Southampton Row

CHAPTER

SEVEN

Charlotte and Gracie worked together in the cottage kitchen. Gracie was cleaning the cooking range after having scrubbed the stone floor, Charlotte was kneading bread, and the butter churn stood on the marble-topped table in the cool of the scullery. Sunlight streamed through the open door; the slight breeze from the moors rising in the distance was sweet and sharp with the aroma of tussock and herbs and the lush grasses of the bogs. The children were playing on the apple tree and every so often they shouted with laughter.

“If that boy rips ’is trousers one more time sliding out o’ that tree, I don’ know wot you’re goin’ ter tell ’is mother!” Gracie said exasperatedly, referring to Edward, who was having the time of his life and had torn every piece of clothing he had brought with him. Charlotte had spent time each evening doing her best to repair them. One pair of Daniel’s trousers had been sacrificed to make patches for both boys. Even Jemima had rebelled against the restrictions of skirts and tucked them up as she had scrambled over stone walls and loudly declared that there was no natural or moral law that girls should not have just as much fun as boys.

They ate bread and cheese and fruit, raspberries, wild strawberries, and plums, till they were fortunate not to be sick, and fresh sausages from the butcher in the village. It would have been perfect, if only Pitt could have been with them.

Charlotte understood that it was impossible, even if not the details of why. And although Voisey could not know where they were, she was aware all the time of listening to make sure she could hear the children’s voices, and every ten minutes or so she went to the door and looked out to see them.

Gracie said nothing about it. Not once did she remark on the fact that they were alone here, but Charlotte heard her going around the windows and doors at night, checking after her that they were locked. Neither did Gracie mention Tellman’s name, but Charlotte knew she must be thinking of him, after their closeness during the Whitechapel affair. Her silence was in some ways more telling than words. Perhaps at last her feelings for him were greater than friendship?

Charlotte finished the bread and set it in its tins to rise, then went out to the garden to wash her hands under the pump. She looked up at the apple tree and saw Daniel on the highest branch strong enough to take his weight, and Jemima clinging to the one immediately below. She waited a moment for the stirring of leaves that would tell her where Edward was, and it did not come.

“Edward!” she called. It could only have been minutes. “Edward!”

Silence, then Daniel looked over to her.

“Edward!” she shouted, running towards the tree.

Daniel slid down hand over hand, scrambling into the fork of the branches, and then dropped to the ground. Jemima started to come down a great deal more carefully, hampered by inexperience and the fabric of skirts.

“We can see over the garden wall from up there,” Daniel said reasonably. “And there’s a patch of wild strawberries that way.” He pointed, smiling.

“Is he there?” she demanded, her voice high and sharp beyond her control. Even as she heard it she knew she was being ridiculous, and yet she could not help it. He had only gone to pick fruit, as any child would. There was no need even to be worried, let alone panic. She was allowing imagination to take over her reason. “Is he?” she repeated only a fraction more calmly.

“I don’t know.” Daniel was looking at her anxiously now. “Do you want me to go up again and look?”

“Yes! Yes, please.”

Jemima landed on the grass and straightened up, regarding a small tear in her dress with irritation. She saw Charlotte looking at her and shrugged. “Skirts are stupid sometimes!” she said in disgust.

Daniel went back up the tree, nimbly, hand over hand. He knew exactly the way to go now. “No!” he called from the top. “He must have found another one, maybe better. I can’t see him!”

Charlotte felt her heart lurch and the beating of the blood in her ears was deafening. Her vision blurred. What if Voisey had taken revenge on Pitt by hurting Emily’s child? Or maybe he didn’t even know who was who! What should she do?

“Gracie!” she yelled. “Gracie!”

“Wot?” Gracie flung open the back door and came running out, fear wide in her eyes. “Wot’s ’appened?”

Charlotte swallowed, trying to steady herself. She should not panic and frighten Gracie. It was stupid and unfair. She knew she was doing it and still could not help herself. “Edward has gone . . . gone to pick strawberries,” she gulped. “But he’s not there anymore.” Her mind raced to find a reasonable excuse for the terror which Gracie must see and hear in her. “I’m afraid of the bogs out there. Even the wild animals get caught in them sometimes. I . . .”

Gracie did not wait. “You stay ’ere wi’ them!” She waved at Daniel and Jemima. “I’ll go look for ’im.” And without waiting to see if Charlotte agreed or not, she picked up her skirts and ran with amazing speed across the grass and out of the gate, leaving it swinging behind her.

Daniel turned to Charlotte, his face pale. “He wouldn’t go into a bog, Mama. You showed us what they look like, all green and bright. He knows that!”

“No, of course not,” she agreed, staring at the gate. Should she take Daniel and Jemima with her and go, too, or were they safer here? She should not leave Gracie alone to look for Edward. What was she thinking of! Don’t separate! “Come on!” She darted and grasped Daniel’s hand, almost pulling him off balance as she started towards the gate. “Jemima! Come with me. We’ll all go and look for Edward. But stay together! We must stay together!”

They were only a hundred yards along the lane, the small, straight-backed figure of Gracie another hundred yards ahead of them, when the dogcart came over the rise and with a flood of relief that brought tears to her eyes, Charlotte saw Edward sitting beside the driver, balancing precariously and grinning with satisfaction.

Now she was so furious with him for the fear she had felt that she would happily have spanked him until he had to eat supper off the mantelpiece—and breakfast, too! But it would be totally unfair; he had not meant harm. Looking at his pleasure, she forced back her emotions, called out to Gracie, then picked her way over the ruts in the track to speak to the driver, who had pulled up in seeing them.

Gracie came back and for a moment her eyes met Charlotte’s, and she blinked hard to mask the depth of her own relief. In that instant Charlotte realized just how much they had been hiding from each other, trying to protect, pretend it was not there, and she was filled with gratitude and a startling depth of love for the girl with whom she had so little in common on the surface, and so much in reality.

Pitt’s house in Keppel Street was exactly as always, not an ornament or a book out of place. There were even flowers in the vase on the mantel shelf in the parlor, and early sunlight poured through the windows onto the kitchen bench and splashed warm across the floor. Archie and Angus lay curled up together in the clothes basket, purring gently. And yet everything was so different in its emptiness that it seemed more like a painting than a reality. The kettle was beginning to boil on the stove but it only served to elaborate the silence. There were no footsteps on the stairs, no rattle and clatter of Gracie in the larder or the scullery. No one called out asking where a lost shoe or sock was, or a schoolbook. There was no answer from Charlotte, no reminder of the time. The ticking of the kitchen clock seemed to echo.

But Pitt was at ease that they were away from London, safely anonymous in Devon. He had told himself that he did not think anyone in the Inner Circle would revenge themselves on him by hurting his family at Voisey’s command. Voisey would not hire someone he did not trust, he could not afford the risk to himself, and Pitt’s turning of the events in Whitechapel had made Voisey appear to betray not only his allies and friends but his cause as well. It should have divided the Circle along lines of personal loyalties and self-interest, but Pitt had no way of knowing if it had.

