Treachery at Lancaster Gate

Chapter 11

Pitt found it even harder to contact Alexander this time, but it was imperative that he do so. He could not much longer put off arresting him, no matter what he had promised Jack or how much pity he felt for Alexander. And when that happened he would lose the chance to question him and uncover the important facts he was still missing.

He did not expect Alexander to tell him everything, but if Alexander wanted to be believed, then he would be able to give a list of the people he had spoken to, the times and places, at least roughly. Pitt could check them. An example of Alexander’s handwriting could be compared with the Anno Domini notes. It all needed proving. Above all, there was the question of the supplier who had failed to turn up at the meeting where Tyndale had been shot. Why? And how did Ednam even know of the proposed rendezvous? There was something major missing.

More than that, Pitt needed to find proof that Alexander really had tried to raise the Dylan Lezant case again and make someone listen to his account. He could start looking without knowing when the attempts began, and to whom they were directed, but it would certainly take far longer than if Alexander told him.

Pitt found Alexander eventually, at about eleven o’clock at night, staggering along an alley a hundred yards from his flat. He had bumped into a lamppost and was standing, leaning against it, dazed in its ghostly light.

Pitt was tired, cold, and short-tempered. It was the third time he had passed this way and he had been ready to give up and go home.

When he saw Alexander’s face his anger vanished. He stepped forward and took the young man by both arms, as if he expected to have to support his weight.

“Alexander!” he said. “Alexander!”

Alexander blinked and looked at him hard for a moment before recognizing him. “Oh. It’s you. What do you want now?” He sounded not aggressive, just infinitely tired.

“When did you last eat?” Pitt asked him.

“No idea. Why? Does it matter?”

Pitt did not know. Food did you little good if you could not hold it in your stomach long enough to digest it.

“Come with me,” he said firmly, as if he would not accept a refusal. “At least get warm. There’s a place along here that’s open all night.”

Alexander stared at him. “What do you want?”

“Details. I want to know all the things you did to try to make them listen to you and look further into Lezant’s case.”

“Why?” Alexander stared at him, still leaning his weight against the lamppost. He blinked several times, trying to focus his mind.

“I want to know who ignored you,” Pitt replied.

Alexander shrugged. “Who gives a damn now?”

“I do.”

Alexander slumped and Pitt was obliged to hold him up so he did not slide into a heap on the pavement. He would be hard to raise up again.

“Come on!” he said sharply. “You’ll freeze out here. Come and get warm inside, and at least have a hot cup of tea.”

Alexander made an effort, and allowed Pitt to lift him. Possibly because he hadn’t the energy to fight anymore.

Half an hour later they were both warmed by the pleasant clatter of a cafe open for workers all night. They had hot, over-strong tea with too much sugar in it. Pitt all but gagged on it, but Alexander drank it without apparent awareness of its taste. He ate half a bacon sandwich, and seemed rather better for it.

He looked at Pitt curiously. He returned to the earlier subject. “Why do you want to know so exactly? Are you going to prosecute me for it? No, of course not. It’s evidence, isn’t it? It gives me a motive for killing Ednam and his men. They ignored me. And if I had found proof, then they would have hanged, and not Dylan.” He blinked, knowing he had made an error. “No…that’s out of order, isn’t it? I mean, out of sequence. I went on trying to make them listen, after Dylan’s death. It’s to hang me, isn’t it…for the bombing? Give me a motive. Otherwise why would I?” He shook his head very slightly. “No evidence. No one saw me, or you’d have arrested me already.”

Pitt looked at him across the narrow wooden table, the light coming from oil lamps set at each end. The shadows were sharp, throwing Alexander’s features into an exaggerated hollowness.

Pitt smiled. “So I would. But isn’t that what you want? If not, why blow up a second building?”

“You know I did that?” Alexander’s expression was unreadable. It could have been anything from irony to tragedy in his face.

“Of course. You left the handkerchief for me, remember?” Pitt answered gently. “But I want to know who killed Tyndale, and why. If it was accidental or deliberate, and if police knowingly sent an innocent man to the gallows.”

Alexander winced at the word “gallows.” In that moment Pitt knew that the pain was still there, still deep, and that whatever he had done, Alexander would not stop until the truth was exposed, or he was dead, whichever came first.

He was going to die. The shadow of it was already across his eyes. Pitt stopped trying to deny it to himself, and was overwhelmed with his own anger and pity. He knew he would do anything he could to ensure justice came while Alexander could still see it.

“Tell me all the people you saw,” he urged. “Or tried to see, and how far you got with them. If possible, tell me approximately when.”

Alexander nodded, smiling, as Pitt took out his notebook and held the pencil ready.

Having had just five hours in bed altogether, Pitt woke early the next day, and after a quick cup of tea he began to visit the people whose names Alexander had given him.

The first was a man called Lessing, who was in charge of the process of appeals. Pitt gained an immediate appointment because of his position, which he was more than willing to use to its utmost.

