Bethlehem Road (17 page)

She listened almost without interruption, only mentioning briefly that Florence Ivory’s name had been spoken in the public meeting, but since she had learned nothing of her, except that she was an object of pity or contempt, she did not elaborate, and when he finished there was no time to discuss it. He was already late, but he felt lighter-footed and easier of heart, though nothing had changed, no new insight had flashed on his inner mind.

But as he walked along the damp street towards the thoroughfare where he could get a hansom to Westminster, he did wish he could take her just once to someplace exciting and different, give her one glamorous memory to rival Emily’s. But stretch his imagination as he might, he could see no way of affording it.

When he was gone Charlotte sat for several minutes thinking of Florence Ivory, her loss and her anger, before she pushed the matter aside and opened the letter. It was headed Venice and read:

My dearest Charlotte,

What a journey! So long—and noisy. There was a Madame Charles from Paris who talked all the way and had a laugh like a terrified horse. I never want to hear her voice again! I was so tired and dirty when I got here I was ready to cry. It was dark, and I simply fell into a carriage and was taken to our hotel, where all I wanted was to wash off some of the soot and grime before climbing into bed to sleep for a week.

Then in the morning, what magic! I opened my eyes to see light rippling across an exquisite ceiling and to hear, beauty of beauties, the sound of a man’s voice singing, lyrical as an angel, drifting across the morning air outside, almost echoing!

I jumped up, mindless of my nightgown or my hair in a tangle, not caring in the slightest how I looked or what Jack would think of me, and ran to the great window, at least two feet deep, and leaned out.

Water! Charlotte, there was water everywhere! Green and like a mirror, lapping right up to the walls. I could have leaned out and dropped no more than ten feet into it! It was the light reflected from its wind-dappled surface that I had seen on the ceiling.

The man who sang was standing up as graceful as a reed in the stern of a boat that drifted along, moved by a long pole or oar, I’m not certain which. His body swayed as he moved, and he was singing from pure joy at the loveliness of the day. Jack tells me he does it for money from tourists, but I refuse to believe him. I should have sung for joy, had I been afloat on that canal in the sparkling morning.

Opposite us there is a palace of marble—honestly! I have been for a ride in one of the boats, which are called gondolas, and have been right across the lagoon to the Church of Santa Maria della Salute. Charlotte, you never even in your dreams saw anything so utterly beautiful! It seems to float on the very surface of the sea like a vision. Everything is pale marble, blue air and water, and gold sunlight. The quality of the light is different here, there is a clarity to it—it is a different color, somehow.

I love the sound of the Italian language, there is a music in it to my ear. I prefer it to the French, although I understand scarcely a word of either.

But the smell! Oh dear—that is something quite different, and very trying. But I swear I shall not let it destroy one moment of my pleasure. I think I am noticing it less as I become accustomed to it.

It has also taken me a little time to become used to the food, and I am terribly tired of the same clothes all the time, but I can pack and carry only so much. And the laundry service is far from what I might wish!

I have bought several paintings already, one for you, one for Thomas, and one for Mama, and two for myself, because I want to remember this for ever and ever.

I do miss you, in spite of everything I am seeing and even though Jack is so sweet and full of conversation. Since I do not know where I am going to be, or when, or how long letters will take to reach me, I cannot send you an address so that you may write to me. I shall just have to look forward to seeing you when I get home again, and then you must tell me everything. I am longing to hear what you have done, and thought, and felt—and learned?

Give my love to Thomas and the children. I have written separately to Mama and Edward, of course. And don’t get into any adventures without me,

Your loving sister,

Emily

Charlotte folded the letter and slipped it back into its envelope. She would put it in her work basket; that was one place Pitt would not find it. She would tell him that Emily was having a wonderful time, of course, but it would only hurt him to read of all the things Emily and Jack were able to see, and he and Charlotte were not. She could not pretend to him she was not envious, that she did not want to see Venice, the beauty and history and romance of it: he would not believe her if she did.

Better just to tell him Emily was enjoying herself. He would suppose she did not show him the letter because it contained some secret between sisters, perhaps even some details of personal life. After all, Emily was on her honeymoon.

