Betrayal at Lisson Grove tp-26

by Anne Perry

  Gower wandered along the same path, his face sunburned, his hair flopping forward. He stopped just inside the wall, a yard or two short of Pitt. He too leaned against the ledge as if he were watching the sailing boat.

  ‘Where did he go?’ Pitt asked quietly, without looking at him.

  ‘Only to the same cafe as usual,’ Gower answered, referring to Wrexham, whom one or the other of them had followed every day. ‘I didn’t go in because I was afraid he’d notice me. But I saw the same thin man with the moustache go in, then came back out again in about half an hour.’

  There was a slight lift in his voice, a quickening. ‘I watched them through the open window for a few minutes as if I were waiting for someone. They were talking about more people coming, quite a lot of them. They seemed to be ticking them off, as if from a list. They’re definitely planning something.’

  Pitt would like to have felt the same stir of excitement, but all the time he’d been observing, events seemed both too careful and too half-hearted for the passion that inspires great political change. He and Narraway had studied revolutionaries, anarchists, firebrands of all beliefs, and this had a cautious feel to it, the safe talking about it of those who do not actually want to take risks. Gower was young. Perhaps he attributed to them some of the enthusiasm he still felt himself. And he did feel it. Pitt smiled as he thought of Gower laughing with their landlady, complimenting her on the food and letting her explain to him how it was cooked. Then he told her about such English favourites as steak and kidney pudding, plum duff, and pickled eels. She had no idea whether to believe him or not.

  ‘They’ve delivered more oysters,’ Pitt remarked. ‘It’s probably another party. Whatever Frobisher’s political beliefs about changing conditions for the poor, he certainly doesn’t believe in starving himself, or his guests.’

  ‘He would hardly go around letting everyone know his plans. . sir,’ Gower replied quickly. ‘If everyone thinks he’s a rich man entertaining his friends in harmless idealism he never intends to act on, then nobody will take him seriously. That’s probably the best safety he could have.’

  Pitt thought about it for a while. What Gower said was undoubtedly true, and yet Pitt was uneasy about it. The conviction that they were wasting time settled more heavily upon him, yet he could find no argument that was pure reason rather than a niggling instinct born of experience.

  ‘And all the others who keep coming and going?’ he asked, at last turning and facing Gower, who was unconsciously smiling as the light warmed his face. Below him in the small square a woman in a fashionable dress, wide-sleeved and full-skirted, walked from one side to the other and disappeared along the narrow alley to the west. Gower watched her all the way, nodding very gently in approval.

  Gower turned to Pitt, his fair face puzzled. ‘Yes, about a dozen of them. Do you think they’re really harmless, sir? Apart from Wrexham, of course?’

  ‘Are they all wild revolutionaries pretending very successfully to be ordinary citizens living satisfied and rather pedestrian lives?’ Pitt pressed.

  It was a long time before Gower answered, as if he were weighing his words with intense care. He turned and leaned on the wall, staring at the water. ‘Wrexham killed West for a reason,’ he said slowly. ‘He was in no present danger, except being exposed as an anarchist, or whatever he would call himself. Perhaps he doesn’t want chaos, but a specific order that he considers fairer, more equal to all people. Or it may be a radical reform he’s after. Exactly what it is the socialists want is one of the things we need to learn. There may be dozens of different goals-’

  ‘There are,’ Pitt interrupted. ‘What they have in common is that they are not prepared to wait for reform by consent; they want to force it on people, violently, if necessary.’

  ‘And how long will they have to wait for anyone to hand it over voluntarily?’ Gower said with an edge of sarcasm. ‘Whoever gave up power if they weren’t forced to?’

  Pitt scanned his memory for the history he could recall. ‘None that I can think of,’ he admitted. ‘That’s why it usually takes a while. But the abolition of slavery was passed through Parliament without overt violence. Certainly without revolution.’

  ‘I’m not sure the slaves would agree with that assessment,’ Gower said with a twist of bitterness. ‘Perhaps we’re looking at a would-be Wilberforce?’