“I don’t see what this has to do with the security of the nation,” Lessing said irritably. “This office is extremely busy!”

“Then let us not waste your valuable time in explanations as to why I cannot tell you the reasons for my request,” Pitt replied with a straight face and an equally tart tongue. “Did Alexander Duncannon, or anyone else, ask you to look further into the circumstances of the case against Dylan Lezant?”

“It will take me some time…” Lessing began, his lips pursed as if in distaste.

Pitt gave him the date and approximate time of day Alexander had said he called.

Lessing glared at him. “It seems you already know,” he pointed out with a touch of sarcasm.

“I know what was told to me,” Pitt replied. “I expect you to either confirm it or deny it. Preferably with written records, which I presume you have?”

“We don’t let such records out of this office.” Lessing looked at Pitt with little patience. He expected a man of Pitt’s position to know that without being told.

“I want to read it, not take it!” Pitt stared at him almost unblinkingly. “Don’t waste my time or your own, Mr. Lessing. Was the request made, or not?”

“We don’t keep records of every frivolous request that comes to our doors…” Lessing began.

Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Police corruption is not regarded as frivolous by Special Branch, Mr. Lessing. Most particularly when it involves manslaughter, perjury, and judicial murder. And now it would appear multiple murder in a bombing. We see it as very serious…indeed.”

Lessing looked pale, and furious. He had been caught off balance by what he regarded as deliberate deceit.

“It involved a rather hysterical young man accusing reputable police officers of having shot a bystander in a drug deal to which there were at least four witnesses, and the man concerned had been tried by a jury, found guilty, and hanged,” he said all in one breath. “There was nothing to investigate. And what is more, the young man complaining was clearly under the influence of drugs himself. He was staggering, slurring his words, and at times almost incomprehensible. He spoke of the dead man as if they were lovers.” He said the last word with a heavy intonation of disgust.

“I know who the complainant was.” Pitt’s voice was tight now with barely controlled rage. His own helplessness to heal pain drove his response. “He is a young man of excellent family, his father highly respected. Unfortunately the young man suffered a severe injury from which he will never recover. Drugs were prescribed to him in order to make the pain bearable, at least most of the time. The hanged man was like a brother to him, a companion in suffering. Perhaps that is not something you have experienced. But it is unfortunate that you should put such an interpretation on it. It says more about you than it does about either of the young men.”

Lessing’s face flamed hot with color, but he knew better than to lose his temper with the head of Special Branch. Pitt realized that without surprise. He had seen that flicker of fear when men looked at Victor Narraway, but never recognized it so clearly with himself. It was gratifying, and alarming. Please heaven he never got used to it.

“Did you inquire into the issue?” he asked with a smile that was more a baring of his teeth.

“Of course not!” Lessing attempted to be derisive. “The case was tried and decided.”

“I thought appeals were your business? Do you always decide ahead of inquiry that the verdict was unquestionable? Then there hardly seems any purpose to your existence!”

“Of course not! But usually it is. ‘Twelve good men and true’ are generally right in their decisions. Do you always question the jury’s verdict?” He mimicked Pitt’s tone with some satisfaction.

“Yes, if it seems to make little sense,” Pitt snapped back.

“It made perfect sense,” Lessing told him. “Lezant went to purchase opium to feed his addiction. He intended to meet his supplier in an alley, but when he got there he found the police waiting for him. He panicked and shot at them, and unfortunately he killed a bystander. Or possibly the bystander was actually the dealer.”

“You are slandering an innocent man, Mr. Lessing,” Pitt told him coldly. “Tyndale was investigated exhaustively-I have since done so again myself-and his record is without blemish.” He was exaggerating very slightly, but he was furious with this man. There was no evidence whatever against Tyndale, but his involvement was not as impossible as Pitt was suggesting.

“All right!” Lessing said with equal anger. “So he was merely a passerby. So much the more tragic that Lezant should have shot him.”

“Did you know Tyndale was in the opposite direction from the police-in fact behind Lezant?” Pitt asked him.

Lessing’s eyebrows shot up.

“Really? Who told you that?”

Pitt could not tell him that Alexander had, when he had spoken to him at Christmas.

“The evidence,” he responded. “If you had read it you would conclude so yourself. The alley had two entrances, and a small cutting through which one might make a shortcut from the main road to where Mr. Tyndale lived. He was on that cutting, making his way home.”

“How do you know?” Lessing demanded.

“I have been there and compared it with the police drawings, and their testimony,” Pitt told him. “If you looked at it yourself, where Tyndale’s body was found, and the bullet holes on the wall of the building, you would see that Tyndale was behind Lezant, but in front of all five of the police.”

“Are you saying that five policemen lied, and one hysterical opium addict, who was not even there, is telling the truth? He could’ve easily turned around and shot the man. You’re crazy! You must be on some kind of a-” He looked at Pitt’s face and bit off the words he was going to say.

