Treachery at Lancaster Gate

Chapter 8

Pitt returned his attention to the physical evidence of the bombing again, hoping that the break would bring him fresh perception. He concentrated on that which was incontrovertible and had no alternative interpretations.

“Sorry, sir,” Stoker said when they had reexamined everything, all the fragments from the building, sketches and photographs of what was left of the house at Lancaster Gate, and the architect’s drawings of what the house had been like before the bomb.

They reread every report from the police who had survived, and from the fire brigade. Separately they went through the medical reports on those alive, and the police surgeon’s autopsy reports on the dead.

They checked the information provided by the informer who called himself Anno Domini, and went over every noted time so there were no discrepancies. Was Anno Domini-A.D.-actually Alexander Duncannon? Trying yet another way to force police attention? It looked like it to Pitt.

They could trace the dynamite from the quarry from which it had been stolen, through the foreman and to the first man to whom he had sold it. From then on it disappeared. “An anarchist” was all the description they could gain. Dark-haired, young. It could apply to Alexander Duncannon-but also to three-quarters of all the anarchists, nihilists, and fugitives from European and Russian law that they knew of.

“We’re no closer to solving this,” Stoker said when they had finished. “And we are as sure as we ever can be that we know them all. I’ve even looked at all the odd military or would-be military groups, or arrogant young would-be generals. We can’t hide it anymore, sir. We’ve got to look at Duncannon. I don’t care who his father is.” Stoker stood facing Pitt, his lean shoulders square, his eyes undeviating. Every angle of his body said he disliked the task as much as Pitt did, and therefore he was bent on getting it over with.

Neither of them had said so, but both of them knew that the rather delicate relationship between Special Branch and the police would be strained by even the suggestion that the murdered men were in any way responsible for their own appalling deaths, or the burns that Bossiney would carry for the rest of his life, or Yarcombe’s lost arm. To look into the possibility at all would be seen as a slur on the maimed and the dead, and an insult to every other officer or man who daily worked to keep the law and serve the public.

What would it do to the future cooperation between the forces that Special Branch in particular relied on? The whole idea of a police force, with power to search a man’s house, question his servants or even his family, was a relatively new idea among the general public, and, with some, still unpopular.

Special Branch, on the other hand, was accepted by patriotic men, so long as they did not bother people too much and did not intrude into any man’s private affairs. It was agreed that there had always been spies, recognized and dealt with discreetly, since the days of Queen Elizabeth and her spymaster, Walsingham. It was something one did not refer to, except in private with one’s most trusted friends. Best to keep on the right side of the fellow in charge of it, who was usually a gentleman anyway, more or less.

It was the regular police whose toes Special Branch trod on occasionally, and whose cooperation they needed a sight too often.

Pitt was angry, mainly with himself.

“Looking into this will turn the whole force against us,” he pointed out, staring at the papers spread out on the table between them.

“You think Tellman’s wrong?” Stoker said with raised eyebrows.

“No,” Pitt admitted. “He hates this even more than we do.”

“I don’t hate it,” Stoker contradicted him. “Any policeman who thinks it’s all right to tamper with evidence, pick and choose what bits he’ll show and what he’ll hide, lie about things, change times and records, take money if he thinks he can get away with it, or beat the hell out of a few witnesses or villains if he’s in a bad temper, is a disgrace to the force and should be got rid of, before he poisons everyone. When they’re no better than the men they’re chasing, we’ve all had it! I don’t care how much they resent it. If they’d got rid of those practices themselves, then we wouldn’t have to.”

Pitt gave him a long, cold look. “You want them to come and take a close look at us?”

Stoker colored faintly. “That’s not exactly fair, sir. If you caught any one of us doing anything like that we’d be charged with treason, and be out in a day. It’s a much tougher service, and you know that.”

“Yes, it is,” Pitt conceded. “But the police still have to trust each other. You don’t want to go into any sort of a fight if you can’t trust the man who’s always there beside you, watching for you.” He looked at Stoker’s face. “All right, I know: I just made your point for you. But this is still going to cause a hell of a lot of ill feeling. The next time we need police help, we may be damn lucky to get it!”

Stoker’s hard, blue eyes widened. “We may clear their good name, sir!”

“Don’t be so damn stupid,” Pitt snapped, hating himself for the situation he had walked into, and Stoker for his perception of it. He was even annoyed with Tellman for caring so much, and still having gone on and on after Ednam and his men. “I’ve got to know more, with proof, before I face them with it. I wish to hell there were a way out of it, but there isn’t.”