  Pitt looked at him obliquely, slightly ashamed of his shallow remark about slavery.

  ‘It’s time we found out what we are looking at,’ he conceded.

  Gower straightened up. ‘If we ask open questions it’s bound to get back to Frobisher, and he may take a great deal more care. The one advantage we have, sir, is that he doesn’t know we’re watching him. Can we afford to lose that?’ He looked anxious, his fair brows drawn together in a frown, the sunburn flushing his cheeks.

  ‘I’ve been making a few enquiries,’ Pitt said.

  ‘Already?’ Suddenly there was an edge of anger in Gower’s voice.

  Pitt was surprised. It seemed Gower’s easy manner hid an emotional commitment he had not seen. He should have. They had worked together for over two months even before the hectic chase that had brought them here.

  ‘As to who I can ask for information without it being obvious,’ he replied levelly.

  ‘Who?’ Gower said quickly.

  ‘A man named John McIver. He’s another expatriate Englishman who’s lived here for twenty years. Married to a French woman.’

  ‘Are you positive he’s trustworthy, sir?’ Gower was still sceptical. ‘It’ll take only one careless word, one remark made idly, and Frobisher will know he’s being watched. We could lose the big ones, the people like Linsky, and Meister.’

  ‘I didn’t choose him blindly,’ Pitt replied. He did not intend to tell Gower that he had encountered McIver before, on a quite different case.

  Gower drew in his breath, and then let it out again. ‘Yes, sir. I’ll stay here and watch Wrexham, and whoever he meets with.’ Then he flashed a sudden, bright smile. ‘I might even go down into the square and see the pretty girl with the pink dress again, and drink a glass of wine.’

  Pitt shook his head, feeling the tension ease away. ‘I think you’ll do better than I will,’ he said ruefully.

  McIver lived some five miles outside St Malo in the deep countryside. He was clearly longing to speak to someone in his native tongue, and hear first-hand the latest news from London. Pitt’s visit delighted him.

  ‘Of course I miss London, but don’t misunderstand me, sir,’ he said, leaning back in his garden chair in the sun. He had offered Pitt wine and little sweet biscuits, and — when he declined those — fresh crusty bread and a soft country cream cheese, which he accepted with alacrity.

  Pitt waited for him to continue.

  ‘I love it here,’ McIver went on. ‘The French are possibly the most civilised nation on earth — apart from the Italians, of course. Really know how to live, and do it with a certain flair that gives even mundane things a degree of elegance. But there are parts of English life that I miss. Haven’t had a decent marmalade in years. Sharp, aromatic, almost bitter.’ He sighed, a smile of memory on his face. ‘The morning’s Times, a good cup of tea, and a manservant who is completely unflappable. I used to have a fellow who could have announced the Angel of Doom with the same calm, rather mournful air that he announced the Duchess of Malmsbury.’

  Pitt smiled, and ate a whole slice of bread and sipped his wine before he pursued the reason he had come.

  ‘I need to make some very discreet enquiries: government, you understand?’

  ‘Of course. What can I tell you?’ McIver nodded.

  ‘Frobisher,’ Pitt replied. ‘Expatriate Englishman living here in St Malo. Would he be the right man to approach to ask a small service to his country? Please be candid. It is of. . importance, your understand?’

  ‘Oh quite — quite.’ McIver leaned forward a little. ‘I beg you, sir, consider very carefully. I don’t know your business, of cour
se, but Frobisher is not a serious man.’ He made a slight gesture of distaste. ‘He likes to cultivate some very odd friends. He pretends to be a socialist, you know, a man of the people. But between you and me, it is entirely a pose. He mistakes untidiness and a certain levity of manner for being an ordinary man of limited means.’ He shook his head. ‘He potters around and considers it to be working with his hands, as if he had the discipline of an artisan who must work to live, but he has very substantial means, which he has no intention of sharing with others, believe me.’