“If you go to the scene instead of reading other people’s accounts of it,” Pitt told him very carefully and in a measured voice, “you will see that what the police say doesn’t make any sense. And Alexander Duncannon says he was there. In fact he had the money to make the opium purchase.”

“He said so?”

“Yes.”

“And of course you believe him!” Now Lessing’s voice was derisive again. “Isn’t that a little…gullible…sir?”

“Well, Lezant didn’t have it,” Pitt pointed out. “His possessions were carefully listed when he was arrested, on the spot! The gun, a pocket handkerchief, one pound, seventeen shillings and sixpence in change. No money to buy opium, and no opium itself. If there was no one else there, no dealer, no companion, where was the money, or the opium?”

“Tyndale…” The moment he had said it Lessing realized his error.

“Really?” Pitt widened his eyes in amazement. “Did he have the opium, or the money, or both? I wonder why it never turned up. And the police failed to mention it. You did not see fit to inquire into that, I see.”

Lessing was fuming, but the point was just.

“I have no idea. It was two years ago now. Mistakes happen now and then…” he protested.

“Resulting in a man being hanged?” Pitt let all his sarcasm show. “That’s rather more than a ‘mistake,’ Mr. Lessing. I think you owe a considerable explanation as to why you did not examine it at the time.”

Lessing’s mouth drew into a thin, hard line. “Well, if their lordships request it, no doubt we will do what we can,” he said grimly. “In the meantime, I have other work to do.”

Pitt made a note on the bottom of his page, and closed his notebook. “Indeed, as have I,” he answered with a bleak smile. “Quite a lot of it!”

Pitt went to see all of the people Alexander had listed in his attempt to get anyone at all to reconsider Dylan Lezant’s case. Few of them were as hostile as Lessing, but the pattern was all the same in the end.

“I felt sorry for him,” Green, the clerk at Hayman’s chambers said sadly. “He seemed a decent young man, terribly cut up about his friend’s death and sure that he was innocent.” He shook his head. “Hope if I’m ever in trouble I have a friend as loyal. But there wasn’t anything we could do. He offered to pay us all he had, which was considerable. But there really were no grounds for appeal. I wish there had been. I would like to have helped him, simply because he was so desperate.”

“There was no merit to the case?” Pitt pressed.

“Legally not. Once a man has been convicted, there has to be a fault in the way the case was conducted, which there was not, or some overwhelming new evidence, which also there was not. I’m sorry.” He looked as if it grieved him. Pitt wondered how many desperate relatives he had had to turn away, people who could not bear to believe that one of their own, a husband, a son, even a wife, could be guilty of a crime so grave they would pay for it with their lives.

All the accounts, compassionate or not, sad or dismissive, even angry, when put together painted a picture of a lonely young man, idealistic, emotional, and in both physical and mental pain, driving himself to exhaustion in the effort to save his friend. And after Lezant’s death, he strove at least to retrieve his reputation.

Every name and office that Alexander had given him, Pitt checked and found that he had been there, and in one manner or another had been turned away. Everyone had been either unwilling or unable to help. No one had taken it higher. No one had felt the need to reconsider the issue or question the police report.

Should they have questioned further, reexamined the facts, questioned the witnesses again? Lessing, definitely. He had chosen to believe the easiest account and ignore the inconsistencies. At the other end of the spectrum, Green had regretted the fact that he could do nothing. The loopholes were with the police, possibly with the conduct of the case, but not with the law itself.

By the end of the third day Pitt was sitting beside the fire in his own parlor, weighing up all he knew. It had begun at the level of the five police: Ednam, Newman, Hobbs, Yarcombe, and Bossiney. It had been covered up by those immediately above, and questioned by no one.

Where else was such a thing happening? That was a question he would much rather not have to ask, but it was now unavoidable.

He was thinking of this when there was a knock on the front door. Since Charlotte was upstairs talking to Jemima, Pitt answered and found Jack Radley on the doorstep. He was wearing a heavy winter overcoat and yet his shoulders were hunched, spoiling his usual highly fashionable appearance.

Pitt let him in, took his coat and hat and hung them in the hall, then invited him into the parlor. He offered him whisky rather than tea, but Jack declined it anyway. He sat in Charlotte’s chair by the fire, his feet close to the hearth. He came straight to the point of his visit.

“You’ll remember that I have been working with Godfrey Duncannon on this contract for a British free port on the China coast…?” he began.

Pitt nodded without interrupting.

Jack smiled with bleak humor. “I haven’t forgotten my past misjudgments of character. Only a fool gets caught in the same mistake twice, and I would expect to be thrown out if I do it again. It may be totally trivial, and I’m being too easily alarmed. I suppose that’s as bad a fault in the opposite direction. But there are small things that worry me. If I speak to you, is it in confidence?”

Pitt could see the tension in him, very little hidden by his attempt at lightness.

