Anne Perry - [Thomas Pitt 24]

by Long Spoon Lane

  “What are you going to do now? He killed Magnus. I suppose you’re sure of that?”

  “Aren’t you! If you think about it?” Pitt asked. “It had to be someone who knew you would go back to Long Spoon Lane, because he was waiting there. He knew Magnus by sight, and killed no one else. He didn’t even shoot at Welling or Carmody. Also he kept out of sight himself.”

  Kydd’s face tightened. “All right, it must have been Piers. It’s the only answer that makes sense. Poor devil. I suppose I want to see him on the end of a rope, but I’m not as sure as I was.” He put his hand over Mite again and stroked her, being rewarded by an instant rattle. “Go and do whatever you have to. Turn left at the door. Follow the London Road to the Onega Yard, past the Norway Dock to where it goes into Brickley Road right to the Rotherhithe Pier. You’ll get a ferry there.” He did not get up.

  Pitt nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t bother looking for me here again.”

  “I wasn’t going to. As you pointed out, I owe you a favor.” He stopped in the doorway. “I suppose you had nothing to do with Scarborough Street?”

  The contempt in Kydd’s face was unseen, but he spoke. “That’s another one I’ll see on the end of a rope with pleasure, if you can catch him. That’s why I fished you out—I reckon you’re the only one who’s ever going to try.”

  Vespasia was about to set out for a late dinner with friends when her butler informed her that Mr. Pitt was in the hall.

  “Have the carriage wait and show Mr. Pitt in,” she ordered without hesitation. She went to her sitting room. The curtains were drawn because the evening was wet and she did not want to look at light reflected on dripping trees. She was barely there when she heard Pitt’s voice thanking the butler, and then he was there, closing the door behind him. He looked pale and cold. His unruly hair was wet with the rain and curling wildly. There was a considerable amount of dirt on his face and his clothes.

  “You were about to go out,” he said, looking at her magnificent gown with its high, full-shouldered sleeves and the sheen of dove-gray satin under the falls of ivory lace. “I’m sorry.” There was a finality in his voice and the short, shivering attitude of his body that canceled even the possibility of her wishing to leave.

  “It is of no importance.” She dismissed it with a tiny gesture of her hand, the diamonds on her fingers catching the light. “Shall I ask Cook to prepare us something? You look a little like a horse that has run a hard race…and lost.”

  He smiled. “Actually, I think I might have won. Yes. I’m cold more than hungry. I…” He stopped. He was trembling.

  “Sit down,” she ordered. “But for heaven’s sake take that coat off!” She reached for the bell. When it was answered, she dispatched the butler to send the coachman with an apology for her absence at the dinner party. The cook was requested to prepare a meal for two, and the butler to bring back a hot toddy immediately, and, when he had time, to sponge clean and dry Pitt’s coat.

  “Now.” She sat down facing him. “What has happened, Thomas?”

  Briefly he told her, elaborating only when he came to the death of Magnus Landsborough, and what Kydd had told him. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “It is going to be very hard for the Landsborough family, but I cannot let it go.”

  “Of course not,” she agreed, her throat so tight she could barely swallow. She thought of Sheridan, then the instant after of Enid. They were so close to each other, and yet her son had killed his. How would they bear it? “I assume you would not have told me if there could be any doubt.” That was not really a question. It all made an ugly and terrible sense. At least Pitt was safe, even if Voisey was still alive. “And this Kydd said that Magnus’s father had been there, and tried to persuade him to abandon his anarchist beliefs?”

  “Yes. That is a natural thing to do. Were it my son, I would have done so too. Kydd spoke of Magnus with respect, and I thought considerable affection. He had even adopted Magnus’s kitten.”

  “Magnus’s kitten?” she said. It was extraordinary. Surely Magnus was as sensitive to cats as the rest of the family? He would not keep a kitten. He would be sneezing all the time, scarcely able to breathe.

  “Yes,” Pitt answered. “A little black thing he named Mite. It can’t have been more than a few weeks old. Not had its eyes open long.”

  “He must have been lying to you, Thomas. All the Landsboroughs are sensitive to cats.”

