Southampton Row

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

The air blowing down off the moor was sweet, barely stirring the leaves of the apple tree in the cottage garden, and the silence and darkness were unbroken. It ought to have been a perfect night for deep, untroubled sleep. But Charlotte lay awake, aware of her loneliness, ears straining as if expecting to hear a sound, a footfall somewhere, a loose stone disturbed on the track beyond the gate, perhaps wheels, or more likely simply a horse’s hoof striking a sudden hard surface.

When at last she did hear it, the reality shot through her blood like fire. She threw back the bedcovers and stumbled the mere three steps to the window, and peered out. In the starlight there was nothing but a variance of depth in the shadows. Anyone could have been there, and she would not have seen.

She stayed until her eyes ached, but there was no movement, just another slight sound, no more than a rustle. A fox? A stray cat, or a night hunting bird? She had seen an owl at dusk yesterday evening.

She crept back to bed, but still lay awake, waiting.

Emily also found it hard to sleep, but it was guilt that disturbed her, and a decision she did not want to make but knew now was inevitable. Of all the possibilities she had considered for the fear that haunted Rose, insanity had never been among them. She had thought of an unfortunate romance before Aubrey, or even after, possibly a lost child, someone in her family with whom she had quarreled and who had died before she had had the chance to repair the rift. Not once had she imagined something as terrible as madness.

She could not commit herself to telling Pitt, and yet in her heart she knew she had to, she was just not prepared yet to admit it to herself. She still wanted to believe that somehow she would be able to protect Rose from . . . what? Injustice? Judgment that knew only some of the facts? The truth?

She toyed with the idea of going to Pitt in the morning, an hour or so after breakfast, when she had had time to compose herself, think exactly what she was going to say and how to word it.

But honesty compelled her to acknowledge that if she waited, then Pitt would almost certainly have left the house, and she was only thinking of doing it so she could pretend to herself that she had tried, when in actuality she had quite deliberately gone when she knew it was too late.

So she rose at six, when her maid brought her the requested cup of hot tea, which made her feel rather more like facing the day. She dressed and was out of the house by half past seven. Once you have made up your mind to do something that you know will be difficult and unpleasant, it is better to do it immediately, before too much thinking of it can fill your mind with the fears of all that can hurt and go wrong.

Pitt was startled to see her. He stood in the doorway in Keppel Street in shirtsleeves and stocking feet, his hair untidy as ever. “Emily!” His concern was instant. “Has something happened? Are you all right?”

“Yes, something has happened,” she replied. “And I am not sure whether I will be all right or not.”

He stood aside, inviting her in, allowing her to lead the way to the kitchen. She sat down on one of the hard-backed chairs, sparing only a glance at the familiar surroundings, so subtly different without either Charlotte or Gracie there. The room had a vaguely unused feel, as if only the necessities were being done, no baking of cakes, no smell of richness or warmth, too little linen on the airing rail strung up to the ceiling. Only Archie and Angus, stretching themselves awake on the hearth of the cooking range, looking totally comfortable.

“Tea?” Pitt asked, indicating the pot on the table and the kettle whistling gently on the back of the hob. “Toast?”

“No, thank you,” she declined.

He sat down, ignoring his own half-finished drink. “What is it?”

She had passed the point of changing her mind . . . well, almost. There was still time to say something else. He was looking at her, waiting. Perhaps he would draw it out of her whether she wanted him to or not. If she hesitated long enough he might do that, and relieve her of the guilt.

Except that was a lie to herself. She was here. At least do what needed doing with some integrity! She raised her eyes and stared at him. “I saw Rose Serracold yesterday evening and talked with her as if we were alone. It can be like that sometimes at a big party, find yourself sort of . . . islanded in noise, so no one overhears you. I bullied her into telling me why she went to Maude Lamont.” She stopped, remembering how she had forced Rose into an emotional corner. Bullied was the right word.

Pitt waited without prompting her.

“She is afraid her father died insane—“ She stopped abruptly, seeing Pitt’s amazement, and then instant horror. “She is terrified that she might have inherited the same taint in the blood,” she went on quietly, as if whispering could lessen the pain of it. “She wanted to ask her mother’s spirit if it was true, if he really was mad. But she didn’t have the chance. Maude Lamont was killed too soon.”