“Of course it is. But if I have to act, I can’t guarantee that no one will guess my source. What is it that disturbs you?”

“Emily noticed it before I did,” Jack said almost as an apology. “Duncannon and Josiah Abercorn are both very keen for this contract to succeed, for different reasons. For Duncannon it would be the crowning achievement of his career. For Abercorn, who is at least twenty years younger, it would be an investment that would probably make his fortune for the rest of his life and guarantee his political career, with a good deal of independence. He’s well on the way to getting a safe seat in Parliament.”

Pitt was puzzled. “You don’t need Emily to tell you that. What bothers you?”

Jack looked down at his hands. “I used to think that it was just a difference in age, and social background. Abercorn has no family to speak of, only a mother, who is now dead…”

“The point, Jack,” Pitt reminded him.

“Abercorn hates Duncannon.” He raised his head again. “Hate is a very extreme word, but I mean it. Emily noticed it. I didn’t take it seriously at first, but once she told me, I started to see it in small things. It sounds petty, but it builds up. A tone of voice, a facial expression when he assumes no one is looking at him, double-edged remarks that seem civil until you realize the alternative meaning. I thought at first that he was just less sophisticated with words, until I caught the look in his eyes, the slight sneer, gone the instant he knows you are looking at him. I know, it sounds absurd. But Abercorn knows I’ve seen it, and now he avoids me, and he’s much more careful when the three of us are in the same discussion.”

“Is Duncannon aware of it? Does he feel the same?”

Jack smiled. “Godfrey Duncannon really doesn’t care what anyone else thinks of him, as long as they do what he wishes. And Abercorn is certainly doing that, at least at the moment.”

“People dislike each other for all sorts of reasons,” Pitt pointed out. “Could it be a debt? A woman? Could Duncannon have done something as simple as blackball Abercorn from some club he wants to, or needs to, be a member of? People can care passionately about these things. It matters a lot to a social or political career. And usually those two are linked. They shouldn’t be, but they are.”

“Not dislike, Thomas,” Jack corrected. “I wouldn’t give a damn about that. I don’t trust Abercorn. There’s malice in him, a deep pain. I can’t help thinking he knows something about Duncannon that I don’t, and when it suits him, he’s going to use it. I would love it if you could tell me for certain that I’m wrong.”

“What are you afraid of, Jack? Specifically?”

Jack took a deep breath. “That Abercorn knows something about these bombings, and he’ll produce it when it can most damage Duncannon.”

“Alexander’s guilty,” Pitt said quietly. “But I think you already know that as well as I do. Isn’t that why you asked me to delay arresting him until the contract is signed?”

“Yes. But my fear is that it goes deeper than that; I’m not sure how. Abercorn is championing the dead police as the victims of anarchy and lawlessness. He’s calling for revenge on those who were attacking the very defense against crime that everyone relied on. Some of his most outspoken remarks even suggest that to fail in support for the law, and those who represent it, is to invite anarchy, even to give support to revolution.

“In one article he says that the specific duty of Special Branch is to safeguard the security of the Crown and the nation,” Jack continued. “He asks if you are involved in the Lancaster Gate bombing case precisely because, through attacking the police and insidiously by speaking of corruption, there is a thinly veiled prologue to revolution by violence. He likens it to the revolution that all but destroyed France in 1789.”

“For heaven’s sake-” Pitt began.

But Jack overrode him. “The fact that we are now at the beginning of the last year of this century was not lost on most of his readers,” he added. “There are more than enough eccentrics, even lunatics, predicting the end of the world, without men otherwise respected adding to the hysteria. Be realistic, Thomas. Men don’t invest fortunes if they don’t expect to gain something, either even more money, or value of some other sort. Are you sure Alexander committed this atrocity? Absolutely sure…and on his own?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Why? Because he’s dissolute, and addicted to opium?” Jack leaned forward earnestly. “He lost his way-no one is arguing that-but he’s a decent man, underneath the eccentricity and the pain. Perhaps he got in with some bad people. Godfrey says Lezant was a pretty good rotter. Considering what happened to him, that much seems unarguable. He must have been off his head with the opium, or why else would he have shot a completely innocent passerby?”

“Is that what Godfrey Duncannon says?” Pitt was curious. He had not spoken to Alexander’s father, nor did he intend to, on that subject. “Easiest thing to blame the friend,” he agreed. “I might do the same, if it were my son. It’s not what Alexander himself says.”

Jack shook his head sharply. “For heaven’s sake, Thomas! He’s lonely, shut out of the sort of career and society he would have had if he were able to follow in his father’s steps. Unfortunately he fell in with a really bad one in young Lezant.”

There was some truth in what Jack said, but only a little, and even that was irrelevant now.

“Whether Lezant was guilty or not doesn’t change anything if Alexander set the bomb in Lancaster Gate,” Pitt pointed out. “Yes, he is young and quixotic. He was over-loyal. He refuses to believe that Lezant was guilty. Have you considered the possibility that he was actually there, and he saw what happened? Maybe he isn’t guessing. Perhaps he knows that Lezant wasn’t guilty. Then trying to save him wasn’t quixotic. It was simply the decent thing to do.”

