by Anne Perry
“What’s happened?” Pitt demanded, stopping as soon as he reached them, although he feared he knew.
“Terrible,” one of the secretaries answered. He was a pale young man formally dressed. He clutched a bunch of papers in his hand and it was shaking, making a slight rustle as the sheets flapped together. “Absolutely dreadful.”
“What is?” Pitt repeated urgently.
“Oh! Don’t you know? Sir Charles Voisey’s been shot. The superintendent of police is here. Man from Bow Street. To have a member shot dead in the House! What’s happening to the world?”
Pitt pushed his way through, elbowing people aside until he reached the door, and found himself a yard away from Wetron who looked pale and shaken. However, the moment their eyes met Pitt saw the gleam of triumph, and knew he had been defeated.
Wetron gave nothing away. To all other onlookers he was a man startled and grieved by an appalling event.
“Ah! Superintendent Pitt,” he said, as if Pitt still held his old rank. “I’m glad you’ve come. Dreadful thing. Irrefutable evidence, I’m afraid. Tragic. I went to question Sir Charles about it, hoping against hope that he had some other explanation, but he hadn’t. Guilt overtook him. He lunged at me with a paper knife in his hand. I had no choice.” His words were wrung out of him, harsh with shock and regret. His eyes burned with victory, and the hard, sweet taste of power. To those standing around, his expression could have meant anything, but Pitt read it for what it was.
“Evidence of what, Superintendent Wetron?” Pitt asked innocently, as if he had no idea.
Wetron’s expression did not waver. “Of corruption, Mr. Pitt. Deep corruption, not only of serving officers of police. I regret profoundly to have to say it, but Sir Charles was in league with Superintendent Simbister of Cannon Street. Worse than that, it seems inescapably evident that he was also involved with the anarchists who bombed Scarborough Street so appallingly. He is tied indisputably to the dynamite used. I wish it were not so.” He did not smile—there were too many others looking—but the victory shone in his eyes.
Pitt felt the taste of defeat as bitter as gall, but he could think of no weapon with which to strike back. There was no point in asking if Voisey had admitted any of it. Wetron would say he had, and Pitt would know it was not true.
“I shall tell Mr. Narraway,” Pitt managed to say. “Proof of the Scarborough Street bombers’ guilt will be very welcome.” Would Wetron give up his accomplices, the men who had obeyed his orders? Possibly. If they had no idea and no evidence of where the orders had come from, he had nothing to lose, and perhaps much to gain. The thought of Wetron taking the credit for that too made him sick with anger at the injustice of it, and his own helplessness, but there was nothing whatever he could do.
“Of course,” Wetron agreed slightly patronizingly. “I’ll be happy to pass it to him, when my men have sorted it out. We must settle the matter of Sir Charles’s death first, of course.”
One of the several parliamentary secretaries nodded. “Naturally, naturally. Fearful thing. Very well handled, if I may say so, sir. Great personal courage to tackle the man alone. Grateful not to have a herd of uniformed men in the place. What a scandal. Terrible thing. Never suspected it at all.”
“Years of experience,” Wetron said modestly. “But I am still shocked, I admit. This is…crime of a terrible order, a tragedy for the country. I…” He gave a little shudder. “I am sure you understand that at the moment I prefer to say nothing further. It has all been deeply distressing.” He glanced towards Voisey’s closed office door.
“Of course,” the parliamentary secretary agreed piously. He turned to the rest of the group around him. “Gentlemen, it is not appropriate for us to remain here when there is nothing we can do to help. This is the time for the sad duty of others. Let us return to our own offices, or wherever else we should be.” He made a gesture half-ushering them away.
Pitt hesitated. He was oddly reluctant to go in and see Voisey’s body. Was it his duty?
Wetron’s hand gripped his arm, holding him back with some force. “It’s a police matter,” he said firmly. “You are Special Branch, remember?”
Pitt’s mind was changed in an instant. “Did I mishear you, Superintendent? I thought you said Sir Charles was implicated in the Scarborough Street bombing, and that the money he had extorted from the tradesmen around the Cannon Street area went towards furnishing the anarchists.”