“I see.” He sat staring at her without moving. “We can ask General Kingsley to confirm that at least she had not contacted her mother by the time she left.”

She was startled. “You think she might have gone back afterwards and had a private séance?”

“Someone went back, whatever for,” he pointed out.

“Not Rose!” she said with more conviction than she felt. “She wanted her alive!” She leaned forward across the table. “She’s still so afraid she can hardly keep control of herself, Thomas. She doesn’t know yet! She’s hunting for another medium so she can go on searching.”

The kettle shrilled more insistently on the hob, and he ignored it. “Or Maude Lamont told her something she doesn’t want to believe,” he said gently. “And she is terrified that it will be discovered.”

She looked at him, wishing he did not understand her so well, read in her the racing thoughts she would so much rather have concealed. And yet if she could dupe him that would not be any comfort, either. She had always believed that her own skill with people was her greatest asset. She could charm and beguile and so often make people do what she wished them to without their even being aware that what they embraced so eagerly was actually her idea.

And the use of it left her oddly dissatisfied. She had realized that more and more lately. She did not want to see further than Jack could, or be stronger or cleverer than he was. Ahead was a very lonely place. One had to take the burden sometimes, it was part of love, part of responsibility—but only sometimes, not always. And it was a pleasure only because it was right, fair, an act of giving, not because it afforded any comfort to oneself.

So while she resented Pitt’s pressure on her to tell him more than she wished to, she also felt a sense of comfort that she could not fob him off with half an answer. She needed him to be cleverer than she was, because she had not the power to help Rose, or even to be certain what help would be. She might only make it worse. She realized now that she was not absolutely sure that Rose was not touched with the edge of madness, and could in her panic have thought Maude Lamont knew her secret and would endanger her, and then Aubrey. She remembered how quickly Rose had turned on her when she was afraid. Friendship had vanished like water dropped on the hot surface of a griddle, evaporated before her sight.

“She swore she did not kill her,” she said aloud.

“And you want to believe her,” Pitt finished the unsaid thought. He stood up and went to the stove, moving the kettle off the heat. He turned back to face her. “I hope you are right. But somebody did. I don’t want it to be General Kingsley, either.”

“The anonymous person,” Emily concluded. “You still don’t know who he was . . . do you?”

“No.”

She looked at him. Something was closed and hurt in his eyes. He was not lying. She had never known him to do that. But there was a world of feeling and of fact that he was not willing to tell her.

“Thank you, Emily,” he said, coming back to the table. “Did she say if anyone else knew of this fear? Does Aubrey know?”

“No.” She was quite certain. “Aubrey doesn’t know, and if you are thinking Maude Lamont blackmailed her, I don’t think so.” She was aware of a sudden lurch of anxiety as she said it, and that it was only partially true. Could Pitt see that in her face?

He gave a slight shrug. “Perhaps Maude Lamont didn’t know yet,” he said dryly. “Someone may have affected a very lucky escape for Rose.”

“Aubrey doesn’t know, Thomas! He really doesn’t!”

“Probably not.”

He walked with her to the front door, collecting his jacket on the way, and outside he accepted a lift in her carriage as far as Oxford Street, where she turned west to go back home. He went south towards the War Office, to again search its records for whatever it was that had forced General Kingsley to attack the political party whose values he had always believed. Surely it had to have some connection with the death of his son or some action shortly before it.

He had been there over an hour, reading one report after another, when he realized that he still had no flavor of the man, no sense of anything other than a torrent of formal, fleshless words. It was like seeing the skeleton of a man and trying to imagine the look of his face, his voice, his laughter, the way he moved. There was nothing here. Whatever it had been was covered over. He could read this all day and learn nothing.

He copied out the names of most of the other officers and men who had been at Mfolozi to see if any of them were here in London, and perhaps willing to tell him more than this. Then he thanked the clerk and left.

He had already given the cabbie the address of the first man on the list when he changed his mind, and gave Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould’s address instead. Perhaps it was an impertinence to call on her uninvited, but he had never found her unwilling to help in any cause in which she believed. And after Whitechapel, where they had shared not only the battle itself but a depth of emotion, a fear and a loss, and a victory at terrible price, there was a bond between them unlike any other.