“Lezant was tried and convicted,” Jack argued.

“And juries are infallible?”

“Do you think this one was wrong? Come on, Thomas! Five police, all lying? Two opium addicts, one of whom probably wasn’t even there! Who do you believe?”

“There is police corruption, Jack, and it’s a lot deeper than I thought.”

“To the level of shooting a bystander, then lying to get another man hanged for it?” Jack said with open disbelief.

“Yes, it looks that way,” Pitt replied. Then a sudden weariness overtook him, filling him with grief. “It’s more than that, Jack, it’s a creeping dishonesty. This didn’t happen suddenly. Good men don’t turn bad overnight. There were small thefts, a few shillings here and there: lies to cover a man’s incompetence, absence without explanation, being drunk on duty, losing evidence, threatening a witness, turning a blind eye when it suited them, using more violence than necessary to arrest someone or get a statement. None of them alone is terrible, but added up, they are. And, in this case, it looks as if someone lost his self-control, panicked, and then found he’d shot Tyndale, the passerby. The only way out of it was to arrest Lezant, put the gun next to him, and say that Tyndale either was the dealer or Lezant thought he was.”

“Why the hell would Lezant shoot his own dealer?” Jack asked.

“He wouldn’t. He didn’t,” Pitt agreed.

“Where was Alexander?”

“They both ran for it, he was faster and got away. Or perhaps Lezant deliberately covered for him. It would explain even more powerfully why Alexander is willing to pay such a high price to clear Lezant’s name. From all I can find, he tried to his wits’ end to clear Lezant at the time. Nobody believed that Alexander was even there.” He disliked what he said next, but he still said it. “I don’t think Lezant’s father was anyone of note. Godfrey Duncannon certainly is. Perhaps no one wanted to lay the blame at that door, if they could find an easier one. Alexander would hate him for that.”

A sudden tightness filled Jack’s face, then with an effort he dismissed it. “I…don’t know,” he confessed, the conviction suddenly seeping out of him.

But it was too late. “Yes, you do,” Pitt told him. “I’ve watched Alexander’s face when his father’s name is mentioned. He may well suspect that he got off because of his father’s name, even if Godfrey never actually said anything. If you’re powerful enough, you don’t have to.”

There were several conflicting emotions in Jack’s face. A momentary tenderness was replaced by anger, then guilt. Was he thinking of his daughter, Evangeline, so like Emily, so quick, so admiring of her father? What would Jack do to save her, if he had to?

What would Pitt do to save his children? How can you ever know, unless you are tested?

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Pitt said gravely. “Alexander wants a trial. He’s dying and he knows it. That’s why he did all this. It’s not revenge; it’s to force us to look at Lezant’s case again. I have to arrest him.”

Jack’s face was racked with pity, but he did not change his mind.

“I understand that, Thomas, but it doesn’t change my fear that Abercorn has something planned against Godfrey. He might even try to implicate him in the bombings…I don’t know. I’ve tried to find out more about him, but I can’t discern anything except a hardworking mother, no apparent father. Birth certificate simply says ‘deceased.’ He looks to be illegitimate, but that’s irrelevant. From what little I can learn, his mother was a decent enough woman who may have anticipated marriage and then had the misfortune for her would-be husband to be killed just before the wedding. I don’t want to crucify her for that, for God’s sake. Half the aristocracy sleeps around where they shouldn’t. And believe me, I know that. I’ve been to enough country house weekends. Lots of lordships’ children are not who they think they are.”

Pitt looked at Jack’s face, the humor in it, and behind the charm, the deep anxiety, almost fear.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” he promised. “Narraway might know something personally. There’s a lot that isn’t committed to paper.”

The tight muscles loosened and Jack suddenly sat easily in his chair. “Thank you,” he sighed. “I…appreciate that. If it turns out to be nothing, I apologize.”

Pitt smiled back at him. He did not think it would be “nothing.”

Pitt got up early the next morning and had a snatched breakfast in the kitchen while Minnie Maude prepared for the day. She had already cleaned out the stove, boiled the kettle for him, and stirred the porridge. Now she was encouraging the old embers to catch the new coal and burn up so she could cook for the rest of the family.

He thanked her and ate the porridge quickly. He would far rather have stayed and eaten properly, with the rest of the family. Stoker had been on watch all night, but there was no guarantee that Alexander would remain at his parents’ home, where he was currently staying, beyond eight or nine o’clock.

Charlotte was standing at the bottom of the stairs, holding her dressing gown around her to keep warm.

“Are you sure you want to arrest him at his parents’ home?” she asked anxiously. “This early his father will be there. He won’t make it easy for you.”