Wetron was confused for a moment, caught on the wrong foot. At least one of the parliamentary secretaries was still within hearing.
“That makes it Special Branch,” Pitt said with a tight, bitter smile. “That’s what we’re here for: anarchists and bombings. We are obliged to you for catching him…and of course for attempting to arrest him for us.”
Wetron regained his balance, at least outwardly. “A pity I couldn’t take him alive,” he said bitterly. “That way he might have testified against others. Now, of course, he can’t.”
“No doubt that was in his mind also,” Pitt said ambiguously. He shook his arm free of Wetron’s grip and opened the door, leaving Tellman to follow or not, as he wished. In a way he hoped he would not.
He closed the door.
Inside the room it was silent in the morning sun, the closed windows kept out the sound of traffic below, and they were several floors up anyway. There was no sound of voices from the corridors, or from the walks by the river.
Everything was tidy. There were no signs of any struggle, as if whatever conflict they had had, it had been entirely verbal, a battle of wits rather than body against body.
Charles Voisey lay on the carpet between his desk and the window. He was half on his left side, his hand crooked, the neat bullet hole like a third eye in his forehead. There was no surprise on his face, only irritation. He had seen it coming, and knew his mistake.
Pitt stared down at him, wondering if Voisey had known that he had failed last night, and that Pitt was still alive. Was there some vision after death that would enable him to know it now? Or did whatever soul there was concern itself only with what lay ahead?
Would Mrs. Cavendish be distraught? Who was there to tell her? Her family, other friends? In all their conversations, Voisey had never mentioned other friends. Allies, people over whom he had power, but not anyone who would miss him simply because they had liked him.
Pitt had almost liked him. He had been clever, sometimes he had made Pitt laugh, he had been intensely alive, capable of passion, curiosity, and need. There was an emptiness because he was gone.
“You’re a fool,” Pitt said aloud to Voisey. “You didn’t have to do this. You could have been…lots of things. You had the chance.” He stared down at the body. “What the hell did you do with the proof…if you ever had it?”
Was it even worth looking for? Wouldn’t Wetron have thought of it, and done all he could to tamper with it? He would have left only what incriminated Voisey rather than himself.
A deeper sense of defeat settled over Pitt, an anger and a sadness. He had fought against Voisey for a long time, and suffered intense loss at his hands. And yet he realized he still would not have had it end this way. What had he wanted? He realized with surprise that the answer was absurd. He had wanted Voisey to change. That was never likely to have happened. He was angry with him for it, angry with Wetron, and angry with himself for not having been clever enough to beat him.
There was a knock on the door. It would be people to take the body away. He could not keep them waiting. There was no debate over what had happened, Wetron had told as much of the truth as could be proved, so he had no reason to keep the body back as evidence.
“Come in,” he answered.
An hour later he left the Houses of Parliament. Tellman had already gone with Wetron. He had had no choice: Wetron was his superior and had ordered him to. Pitt had searched Voisey’s office as much as he could. Many drawers were locked, and he had been told they contained government papers to which he could be given no access. H
e had found nothing useful in the rest. The proof regarding the dynamite on the Josephine, Grover’s involvement, and all the papers incriminating Simbister were already with the authorities. They were what Voisey had used to prove Simbister’s guilt.
He went back to Keppel Street, going that way first almost without thinking about it. Then he realized that Narraway might still be there, expecting him to come back, and Charlotte and Vespasia certainly would be. He had to allow Tellman to do as Wetron commanded. That was just one other aspect of defeat. He dare not defy him, or Tellman would pay.
As soon as he opened the front door Narraway was in the passage. He saw from Pitt’s face that they had lost.
“What happened?”
Pitt bent and took off his boots. “Stupid,” he answered. “He telephoned Voisey at home, and apparently spoke to him, then he told Tellman he was going to see him there. We believed it.”
“And?” Narraway snapped.