He could not clear from his mind the look of hatred in Voisey’s eyes as he had passed him in Buckingham Palace the moment after the knighthood which he and Vespasia had contrived, using Mario Corena’s sacrifice. It had ended forever Voisey’s ambitions to be republican president of Britain.

And that same hatred had been there in his eyes again when they had met in the House of Commons. Passion like that did not die. Pitt could sit here at his own kitchen table with some measure of calmness only because he knew his family was hidden and safe, miles away. No matter how much he missed the mere knowledge of their presence in the house, the loneliness was a small price to pay for that.

Was the murder of Maude Lamont connected with Voisey’s bid for a parliamentary seat? There were at least two possible connections: the fact that Rose Serracold had been at the séance that night; and the fact that Roland Kingsley, who was also there, had written to the newspapers so vehemently against Aubrey Serracold. Pitt had found nothing in Kingsley’s previous political views to lead anyone to expect such an opinion now.

But then elections brought out extreme views. The threat of losing exposed some ugly sides of nature, just as some were surprisingly brash in victory where one had expected grace, even generosity.

Or was the connection the man whose name was concealed by a cartouche, and who might have had a far more personal relationship with Maude Lamont? Was the connection with Voisey even a real one, or was it Narraway’s attempt to use any means possible to block his path to power?

If Narraway had been Cornwallis, Pitt would have known every attack he made would be clever but fair. Cornwallis was a man trained by the rigor of the sea who went into battle with his face forward and fought to the end.

Pitt did not know Narraway’s beliefs, the motives which drove him, or the experience, the triumphs and the losses which had formed his character. He did not even know whether Narraway would lie to the men under his command in order to make them do whatever would achieve his own ends. Pitt was moving step by step in the dark. For his safety, so he was not manipulated to serve a purpose he did not believe in, he must learn a great deal more about Narraway.

But for the present he needed to discover why Roland Kingsley had proclaimed himself so virulently against Serracold. It was not the opinion he had expressed when Pitt had spoken to him. Had Maude Lamont been manipulating him with the threat of disclosure of something she had learned from his questions to the dead?

What made a man of the successful, practical nature he seemed to possess go to a spirit medium? Tragically, many people lost sons and daughters. Most of them found a fortitude based in the love they shared in the past and an inner belief in some religion, formal or not, that there was a divine power that would reunite them one day. They continued with life the best way they could, with work, the comfort of others they loved, perhaps a retreat into great music or literature, or the solitude of nature, or even exhausting oneself in the care of those less fortunate. They did not turn to notions of Ouija boards and ectoplasm.

What was there in his son’s death that had driven Kingsley so far? And if the answer were blackmail, was it by Maude Lamont herself, or had she only supplied the information to someone else, someone still alive, and who would continue to use it?

Such as a member of the Inner Circle—even Charles Voisey himself?

That was what Narraway would like it to be! And it had nothing to do with whether it was the truth or not. Perhaps Pitt was seeing Voisey where he had no part. Fear itself could be an element of his revenge, maybe better even than the actuality of the blow.

He stood up, leaving his dishes on the table where Mrs. Brody would find them and clear them away. He went outside. He was hot by the time he had walked as far as Tottenham Court Road and stopped on the pavement to hail a hansom.

He spent the morning with the official military records tracing the career of Roland Kingsley. No doubt Narraway would have searched them, if he did not already know the facts, but Pitt wanted to see for himself, in case his interpretation of the records was different.

There was little personal comment. He read through it all quickly. Roland James Walford Kingsley had joined the army at eighteen, like his father and grandfather before him. His career spanned over forty years, from his early discipline and training, his first foreign posting in the Sikh Wars of the late 1840s, the horror of the Crimean War of the mid-1850s, where he had been mentioned several times in dispatches, and the immediately following bloodbath of the Indian Mutiny.

Later he had turned to Africa, the Ashanti Campaign of the mid-1870s, and the Zulu War at the end of the decade, where he had been decorated for extraordinary valor.

After that he had returned to England, seriously injured, and seemingly also wounded in spirit. He never again left the country, although still honoring all his commitments, and retiring in 1890 at the age of sixty.

Pitt then looked up Kingsley’s son, seeking his death in those same Zulu Wars, and found it recorded on July 3, 1879, during the fiasco crossing the White Mfolozi. It was the action in which Captain Lord William Beresford had won a Victoria Cross, the highest honor given for supreme gallantry on the field of battle. Two other men had also been killed, and several wounded, in a superbly executed Zulu ambush. But then Isandlwana had proved the Zulu as warriors of not only courage but exceptional military skill. At Rorke’s Drift they had brought out the best in British discipline and honor. That action lived in history and fired the imagination of men and boys as they heard the story of how eight officers and a hundred and thirty-one men, thirty-five of whom were sick, had withstood the siege of nearly four thousand Zulu warriors. Seventeen British had been killed, and eleven Victoria Crosses awarded.

Pitt stood in the middle of the floor and closed the book holding the records, the bare words which made little attempt to describe the burning, dusty countryside of another continent, and the men—good and bad, cowardly and brave—who had gone there out of service or adventure, obedience to an inner voice or an outer necessity, and lived and died in the conflicts.

But as he thanked the clerk and walked down the steps and into the clearing air, the pavement cloud and sunshine patterned, he felt emotion constricting his chest, pride and shame and a desperate desire to preserve all that was good in a land and a people he loved. The men who had faced the enemy at Rorke’s Drift stood for something far simpler and cleaner than the secrecy of the Inner Circle and political betrayal for ambition’s sake.

He took a cab as far as Narraway’s office and then paced the floor with mounting anger as he was obliged to wait for him.

When Narraway arrived nearly an hour later he was mildly amused to find Pitt glaring at him. He closed the door. “I assume from your expression that you have found something of interest?” He made it a question. “For heaven’s sake, Pitt, sit down and make a proper report. Is Rose Serracold guilty of something?”

“Self-indulgence,” Pitt answered, obeying the instruction. “Nothing else, so far as I know, but I have not stopped looking.”

“Good!” Narraway said dryly. “That is what Her Majesty pays you for.”

“I think Her Majesty, like God, would be horrified at much of what is done in her name,” Pitt snapped back. “If she knew about it!” Then, before Narraway could interrupt, he went on. “Actually, I’ve been looking at Major General Kingsley to see why he went to Maude Lamont and why his letters to the newspapers condemning Serracold are so at odds with the opinions in his ordinary speech.”

“Have you indeed?” Narraway’s eyes were very sharp and still. “And what have you found?”

“Only his military record,” Pitt replied guardedly. “And that he lost his son in a skirmish in Africa in the same Zulu Wars in which he himself was highly distinguished. It was a bereavement from which he doesn’t seem to have recovered.”

“It was his only son,” Narraway said. “Only child, actually. His wife died young.”

Pitt searched his face, trying to read the man’s feelings behind the repeating of simple and terrible facts. He saw nothing he was sure of. Did Narraway deal in death so often, in other people’s grief, that it no longer marked him? Or could he not afford to feel, in case it swayed judgments that had to be made in the interest of all, not simply those for whom he cared? The closest look at Narraway’s clever, line-seamed face told him nothing. There was passion there, but was it of the heart or only the mind?

