he pointed out, leaning against the wall. “You and Welling are in prison. Has it even occurred to you that the purpose behind the Myrdle Street bombing was to get you out of the way?”

  Carmody started to speak, then stopped. His face drained of the last vestige of blood. “Oh, God!” he breathed. “You think…no!” He started to shake his head, repeating the word over and over, but there was no belief in it. It was himself he was trying to convince, and his eyes never left Pitt’s.

  “Why not?” Pitt asked him. “Maybe there was someone else in your group who wanted to follow a different plan, a more violent, more decisive one. Somebody certainly does!”

  “No!” But it was an empty word. Carmody understood, and even as the seconds ticked by it made more and more sense to him. He sat down suddenly on the cot, as if his legs had given way.

  “Someone you know killed Magnus,” Pitt went on, speaking quietly and firmly. “Someone planned it. They knew where you would escape to after the Myrdle Street bomb went off, and they were there waiting for you. They shot Magnus, and then escaped out the back way. They went down the stairs and past the police, who thought it was one of us from the front, in pursuit of one of yours. That takes thought, care, and intelligence. It also takes a good deal of knowledge about your plans. Why would any one of you want Magnus dead, except to get rid of him as leader, and take over yourselves?”

  Carmody raised both hands up to his face and pushed his hair back so hard it stretched the skin of his brow and pulled his features. “This is a nightmare!”

  “No, it isn’t,” Pitt said deliberately. “It’s real and you won’t wake up from it. The only way out is to tell the truth now. Who is the man to take over the leadership if anything happened to Magnus? And don’t tell me you never thought of that. That would be stupid. There was always a chance that any one of you could get caught, or killed.”

  “Kydd,” Carmody said in a whisper. “Zachary Kydd. But I would have sworn he believed the same as we did. I’d have put my life on it!”

  “Looks as if you would have lost, like the people in Scarborough Street last night.”

  Carmody said nothing.

  “Where will Kydd be now? Unless you want more like last night, we’ve got to get him.”

  Carmody stared at him, his eyes wretched. “You’re asking me to betray my friend.”

  “You can’t be loyal to your friend and your principles. You have to choose. Even remaining silent is a choice.”

  Carmody closed his eyes. “He has a place about halfway down Garth Street, in Shadwell, down near the docks. I don’t know the number, but it’s on the south side, with a brown door.”

  “Thank you. Just one more thing. The old man who kept on speaking to Magnus Landsborough, tell me as much about him as you know.”

  Reluctantly, and with more emotion than he could mask, Carmody described Magnus’s meeting with the man who could only have been his father, and the heated exchanges they had had. The older man was begging for something, and being refused. Afterwards, Magnus was always quiet. He would not discuss it, it was quite clearly something that pained
him. Twice Carmody had also seen a younger man some way in the distance, as if following the old man, but so discreetly that Carmody was not certain. It clearly distressed him to recall it, and when Pitt left he was quiet, drawn into the pain of his own memories.

  Voisey had agreed that the next time that he and Pitt met it should be at the memorial to Turner, and as before, at noon. Surely, after last night’s bombing, Voisey would be there?

  Pitt was five minutes late, and strode across the black-and-white marble floor. When he saw Voisey looking unnaturally around, fidgeting from one foot to the other, he was annoyed and also very slightly amused to feel such an intense relief.

  Voisey was expecting him to arrive from the opposite direction, and spun around to face him only at the last moment. His eyes lit with relief. “Is it as bad as the newspapers say?” he demanded.

  “Yes. In fact it will get worse.”

  “Worse?” There was a bitter edge to Voisey’s tone. “What have you in mind?” he asked sarcastically. “Two streets destroyed? Three streets? Another great fire of London, perhaps? We were damned lucky that it only went as far as it did. At low tide and with only a little rain, we could have lost half of Goodman’s Fields last night.”

  “Wait until Parliament meets this afternoon,” Pitt answered him. “We won’t need any more explosions to make them demand immediate passage of the bill, together with the provision to be able to question servants. Did you read Denoon’s editorial?”

  Voisey turned away and started to walk as if he could not bear to stand still. “Yes, of course I did. This is his chance, isn’t it? They’ll use this to get the bill through!” It was really more of a statement than a question. He did not need Pitt’s answer. He knew before he came, he had been avoiding acknowledging the fact of defeat.

  Pitt needed to walk swiftly to keep up with him, as if he had a purpose.

  “If they burn down half of London again, do you suppose we can produce another genius to rebuild it like this?” Voisey said grimly. “They began this in 1675, you know.” He gestured at the vast cathedral around him. “Only nine years after the fire. Finished it in 1710.”