Pitt stood up, bootless. “He probably spoke to a butler, or maybe was just pretending to speak to someone. Voisey was at the House of Commons. By the time we got there he was already dead. Wetron was busy telling people he had gone to arrest Voisey, Voisey had resisted, attacked him with a paper knife, and in self-defense Wetron had had to shoot him.”
Narraway swore, oblivious of the fact that Charlotte and Vespasia were both in the kitchen behind him.
“What can we do now?” Charlotte asked quietly, her voice sounding crushed.
Narraway turned around, and colored deeply. He seemed to debate whether to apologize or not. He drew in his breath.
Vespasia overrode him. “Gracie will make us tea, and we shall consider what choices we have,” she answered.
“What are they?” Charlotte asked again, ten minutes later as they sat around the kitchen table, Gracie as well, eating thin-sliced bread and butter and drinking tea. Vespasia sat with them, exactly as if it were her habit to dine in the kitchen with friends, a maidservant, and the head of Special Branch.
“Denoon’s paper will be full of Wetron the hero by midafternoon,” Narraway said grimly. “On this tide, he’ll be the next commissioner of police.”
“We assume that was his intention,” Vespasia agreed. “I must admit, there are few things that anger me as much as that. The man is vile, and he will harm this whole country irreparably.”
“He’s also still head of the Inner Circle,” Pitt added. “And there is not even Voisey alive to challenge him. In fact, no one will dare to challenge him for a long time, I should think.”
Gracie screwed up her face. “ ’E still puts ’is trousers on one leg at a time, like anybody else. There must be summink as ’e’s weak in, summink ’e forgets.”
“He seems to have thought of everything,” Narraway replied to her. It cost him a moment’s surprise that she felt free to make a remark. “All the evidence anyone has could be attributed to Voisey as easily as to him. Simbister is totally discredited, and I imagine with Wetron’s intelligence he has made sure there are sufficient threats in his hands to be certain that Simbister does not accuse him. Not that there is likely to be any proof. I know Voisey said he had proof, but no one has seen it, and if it exists, Wetron will have destroyed it by now.”
“Piers Denoon’s confession is no good. It only implicates Simbister, and he’s finished anyway,” Pitt added. “We can arrest Piers, but that doesn’t implicate Wetron.”
“Piers Denoon’s confession to what?” Gracie asked, puzzled.
“He raped a young woman. Simbister got a confession from him and used it to blackmail him into supporting the anarchists, and then to shooting Magnus Landsborough,” Pitt explained briefly. “Wetron took it over, but we can’t prove that.”
Gracie wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“We…removed it from Wetron’s safe,” Pitt said drily, “but we are not in a position to say so.”
“All the same,” Gracie persisted. “ ’e’s gotter ’ave suffink as ’e’s scared of, or as ’urts ’im. Wi’ Mr. Voisey it were ’is sister. In’t Mr. Wetron got nobody?” She made a little noise of irritation. “We can’t jist let ’im be! It in’t right!”
“He has made himself very powerful indeed!” Vespasia said gently, looking at Gracie’s small, stiff figure across the kitchen table. “And most of his power is secret.”
“There must be someone as don’t care!” Gracie protested. “If ’e’s that wicked, ’e must ’ave ’urt someone bad enough. We just gotter find ’em.”
An idea was beginning to form in Pitt’s mind, but he did not like it. It helped very little, and it might take a long time.
Charlotte was watching him. “What is it?” she demanded. “What have you thought of?”
He rubbed his hand over his forehead. He was suddenly very tired. He did not seem to have had a restful night for weeks. The things in the world he believed in were crumbling around him; a decency he had taken for granted was not there. It was Wetron who was at the heart of the breaking, the sinking of good men and the betrayal of the people who trusted them.
“I think I’ll go and tell the Landsboroughs that we know who murdered their son,” he said, standing up slowly. “They have a right to know that. I can’t arrest him until I know where he is.”
“If you tell Lord Landsborough, they may warn Enid Denoon,” Vespasia said reluctantly. There was intense pity in her face. “Or is that what you intend, Thomas?”
Charlotte looked from Pitt to Vespasia, and back again.