  Although Pitt had begun to wonder if there were anything more to Frobisher than the comfortable way of life there seemed, he still felt a sinking of bitter disappointment from McIver’s words. If this were not what West had been going to tell them about, and for which he had been killed, then why was Wrexham still here? Why had men like Linsky and Meister visited?

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said as politely as he could. However he said it, he was still questioning McIver’s judgement.

  ‘As sure as anyone can be,’ McIver replied. ‘Made a lot of noise, prancing about striking poses, but never done a thing in his life.’

  ‘He had some very violent and well-known people visiting him.’ Pitt clung to the argument, unwilling to concede that they had spent over a week here for nothing, still more, that West had died for a farce, a piece of pointless pretence.

  ‘See ’em yourself?’ McIver asked.

  ‘Yes. One of them in particular is very distinctive,’ Pitt told him. Then even as he said it, he realised how easy it was to ape a man as unusual as Linsky. He had never seen Linsky except in photographs, taken at a distance. The hatchet features, the greasy hair would not be so hard to copy. And Jacob Meister was ordinary enough.

  But why? What was the purpose of it all?

  That too was now hideously clear — to distract Pitt and Gower from their real purpose. It had succeeded brilliantly, until this moment. Even now, Pitt was confused, struggling to make sense, and with no idea what to do next.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ McIver said sadly. ‘But the man’s an ass. I can’t say differently. You’d be a fool to trust him in anything that matters. And I hardly imagine you’d have come this far for something trivial. I’m not as young as I used to be, and I don’t get into St Malo very often, but if there’s anything I can do, you have only to name it, you know.’

  Pitt forced himself to smile. ‘Thank you, but it would really need a resident of St Malo. But I’m grateful to you for saving me from making a bad mistake.’

  ‘Think nothing of it.’ McIver brushed it away with a gesture. ‘I say, do have some more cheese. Nobody makes a cheese like the French — except perhaps the Wensleydale, or a good Caerphilly.’

  Pitt smiled. ‘I like a double Gloucester, myself.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ McIver agreed. ‘I forgot that. Well, we’ll grant the cheese equal status. But you can’t beat a good French wine!’

  ‘You can’t even equal it,’ Pitt agreed.

  McIver poured them both some wine, then leaned back in his chair. ‘Do tell me, sir, what is the latest news on the cricket? Here I hardly ever get the scores, and even then they’re late. How are Somerset doing?’

  Pitt walked back along the gently winding road as the sun dropped towards the horizon. The air glowed with that faint patina of gold that lends unreality to old paintings and makes them seem landscapes of the imagination. Farmhouses looked huge, comfortable, surrounded by barns and stables. It was too early for the trees to be in full leaf, but clouds of blossom mounded like late snow, taking on the delicate colours of the coming sunset. There was no wind, and no sound across the fields but the occasional movement of the huge, patient cows.

  In the east the darkness was no more than a fading in the sky, a purpling of the colour behind the streamers of cloud.

  He went over what they knew in his mind again, carefully, all he had seen or heard himself, and all that Gower had seen and reported.

  It did not make sense, therefore there must be something missing. Or something seen but misunderstood?

  A carter passed him on the road, the wheels sending up clouds of dust, and he smelled the pleasant odour of horses’ sweat and fresh-turned earth. The man grunted at Pitt in French, and Pitt returned the greeting as well as he could.

  The sun was sinking rapidly now, the sky filling with hot colour. The soft breeze whispered in the grass and the new leaves on the willows, always the first to open. A flock of birds rose from the small copse of trees a hundred yards away, swirled up into the sky and circled round.

  Between them Pitt and Gower had seen just enough to believe it was worth watching Frobisher’s house. If they arrested Wrexham now, it would unquestionably show everyone that Special Branch was aware of their plans, so they would automatically change them.

  They should have arrested Wrexham in London. He would have told them nothing, but they had learned nothing anyway. All they had really done was waste time.

  How had he allowed that to happen? West had arranged the meeting, promising extraordinary information. Pitt could see the letter in his mind, the scrawled, misspelled words, the jagged edges of fear in the letters, the smudged ink.