Pitt needed to talk about it with someone who understood what damage it might do, both if he did as Stoker had suggested-and he knew he must-or if he did not. He had long ago learned what good and honest argument could do. At the very least it would force him to defend his decision and see the flaws in it before it was too late.

In times past, with ordinary civilian murder cases, he had talked things through with Charlotte, but this was different. There was only one person who would understand it perfectly and be willing to counteract him with both reason and passion. That was Victor Narraway. He might even have faced a similar situation himself, although Pitt had looked through the records of Narraway’s years, and found nothing especially comparable.

But then he himself had made no written notes on the possibility of police corruption. It was not something he wanted to have on paper. Narraway might have felt the same.

Vespasia was out when Pitt visited her home. It was now only three days before Christmas, but this was the first moment he was touched by the joy of the season. There was a tree in the hall, decorated with colored balls and golden tinsel. Delicate angels of spun glass hung from the upper branches, their gossamer wings seeming to trap and hold the light.

In the sitting room Narraway poured Pitt a very small portion of brandy, ignoring his protests, and they sat on either side of the fire, smelling the faint fragrance of burning applewood. There was a plate of warm mince pies on the small table beside them.

Pitt explained the situation and watched Narraway’s face grow more and more serious.

“And you’re going to start digging into this trial of Dylan Lezant tomorrow?” Narraway said finally.

“I would be delighted to escape it,” Pitt replied ruefully. “But I don’t see how I can.”

“What do you expect from me?” The firelight accentuated the shadows on Narraway’s face, the concentration in his expression.

“An analysis of the political fallout,” Pitt replied immediately. “And any advice you have as to how best to go about it. What procedure do I use if the evidence is there and I need to contain it?”

Narraway did not answer for several minutes. There was no sound in the room except the crackle of flames in the hearth. Somewhere outside, beyond the window and its curtains, came the distant sound of carol singers in the street.

Pitt noticed how much more masculine the room had become since Narraway had moved in. Vespasia’s paintings were still on the walls, scenes from her youth and from generations even earlier. But there were some of Narraway’s favorite charcoal drawings of bare trees as well. They were a total contrast, and yet they complemented each other. It completed the sense of balance in the room, and Pitt liked it.

A log settled in the hearth, sending up a shower of sparks. Narraway leaned over and took a fresh one from the box, putting it on top of the others. The flames leaped up quickly to accept it.

“If what Tellman says is true,” he said at last, “then you have to start immediately. And Tellman is a good man. I think he would not say this if he could escape it. I assume he has no history with Ednam? Or any of the others? No, I assumed not. You have to know if it is just bad practice at that station, petty corruption that you can discipline the men for, perhaps get rid of the worst of them…although, God help us, it rather looks as if young Duncannon may have done that for you.”

“Of course Tellman hates it,” Pitt agreed. “I could think of a strong argument for dealing with it as discreetly as possible, with some acceptable story for the public, if I were sure there was no more than Tellman found. But if it has any connection at all with the shooting for which Lezant was hanged, then it can’t be left. For a start, Duncannon will open it up again, whatever else we do on a smaller scale.”

“If it is Duncannon,” Narraway pointed out. “Better find out about Ednam and his men on one hand, and about Lezant on the other. Put them together only if you have to. I assume you’ve gone over the bombing evidence with a fine-tooth comb?”

“Of course. There’s nothing definitive in it.”

“And this ‘Anno Domini’?” Narraway gave a wry smile. “You think that’s Alexander Duncannon?”

“No way to be sure,” Pitt replied. “But I think so, and I have to investigate his story about Lezant.”

“I can’t see a way out of it either,” Narraway said unhappily. “But the cost could be high, and I think it will be. For God’s sake, be careful, Pitt. You don’t know how far this goes.”

Pitt felt the coldness close up tightly inside him, like a lump of ice. New possibilities took form in his imagination: corruption deeper than merely that of Ednam and his men. If it was someone higher than Ednam conniving at an appalling murder, then they would react powerfully, perhaps violently, to Pitt’s attempt to expose them all.

Narraway was watching him intently. “Be prepared for the worst. This may go very deep. If Alexander really believes his friend was innocent-”

“He does,” Pitt interrupted. “Right or wrong, he believes it.”

“Then be prepared for what that means,” Narraway warned.