“I know that.” He touched her arm gently. “But at least he will be there to be some support to his wife. If I wait it will look as if I’ve deliberately done it behind Godfrey’s back. I can’t afford to leave it, Charlotte. He’s very likely to do something more, and there could be someone else killed.”

“I know…I know.” She was arguing for no reason, and they both understood that. She just could not accept it easily. Silence might imply consent.

He kissed her, then, without looking back, put on his coat. He added a thick scarf, which was definitely unfashionable, but was a remembrance of the old days when he was simply a policeman, and he did not have to think more than superficially about politics. He jammed his hat on at an unintentionally rakish angle and went outside.

The traffic was beginning to get heavy, but even so, he arrived at the Duncannons’ house far sooner than he wished. But it was a delusion to think that he would ever be sufficiently prepared for the emotional tragedy that was about to play out.

He found Stoker tired and cold about fifty feet away from the house, half-sheltered from sight by a tree.

“Still there,” he said quietly as Pitt came up to him. “We going to take him? Will two of us be enough?”

“Yes. He wants to go…poor devil,” Pitt said quietly. “Come on. Let’s get it over.”

The butler looked startled to see him, especially with Stoker at his back. Pitt did not expect violence, least of all from Alexander, but he would be a fool if he did not prepare for the possibility.

“Good morning, sir?” the butler said coolly. It had been a footman who answered the door when Pitt came here on Boxing Day. Pitt did not look like the usual kind of gentleman who called on Godfrey Duncannon. His hat was too casual, the scarf was a disaster. What kind of man wore such a thing? He did not notice Pitt’s beautiful boots, which were an indulgence he had continued ever since the first expensive pair he had been given. A policeman is on his feet too much to ill-treat them.

“Good morning,” Pitt replied. He put his card on the silver tray in the butler’s hand. It carried his rank in a discreet print that was nevertheless highly legible. “I require to see Mr. Godfrey Duncannon and Mr. Alexander on business that cannot wait. If you would be good enough to present my card…? I will wait in the morning room. Sergeant Stoker will wait in the hall.”

The butler blinked. Clearly he considered arguing, and then thought better of it. He pulled the door wide open and allowed them both inside. The house was old and long cared-for with both money and dedication. At another time Pitt would have admired the carved mahogany balustrade and the portraits on the walls. Today he thought only of what was ahead of them.

He was shown to the morning room, which was cold because the fire had barely caught. The dark wood paneling and the green leather furniture made it feel even colder. It was early in the New Year, and the cheer of Christmas had already faded.

Pitt stood as the minutes ticked by. Did Alexander already know why he was here? Surely he must.

Finally Godfrey Duncannon came in and closed the door behind him. He faced Pitt grimly, his skin pale and papery, his thick hair immaculate, but somehow looking lifeless.

“I understand you wish to see me, Commander Pitt,” he said, meeting Pitt’s eyes unflinchingly. “It must be urgent indeed for you to interrupt breakfast. You had better tell me what it is you want.”

Could he really be so unaware? Or did he know, and he was playing out the charade to the bitter end?

“I know it is early,” Pitt replied. “I considered waiting until later in the day, but I thought it better to do the thing while you were at home and able to offer your wife some comfort, and decide in private what steps you wish to take.”

“Regarding what, for heaven’s sake? Spit it out, man.”

“I have come to arrest Alexander for the bombing in Lancaster Gate, and the resulting deaths of three police officers and the serious injury of two more.”

Duncannon stared at him. He stood absolutely motionless, and the last vestige of color drained from his skin. In that moment Pitt had the wild idea that he had actually never considered this possibility. Had he refused to acknowledge it? Or imagined that Alexander would not be charged?

“That…is…that is absurd!” he said at last. “Why on earth would my son do such an appalling thing?” His voice shook. “The idea is preposterous! Is this some political ploy to stop the contract going through? Is that what you’re after? Who’s behind it?”

Pitt was embarrassed for him. He was making a fool of himself.

“I very much hope the contract does go through, sir,” he said gravely. “But whether it does or not, I can no longer put off arresting your son for the Lancaster Gate bombing.”

“Why on earth would he do such a thing? You are making yourself ridiculous!” Duncannon tried one more time.

“To draw attention to police corruption the only way he knows how,” Pitt replied. “No one would listen to him-”

“For God’s sake!” Duncannon’s rage exploded at last. “He’s addicted to opium, man! He’s off in a fairyland of his own! He can’t face it that his friend, what’s his name-Lezant-was guilty. He can’t bear to think it. He needs rest, in a hospital of some sort.”

“That might have been an excellent idea a few months ago,” Pitt agreed. “It’s too late now-”

“You’ve got your facts twisted,” Duncannon cut across him. “Taking the easiest answer. It’s anarchists of some sort, whom you damned well should have found. The city is full of them.” He turned toward the door.

“Sir! I intend to arrest him. We can either do this in a discreet way, or you can make an incident out of it and I shall be obliged to do it by force. I don’t think that is what you wish, for your son or for your wife.”