  “It seems a pointless lie,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “It made no difference to anything. Are you sure?”

  “I…” she began, about to say that she was, and then realized that she had assumed it, knowing that Sheridan and Enid both were. It had seemed that their father had been also, and so was Piers. Perhaps Magnus had escaped it. He resembled his mother more in some respects—the dark coloring for instance. With build, it was impossible to tell. Both Sheridan and Cordelia were fairly tall. He had remained spare, she had put on a little extra flesh. Magnus had not looked particularly like the Landsborough side when she had last seen him a few years ago. His coloring was different, the bones of his face. She remembered his smile, the strong teeth.

  Then she remembered where once, very briefly, she had seen a smile that reminded her of Magnus, and a dozen impressions collided in her mind. One new, revelatory one emerged that replaced the passions she had felt below the surface of every encounter she had witnessed in the Landsborough house: Enid’s hatred, Cordelia’s fury, Sheridan’s indifference. If that were true, it made hideous sense, even of the kitten.

  Pitt was watching her, waiting.

  She felt dazed, and overwhelmed with sorrow far from untouched by guilt of her own. She had liked Sheridan so much, found a companionship with him, a comfortable laughter, a friendship that had nothing of duty in it, nothing of expectation or advantage for either of them. It was a shared loneliness, an understanding of beauty missed, of infinite small pleasures that could not be fully savored alone. She had not even guessed at that love or loss. When had Sheridan known?

  “What is it?” Pitt had to ask. The answer might be one he could not ignore.

  She looked up at him. It surprised her how easy it was to tell him. Vespasia was an earl’s daughter and Pitt’s mother a domestic servant whose husband had been transported to Australia for poaching his master’s game. There was an irony to it, and a value truer than most men would grasp.

  “I believe Cordelia had an affair,” she told him. “Magnus is not sensitive to cats because Sheridan Landsborough is not his father, Edward Denoon is. That is why Enid hates her husband, and her sister-in-law. It is why Sheridan has no feeling for his wife, and his indifference is the greatest insult she could imagine. It explains everything I’ve half-seen, half-understood before.”

  He said nothing. She could see in his face that he was weighing it, thinking of all the other things it meant, and how much it bore upon the murder, if it did at all. Had Piers Denoon known that it was not his cousin but his half-brother that he had been forced into killing? Had Wetron known, or cared? Probably not. It was just another, parallel tragedy.

  “What will you do?” she asked him.

  He looked tired. “I don’t know. We have to arrest Piers Denoon and charge him, but Tanqueray’s bill is more important at the moment.” His face was tight, his skin pale and shadowed around the eyes. “At the moment Voisey is winning. He still has the proof of Simbister’s guilt in the Scarborough Street bombing, and his connection with Wetron. That is, if he was telling me the truth about it, and I dare not assume he wasn’t.”

  “No.” Vespasia felt oddly empty inside. She had expected Voisey to betray Pitt if he could. One needed a very long spoon indeed to dine with the devil. Pitt was a man who had seen tragedy and all kinds of human selfishness, arrogance, and hatred, but he still encountered evil with surprise. He saw humanity where simpler and less generous men would have seen only the crime. There was no point in telling him that he should have been less trusting. He probably knew it. And anyway, sh
e did not wish him to lose that peculiar quality that was his strength as well as his weakness. “There will be time to think of him later, perhaps.” She smiled bleakly, but with intense gentleness. “But I am afraid it may require all the imagination and intelligence we have. Voisey does not yet know that you are still alive. He may well proceed tomorrow as if you were not.”

  “The bill?” His voice was tight. “Will he change sides, and back it now?”

  “If I were he,” she said slowly, “I would expose Simbister for the Scarborough Street bombing, and use that evidence of corruption to block the bill, at least for the time being.”

  “And after that?” His eyes told her he knew the answer.

  “Destroy Wetron too,” she answered. “And then take his place, unite the old Inner Circle again, and rule it as before. Knowing Voisey, he will exert a terrible revenge upon those who betrayed him.” She told him the truth. He did not deserve less, nor could they afford evasions now.

  He sat quite still. “Yes.” He was thinking deeply, his face reflecting a desperate weariness.