“How did he die?” Pitt asked aloud.

Narraway raised his eyebrows in surprise that Pitt should want to know. “He was one of the three who was killed during the reconnaissance at White Mfolozi. They ran straight into a rather well-laid Zulu ambush.”

“Yes, I saw that in the records. But why is Kingsley pursuing it through a woman like Maude Lamont?” Pitt asked. “And why now? Mfolozi was thirteen years ago!”

Anger flashed in Narraway’s eyes, then pain. “If you had lost anyone, Pitt, you would know that the hurt doesn’t go away. People learn to live with it, to hide it, most of the time; but you never know what is going to wake it again, and suddenly, for a space, it is out of control.” His voice was very quiet. “I’ve seen it many times. Who knows what it was? The sight of a young man whose face reminded him of his son? Another man who has the grandchildren he doesn’t? An old tune . . . anything. The dead don’t go away, they just fall silent for a while.”

Pitt was aware of something intensely personal in the room. These words were not practical, they were from the passion of the moment. But the shadow in the eyes, the set of Narraway’s lips, forbade the intrusion of any words that touched them.

Pitt affected not to have noticed.

“Is there any connection between Kingsley and Charles Voisey?” he asked.

Narraway’s dark eyes widened suddenly. “For God’s sake, Pitt, don’t you think I’d tell you that if I knew?”

“You might prefer me to find it for myself . . .”

Narraway jerked forward, the muscles of his body locked. “We haven’t time for games!” he said between his teeth. “I can’t afford to give a damn what you think of me! If Charles Voisey gets into Parliament there’ll be no stopping him until he has the power to corrupt the highest office in the land. He’s still head of the Inner Circle.” A shadow crossed his face. “At least I think he is. There is another power there. I don’t know who it is . . . yet.”

He held up his hand, finger and thumb an inch apart. “He came that close to losing it! We did that, Pitt! And he won’t forget it. But we didn’t finish him. He will have a new Number Two, and Three, and I haven’t the faintest idea who they are. It is a disease eating at the bowels of the true government of the land, whichever party sits in Westminster. We can’t deal without power—and we can’t deal with it! It’s a balancing act. If we stay one step ahead, keep changing often enough, weed out the infection of madness as soon as we recognize it, the delusion that you can do anything and get away with it, that you’re infallible, untouchable, then we win—until next time. Then we start all over again, with new players and a new game.”

He threw himself back in the chair suddenly. “Find the connection between Kingsley and Charles Voisey yourself, whether it has to do with that woman’s death or not. And be careful, Pitt! You were a detective before for Cornwallis, a watcher, a judge. For me you’re a player. You too will win—or lose. Don’t forget that.”

“And you?” Pitt asked a little huskily.

Narraway flashed him a sudden smile that lit his face, but his eyes were hard as coal. “Oh, I intend to win!” He did not say he would die before letting loose his hold, like an animal whose jaws do not unlock even in death. He did not need to.

Pitt rose to his feet, muttered a few words of acknowledgment, and went outside, his mind whirling with unanswered questions, not about Kingsley or Charles Voisey, but about Narraway himself.

He returned home briefly, and on the footpath at the end of Keppel Street heard a voice addressing him.

“Afternoon, Mr. Pitt!”

He turned around, startled. It was the postman again, smiling, holding out a letter for him.

“Good afternoon,” he replied hastily, a sudden excitement inside him, hope surging that it was from Charlotte.

“From Mrs. Pitt, is it?” the postman asked cheerfully. “Somewhere nice, is she?”

Pitt looked down at the letter in his hand. The writing was so like Charlotte’s, and yet it was not, and the postmark was London. “No,” he said, unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

“She’s only been gone a day or two,” the postman comforted him. “Takes a while from farther off. You tell me where she’s gone, I’ll tell you ’ow long it’ll take for ’er letter ter get ’ome.”

Pitt drew in his breath to say “Dartmoor,” and then looked at the man’s smiling face, and sharp eyes, and felt the coldness well up inside him. He forced himself to remain calm, and it took such an effort that it was a moment before he could reply.

The postman waited.

“Thank you,” Pitt said then answered with the first place that came to his mind: “Whitby.”

“Yorkshire?” The man looked extraordinarily pleased with himself. “Oh, that shouldn’t be more than two days at the most this time of year, maybe only one. You’ll ’ear soon, sir. Maybe they’re ’aving too much fun ter get down ter writing. Good day, sir.”

“Good day.” Pitt swallowed, and found his hands shaking as he tore open the letter. It was from Emily, dated the previous afternoon.

Dear Thomas,

Rose Serracold is a friend of mine, and after visiting her yesterday I feel that I know certain things which may be of some meaning to you.

Please call upon me when you have the opportunity.

Emily

He folded it up and slipped it back into the envelope. It was the middle of the afternoon, a time when she would normally be out visiting, or receiving calls, but there would be no better opportunity, and perhaps what she had to say would help. He could not afford to decline any chance at all.

He turned around and walked back towards Tottenham Court Road again. Half an hour later he was in Emily’s sitting room and she was telling him, with awkward phrases and some self-consciousness, of her quarrel with Rose Serracold. She spoke of her growing conviction that Rose was so deeply afraid of something that she was impelled to visit Maude Lamont in spite of the danger of ridicule, and that she had, if not deceived him, at least omitted to tell Aubrey anything about it.

Emily’s warning had produced anger in her to the point of endangering their friendship.

When she finished she stared at him, her eyes filled with guilt.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“Thomas . . .” she began.

“No,” he answered before she could ask any further. “I don’t know whether she killed her or not, but I cannot look the other way, no matter who gets hurt. All I can promise is that I will cause no more pain than I have to, and I hope you knew that already.”

“Yes.” She nodded, her body stiff, her face pale. “Of course I did.” She took a breath as if to say something more, then changed her mind and offered him tea, which he did not accept. He would have liked to accept—he was tired and thirsty, hungry also if he thought about it—but there was too much emotion between them, too much knowledge for it to be comfortable. He thanked her again and took his leave.

That evening Pitt telephoned Jack’s political offices to find out where he was going to speak, and on being informed of the place, he set out to join him, first to listen, feel the political temper of the crowd, then maybe to judge from it more accurately what Aubrey Serracold faced.

And he admitted he was also increasingly concerned for Jack himself. It was going to be a far closer election than last time. Many Liberals could lose their seats.

He arrived as some two or three hundred people were gathering, mostly men from the nearby factories, but also a good number of women, dressed in drab skirts and blouses grained with the sweat and dirt of hard work. Some were even as young as fourteen or fifteen, others with skins so tired and gaunt, bodies so shapeless, that it was hard to tell how old they were. They might have been the sixty that they looked, but Pitt knew very well it was more likely they were still under forty, just exhausted and poorly fed. Many of them would have borne too many children, and the best would have been given to them, and to the men.

There was a low murmur of impatience, a couple of catcalls. More people drifted in. Half a dozen left, grumbling loudly.