Duncannon’s eyebrows shot upward. “Are you threatening me, sir?”

Pitt hated doing it. He could imagine how he might have felt if someone had come to arrest Daniel. But he would not be bluffed.

“If you wish to look at it that way, then yes, sir, I am. The law applies to your family just as it does to any other man’s. I give you the courtesy of doing it in private, and in your presence. I could as easily have waited until he left and arrested him in the street.”

“You are a disgrace to your service, sir!” Duncannon spat the words, but he snatched the handle and flung the door open. He turned back and looked at Pitt disdainfully. “Then you had better come and arrest my son in the dining room, where he and his mother are having breakfast. I trust you will not expect me to offer you tea?”

Pitt did not reply. He followed Duncannon across the hall, nodding to Stoker as he went, and then into the dining room.

Cecily Duncannon was sitting at the foot of the table, Alexander beside her. He looked gaunt and very pale, but he faced Pitt without surprise. If he was afraid, now that the moment had come, he did not show it. He rose from his seat slowly, swayed for an instant, then straightened himself.

“I imagine you have come for me at last,” he said to Pitt. “I am obliged that you did it here, and not somewhere more comfortable for you. Perhaps not easier, but then nothing would make it easy, but at least discreet. My father can pretend it was simply a social call…a little early in the day.” He made a good attempt at a smile.

“You are not going with them, Alexander,” Duncannon said firmly. “We will contact Studdert, and then go in at our leisure.”

Alexander looked past his father toward Pitt. “Studdert is our family solicitor. I don’t wish to consult him. Mr. Pitt and I already understand each other. Thank you, Father, but I will take care of my own affairs.” He moved away from the table just as Cecily stood up also. She did not look confused, only desperately unhappy. Pitt was certain in that moment that she already knew how this would have to end. Indeed, she too had been expecting it.

“Do what you must, Alex,” she said gently. “But know that whatever happens, I love you.”

For a moment Alexander swayed and Pitt was afraid he was going to collapse. Then he straightened himself, but did not trust his voice. He touched his mother, brushing the side of her cheek with his finger, and then turned to Pitt. “I am ready.”

“Nonsense!” Duncannon interrupted. “You will do as I tell you, Alexander. You are in no state to represent yourself.” He gestured toward Pitt without looking at him. “This man is trying to say that you are guilty of the murder of three policemen. For God’s sake! Don’t you understand that if they find you guilty they’ll hang you!” He all but choked on the word, and he was struggling for breath.

Alexander raised delicate black eyebrows. “You mean like they hanged Dylan? Yes, I know that, Father. Perhaps I know more about it than you do. They assured me that actually when you get as far as having the rope around your neck, it’s quite quick. The only difference is that Dylan was innocent. I am not.”

“How dare you say that in front of your mother?” Duncannon’s voice was high with fury.

Pitt had seen it before. Rage was less painful than fear, and far easier to own.

For an instant Alexander’s face filled with scorn.

“You think I should protect her? From what? Reality? She’s always faced reality, Father. It’s you who doesn’t. She knew my back would never heal. She never said so, but she knew. She knew the time would come when I couldn’t take the pain and I’d go back to the opium. She sold her diamonds to get it for me. She believed me that Dylan was innocent. You can’t protect her from the truth now, and I don’t think you ever did!” Without waiting for his father to react, he moved away from the table and walked toward Pitt. He held out his hands, palms down, wrists very slightly exposed from his white shirt cuffs.

“That’s not necessary,” Pitt told him. “But it is very cold outside. I think you should have your butler bring your coat.”

Alexander made an attempt to smile. “?‘If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly,’?” he quoted, then he walked beside Pitt and into the hall. Not once did he look back.

It was late afternoon and already hastening toward dusk when Pitt was summoned to Bradshaw’s office. The lampposts were a curving chain of lights along the river’s edge and the wind was blowing hard from the east.

“What the hell are you playing at?” Bradshaw demanded the moment Pitt had closed the office door. “Release Duncannon immediately. If you have to say anything at all to the press, and avoid it if you can, tell them he was helping you with reference to an old case. Let them assume what they like. I’d have thought you’d have had the sense to realize that you cannot arrest him until this…this damned contract is agreed. It may well be no more than a few days. Whatever possessed you to do it today? And at his father’s home, for God’s sake.”

Pitt was tired and cold, and he had hated arresting Alexander. The young man had trusted him, perhaps for all the wrong reasons. Alexander was searching for justice, and he might well have had no idea what it was going to cost him. Pitt was not even sure if he was completely sane. Perhaps pain, the opium, and grief over the friend he had in his own mind let down had robbed him of balance.

“For precisely the reasons you mentioned,” he answered, leaving off the courtesy of calling him sir. They were of equal enough rank, extraordinary as that seemed to Pitt. “I went there discreetly and his parents were present so they did not have to be informed.”