  She sat silent for some moments. “He will not forgive you, Thomas,” she said at last.

  He looked up. “I know. I still have the evidence implicating his sister in the murder of Rae. Should I use it? If I do, then I have nothing else left to protect Charlotte. And he knows that.”

  “Of course,” she answered. “That is the trouble with the ultimate weapon. What is there left after you have used it?”

  He looked at her with a searing honesty, his fear naked. A very slight smile at his own vulnerability softening his tiredness. “I expect Charlotte wouldn’t use it either, even if I were dead in the river. She’d keep it to protect Daniel and Jemima. And he knows that. I wondered why he wasn’t afraid to have me killed. I should have thought of that.”

  “There is no profit in what we should have done, my dear,” she answered. “Let us sleep on tonight’s events, and see what the morning brings. I shall call upon you at nine o’clock, when we see the newspapers. Now you must allow me to have my coachman take you home. Please don’t argue with me.”

  He did not. He was grateful for it, and said so.

  Pitt slept better than he had expected. He had gone home not intending to tell Charlotte the details of what had happened. He not only wanted not to frighten her more than need be, but also he was aware how foolish he had been to take anything Voisey said as true, no matter how likely, or how rushed he was by circumstance.

  In the event, she guessed too much for him to conceal it without deliberately lying to her, and he found her far more understanding than he had feared. She was too relieved to criticize him. She even agreed that she would not have used the evidence against Mrs. Cavendish, precisely for the reasons he had supposed.

  When he rose in the morning and went downstairs, he was consumed in domestic matters until the children had left for school. Then he, Charlotte, and Gracie opened the morning newspapers. They had read little more than the headlines when Vespasia arrived, closely followed by Tellman, and then Victor Narraway. They all looked deeply serious.

  “Good morning, Thomas, Charlotte,” Vespasia said briefly. “I took the liberty of calling Mr. Narraway to join us. It seems Sergeant Tellman must have had the same thought.”

  The Times was lying open on the kitchen table. All the other newspapers carried the same story. The only variations lay in which aspect of it they emphasized the most.

  It had all happened yesterday evening, in time for today’s press. Of course, Pitt thought ruefully. Voisey would have prepared everything he needed exactly so that should be the case. He could not afford to give Narraway time to react, or assume that Pitt was dead, and therefore could do nothing.

  It seemed Voisey had gone directly to the home secretary himself with the proof of Simbister’s corruption. He had chosen to expose not Piers Denoon’s murder of Magnus Landsborough, but the systematic extortion from small businesses such as publicans, shopkeepers, and manufacturers—ordinary people dealing in pennies and shillings, who made up the vast majority of the population.

  He had progressed from that through the finding of the explosives on the Josephine, proof that they were placed there by Grover, and his close connection with Simbister. He added a dramatic account of Grover’s attempted murder of Voisey himself, and an unnamed officer of Special Branch, whose identity needed to be protected.

  It made exciting reading. The outrage at such an abuse of power shone through it, lighting it with emotion and humanity. It was obviously a story that would unfold through the next days, perhaps weeks. Every reader would be purchasing the newspapers hot off the stands to follow it.

  Denoon’s paper carried it also, but with a more subdued note, sounding bewildered that such a tragedy could have come to pass. Surely it would be explained soon, and put right. It must be a single instance of criminality. That was the only credible explanation.

  Even so, Tanqueray’s bill to arm the police and give them greater power must be delayed. It was intolerable to allow a man such as Simbister to be in charge of an armed force.

  “It will be a short respite,” Narraway said grimly. “Without proof that it’s connected to Wetron as well, it can be passed over as a single corrupt man leading astray one station.”

  Gracie had put on the kettle, and it was beginning to blow a light breath of steam. She stood with her back to it, having glanced at Tellman and met his eyes in a short moment of understanding. The cups were sitting on the kitchen table, a jug of milk from the pantry, a bowl of sugar if anyone wanted it, and the tea caddy had been brought down ready.

  “It seems Sir Charles is a hero once again,” Vespasia said drily. She was sitting on one of the hardback chairs.