“He may be right,” Pitt agreed a little tartly. “I know that!”

“Not only that.” Narraway’s face was bleak. “It means the police lied under oath to get Lezant convicted and hanged. That’s not only a particularly terrible and deliberate kind of murder, it’s a perversion of the law that affects everyone in England. It is the safeguard for all of us, of the system itself. Those who offend against it have to be recognized, and punished. Surely I don’t have to explain the core of that to you?”

“No, you don’t!” Pitt heard the sharpness in his own voice and regretted it, but he resented Narraway telling him as if he might not have understood.

“The Lezant case was a couple of years ago,” Narraway went on.

For an instant Pitt thought that he was referring to the fact that Narraway himself had been in charge of Special Branch then, not Pitt. Did that make any difference? Was he saying, obliquely, that he had known something about it?

“Did it involve Special Branch?” Pitt asked sharply. Was this even blacker than he had thought? What could possibly have concerned Special Branch that would have made Narraway connive at such an abysmal miscarriage of justice? What would be important enough to pervert justice to hang an innocent man? Who had Dylan Lezant been that they destroyed him that way?

“No, it bloody well did not!” Narraway was staring at him incredulously. “But if Alexander Duncannon always believed Lezant was innocent then you need to know why, and who he believed was guilty. Is he so far over the edge that he had no reason beyond his own emotions to think so? If that’s true, why didn’t his father have him put away? Or has Godfrey no idea what’s going on? Did Alexander tell him, or not? How is the relationship between them? What does the mother know, and what did she do, if anything?”

“Probably nothing,” Pitt said quietly. “She would have her loyalty to her husband as well…” He tried to imagine the conflict within her. What would Charlotte have done in a similar situation? He knew the answer to that: she would have faced him with it and demanded an answer-for him to resign his position, if necessary.

And what would he have done? Put his family before his career? Yes. But what if the member of his family, his son, were wrong? Then the answer would have to be different. You did not sell your own honor, whatever the cause, or you had nothing left to give anybody. Was that what Narraway was thinking of?

The room seemed suddenly overwhelmingly silent.

“Think hard before you act, Pitt,” Narraway warned. “Alexander has had two years in which to try to get somebody to listen to him. Setting a bomb off that killed three policemen, and badly injured two more, is the very last resort, even of a man desperate and emotionally unbalanced. You met him; you liked him. Was he a raving lunatic?”

“No…at least I thought not…”

Pitt swallowed hard. His throat felt tight. What the hell had made him take this job? He was not fit for it, not prepared. The decisions were too wide and deep. He had not the knowledge, or the connections, to survive it. He had made enemies who would be only too happy to see him brought down.

“I can’t let it go.” The moment the words were out of his mouth he realized that he had done exactly what he had believed he would not. He had placed his job before his family. If he were destroyed, how would they survive?

But if he backed away because he was afraid, how would he survive that? Charlotte would probably be loyal to him. Love would survive, but respect would turn into pity. The whole balance of their relationship would change. And he would hate himself.

A wave of fury boiled up inside him against Ednam, or whoever was responsible. How dare they create a corruption that was going to drown all of them in its tide of poison?

“I can’t let it go,” he repeated, but this time his voice was almost strangled in his throat.

“I know you can’t,” Narraway said gently. “Neither can I, now that I know. But for God’s sake be careful! Know everything you can about what you’re dealing with before you take the cover off, even if you have to lie as to what you’re looking into, and why.”

Pitt said nothing. The enormity of it overwhelmed him. It was like a dark storm on the horizon racing toward him. The first wind of it was tingling on his skin already; the first needles of ice began to hurt.

He slept badly, even though he was exhausted. His dreams were full of dark passages that led nowhere, locked doors, paths through grass that crumbled under his feet and slid away.

He was glad to get up early and take a quick breakfast. Minnie Maude was busy already, clearing out the ash in the oven and piling in more coal. She was good at it, and the kettle boiled in a matter of minutes.

She had grown used to Pitt’s manner, and his odd hours, and made him tea and toast without surprise. She offered to cook more, but he declined. The bread was fresh and she made the toast crispy, as he liked it. There was new marmalade, tart, with a real bite to it, almost aromatic. It was a good start to a cold, unwelcoming day. Two days to go until Christmas. He would take that one day off. He had chosen a gift for Charlotte some time ago, so that was taken care of. He had agreed to share with Charlotte and get both Jemima and Daniel something special. Charlotte would shop, wrap, and deliver gifts to all the other people to whom they gave presents too. But perhaps he should remind her to do something nice for Minnie Maude as well. Or would she have thought of it already?