Pitt shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He tried to overhear conversations. What did these people think, what did they want? Did anything make any difference to the way they voted, except to a handful of them? Jack had been a good constituency member, but did they realize that? His majority was not large. On a wave of Liberal success he would have had no cause to worry, but this was an election even Gladstone did not wholly desire to win. He fought it from passion and instinct, and because he had always fought, but his reasoning mind was not in it.

There was a sudden flurry of attention and Pitt looked up. Jack had arrived and was walking through the crowd, clasping people by the hand, men and women alike, even one or two of the children. Then he climbed onto the tail of a cart which had been drawn up to form a makeshift platform for him, and began to speak.

Almost immediately he was heckled. A semibald man in a brown coat waved his arm and demanded to know how many hours a day he worked. There was a roar of laughter and more catcalls.

“Well, if I don’t get returned to the House, I’ll be out of work!” Jack called back at him. “And the answer will be none!”

Now the laughter was directed the other way—humor, not jeering. There followed immediately an argument about the working week. Voices grew harsher and the underlying anger had an ugly edge. Someone threw a stone, but it went yards wide and clattered off the warehouse wall and rolled away.

Looking at Jack’s face, handsome and easy-natured as it seemed to be, Pitt could see he was holding his temper with an effort. A few years ago he might not even have tried.

“Vote for the Tories,” Jack offered with an expansive gesture. “If you think they’ll give it to you.”

There were curses and hoots and whistles of derision.

“None of yer’s any good!” a scrawny woman yelled, her lips drawn back from broken teeth. “All yer do is bleed us fer taxes and tie us up in laws no one understands.”

And so it continued for another half hour. Slowly, Jack’s patience and occasional banter began to win over more of them, but Pitt could see in the growing tension in his face and the tiredness of his body the effort it cost him. An hour later, dusty, exhausted and hot from the press of the crowd and the stale, clinging air of the dockside, he climbed down from the cart and Pitt caught up with him as he walked towards the open street where he would be able to find a hansom. Like Voisey he had had the tactical sense not to bring his own carriage.

He turned to Pitt with surprise.

Pitt smiled at him. “An accomplished performance,” he said sincerely. He did not add any facile words about winning. As close to Jack as he was, he could see the exhaustion in his eyes and the grime in the fine lines of his skin. It was dusk and the street lamps were glowing. They must have passed the lamplighter without noticing him.

“Are you here for moral support?” Jack asked dubiously.

“No,” Pitt admitted. “I need to know more about Mrs. Serracold.”

Jack looked at him in surprise.

“Have you eaten?” Pitt asked.

“Not yet. Do you think Rose could be involved in this wretched murder?” He stopped, turning to face Pitt. “I’ve known her for a couple of years, Thomas. She’s eccentric, certainly, and has some idealistic beliefs which are highly impractical, but that’s a very different thing from killing anyone.” He pushed his hands into his pockets, which was uncharacteristic in him; he cared too much about the cut of his suits to so misuse them. “I don’t know what on earth possessed her to go to this medium now, of all times.” He winced. “I can imagine how the press would ridicule it. But honestly, Voisey’s making pretty heavy inroads into the Liberal position. I started off believing Aubrey would get in as long as he didn’t do anything totally stupid. Now I’m afraid Voisey’s winning is not as impossible as it seemed even a couple of days ago.” He continued walking, looking straight ahead of him. They were both dimly aware of supporters, out of uniform, twenty yards behind.

“Rose Serracold,” Pitt reminded him. “Her family?”

“Her mother was a society beauty, as far as I know,” Jack replied. “Her father was from a good family. I did know who, but I forget. I think he died quite young, but it was illness, nothing suspicious, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Pitt was reaching after every possibility. “A lot of money?”

They crossed the alley and turned left, feet echoing on the cobbles.

“I don’t think so,” Jack answered. “No. Aubrey has the money.”

“Any connection with Voisey?” Pitt asked, trying to keep his voice light, free from the emotion that surged up in him at even the mention of his name.

Jack glanced at him, then away again. “Rose, you mean? If she has, then she’s lying, at least by implication. She wants Aubrey to win. Surely if she knew anything about him at all, she would say so?”

“And General Kingsley?”

Jack was puzzled. “General Kingsley? You mean the fellow who wrote that harsh piece in the newspaper about Aubrey?”

“Several harsh pieces,” Pitt corrected. “Yes. Has he any personal enmity against Serracold?”

“None that Aubrey knows of, unless he’s concealing something as well, and I’d swear he isn’t. He’s actually quite transparent. He was pretty shaken by it. He’s not used to personal attack.”

“Could Rose know him?”

They were halfway along a stretch of narrow pavement outside a warehouse wall. The single street lamp lit only a few yards on either side, cobbles and a dry gutter.

Jack stopped again, his brows drawn together, his eyes narrow. “I presume that is a euphemism for having an affair?”

“Probably, but I mean any kind of knowing,” Pitt said with rising urgency. “Jack, I have to find out who killed Maude Lamont, preferably show beyond any doubt at all that it was not Rose. Mocking her for attending séances will be nothing compared with what Voisey will see that the newspapers do to her if any secret emerges which suggests she committed murder to hide it.”

They were still under the light. Pitt saw Jack wince, and he seemed almost to shrink into himself. His shoulders drooped and the color ebbed from his face.

“It’s a hell of a mess, Thomas,” he said wearily. “The more I know of it the less I understand, and I can explain almost nothing at all to people like those.” He jerked a hand backwards to indicate the crowd near the dockside, now out of sight beyond the jutting mass of the warehouse.

Pitt did not ask him to explain; he knew he was going to.

“I used to imagine the election rested on some kind of argument,” Jack went on, starting to walk again. Ahead of them, the Goat and Compasses public house was glowing invitingly in the rapidly thickening dusk. “It’s all emotion,” he went on. “Feeling, not thought. I don’t even know if I want us to win . . . as a party, I mean. Of course I want power! Without it we can’t do anything. We might as well pack up and leave the field to the opposition!” He glanced at Pitt quickly. “We were the first country in the world to be industrialized. We manufacture millions of pounds worth of goods every year, and the money that earns pays most of our population.”

Pitt waited for the rest of it after they entered the Goat and Compasses, found a table and Jack sank into a chair and requested a large ale. Pitt fetched his usual cider and returned with both tankards.

Jack drank for several moments before continuing. “More and more goods all the time. If we are to survive, then we need to sell all those goods to someone!”

Pitt had a sudden perception where Jack was reaching. “The Empire,” he said quietly. “Are we back to Home Rule again?”

“More than that,” Jack replied. “We’re on the whole moral subject of should we have an empire at all!”

“Bit late for that, isn’t it?” Pitt asked dryly.

“Several hundred years. As I said, it isn’t based on thought. If we divest ourselves of the Empire now, who do we sell all our goods to? France and Germany and the rest of Europe, not to mention America, are all manufacturing now as well.” He bit his lip. “The goods are growing more and the markets less. It’s a wonderful ideal to give it all back, but if we lose our markets, untold numbers of our own people will starve. If the country’s economy is ruined there’ll be no one with the power to help them, for all the good intentions in the world.” A wet glass slipped from someone’s hand and splintered on the floor. They cursed fluently. A woman laughed too loudly at a joke.