“What did you charge him with?” Bradshaw asked.

“Murder. Three policemen are dead.”

Bradshaw sat down very slowly. He looked exhausted, as if he were facing defeat after a long battle. “Why now? Why couldn’t you have waited?” It was a cry of despair, not accusation.

“Because he was trying to be arrested,” Pitt replied, sitting down in the chair opposite the desk. “He let off the second bomb because we took too little notice of the Lezant case after the first. I couldn’t afford to leave him free to do it again.”

“Are you so sure, Pitt?”

“Yes, I am. He left his monogrammed handkerchief for me at Craven Hill.”

Bradshaw put his elbows on the desktop and his head in his hands. “Oh God! But you’re still going to have to let him go.”

“Why? He’s guilty, and he doesn’t deny it. He refused to have his father’s lawyer represent him.”

“He’s out of his mind.” Bradshaw’s voice dropped even lower. “Opium addiction does that to you in the later stages. It’s…a very slow and terrible death.”

Pitt heard the pain in Bradshaw’s voice; saw the beaten, aching slump in his shoulders.

He stared beyond Bradshaw at the photograph in the alcove, the one of his lovely wife, who looked so happy. It would be cruel, inexcusable to ask if she was the addict he referred to. Was she still alive? Disintegrating in front of him, like Alexander Duncannon? Had she also suffered some agonizing disease from which there was no escape but death?

“Sir,” Pitt began almost gently, “I had to arrest him. If I didn’t, he’d have blown up something else, and there might be other people dead. We were lucky last time. He merely destroyed an empty building.”

Bradshaw raised his head and stared at Pitt.

Pitt did not say anything more.

Bradshaw pushed his hand through his hair. “I thought you were going to say that Josiah Abercorn was crucifying us in the papers, and we have to do something.”

Pitt did not often swear, but he felt like it now-except that to give in to fury was just the reaction men like Abercorn counted on. It was an admission of defeat.

“By-election coming up soon, is there?” he said bitterly.

Bradshaw looked at him. “I suppose it’s obvious, isn’t it? There are times when I hate politicians, Lords or Commons.”

“?‘A plague on both your houses,’?” Pitt replied with a twisted smile. “Do you still want me to release Duncannon?”

Bradshaw’s voice was very quiet, and he looked away, as though the words were forced out of him. He did not meet Pitt’s eyes. “Yes. But put a watch on him. For God’s sake don’t let him blow up anything more.”

Bradshaw stood up, moving stiffly, as though his body ached. “Was there police corruption at the time of the Lezant case?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. Ednam and his immediate men, at the least. Probably more,” Pitt replied.

Bradshaw winced as if he had felt a sudden stab of pain, and there were tears in his eyes. “Let Alexander go anyway.”

Pitt did not reply.

Pitt kept his word to Jack. He went straight from Bradshaw’s office to Vespasia and Narraway’s home. He considered speaking to Narraway alone, then realized how foolish that was. Vespasia might well know more rumor about Josiah Abercorn than Narraway did, certainly more personal gossip, which frequently was the first step toward the truth, however unwelcome.

He sat beside the fire in Vespasia’s great sitting room.

“Highly ambitious,” Narraway answered Pitt’s questions. “And a man who likes to owe no one anything, so if he has accepted favors, and few people attain high office without, he will be as quick to pay them off as he can.”

“Godfrey Duncannon?” Pitt asked.

“I doubt it. I’ve never known Godfrey to act except in his own ultimate interest.”

“You don’t like him,” Pitt observed and saw Vespasia smile.

“Not a lot,” Narraway admitted. “But he is exceptionally competent, and I know nothing to his discredit. He’s just…chilling.”

“Invulnerable,” Vespasia said quietly.

Both Pitt and Narraway looked at her curiously.

“You do not like a man who is invulnerable,” she said to Narraway.

A shadow passed across Narraway’s eyes, a moment’s hurt.

“Do I always have to have power?” he asked very softly.

She reached over and put her slender fingers on his arm.

“Not at all, my dear. It is not his weakness you need; it is the humility it brings, and the understanding of others. Without such things he is no use to any of us, ultimately, least of all himself.”

Narraway put his hand over hers, and said nothing.

Pitt knew he had witnessed a very private moment, of both pain and joy. He had never imagined such raw vulnerability in Narraway, or imagined him so intensely human after all.

Vespasia looked back at Pitt. “Godfrey married Cecily for her money, you know. There was a very great deal of it, and he has multiplied it many times.”

“Are you sure?”

“On both counts. I am perfectly sure. The enlarging of her fortune, now his, is common knowledge, but you can easily check it, if you wish.”

“No…that he married Cecily for her money. Does that have anything to do with Abercorn?”

Vespasia’s smile was extremely sad. “Of course it has, Thomas. It was Abercorn’s mother Godfrey Duncannon jilted to do it.”

Pitt and Narraway both stared at her, and neither of them spoke.