Therefore it was with confidence that he presented himself at the front door of her house and told the maid who answered it that he wished to speak with Lady Vespasia on a matter of some urgency. He would await her convenience, however long that might be.

He was left in the morning room, but it proved to be only for a matter of minutes, then he was shown into her sitting room, which faced onto the garden and always seemed to be full of peace and a soft light, whatever the season or the weather.

She was wearing a shade of clover pink, so subtle it was hardly pink at all, and the usual pearls around her neck. She smiled to greet him, and held out her hand very slightly, not for him to take, merely as a gesture that he should come in.

“Good morning, Thomas. How pleasant to see you.” Her eyes searched his face. “I have been half expecting you ever since Emily called. Or perhaps ‘half hoping’ would be more accurate. Voisey is standing for Parliament.” She could not even say his name without the emotion thickening her voice. She had to be remembering Mario Corena, and the sacrifice which had cost Voisey so dearly.

“Yes, I know,” he said softly. He wished he could have spared her being aware of it, but she had never evaded anything in her life, and to protect her now would surely be the ultimate insult. “That is why I am here in London rather than with Charlotte in the country.”

“I am glad she is away.” Her face was bleak. “But what is it you believe you can do, Thomas? I don’t know much about Victor Narraway. I have asked, but either the people I spoke to know little themselves or they are not prepared to tell me.” She looked at him steadily. “Be very careful that you do not trust him more than is wise. Don’t assume that he has the concern for you, or the loyalty, that Captain Cornwallis had. He is not a straightforward man—”

“Do you know that?” Pitt said, cutting across her unintentionally.

She smiled very slightly, a gesture that barely moved her lips. “My dear Thomas, Special Branch is designed and created to catch anarchists, bombers, all kinds of men, and I suppose a few women, who plan in secret to overthrow our government. Some of them intend to replace it with another of their own choosing, others simply wish to destroy without the slightest idea what will follow. Some, of course, have loyalties to other countries. Can you imagine John Cornwallis organizing a force to prevent them before they succeed?”

“No,” Pitt admitted with a sigh. “He is brave and profoundly honest. He would expect to see the whites of their eyes before he would shoot.”

“He would invite them to surrender,” she amended. “Special Branch requires a devious man, subtle, full of imagination, a man seen only in the shadows, and never by the public. Do not forget that.”

Pitt was cold, even in the sun. “I think General Kingsley was being blackmailed by Maude Lamont, at least on the surface it was by her.”

“For money?” She was surprised.

“Possibly, but I think more likely to attack Aubrey Serracold in the newspapers, sensing his inexperience and the probability that he would react badly, damaging himself further.”

“Oh dear.” She shook her head very slightly.

“One of them killed her,” he continued. “Rose Serracold, General Kingsley, or the man denoted in her diary by a cartouche, a little drawing rather like a reversed small f with a semicircle over the top of it.”

“How curious. And have you any idea who he may be?”

“Superintendent Wetron believes he is an elderly professor of theology who lives in Teddington.”

Her eyes widened. “Why? That seems a very perverse thing for a religious man to do. Was he seeking to expose her as a fraud?”

“I don’t know. But I . . .” He hesitated, not sure how to explain either his feelings or his actions. “I really don’t believe it was he, but I am not certain. He recently lost his wife and is deeply grieved. He has a passion against spirit mediums. He believes they are evil, and acting contrary to the commandments of God.”

“And you are afraid that this man, deranged by his grief, may have taken it into his head to finish her intervention permanently?” she concluded. “Oh, Thomas, my dear, you are too softhearted for your profession. Sometimes very good men can make the most terrible mistakes, and bring untold misery while convinced they are bent upon the work of God. Not all the inquisitors of Spain were cruel or narrow-minded men, you know. Some truly believed they were saving the souls of those in their charge. They would be astounded if they knew how we perceived them now.” She shook her head. “Sometimes we see the world so differently from each other you would swear we could not possibly be speaking of the same existence. Have you never asked half a dozen witnesses to an event in the street, even the description of a person, and received such conflicting answers, told in all sincerity, that they cancel each other out entirely?”

“Yes, I have. But I still do not think he is guilty of having killed Maude Lamont.”

“You do not want to think it. What can I do to help you, more than simply listen?”