Jack gave an abrupt, angry little gesture. “And try campaigning by telling people, ‘Vote for me and I’ll free you of the Empire you are so against. Of course, unfortunately it will cost you your jobs, your homes, even your town. The factories will go out of business because there’ll be too few customers being courted to buy too many goods. The shops will close, and the factories and the mills. But it’s a high-minded thing to do, and must surely be morally right!’ “

“Are our manufactured goods not competitive against the rest of the world?” Pitt asked.

“The world doesn’t need them.” Jack picked up the second half of his beer. “They’re making their own. Can you see anybody voting you in on that?” He raised his eyebrows, his eyes wide. “Or do you think we should tell them we won’t, and then do it anyway? Lie to them all in the name of moral righteousness! Isn’t it up to them whether they want to save their souls at that price?”

Pitt said nothing.

Jack did not expect an answer. “It’s all in the uses and balances of power, isn’t it?” he went on softly, staring into the distance of the crowded tavern. “Can you pick up the sword without cutting yourself? Someone must. But do you know how to use it any better than the next man? Don’t you believe anything enough to fight for it? And what are you worth if you don’t?” He looked at Pitt again. “Imagine not caring for anything sufficiently to take a risk for it! You’d lose even what you had. I can imagine what Emily thinks of that.” He stared down at the mug in his hand, smiling a trifle twistedly. Then suddenly he looked up at Pitt. “Mind, I’d sooner face Emily than Charlotte.”

Pitt winced, a new set of images in his mind, racing away, one melting into another. For an instant he missed Charlotte so much it was a physical ache. He had sent her away to be safe, but he was not stepping forward to fight some noble battle by choice. Looking at it now with hindsight, if he could have evaded Voisey, perhaps he would have. “Are you thinking of what will happen if you are given office?” he said suddenly.

A swift color stained Jack’s cheeks, making a lie impossible. “Not exactly. They asked me to join the Inner Circle. Of course I won’t!” He spoke a little too quickly, his eyes fixed on Pitt’s. “But it was very clearly pointed out to me, if I were not with them, then my opponents would be. You can’t step outside it all . . .”

Pitt felt as if someone had opened the doors onto a winter night. “Who was it that asked you?” he said softly.

Jack shook his head, only a tiny movement. “I can’t tell you.”

It was on the edge of Pitt’s tongue to demand if it had been Charles Voisey, but he remembered at the last moment that Jack did not know what had happened in Whitechapel, and for his own safety it was better it should remain so. Or was it? He looked at Jack now, sitting at the other side of the table with the beer tankard between his hands, his expression still carrying some of the charm and a kind of innocence he had had when they had first met. He had been so worldly wise in the manners and rules of society, but naive of the truly darker alleys of life, the violence of the mind. The facile betrayals of country house parties, the selfishness of the idle, was an uncomplicated thing compared with the evil Pitt had seen. Would knowledge be a greater protection? Or a greater danger? If Voisey guessed Jack was aware of his position as leader of the Inner Circle, it might mark Jack as another he had to destroy!

And yet if Jack did not know, was Pitt leaving him without shield against the seduction of twisted reason? Was Jack more than just another Liberal candidate? Disarmed, was he also another way to wound Pitt? Corruption would be infinitely more satisfying than mere defeat.

Or perhaps it was coincidental, and Pitt was creating his own demons?

He pushed his chair back and stood up, drinking the last of his cider and setting the glass down. “Come on. We’ve both got a long way to go home, and there’ll be all sorts of traffic on the bridges at this time of night. Don’t forget Rose Serracold.”

“Do you think she killed that woman, Thomas?” Jack climbed to his feet also, ignoring the dregs of his ale.

Pitt did not answer until they had pushed their way through the crowd and were outside in the street, which was almost completely dark.

“It was she, General Kingsley, or the third person, who kept his identity secret,” Pitt replied.

“Then it was the third person!” Jack said instantly. “Why would any honest man hide his identity over what is an eccentric pursuit, perhaps a trifle absurd, even pathetic, but quite respectable and far from any kind of crime?” His voice picked up enthusiasm. “There was obviously more to it! He was probably slipping back after the others left and having an affair with her. Perhaps she blackmailed him, and he killed her to keep her quiet. What better way to conceal his visits than in the open, going to a séance with other people. He’s looking for his great-grandfather, or whoever. Foolish, but innocent.”

“Apparently he wasn’t looking for anyone in particular. He appeared to be a skeptic.”

“Better still! He’s trying to discredit her, prove her a fraud. That shouldn’t be difficult. The very fact that he didn’t expose her suggests another motive.”

“Perhaps,” Pitt agreed as they passed under the street lamp again. The wind was rising a little, blowing up from the river, carrying loose sheets of old newspapers, drifting over the cobbles and settling again. There were beggars in the doorways; it was too early to huddle down for the night. A street woman already kept an eye hopeful for custom. The air was sour in the throat as they walked abreast towards the bridge.

Pitt slept badly. The silence in the house was oppressive, an emptiness, not a peace. He woke late with a headache and was sitting at the kitchen table when the doorbell rang. He stood up and went in his stocking feet to answer it.

Tellman stood on the step looking cold although the morning was mild and the high clouds were already thinning. By midday it would be bright and hot.

“What is it?” Pitt asked, stepping back in tacit invitation. “Judging by your face, nothing good.”

Tellman stepped in, frowning, his lantern jaw set tight and hard. He glanced around as if for a moment he had forgotten that Gracie would not be there. He looked forlorn, as if he too had been abandoned.

Pitt followed him back to the kitchen. “What is it?” he repeated as Tellman went to the far side of the table and sat down, ignoring the kettle and not even looking for cake or biscuits.

“We might have found the man written in the diary as a pic-ture . . . what did you say . . . a cartouche?” he replied, his voice flat, struggling to keep all expression out of it, leaving Pitt to make all his own judgments.

“Oh?”

The silence in the room was heavy. A dog was barking somewhere in the distance, and Pitt could hear the slithering sound of a bag of coal being emptied into a cellar chute next door. He felt a curious, sinking sensation. There was a premonition of tragedy in Tellman’s face, as if already a weight of darkness had settled inside him.

Tellman looked up. “He fits the description,” he said quietly. “Height, age, build, hair, even voice, so the informant says. I suppose he would, or Superintendent Wetron wouldn’t have passed it on to us.”

“What makes him think it’s this man rather than any of a thousand others who also fit the description?” Pitt asked. “All we have is middle height, probably in his sixties, neither thin nor fat, gray hair. There must be thousands of men like that, tens of thousands within train distance of Southampton Row.” He leaned forward across the table. “What is the rest, Tellman? Why this man?”

Tellman did not blink. “Because he’s a retired professor, apparently, who just lost his wife after a long illness. All their children died young. He has nobody else, and he’s taken it very hard. Sort of . . . started behaving oddly, wandering around talking to young women, trying to recapture the past. His dead children, I suppose.” He looked wretched, as if he had been caught intruding on someone’s acute private embarrassment, like a voyeur. “He’s got himself talked about . . . a bit.”