He finished breakfast, thanked her, and collected his coat, hat, and scarf from the hooks in the hall. He went out and closed the front door gently, then turned into the wind and walked to Russell Square. From there he would catch a hansom to the Public Record Office and begin by searching the records of the trial of Dylan Lezant. He would read the account carefully, note who had presided, who prosecuted, and who defended. He would find and note all the witnesses and what they had said. He would consider finding Alexander Duncannon and asking him who he had consulted in trying to get justice for Lezant, but that was a decision he would leave until later. This side of Christmas, many people had already left the city, and nobody’s mind would be on an old case that was ugly and tragic but long since considered closed.

It was afternoon by the time Pitt had read and noted all that he had set out to find. Reading the trial transcripts was a long and miserable job, but he became so absorbed in it that when he finally reached the end and stood up his back was stiff. His neck ached, too, and he realized his mouth was as dry as the dust he disturbed when he put the mounds of papers back where he had found them.

“Thank you,” he said to the clerk as he was leaving.

“You’re welcome, sir,” the man replied, pushing his spectacles back up his nose. They slid again immediately.

Pitt turned back. “Oh…by the way, has anyone else had those out recently, do you know?”

“No, sir. And I’d know. No one has had this lot out in close to two years.”

“You’d know the name of whoever read them?” Suddenly Pitt did not wish to have it known he had inquired, let alone taken the transcripts. “Who took them?”

“Not took them, sir, just read and put them back again. Can’t take them off the premises.”

Pitt had produced his identification to get them in the first place. The clerk would have read his name, along with his rank.

“And do you recall who read them?”

“No, sir. Sorry.”

“I would be obliged if you could be as forgetful of my name as well, if you please.”

“Yes, sir.” The man looked startled. “If you wish…”

“I do wish, Mr….” He struggled to remember the name the clerk had given. “Mr. Parkins. Thank you.”

The clerk paled, but said nothing more.

When Pitt finally got to Lisson Grove there was a message waiting that he should see Commissioner Bradshaw as soon as possible.

“Seemed a bit upset, sir,” Dawlish told him with a rueful half smile. “Expect he wants to get off for Christmas.”

Pitt did not need to ask what it was about.

“Thank you,” he said, merely as a matter of civility.

In the hansom on the way back into the heart of the city, he considered what he would say to Bradshaw. It was his force Pitt was investigating. It would be a courtesy to inform the man of his intent, but it would also be an unwise thing to do. Bradshaw would be offended, and maybe more worried than he would show. Let him have what Christmas he could, rather than sit worrying when there was nothing he could change or protect now.

He found Bradshaw impatient, pacing the floor. The fire was low in the grate but the room was still warm and it was easy to ignore the rain spattering against the window.

Bradshaw barely observed the civilities.

“Thank you for coming,” he said briskly. “Filthy night. Before I leave, I want to know exactly what it is you are looking for regarding the men who were killed at Lancaster Gate. Do you think their past records are going to turn up something? What, for example?”

Pitt was already prepared. “The identity of Anno Domini, the name assumed by their informer, sir. It’s possible those particular men were there just by chance and nothing to do with the fact that he had informed them before-”

“We had all got that far, Pitt!” Bradshaw said impatiently. “You didn’t need to have someone go digging through the station records for that!”

Pitt ignored his interruption. “It is also possible that this informer chose them intentionally, targeting them from the beginning.”

Bradshaw jerked his head up.

“Why? What are you suggesting?”

“That he had some personal issue with one or all of them, and this was done out of the desire for revenge over something that happened, or that he believed happened.”

Bradshaw looked pale, and suddenly very tired. “What do you have in mind? Most criminals resent being arrested. It’s always someone else’s fault, never theirs. A man caught stealing will blame the man who arrests him, not himself for committing the crime. Did you spend twenty years in the police force with your eyes shut and your ears muffed?”

“No, sir. But neither did I ever have to investigate a revenge bombing and the murder of three officers.”

Bradshaw sat down behind his desk. He looked almost as if he were punch-drunk at the end of a big fight. Pitt was left to sit or stand as he chose.