“I must discover who killed Maude Lamont, even though that is really Tellman’s job, because the people she blackmailed are part of the effort to discredit Serracold . . .”

Sadness and anger filled her eyes. “They have already succeeded, with the poor man’s own help. You will have to perform a miracle if you are to rescue him now.” Then she brightened. “Unless, of course, you can demonstrate that Voisey had a hand in it. If he obtained her murder . . .” She stopped. “I think that would be good fortune beyond our reach. He would not be so foolish. Above all, he is clever. But he will be behind the blackmail; it just depends how far behind! Can you prove that?”

He leaned forward a little. “I may be able to.” He saw her eyes shine, and he knew she was thinking of Mario Corena again. She could not weep. She had already shed all her tears for him, first in Rome in ‘48, then here in London only a few weeks ago. But the loss was still raw. Perhaps it always would be. “I need to know why Kingsley was being blackmailed,” he went on. “I think it was to do with the death of his son.” Briefly, he told her what he had learned, first about Kingsley himself and his part in the Zulu Wars, and then the ambush at Mfolozi, so soon after the heroism of Rorke’s Drift.

“I see,” she said when he had finished. “It is very hard to follow in the steps of a father or brother who has succeeded in the eyes of the world, most especially in the world of military courage. Many young men have thrown away their lives rather than be thought to fail in what was expected of them.” There was a weight of sadness in her voice, and memory sharp and painful in her eyes. Perhaps she was thinking of the Crimea, of Balaclava, and the Alma, or of Rorke’s Drift, Isandlwana, or the Indian Mutiny and God knew how many other wars and losses. Her memory might even have stretched back as far as her girlhood, and Waterloo.

“Aunt Vespasia . . . ?”

She brought herself back to the present with a jolt. “Of course,” she agreed. “It will not be too difficult for me to learn from one friend or another what really happened to young Kingsley at Mfolozi, but I think it hardly matters, except to his father. No doubt what was used to blackmail him was the possibility of a coward’s death. It did not have to be the fact. It is not only the wicked who run where no man pursues, it is also the vulnerable, those who care more than they are able to govern, and who have raw wounds they cannot defend.”

Pitt thought of Kingsley’s bent shoulders and the haggard lines of his face. It took a particular kind of sadism to torture a man in such a way for one’s own profit. For a moment he hated Voisey with a passion that would have exploded in physical violence, had he been there to lash out at.

“Of course it may be that the incident of his death is so blurred that the truth cannot be known, or a lie dismissed,” Vespasia went on. “But I shall do all I can to find out, and if it is of any ease at all, I shall inform General Kingsley of it.”

“Thank you.”

“Which is not a great deal of use in tying the blackmail to Voisey,” she continued with a trace of anger. “What hope have you of discovering the identity of this third person? I assume you know it is a man? You refer to him as ‘he.’ ”

“Yes. It is a man of late middle years, fair or gray hair, average height and build. He seems to be well educated.”

“Your theologian,” she said unhappily. “If he went to a spirit medium with the intent of proving her a fraud and unmasking her in front of her clients, that would not please Voisey very much. I think we may assume he could retaliate, perhaps with extreme pressure.”

That was impossible to argue against. Pitt remembered the look in Voisey’s eyes as they had passed each other in the House of Commons. Voisey forgot nothing and forgave nothing. Again Pitt found himself sitting in the light of the sun, and cold inside.

Vespasia was frowning.

“What is it?” he asked.

Her silver-gray eyes were troubled, her body not merely straight-backed with the disciplined posture of decades of self-control, but her shoulders stiff with an inner tension.

“I have given it much thought, Thomas, and I still do not understand why you were dismissed a second time from command of Bow Street . . .”

“Voisey!” he said with a bitterness that startled him. He had thought himself in control of his anger, his burning sense of injustice on the subject, but now it came back in a drowning wave.

“No,” she said, half under her breath. “No matter how much he may hate you, Thomas, he will never act against his own interest. That is his greatest strength. His head always governs his heart.” She stared straight ahead of her. “And it is not in his interest to have you in Special Branch, which is where he must have known you would go if dismissed from Bow Street again. In the police, unless he commits a crime, you have no jurisdiction in his affairs. If you involve yourself with him he can charge you with harassment and have you disciplined. But in Special Branch your duties are far more fluid. Special Branch is secret, not answerable to the public.” She turned to look at him. “Always keep your enemies where you can see them. He is not fool enough to forget that.”