“Where does he live?” Pitt asked unhappily. Why on earth did Wetron think this unfortunate man had anything to do with Maude Lamont’s death? “Is it near Southampton Row?”

“No,” Tellman said quickly. “Teddington.”

Pitt thought he had misheard. Teddington was a village miles up the Thames, beyond Kew, beyond even Richmond. “Where did you say?”

“Teddington,” Tellman repeated. “He could come in on the train quite easily.”

“Why on earth should he?” Pitt asked incredulously. “Aren’t spirit mediums common enough? Why Maude Lamont? She’s rather expensive for a retired teacher, isn’t she?”

“That’s it.” Tellman was totally miserable. “He’s still noted as a deep thinker and very highly respected. Writes the definitive textbooks on some things. Obscure, but then it would be, to most of us. But his own people think the world of him.”

“Having the means doesn’t explain coming all the way into the city to consult a spirit medium whose sessions go on till nearly midnight,” Pitt argued.

Tellman took in a deep breath. “It might if you were a senior sort of clergyman whose reputation rested on your insight into the Christian faith.” Again the pity and contempt struggled in his face. “If you took to looking for answers from women who spit up eggs and cheesecloth and tell you it’s ghosts, I should think you’d be looking to go as far away from home as possible. Personally, I’d want it to be another country! I’m not surprised he came and went by the garden door, and wouldn’t even tell Miss Lamont his name.”

Suddenly it was tragically clear to Pitt. It answered all the anomalies of secrecy, evasion, and why he was so frightened of anyone guessing his identity that he would not even name those spirits he wanted to find. It was tragic, yet so fallible and, with a little imagination, easily understood. He was an old man left bereaved of all things he had loved. The final blow of his wife’s death had been too much for his balance. Even the strongest have a dark night of the soul somewhere in the long journey of life.

Tellman was watching him, waiting for his response.

“I’ll go to see him,” Pitt said unhappily. “What’s his name, and where in Teddington does he live?”

“Udney Road, just a few hundred yards from the railway station. London and South West Line, that is.”

“And his name?”

“Francis Wray,” Tellman replied, watching Pitt’s eyes.

Pitt thought of the cartouche with its bent letter inside the circle, like a reversed f. Now he understood more of Tellman’s unhappiness and why he could not cast it aside, much as he would prefer to. “I see,” he acknowledged.

Tellman opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. There really was nothing to say that they did not both know already.

“What have your men found on the other clients?” Pitt asked after a moment or two.

“Nothing very much,” Tellman replied dourly. “All kinds of people; about the only thing they have in common is enough money and time to spend chasing after signs of those already dead. Some of them are lonely, some confused and needing to feel their husband or father still knows what’s going on and loves them.” His voice was getting lower and lower. “A lot of them are just interested, looking for a bit of excitement, want to be entertained. Nobody has a grudge worth doing something about.”

“Did you learn anything about the other ones who came through the garden door from Cosmo Place?”

“No.” There was a flicker of resentment in his eyes. “Don’t know any way of finding them. Where would we begin?”

“About how much did Maude Lamont earn for this?”

Tellman’s eyes were wide. “About four times as much as I do, even with promotion!”

Pitt knew exactly what Tellman would earn. He could imagine the volume of business Maude Lamont could take if she worked four or five days a week. “That is still rather less than running that house must have cost her, and maintaining a wardrobe like hers.”

“Blackmail?” Tellman said without hesitation. His face tightened to a mask of disgust. “It isn’t enough she dupes them, she has to make them pay for silence over their secrets?” He was not looking for any answer, he simply needed to find words for his bitterness. “There are some people who look to be murdered so hard it makes you wonder how they escaped it before!”

“It doesn’t make any difference to the fact that we must find out who killed her,” Pitt said quietly. “The fact of murder cannot go unanswered. I wish I could say that justice would always visit every act fairly and apportion punishment or mercy as it was deserved. I know it won’t. It will be mistaken in both directions. But allowing private vengeance, or escape from anything except threat to life, would be the gateway to anarchy.”

“I know!” Tellman said curtly, angry with Pitt for pointing out to him the helplessness he already understood quite clearly, as if he could not have found the words so easily to express it.

“Anything more from the maid?” Pitt ignored his tone.

“Nothing helpful. Seems a sensible sort of woman on the whole, but I think she may know more about those séances and how they were rigged than she’s telling us. Had to. She was the only one close. All the other staff, cook and laundress and gardener, all came in by the day and were gone before the private sessions ever began.”

“Unless she was equally deceived?” Pitt suggested.

“She’s a sensible woman,” Tellman argued, his voice sharper as he repeated himself. “She wouldn’t be taken in by tricks like pedals and mirrors and oil of phosphorous, all that kind of thing.”

“Most of us have a tendency to believe what we want to,” Pitt replied. “Especially if it matters very much. Sometimes the need is so great we don’t dare disbelieve, or it would break our dreams, and without them we die. Sense has little to do with it. It is survival.”

Tellman stared at him. He seemed on the point of arguing again, then he changed his mind and remained silent. It obviously had not occurred to him that Lena Forrest might also have doubts and loves, people now dead who were woven into the meaning of her life. He flushed very faintly at his omission, and Pitt liked him the better for it.

Pitt stood up slowly. “I’ll go and see this Mr. Wray,” he said. “Teddington! I suppose Maude Lamont was good enough to bring someone all the way from Teddington to Southampton Row?”

Tellman did not answer.

Pitt wasted no time thinking about how to approach the Reverend Francis Wray when he should find him. It was going to be wretched no matter what he said. It was best to do it before apprehension made him clumsier and even more artificial.

He made his way to the railway station and enquired about the best route to Teddington, and was told that he would have to change trains, but that the next train to begin his journey was due to leave in eleven minutes. He purchased a through ticket, thanked the man, and went to get a newspaper from the vendor at the entrance. Most of the space was taken up with election issues and the usual virulent cartoons. He did notice an advertisement for the upcoming exhibition of costermongers’ ponies and donkeys to be held at the People’s Palace in Mile-End Road in a couple of weeks’ time.

On the platform with him were two elderly women and a family obviously on a day out. The children were excited, hopping up and down and unable to stop chattering. He wondered how Daniel, Jemima and Edward were enjoying Devon, if they liked the country, or if they found it strange, if they missed their usual friends. Did they miss him? Or was it all too full of adventure? And of course Charlotte was with them.

He had been away from them too often lately, first in Whitechapel, and now this! He had hardly spoken to either Daniel or Jemima in a couple of months, not with time to reach towards the more difficult subjects, to listen to what was unsaid as well as the surface words. When this matter of Voisey was over, whether they knew who had killed Maude Lamont or not, he must make sure he took a day or two every so often just to spend with them. Narraway owed him at least that much, and he could not live the rest of his life running away from Voisey. That would be giving him victory without even the effort of a fight.

He dared not even think too closely of Charlotte; missing her left an ache in him too big to fill with thought or action. Even dreams left an ache that hurt too much.