She got up from the kitchen table and put the letter in her apron pocket and began organizing the day. It was spring; she would do some fierce cleaning and renew everything possible. She already had an idea for new curtains on the landing.

Pitt went to the House of Commons in the Palace of Westminster and sought permission to go to Etheridge’s office and examine what papers were there, in search of letters and documents that might have to do with William or Florence Ivory. He would also inquire whether there was an office in Etheridge’s constituency which might have notes or correspondence on the matter.

A junior official in a stiff winged collar and gold-rimmed pince-nez looked at him dubiously.

“I don’t recall the name. What was it concerning? Mr. Etheridge had many constituents appeal for his time or intervention in matters of all natures.”

“The custody of a child.”

“There is an ordinary law which deals with such matters.” The clerk looked over the top of his pince-nez. “I imagine Mr. Etheridge will have replied to Mr. or Mrs. Ivory informing them of the fact, and that will be all the record we have, if indeed we have that. Space is limited; we cannot store trivial correspondence forever.”

“The custody of a child is not trivial!” Pitt said with barely controlled rage. “If you cannot find the correspondence, then I’ll send in men and they can go through every piece of paper there is until either we find it or we know that it is not here. Then we will look in Lincolnshire.”

The man flushed faintly pink, but it was irritation, not embarrassment.

“Really Inspector, I think you forget yourself! You have no mandate to search all Mr. Etheridge’s papers.”

“Then find me the ones referring to William and Florence Ivory,” Pitt snapped. “I imagine you have concluded for yourself that it may have to do with murder.”

The man’s lips tightened and he swung round and marched away along the corridor, with Pitt at his heels. They came to the office Etheridge had shared with another member of Parliament, and the official muttered a few words under his breath to a more junior clerk. Standing at a cabinet full of files, the clerk looked with some alarm at Pitt.

“Ivory?” he looked confused. “I don’t recall anything. What date was it?”

Pitt realized he did not know; he had not asked. It was a stupid omission, but too late to rectify now.

“I don’t know,” he replied with as much coolness as he could muster. “Start at the present and work backwards.”

The clerk looked at him as if he had been something alive on the dinner plate, then swiveled round to a set of files and began searching, moving his fingers through the piles of papers.

The official sighed and excused himself, and his heels tapped away along the corridor into the distance; Pitt stood still in the office and waited.

It did not take as long as he had expected. Within five minutes the clerk pulled out a thin file and produced one letter. He held it up with a pinched look of distaste.

“Here you are, sir, a copy of one letter from Mr. Etheridge to a Mrs. Florence Ivory, dated the fourth of January, 1886.” He held it out for Pitt to take. “Although I cannot imagine how it will be of interest to the police.”

Pitt read it.

Dear Mrs. Ivory,

I regret your very natural distress in the matter of your daughter, but it has been decided, and I fear I cannot enter into any further correspondence with you upon the subject.

I am sure you will come in time to appreciate that all actions that have been taken were in the best interests of the child, which you as her mother must in the end also desire,

Yours faithfully,

Vyvyan Etheridge, M.P.

“That cannot be all!” Pitt said peremptorily. “This is obviously the end of a considerable correspondence! Where is the rest of it?”

“That is all I have,” the clerk said with a sniff. “I expect it is a constituency matter. I daresay it is in Lincolnshire.”

“Then give me the address in Lincolnshire,” Pitt demanded. “I shall go and search there.”

The man wearily wrote several lines of instruction on a piece of paper and passed it over. Pitt thanked him and left.

Back at Bow Street he went straight up to Micah Drummond’s office and rapped impatiently on the door.

“Come in!” Drummond looked up from a pile of papers, and seemed relieved to see Pitt. “Any news? The further we look at the various anarchist groups we know, the less we find anything.”

“Yes sir.” Pitt sat down without being invited; he was too preoccupied with his thoughts for it to have crossed his mind. “There is a past constituent of Etheridge’s it appears he promised to help in a matter of child custody, and then he sided with the father. She lost the child and is distraught with the pain of it. She has admitted she considers there are times when violence is the only recourse for certain wrongs. The evidence is that Etheridge betrayed her. However, she denies having murdered him.”