“Then why would he do it?” he asked, confused by her logic.

“Perhaps it was not Voisey?” she said very carefully.

“Then who?” he asked. “Who else but the Inner Circle would have the power to go behind the Queen’s back and undo what she had done?” The thought was dark and frightening. He knew of no one else he had offended, and certainly no other secret societies with such tentacles winding into the heart of government.

“Thomas, how hard have you thought about the effect on the Inner Circle of Voisey’s knighthood, and the reason for it?” Vespasia asked.

“I hope it shattered his leadership,” he said honestly. He tried to swallow down his anger and the gall of disappointment inside him. “It hurts that it hasn’t.”

“Few of them are idealists,” she replied ruefully. “But have you considered that it might have fractured the power within the Circle? A rival leader who has arisen may have taken with him sufficient of the old Circle to form a new one.”

Pitt had not thought of it, and as the idea ballooned in his mind he saw all sorts of possibilities, dangerous to England but also exquisitely dangerous to Voisey himself. Voisey would know who the rival leader was, but would he ever be certain whose loyalty was where?

Vespasia saw all these thoughts in Pitt’s face. “Don’t rejoice yet,” she warned. “If I am right, then the rival is powerful, too, and no more a friend of yours than Voisey. It is not always true that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Is it not possible that it was he who removed you again from Bow Street, either because he believes you will be more of a thorn in Voisey’s flesh in Special Branch, possibly in time even destroy Voisey for him? Or else it matters to him to have Superintendent Wetron in charge of Bow Street rather than you?”

“Wetron in the Inner Circle?”

“Why not?”

There was no reason why not. The deeper it sank into his mind the more it clarified into a picture he could not disbelieve. There was an exhilaration to it, a beating of the blood as at the knowledge of danger, but there was fear as well. An open battle between the two leaders of the Inner Circle might leave many other victims in its wake.

He was still considering the implications of this when the maid appeared at the door looking alarmed.

“Yes?” Vespasia asked.

“M’lady, there’s a Mr. Narraway to see Mr. Pitt. He said he would wait, but that I was to interrupt you.” She did not apologize in words, but it was there in her gestures and her voice.

“Indeed?” Vespasia sat very straight. “Then you had better ask him to come in.”

“Yes, m’lady.” She dropped the very slightest curtsy and withdrew to obey.

Pitt met Vespasia’s eyes. A hundred ideas flashed between them, all wordless, all touched with fear.

Narraway appeared a moment later. His face was bleak with misery and defeat. It dragged his shoulders in spite of the fact that he stood straight.

Pitt climbed to his feet very slowly, finding his legs shaking. His mind whirled with thoughts of horror; the most hideous and persistent, crowding all the rest, was that something had happened to Charlotte. His lips were dry, and when he tried to speak his voice caught in his throat.

“Good morning, Mr. Narraway,” Vespasia said coolly. “Please sit down and inform us what it is that brings you personally to speak to Thomas in my house.”

He remained standing. “I am sorry, Lady Vespasia,” he said very softly, merely glancing at her before turning to Pitt. “Francis Wray was found dead this morning.”

For a moment Pitt could not grasp it. He was light-headed, his senses swimming. It was nothing to do with Charlotte. She was safe. It was all right! The horror had not happened. He was almost afraid he was going to laugh out of sheer hysteria of relief. It cost him an intense effort to control himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said aloud. He meant it, at least in part. He had liked Wray. But considering the depth of grief that Wray had been in, perhaps death was not a hard thing but a reunion?

Nothing changed in Narraway’s face, except a tiny twitch of muscle near his mouth. “It appears to have been suicide,” he said harshly. “It seems he took poison some time yesterday evening. His maid found him this morning.”

“Suicide!” Pitt was appalled. He refused to believe it. He could not imagine Wray doing anything he would regard as so deeply against the will of the God in whom all his trust lay, the only pathway back to those he loved so intensely. “No . . . there has to be another answer!” he protested, his voice harsh and high.

Narraway looked impatient, as if a fearful anger lay only just under the surface of his control. “He left a message,” he said bitterly. “In a poem by Matthew Arnold.” And without waiting, he went on and quoted by heart:

Creep into thy narrow bed,

Creep, and let no more be said!