The train came in in a roar of steam and the clatter of iron wheels on iron rails, with flying smuts, the smell and heat of power, and the moment of parting with her was as sharp as if she had left barely a moment ago. He had to force himself into the present, to open the carriage door and hold it for two elderly women, then follow them up the step and inside and find a seat.

It was not a long journey. Forty minutes and he was in Teddington. As Tellman had told him, Udney Road was only a block away from the station, and a few minutes’ walk took him to the neat gate of number four. He stared at it in the sun for several moments, breathing in the scents of a dozen flowers and the sweet, clean odor of hot earth newly watered. It was so full of memory, so domestic, that for an instant it overwhelmed him.

At a glance the garden looked random, almost overgrown, but he knew the years of care that had gone into its nurture and upkeep. There were no dead heads, nothing out of place, no weeds. It was a blaze of color, new with long familiar, exotic and indigenous side by side. Simply staring at it told him much of the man who had planted it. Was it Francis Wray himself, or an outdoor servant paid for the task? If it were the latter, whatever he earned, his real reward was in his art.

Pitt unfastened the gate and went in, closing it behind him, and walked up the path. A black cat lay stretched on the windowsill in the sun, a tortoiseshell strolled through the dappled shade of late crimson snapdragons. Pitt prayed he was here on a fool’s errand.

He knocked on the front door, and was admitted by a girl in a maid’s uniform, but who could not have been more than fifteen years old.

“Is this the home of Mr. Francis Wray?” Pitt enquired.

“Yes sir.” She was obviously concerned because he was someone she did not know. Perhaps Wray was usually visited only by fellow clergymen or members of the local community. “Sir . . . if you’d wait there, I’ll go an’ see if ’e’s at ’ome.” She stepped back, then did not know whether to ask him in, leave him on the step, or even close the door in case he might have designs on the gleaming horse brasses hanging behind her in the hall.

“May I wait in the garden?” he asked, glancing back at the flowers.

Her face flooded with relief. “Yes sir. ’Course yer can. ’E keeps it a real treat, don’t ’e?” She blinked suddenly as tears came to her eyes. Pitt gathered that Wray had thrown himself into its care since his bereavement. Perhaps it was a physical labor that eased some of the emotion inside. Flowers were a kind of company that absorbed all your ministrations, yet gave back only beauty, asking no questions and intruding nowhere.

He had not long to stand in the sun watching the tortoiseshell cat before Wray himself came out of the front door and along the short path. He was of average height, at least four inches shorter than Pitt, although in his youth he might have been less so. Now his shoulders sank, his back was a little bent, but it was his face that carried the indelible marks of inner pain. There were shadows around his eyes, deep lines from nose to mouth and more than one razor nick on his papery skin.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he said quietly in a voice of remarkable beauty. “Mary Ann tells me you wish to see me. I am Francis Wray. What may I do for you?”

For a moment Pitt even thought of lying. What he was about to do could only be painful and grossly intrusive. The thought vanished again. This man could be “Cartouche,” and if nothing more, he could supply another recollection not only of the evening, but of the other occasions on which he had been at Maude Lamont’s with Rose Serracold and General Kingsley. With a lifetime spent in the church, surely he was a profound observer of human nature?

“Good afternoon, Mr. Wray,” he replied. “My name is Thomas Pitt.” He hated approaching the subject of Maude Lamont’s death, but he had no other reason for taking Wray’s time or intruding into his home. But not all the truth was necessary yet. “I am endeavoring to be of some assistance in a recent tragedy which has occurred in the city, a death in most unpleasant circumstances.”

Wray’s face tightened momentarily, but the sympathy in his eyes was unfeigned. “Then you had better come in, Mr. Pitt. If you have come from London, perhaps you have not had luncheon yet? I’m sure Mary Ann could find enough for both of us, if simple fare would suffice for you?”

Pitt had no choice but to accept. He needed to speak with Wray. To have gone in but refused the hospitality would have been churlish and hurt the man’s feelings for no reason but to ease his own conscience, and quite artificially. Putting distance between them would not make his act any less intrusive or his suspicions less ugly. “Thank you,” he accepted, following Wray back up the path and in through the front door, hoping he would not be placing more pressure on young Mary Ann.

He glanced at the hall as he passed through it towards the study, waiting a moment while Wray spoke to Mary Ann. Other than the horse brasses there was an elaborate brass stick and umbrella stand, a carved wooden settle that looked at a glance to be Tudor, and several very lovely drawings of bare trees.

Mary Ann scurried off to the kitchen and Wray returned, seeing the direction Pitt was looking.

“You like them?” he said gently, his voice charged with emotion.

“Yes, very much,” Pitt answered. “The beauty of a bare trunk is quite as great as that of a tree in full leaf.”

“You can see that?” For an instant Wray’s face lit with a smile, like a shaft of sunlight on a spring day. Then it vanished again. “My late wife did them. She had a gift for seeing a thing as it really is.”

“And a gift to translate that beauty for others,” Pitt responded, then wished he had not. He was here to find out if this man had gone to a spirit medium in a bid to recapture something of those he had loved, but in contradiction of all that his life and faith had taught him. Pitt might even have to entertain the idea that Wray had murdered the confidence artist who had betrayed that trust.

“Thank you,” Wray murmured, turning quickly aside to give himself a moment’s privacy as he led the way to his study, a small room with too many books, a plaster bust of Dante on a plinth, a watercolor painting of a young woman with brown hair smiling out shyly at the viewer. There was a silver vase of roses of all colors mingled together balanced on the desk, rather too near the edge. Pitt would have liked to read the titles of a score or so of the books to see what they were, but he had time to notice only three: Flavius Josephus’s Histories, Thomas à Kempis, and a commentary on Saint Augustine.

“Please sit down and tell me how I can help,” Wray offered. “I have plenty of time, and nothing in the world more useful to do with it.” He attempted a smile, but it was more of warmth than any happiness within him.

It was no longer possible to evade the issue entirely. “Are you by any chance acquainted with Major General Roland Kingsley?” Pitt began.

Wray thought for a moment. “I seem to recall the name.”

“A tall gentleman, returned from military service largely in Africa,” Pitt elaborated.

Wray relaxed. “Ah yes, of course. Zulu Wars, wasn’t it? Served with great distinction, as I recall. No, I’ve never met him, but I have heard him referred to. I am very sorry to hear he has had another tragedy. He lost his only son, I do know that.” His eyes were bright and seemed almost blind for a moment, but he controlled his voice, and his attention was set entirely upon what he could do to assist Pitt.

“This is not about his bereavement,” Pitt said quickly, before thinking as to whether he was contradicting himself or not. “He was present shortly before someone died . . . someone to whom he had been going in an effort to find solace for his son’s death . . . or the manner of it.” He swallowed, watching Wray’s face. “A spirit medium.” Had he read of it in the newspapers? They were mostly overrun by coverage of the election.

Wray frowned, his expression darkening. “You mean one of those people who claim to be in touch with the spirits of the dead, and take money from the vulnerable in order to produce voices and signs?”