“But you think she did?” Drummond’s pleasure at the thought of a solution was already dimmed by his own perception of the motive, and by something in Pitt’s anger, a darkness that Drummond knew was not directed at the woman.

“I don’t know. But it is too probable not to investigate. Most of the letters may be at the constituency office, which is in his country home in Lincolnshire. I will have to go there and search. I shall need a warrant, in case some clerk or secretary refuses me permission, and a rail ticket.”

“Do you want to go tonight?”

“Yes.”

Drummond considered Pitt for a moment. Then he reached for a bell and rang it, and as soon as a constable appeared he gave his orders.

“Go to Inspector Pitt’s home and inform Mrs. Pitt that he will be away tonight; have her pack him a valise, including sandwiches, and return here as quickly as you can. Keep the cab at the door. On your way out tell Parkins to make out a search warrant for the Lincolnshire home of Mr. Vyvyan Etheridge, for papers or letters that might contain threats to his life or his welfare, and anything to or from ... ?”

“Florence or William Ivory,” Pitt supplied.

“Right. Jump to it, man!”

The constable disappeared. Drummond looked back at Pitt. “Do you think it conceivable this poor woman did it alone?”

“Not likely.” Pitt remembered her slender frame and the passion in her face, and the protective arm of the younger, bigger woman. “She was taken in by a Miss Africa Dowell, who knew the child as well, and seems to sympathize with the Ivory woman intensely.”

“Not unnatural.” Drummond’s face was grave and sad. He had children of his own, who were grown now, and his wife was dead. He missed family life. “What about Hamilton? A mistake?”

“Almost certainly, if it was she. I don’t know how many times she actually met Etheridge, if at all.”

“You said this Africa Dowell—you did say Africa?”

Pitt gave the ghost of a smile. “Yes, that’s what Mrs. Ivory called her: Africa Dowell.”

“Well if this Africa Dowell took her in, that suggests Mrs. Ivory has little means, so she could not have paid anyone else to kill Etheridge. It seems a very ... a very efficiently violent method for a woman. What is she like, what background? Was she a farm girl or something that she might be so skilled in cutting throats?”

“I don’t know,” Pitt admitted. It was another thing he had forgotten to inquire. “But she is a woman of great passion and certainly intelligence, and I think courage. I imagine she would be equal to it, if she set her mind to it. But I gathered from the home, which was very attractive and in a good area, that Miss Dowell has money. They could have paid someone.”

Drummond pulled a small face. “Well, either way it could account for Hamilton’s having been the first victim through a mistake of identity. You’d better go to Lincolnshire and see what you can find out. Bring everything back with you.” He looked up, his eyes meeting Pitt’s, and for several seconds it seemed he was about to add something. Then at last he changed his mind and shrugged slightly. “Report to me when you get back,” was all he said.

“Yes, sir.” Pitt left and went downstairs to await the constable’s return with his things. He knew what Drummond had wanted to say: the case must be solved, and soon. As they had feared, the public outcry was shrill, in some of the newspapers almost to the point of hysteria. The very fact that the victims had been the representatives of the people, that the crimes had struck at the foundation of everything that was freedom, stability, and order, made the violence in the heart of the city a threat to everyone. The murders seemed to reflect the soul of revolution itself, dark and savage, an unreasoning thing that might run amok and destroy anyone—everyone. Some even spoke of the guillotine of the Reign of Terror in Paris, and gutters running with blood.

And yet neither Drummond nor Pitt wanted to think that one woman had been driven to take insane revenge for the loss of her child.

Pitt arrived at the Broad Street Station of the Great Northern Railway just in time to catch his train to Lincolnshire. He slammed the carriage door as the engine started to belch forth steam and the fireman stoked the furnace, and with a roar and a clash of iron they moved out of the vast, grimy dome into the sunlight and began the long journey past the factories and houses and through the suburbs of the largest, wealthiest, and most populous city in the world. Within its bounds lived more Scots than in Edinburgh, more Irish than in Dublin, and more Roman Catholics than in Rome.