“I can’t let him go, Aunt Vespasia,” he spoke gently. The whole idea hurt him. “He raped a girl, he’s been organizing the money for the anarchists who blew up Myrdle Street, and very probably Scarborough Street as well, but mostly he killed Magnus. And arresting him for that so his father knows how Wetron used him is the only way I have to trap Wetron himself at last.”
“I see,” she agreed. “I can think of no other way either.”
He found himself almost choked with overwhelming sadness as he said it. “First mistakes are often not so big, and certainly not irreparable, if you pay for them at the time. He kept on making more, trying to avoid paying for the first. Until they became too big to pay for. I’m sorry.”
Charlotte leaned forward and slid her hand over Vespasia’s. It was a gesture of an intimacy she made without thinking. Had she thought, perhaps she would not have dared.
“Of course.” Vespasia nodded almost imperceptibly. “My remark was made without consideration. How do you intend to arrest him, since according to Voisey he was planning to escape the country by sea?”
“There was no proof that that was true,” Pitt pointed out, embarrassed still with how easily he had believed it. “I think I shall have some idea from Denoon’s behavior whether his son has gone or not. I don’t know for certain, but I believe Edward Denoon was providing at least some of the money Piers gave the genuine anarchists, either from his own sources or from Wetron’s. Wetron probably allowed Grover to keep enough from his extortion to finance the Scarborough Street bombs.”
“I see. You wish Denoon to be at Lord Landsborough’s house when you tell him?” Vespasia made it a question, almost an offer.
He felt a tightening inside himself. “Yes…please.”
“I see that you have a telephone in the hall. Perhaps I had better use it.”
He offered her his hand.
She rose without it, giving him a dry, chilly look, but not without amusement. “I am grieved, Thomas, not incapable!”
Pitt turned to Gracie. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. “I think Wetron may have a vulnerability after all, just a slight one.”
Gracie blushed with pleasure.
Pitt looked at Charlotte. He did not say anything or offer explanations, simply met her eyes for a moment. Then he followed Vespasia out into the hall.
Vespasia’s carriage took Pitt to the Landsborough house before going on to take her back to her own. They did not say anything further on the subject along the short ride, but sat in a companiona
ble silence. Pitt was still thinking about Voisey lying on the floor of his office, drained of the anger and greed, the wit and the hunger that had made him so alive. He did not know what she was thinking, but probably of Sheridan Landsborough and the grief that must fill him, and of Enid and the pain that so soon awaited her.
At no time had he asked Vespasia not to warn them. Such an idea was unthinkable, and to speak of it would be insulting to a degree she might forgive, but she would not forget.
“Thank you, Aunt Vespasia,” he said quietly when the carriage stopped.
She did not answer, but smiled at him very slightly, her face filled with pity.
He wished there were something he could say or do, even a gesture, but he did not know what, and ended simply bidding his good-bye as he alighted, and closing the carriage door behind him.
The footman received him without surprise, or even needing to ask his name. Sheridan and Cordelia were waiting for him in the withdrawing room, Edward and Enid Denoon beside them. They all looked pale and tense, faces turned towards the door as soon as they heard his footsteps in the hall.
Landsborough came forward. “Good afternoon, Mr. Pitt. It is good of you to come in person to inform us.”
“I thought you would wish to know,” Pitt replied. “We now have sufficient evidence to arrest the man who killed your son.”
Landsborough turned to Cordelia who let out a gasp, her face flooding with relief.
“Thank you!” she said with a crack in her voice. “It…it has been very hard waiting.”
Landsborough kept his composure with difficulty. “I am deeply obliged to you, Pitt. It is a great burden lifted, especially among so much bad news. I see from the afternoon papers that Sir Charles Voisey is dead.” His face looked pinched as he said it, the disappointment in his eyes profound. He looked at Pitt, desperate for some shred of hope to defeat the bill. His son was dead and the liberal, tolerant, enlightened world he loved seemed about to be submerged in a tide of corrupt tyranny. He knew of no way to fight it, let alone to win.