Pitt was stung with a sense of pity for him, but he could not avoid telling him at least something of the truth. To do less now would be insulting. He glanced beyond Bradshaw to the framed photograph of a lovely, delicate woman in the niche on the bookcase.

Bradshaw caught the look. “My wife,” he said, as if the explanation were necessary.

“She’s beautiful,” Pitt said quite genuinely.

“Yes…” There was pain in Bradshaw’s voice. “That photograph catches her perfectly. It’s…it’s a few years old now.”

Was she dead? Pitt could hardly ask. At any time it would have been intrusive. Now, the day before Christmas Eve, it would be even more painful.

“Sir, I know that men make mistakes, and that petty thieves, embezzlers, men who can’t control their fists or their tempers usually blame somebody else for their misfortunes, police or victims they beat or robbed. I am looking for some incident that links the men at Lancaster Gate together, as a starting point.”

“What have you found?”

“It was my police associate who found a series of errors rather more than usual. Most of them were very well covered up, largely by Ednam.”

“The man’s dead, Pitt! Is there really any point in raking that up now? He isn’t here to defend himself or explain what really happened. His widow has little but grief for Christmas, and that to spend alone. Is this really going to serve anyone?”

“The rumors are already there, sir,” Pitt pointed out. “In the newspapers, magazines, in the talk in clubrooms and public bars all over the city. Are the police corrupt? Are we riddled with anarchists, nihilists, men with bombs waiting to blow us up any day or night? Where will the next explosion be? In a house, a church, a shop, on a train? Can the police stop them? Can anyone? Or are the police part of it? Does each man have to look after his own-”

“All right!” Bradshaw snapped. “I can read as well as you can! I know what the public is saying, and what most of the newspapers are saying. And I realize how damned dangerous it is, and that we can’t stop it. If we’re not careful, we’ll have half the citizens taking up their own arms to carry out whatever law they see fit. It’ll be chaos. Have you thought that that is exactly what some foreign power might want? Or is that too hideous to contemplate, and that’s why you’re trying to make this look like one bad police station, and that’s an end to it?”

“Are you sure it’s only one?” Pitt returned. “I’d love to think it’s Ednam and half a dozen of his men. But shutting our eyes to any other possibility is exactly what allows this to happen in the first place.”

Bradshaw started up out of his chair. Then he looked at Pitt’s face, and the rigidity of his body, ready to hold Bradshaw in check by force, if necessary. He slumped back again.

“We have to be able to trust the police,” Pitt said very gravely. “We must not only get rid of the doubtful men, we must show the public that we have and we will go on doing so.”

“By blaming Ednam for his own death?”

“By finding out who Anno Domini is, and if he placed that bomb in the house at Lancaster Gate, and if he did, then why.”

“I assume you have a suspect?”

“Yes. And if I’m right, I also know why. I’m sorry, sir, but if it is so, it’s going to be very ugly indeed. If we address it, we can bring it to an end. If not, I’m afraid he will go on bombing until we do. I am not going to be responsible for that, and I imagine you have no wish to be either.”

Bradshaw sighed heavily. “I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.”

Pitt hoped so too. He did not want Bradshaw to have any idea how much he dreaded having to conclude this case, but there was no way out of it. Once Alexander Duncannon detonated that bomb in Lancaster Gate, the course was set.

Pitt arrived home tired, wet, and very cold. He had to make an effort to join in around the dinner table with the excited chatter of his family. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. The day after that they would all be with Emily, Jack, and their children.

Daniel put on his exaggeratedly patient face whenever Jemima was talking and made sure everyone noticed it. Before pudding had been served, Jemima had her own back by teasing him over the sister of one of his friends, and Pitt was startled to see how easily vulnerable Daniel was. His children were growing up.

He relaxed a little as the good dinner restored his sense of wellbeing and he was no longer cold. For an instant, he thought of the widows of the men killed in the bombing, and wondered if there were anything on earth that would lessen the terrible grief of their Christmas. Perhaps the only gift worth having would be to know that their husbands had been innocent, and he was not at all sure that he could give them that.

After dinner, the children were upstairs about their own plans, amid quite a lot of running around and occasional calls for Charlotte’s help to find ribbons or more paper. She was upstairs on one of those errands when the doorbell rang. Pitt went to answer it.

He found Jack Radley on the step. In spite of having come in a carriage, which was waiting at the curb, the shoulders of his elegant coat were soaked dark with rain.

“Come in,” Pitt invited him, standing back and holding the door wide. “Is your driver all right out there?”