  Charlotte was standing by the dresser with its blue and white china. She was too tense to sit. She gave a sharp bark of laughter. “I wish we could think of a way to turn this against him too!” She was referring to the time they had outwitted him over Mario Corena’s death.

  Narraway looked at her. His expression was curious, unreadable. There was emotion in his face, but it was impossible to tell what it was. “I think he has turned our wit upon us this time,” he said, first to her, but in a sense to all of them. If he thought that it was Pitt who had given him the opportunity, it was not implied, even in the tone of his voice. “I think he has used Special Branch as his cat’s paw to pull out his prizes, then take them from us at exactly the right time.”

  “There must be something we can do!” Charlotte protested. She looked from one to the other of them. “If we haven’t any power or any weapons, can’t we turn their own against them somehow?”

  Narraway stared at her. A tiny thread of a smile touched the corners of his mouth, but it was amusement, there was no joy in it.

  Vespasia understood, Charlotte could see it in her eyes. She was a woman also, and grasped exactly the train of thought. If you are clever enough, know your opponent well enough, weakness can be turned into strength.

  “Let us list everything we know of them,” she said aloud. “Some combination of things may occur to us.” She looked at Tellman. “Sergeant, you have worked for Wetron since Thomas left Bow Street. You must have made observations and formed judgments about him. What does he wish for? What might he fear? Is there anyone he cares about, other than himself? Anyone whose good opinion he either values or requires?”

  When Tellman had recovered from his initial surprise that she should ask him, he thought hard. It was not his usual way of addressing a problem, and needed a little mental adjustment.

  They all waited. The kettle boiled and Gracie made the tea, setting the pot on the table so it could brew before it was poured.

  “Power,” Tellman answered, uncertain if that was what Vespasia wanted.

  “Glory?” she asked.

  He was taken aback.

  Pitt thought of covering for him, then bit his tongue.

  “Does he like to be admired, loved?” Vespasia elaborated.

&nbs
p; “I don’t think so,” Tellman answered. “I reckon he prefers if we’re afraid of him. He likes to be safe. He’s always playing careful.”

  “A brave man?” she said softly, a razor’s edge of sarcasm in her voice, as if with a fine blade it cut almost without pain, until too late.

  Tellman smiled very slightly. “No, Lady Vespasia, I don’t think so. I don’t think he wants to meet his enemies face-to-face.”

  Narraway nodded fractionally. He did not interrupt.

  “If he is a coward,” Vespasia said, pursing her lips slightly, “that may be of use to us. Cowards can be rattled, provoked into acting rashly, if they are given little time, and made to feel threatened.” She turned to Pitt. “Is Sir Charles also a coward, Thomas?”

  He knew his answer without having to weigh it. “No, Aunt Vespasia, he’d meet you face-to-face, if need be. In fact, I think he would rather enjoy it.”

  “Because he expects to win,” Vespasia stated. “But he wants revenge, yes?”

  It was a rhetorical question, and they all knew it.

  “Yes,” Pitt said ruefully.

  “Does Wetron know that?” Vespasia asked, turning again to Tellman.

  “I think so,” he answered.

  “If not, we could always tell him,” Charlotte put in.

  Narraway looked at her sharply, his brow furrowed.

  “If we wanted to,” she added quickly.

  Gracie simplified the whole thing in a sentence. “Yer mean, like, set ’em at each other?” She poured the tea.

  Vespasia smiled at her. “Admirably succinct,” she said. “Since we appear to have no weapons, and they have, then we must use theirs, or let them win—a thought that sticks in my throat.”

  Narraway looked at Pitt, then at Vespasia. “Wetron has created a network of corruption where the police of several stations—we don’t know the size of it yet—extort money from the ordinary people of their areas, using certain members of the criminal classes to do the ugliest of the work. As for example, Jones the Pocket. With the proceeds of this Wetron finances his empire. He has raised public feeling, with the help of men like Edward Denoon and his newspaper, to the pitch where they are willing, indeed eager, to arm the police and increase their power without giving any serious thought to the possibilities for abuse. The time for such legislation is ripe now, the bombings and the murder of Magnus Landsborough have seen to that.”