He could hardly have more clearly worded his contempt for them. Did it spring from his religious views or his own betrayal? There was real anger in his eyes; the gentle, courteous man of a few moments ago was temporarily gone. Perhaps noticing Pitt’s attention, he went on. “It is a very dangerous thing to do, Mr. Pitt. I would wish no one harm, but it is better that such activities cease, although I would not have had it by violent means.”

Pitt was puzzled. “Dangerous, Mr. Wray? Perhaps I misled you. She was killed by entirely human means, there was nothing occult about it. It was your possible knowledge of the other people who were present that I wanted, not of the divine.”

Wray sighed. “You are a man of your time, Mr. Pitt. Science is the idol we worship now, and Mr. Darwin, not God, the begetter of our race. But the power of good and evil is still there, whatever the mask of the day we set over them. You assume that this medium had no powers to touch beyond the grave, and you are probably right, but that does not mean to say that they do not exist.”

Pitt felt a chill in the warmth of the room and knew it was inside himself. He had been too quick to like Wray. He was old, charming, gentle and generous in manner, and he was lonely and he had invited Pitt in to luncheon. He loved his garden and his cats. He also believed in the possibilities of calling up the spirits of the dead, and was deeply and profoundly angry with those who attempted to do so. Pitt must at the very least find out why.

“It was the sin of Saul,” Wray continued earnestly, as if Pitt had spoken his thoughts aloud.

Pitt was completely blank. Nothing returned from schoolroom memories.

“King Saul of the Bible,” Wray said with sudden gentleness, almost apology. “He sought the ghost of the Prophet Samuel through the witch of Endor.”

“Oh.” It was the intensity in Wray’s face, the fixity of his eyes, that held Pitt. There was an almost uncontrollable emotion in the man. Pitt was compelled to ask him the next question. “And did he find him?”

“Oh yes, of course,” Wray replied. “But it was the beginning of that seed of defiance in his nature, the pride against God which in the end was rage and envy, and sin unto death.” His face was intensely earnest, a tiny muscle in his temple flickering uncontrollably. “Never underestimate the danger of seeking to know what should not be known, Mr. Pitt. It carries with it a monstrous evil. Shun it as you would a plague pit!”

“I have no desire whatever to enquire into such things,” Pitt said honestly, and then realized with a rush of gratitude and guilt how easy it was to say that when he had no insupportable grief, no loneliness that wrapped around him as this man had, no real temptation. He could not bear even to think of it, to believe that the threat in Voisey’s eyes was anything but emotion, the rage at his defeat in Whitechapel, blind, incapable of action.

“I hope that if I lost someone profoundly dear to me I would seek my comfort in the faith of a resurrection according to the promises of God,” he said to Wray, embarrassed to find his voice trembling. A sudden shivering cold seized hold of him as thoughts of Charlotte and his children forced themselves into his mind, without him, and in a place he had never even seen. Were they safe? He had not heard from them yet! Was he protecting them the best way, and was it good enough? What if it wasn’t? What if Voisey did take that way to exact his vengeance? It might be crass, obvious, unrefined and too quick in its execution, dangerous for him—but it would also be the most exquisitely painful for Pitt . . . and final. If they were dead, what would there be left of value in life?

He looked at the elderly, broken man in front of him, so filled with his loss it seemed to bleed out of him into the air of the room, and Pitt could feel the ache of it himself. In such a situation would he be different? Was it not foolish and unbelievably arrogant, the sign of complacent stupidity, to be so sure that he would never turn to mediums, tarot cards, tea leaves, anything at all that would fill the void in which he dwelt alone in a universe crowded with strangers he could touch in no way of the heart?

“At least I hope so,” he said again. “But of course I don’t know.”

Wray’s eyes filled with tears which spilled down his cheeks without his blinking. “Do you have family, Mr. Pitt?”

“Yes. I have a wife and two children.” Was it compounding the pain to tell him that?

“You are fortunate. Say to them all that you mean, while there is time for you. Never let a day go by without thanking God for what He has given you.”

Pitt struggled to bring his mind back to his reason for being here. He should satisfy himself once and for all that Wray could not have been the man represented by the cartouche in Maude Lamont’s diary.

“I will try,” he promised. “Unfortunately, I still need to do what I can to understand the death of Maude Lamont and prevent the wrong person from being blamed for having killed her.”

Wray looked at him with incomprehension. “If it was unlawful, surely that is a matter for the police, distressing as that is. I understand perfectly that you may not wish to have them involved, but I am afraid you have no moral choice.”

Pitt felt a stab of shame at willfully misleading this man. “They are already involved, Mr. Wray. But one of the people present on that last evening is the wife of a man standing for a seat in Parliament, and a third is someone who wishes to keep his identity a secret, and so far has succeeded.”

“And you wish to know who he is?” Wray said in a moment of startling clarity. “Even if I knew, Mr. Pitt, if it were told me as a matter of confidence, I could not pass on that secret to you. The best I could do would be to counsel him with all my strength to be honest with you. But then I would already have counseled him with every argument and plea within my power to have nothing to do with such an evil and dangerous practice as meddling with knowledge of the dead. The only righteous knowledge of such things is gained through prayer.” He shook his head a little. “Why is it you were led to believe that I might be of service to you? I do not understand that.”

Pitt improvised with a flash of invention. “You have a name for knowledge on the subject, and for your powerful feelings against it. I thought you might have some information on the nature of mediums, particularly Miss Lamont, which would help. She has a very wide reputation.”

Wray sighed. “I am afraid my knowledge, such as it is, is general and not particular. And lately my memory is not as keen as it used to be. I forget things, and I regret to say I have a tendency to repeat myself. I tell the jokes that I like rather too many times. People are very kind, and I would almost prefer that they were not. Now I never know if I have already said before what I am saying now, or if I haven’t.”

Pitt smiled. “You have said nothing twice to me!”

“I have not told you any jokes,” Wray said sadly. “Nor have we had luncheon yet, and no doubt I will show you every flower at least twice.”

“A flower is worth looking at at least twice,” Pitt replied.

A few moments later Mary Ann came in to tell them somewhat nervously that the meal was ready, and they removed to the small dining room, where she had obviously gone to some trouble to make it look even more attractive. There was a china jug of flowers in the center of the table and a carefully ironed cloth set with blue-ringed china and old, well-polished silver. She served a thick vegetable soup with crusty bread, butter and a soft, crumbling white country cheese, and a homemade pickle that Pitt guessed to be rhubarb. It all made him realize how much he missed the domestic touches in his own home with Charlotte and Gracie both away.

Pudding was plum pie with clotted cream. He refrained only with the greatest difficulty from actually asking for more.

Wray seemed to be happy to eat in silence. Perhaps simply to have someone opposite him at the table was sufficient.

Afterwards they rose to go and admire the garden. It was only then that Pitt saw on the side table a folder advertising the powers of Maude Lamont, in which she offered to bring back to the bereaved the spirits of loved ones departed and to give them the opportunity to say all those precious and important things that untimely death had taken from them.

Wray was ahead of him, walking out into the sun, dazzling as it was reflected off the blaze of flowers and the clean white of the painted fence. Almost stumbling on the sill of the French doors, Pitt went after him.