“I suggested he might go around to the kitchen. Hope you don’t mind,” Jack answered, standing in the hall and dripping onto the carpet. “But I won’t be long…I hope.”

“Send him around to the back door, and I’ll get Charlotte to give him a cup of tea, or better, cocoa,” Pitt directed him.

Jack obeyed. Pitt took the stairs two at a time to give the request to Charlotte. Five minutes later it was all accomplished. Pitt sat in his own chair while Jack stood with his back to the fire, warming himself.

“Of course, you’re coming to dinner Christmas Day,” Jack remarked, “but I wanted to speak to you privately.”

“What is it, Jack?” Pitt asked with a chill of apprehension.

Jack gave a very slight shrug. He was standing gracefully, but nothing in him was relaxed. All his body was as taut as the strings of a violin.

“You can let this investigation go for three days at least, can’t you?” He seemed about to add something more, then changed his mind.

“Is that what you wanted to know?” Pitt asked.

Jack faced him at last. “Yes, it is. This contract is more important than I can tell you. Just hold off this investigation of yours until it’s signed.”

“What has it to do with police corruption?” Pitt asked. He sat forward in his chair; there was no more relaxing possible.

“Nothing!” Jack moved from the fire into the center of the room, still too tense to sit down. “I don’t think police corruption comes into it, but I don’t know. I have no idea what happened, I just know that Alexander Duncannon is a very disturbed young man who has delusions as to his friend’s guilt or innocence. Thomas, this contract will help the lives of thousands of people, their families, and their towns. Don’t jeopardize it for the sake of a few days.”

Pitt looked back at Jack’s face, which reflected the earnestness with which he made the request. Pitt knew something of the magnitude of the contract, and he could imagine the hopes that rested on it. He had faced being out of work himself, his family cold, frightened, and hungry, and even without a home, when he had been thrown out of the police. It was moving to Special Branch that had saved him.

Jack must have seen the thought in his face. Perhaps he remembered it too. Emily would have known, and understood.

“This injustice has waited for two years,” Jack said. “Let it wait until the New Year now. Don’t go wakening ghosts just before Christmas. If there is anything to find, it will still be there in four or five days’ time.”

“I have to solve the case,” Pitt warned him. “It isn’t going to disappear on its own. Ednam and his men may have sent an innocent man to the gallows.”

“Is that really likely?” Jack’s eyebrows rose. “Alexander is nice enough, but for heaven’s sake, Thomas, he’s addicted to opium! There are times when he’s completely crazy! Frankly, according to Godfrey, he sees and hears things that aren’t there. Opium addiction is a terrible thing. I daresay it’ll kill him in the end.”

Pitt did not answer. Was that really all that was behind Alexander’s actions? The blind loyalty of an opium addict, the guilt because he escaped driving him relentlessly to try to excuse his friend? It would be easy enough to believe.

“Dylan Lezant was no better,” Jack went on, sensing Pitt’s doubts. “Another young man severely addicted and sinking further and further into a life of depravity. Godfrey says he went through periods of delirious hallucinations, being dreadfully ill, soaked in sweat. And then he would do something desperate to obtain money, and opium, and then, at least to the casual observer, be perfectly all right again. I’m afraid it is very easy to believe that if opium was involved-and the police say it was an illegal sale that they were intercepting-then his cravings could have driven him to kill, if he thought they were going to deny him his opium, which of course they would.”

As Jack said, it was easy to believe. In fact, it made more sense than anything else. Why was Pitt so willing to believe Alexander’s story? Pity? Or was it Alexander’s emotional pain, the trauma of being stretched between two worlds, neither of which really accepted him? Pitt himself could have ended in such a no-man’s-land when his father was convicted and sent to Australia.

Pitt’s bitterness could have consumed him then, and he could have turned to theft or violence, believing there was no justice. There had been times when that seemed to be true. It was Sir Arthur Desmond’s having taken him into the private schoolroom of his own son, to spur him on, to be a friend and a competitor, that had saved Pitt’s sense of perspective. That was why he had joined the police: to find the justice for others that had passed by his own family.

But he believed Alexander Duncannon’s pain was physical more than emotional, at least to begin with.

“The fact that Alexander might be totally deluded about what really happened that night doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe it himself,” he pointed out. “And if he did believe it, and his protests were never taken seriously, as far as he could see, then he could still have felt he had a grudge against Ednam and his men. I have to look into that, Jack. I can’t leave it alone.”