  No one but Pitt himself and Gower knew of it. How had Wrexham learned? Who had betrayed West? It had to be one of the men plotting whatever it was that poor West had been going to reveal.

  But they had not followed West. Pitt and Gower were on his heels from the minute he began to run. If there had been anyone else running they would have to have seen him. Whoever it was must have been waiting for West. How had they known he would run that way? It was pure chance. He could as easily have gone in any other direction. Pitt and Gower had cornered him there, Pitt along the main street, Gower circling around to cut him off.

  Had West run into Wrexham by the most hideous mischance?

  Pitt retraced in his mind the exact route they had taken. He knew the streets well enough to picture every step, and see the map of it in his mind. He knew where they had first seen West, where he had started to run and which way he had gone. There had been no one else in the crowd running. West had darted across the street and disappeared for an instant. Gower had gone after him, jabbing his arm to indicate which way Pitt should go, the shorter way, so they could cut him off.

  Then West had seen Gower and swerved. Pitt had lost them both for a few minutes, but he knew the streets well enough to know which way West would go, and been there within seconds. . and Gower had raced up from the right to come up beside Pitt.

  But the right dog-legged back to the street where Pitt had run the minute before, not the way Gower had gone. Unless he had passed Wrexham? Wrexham had come from the opposite way, not following West at all. So why had West run so frantically, as if he knew death was on his heels?

  Pitt stumbled in the road and came to a stop. Because it was not Wrexham West was afraid of, it was either Pitt himself, or Gower. He had no reason to fear Pitt. Gower was a superb runner. He could have been there before, ducked back into the shelter of the alley entrance and then burst out of it again as Pitt arrived. It was he who had killed West, not Wrexham. West’s blood was already pooled on the stones. Pitt could see it in his mind’s eye. Wrexham was the harmless man he appeared to be, the decoy to lure Pitt to St Malo, and keep him here, while whatever was really happening came to its climax somewhere else.

  It had to be London, otherwise it was pointless to lure Pitt away from it.

  Gower. In fifteen or twenty minutes Pitt would be inside the walls of St Malo again, back to their lodgings. Almost certainly Gower would be there waiting for him. Suddenly he was no longer the pleasant, ambitious young man he had seemed only this morning. Now he was a clever and extremely dangerous stranger, a man Pitt knew only in the most superficial way. He knew that Gower slept well, that his skin burned in the sun, that he liked chocolate cake, that he was occasionally careless when he shaved himself. He was attracted to women with dark hair and he could sing rather well. Pitt had no idea where he ca
me from, what he believed, or even where his loyalties were — all the things that mattered, that would govern what he would do when the mask was off.

  Now suddenly Pitt must wear a mask as well. His own life might depend on it. He remembered with a chill how efficiently West had been killed, his throat cut in one movement, and his body left on the stones, bleeding to death. One error and Pitt could end the same way. Who in St Malo would think it more than a horrific street crime? No doubt Gower would be first on the scene again, full of horror and dismay.

  There was no one Pitt could turn to. No one in France even knew who he was, and London could be in another world for all the help it could offer now. Even if he sent a telegram to Narraway it would make no difference. Gower would simply disappear, anywhere in Europe.

  He started to walk again. The sun was on the horizon and within minutes it would be gone. It would be almost dark by the time he was within the vast city walls. He had perhaps fifteen minutes to make up his mind. He must be totally prepared once he reached the house. One mistake, one slip, and it would be his last.

  He thought of the chase to the East End, and finally the railway station. He realised with acute self-blame how easily Gower had led him, always making sure they did not lose Wrexham completely, and yet the chase seemed natural enough to be real. They lost him momentarily, and it was always Gower who found him. It was Gower who stopped Pitt from arresting him, pointing out the use of watching him and learning more. Gower had had enough money in his pocket to buy tickets on the ferry.

  Come to that, it was Gower who said he had seen Linsky and Meister, and Pitt had believed him.