Vain thy onset! All stands fast.

Thou thyself must break at last.

Let the long contention cease!

Geese are swans, and swans are geese.

Let them have it how they will!

Those art tired; best be still.

Narraway’s eyes did not move from Pitt’s. “Close enough to a suicide note for most people,” he said softly. “And Voisey’s sister, Octavia Cavendish, who has been a friend of Wray’s for some time, called by to visit him just as you were leaving yesterday afternoon. She found him in a state of some distress; in her opinion, he had been weeping. You had made enquiries about him in the village.”

Pitt felt the blood drain from him. “He wept for his wife!” he protested, but he heard the note of despair in his voice. It was the truth, but it sounded like an excuse.

Narraway nodded very slowly, his mouth a thin, tight line.

“This is Voisey’s revenge,” Vespasia whispered. “He has not minded sacrificing an old man in order to blame Thomas for hounding him to his death.”

“I didn’t . . .” Pitt began, then stopped, seeing the look in her eyes. It was Wetron who had given him Wray’s name and suggested he was the man behind the cartouche. And according to Tellman, it was Wetron who had insisted Pitt go out again and follow up his first enquiry, or else he himself would send a force of men, surely knowing Pitt would go before he would allow that. Was he with Voisey, or against him? Or either way as it suited his own purposes?

Vespasia turned to Narraway. “What are you going to do?” she asked him, as if it were inconceivable he should do nothing.

Narraway looked beaten. “You are quite right, my lady, it is Voisey’s revenge, and it is exquisite. The newspapers will crucify Pitt. Francis Wray was deeply revered, even loved, by all who knew him. He had suffered many reverses of fortune with courage and dignity, first the loss of his children, then of his wife. Someone has already told the newspapers that Pitt suspected him of having consulted Maude Lamont and then having murdered her.”

“I did not!” Pitt said desperately.

“That is irrelevant now,” Narraway dismissed it. “You were trying to determine if he was Cartouche, and Cartouche is among the suspects. You are arguing the depth of the water in which you will drown. It is deep enough. What does it matter if it is two fathoms or thirty, or a hundred?”

“We had afternoon tea,” Pitt said, almost to himself. “With greengage jam. He hadn’t much of it left. It was an act of friendship that he shared it with me. We talked of love and loss. That was why he wept.”

“I doubt that is what Mrs. Cavendish will say,” Narraway replied. “And he was not Cartouche. Someone else has come forward to say exactly where Wray was on the evening of Maude Lamont’s last séance. He had a late supper with the local vicar and his wife.”

“I believe I already asked you, Mr. Narraway, what you intend to do about it?” Vespasia said a little more sharply.

He turned to look at her. “There is nothing I can do, Lady Vespasia. The newspapers will say what they wish, and I have no power over them. They believe that an innocent and bereaved old man has been hounded to death by an overzealous policeman. There is considerable evidence to that effect, and I cannot prove it false, even though I believe it is.” There was no conviction in his voice, just a flat despair. He looked at Pitt. “I hope you will be able to continue with your job, although it seems inevitable now that Voisey will win. If you need anyone to help you, other than Tellman, let me know.” He stopped, his face pinched with misery. “I’m sorry, Pitt. No one crosses the Inner Circle and wins for long . . . at least not yet.” He went to the door. “Good day, Lady Vespasia. I apologize for my intrusion.” And he left as easily as he had come.

Pitt was stunned. In a matter of a quarter of an hour his world had been shattered. Charlotte and the children were safe; Voisey had no idea where they were, but then possibly he had never tried to find out! His vengeance was subtler and more appropriate than simple violence. Pitt had ruined him in the eyes of the republicans. And in return he had ruined Pitt in the eyes of the people he served and who had once thought so well of him.

“Courage, my dear,” Vespasia said gently, but her voice cracked. “I think this is going to be very hard, but we will not cease to fight. We will not allow evil to triumph without giving everything we have in the cause against it.”

He looked at her, frailer now than she used to be, her back ramrod stiff, her thin shoulders square, her eyes burning with tears. He could not possibly let her down.

“No, of course not,” he agreed, though he had not the faintest idea even where or how to begin.