“Follow another line of inquiry, for the moment,” Jack argued, but he could see that Pitt was moved. “Please. Just over Christmas. The contract will be signed in a few days.”

Pitt hesitated.

“The creation of a free port in China will be worth a king’s ransom to Britain, if we lease it from them,” Jack said urgently. “That’s what this is, Thomas! Morally it will be something of a reparation to the Chinese for the wrongs of the Opium Wars-and God knows, there were wrongs!” He went on more eagerly, his face alight, “That’s why Abercorn is willing to work with Godfrey Duncannon, even though he loathes him, according to Emily. I’ve no idea why, but it doesn’t matter. Abercorn has huge interests in China, and Godfrey has the political and diplomatic weight to see this through. Please…don’t do something that could ruin Godfrey, for the sake of a few days!”

“Until after Christmas,” Pitt conceded.

“Thank you!” Jack held his hand out and clasped Pitt’s so strongly that for a moment Pitt had to concentrate not to wince from the power of it.

After Jack was gone, Charlotte returned to the sitting room, having instructed Minnie Maude to give the coachman hot tea with a dash of whisky in it, and two rather large mince pies.

She looked at Pitt’s face and saw both the relief in it and the shadow of a remaining anxiety. “Well?” she asked.

“Has Emily said anything to you about this contract Jack is working on with Godfrey Duncannon?”

“Yes,” she answered guardedly, waiting for him to explain. “Why? Is that what he came about?”

“Yes. I can see why it’s so important to him-to Britain. But I can’t let it go altogether…”

She looked at him gravely, but she did not ask anything of him.

“I can’t let it go,” he said quietly. “If Alexander is guilty of the bombing, it is because, in his eyes, the police were corrupt to the degree that they deliberately lied and manufactured evidence. They swore on oath in court that Dylan Lezant was guilty of murder, sending him to the gallows knowing that he was innocent. Then what exactly was Alexander guilty of? Taking the law into his own hands, when the law of the land had so terribly failed him.”

She said nothing, but the grief in her face was answer enough.

“Who else would do that, if this is proved?” he went on. “People wouldn’t trust the police. Who would want to help them, or give them simple information, or come to them when they were in trouble, attacked, and outnumbered?”

“I understand,” she said quietly at last. “Did you warn Jack?”

“He knows I’m worried, and why I am,” he told her. “All he asked was that I wait until the contract is signed. Just a few days.”

She smiled, but there was no relief in her. “It’s late. I think we should go to bed. Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, and there’s a lot to do, even if we are going to Jack and Emily’s on Christmas Day.”

It was just before daylight when Pitt was woken by a loud and persistent knocking on the door. He had slept later than he meant to. He threw the bedclothes off and stood up, shivering in the bedroom that had lost its warmth overnight.

The knocking on the door had stopped. Charlotte must have answered it. Pitt dressed hastily, putting on heavy underwear and thicker trousers. He splashed water over his face. There was no time to shave before he went to see who it was, and what had happened. No one would dare call on him on Christmas Eve, at this hour, if it were not serious.

He went down the stairs quickly in his stockinged feet, his hair still tousled.

Stoker was standing in the hall, his eyes hollow, his face white. He did not wait to be asked.

“There’s been another bombing, sir,” he said gravely. “Also near Lancaster Gate. Another empty house. No one hurt this time, but it’s a hell of a mess. Still burning, last I heard.”

Pitt stood motionless on the second to last stair.

Charlotte was standing in the hall.

“Shave,” she said quietly to Pitt. “I’ll get Mr. Stoker a cup of tea.” She turned to Stoker. “Have you eaten anything yet?”

“No, ma’am, but-”

She did not let him finish. “I’ll make you some toast. You can eat it while he gets ready. Come with me.”

Stoker did not argue. He was shaking with cold and the beginning of this new nightmare. He looked as if he had already been up for hours, but his visible fatigue was probably only from the exhaustion of too many long days and short nights.

Pitt shaved too quickly, cutting himself on the chin, but not badly. It was only seven minutes later that he went into the kitchen and took a plate of toast and a cup of tea from Charlotte. Five minutes after that he had his boots on and his coat and led the way out of the front door into the street, Stoker on his heels. The hansom that Stoker had arrived in was still at the curb. Stoker gave the man the address, and they moved off into the dark, wet early morning.