Long Spoon Lane (14 page)

“What are anarchists, Papa?” Daniel asked with his mouth full. “Mrs. Johnson says they are devils. Is that true?”

Charlotte started to admonish him to eat his vegetables, but Pitt interrupted.

“No. People are not devils,” he said. “But they can do bad things, for all kinds of reasons. Anarchists don’t believe in order. They think they would like no rules, no government.”

“Why?”

Charlotte rolled her eyes, hiding a smile. She was not going to help.

Pitt was tempted to make a flippant reply, but he looked at Daniel’s serious, rather worried expression and changed his mind. “They think it would be better if we all did whatever we liked.”

Daniel waited.

“Do you remember when we went to Piccadilly in a hansom?” Charlotte said gently. “Do you remember one person’s carriage wheel getting caught in someone else’s and coming off, and everybody went in different directions to get around it, and ended by making it all worse?”

Daniel nodded, satisfaction close to laughter lighting his face.

“Well, that was what it would be like,” Charlotte replied. “It was quite funny for a little while, but it wouldn’t be if you were in a hurry, or you were very tired or cold, or not feeling well. If there are rules then we all get where we are going…eventually.”

Daniel turned to his father. “Why would anybody want a mess? It’s stupid!”

“Some people are stupid,” Jemima ventured. “Dolly Jones is stupid. My cat has more sense.”

“Cats are very practical,” Charlotte agreed. “Finish your carrots and don’t call people stupid.”

“Cats don’t eat carrots,” Jemima tried her luck.

“No,” Charlotte conceded. “Would you prefer a mouse?”

Jemima let out a howl of disgust, and ate the rest of her carrots in two mouthfuls.

Pitt was not alone with Charlotte until nearly nine o’clock. Then he could no longer evade the issue, not because he felt compelled to broach it but because she did.

“I visited Emily today,” she said, ignoring her sewing folded up beside her on the small table next to her chair. Both children were upstairs, and Gracie had taken the rest of the evening off.

“How was she?” Pitt asked, both from courtesy and because he was genuinely fond of his sister-in-law, even if he was also exasperated by her at times.

“She is concerned,” Charlotte replied.

Pitt was happy to talk about Emily’s concern. Presumably it had something to do with her children, or some other domestic matter. It would save him from struggling with his guilt over not sharing his own feelings with Charlotte. He could not tell her that he was going to work with Voisey. Every time he was half an hour later home than she expected, she would be filled with fear, visions of violence and betrayal tearing through her mind. “What about?” he asked.

She looked at him very directly. “About the bill to arm the police,” she replied. “She is afraid that men like Wetron, whom we know is the head of the Inner Circle, will get members of Parliament, like Tanqueray, who’s a fool, to force the bill through. And then Wetron will end up with even more power. We don’t know who is with him, and who is against. Perhaps Charles Voisey will come back into the Circle again, maybe even buy his way back by helping with the bill.”

“No, he won’t,” he said immediately, then wished he had not been so emphatic. “At least…” He stopped. She was staring at him with her brows furrowed.

“How do you know that, Thomas?” It was not a challenge. She had seen that he did know, and she was asking him to explain it. Now he had either to tell the truth or take the vast step of deliberately lying to her.

“Thomas?” she asked. “How do you know that Voisey won’t do that?”

She would be terrified for him if she knew what he was going to do.

“Wetron doesn’t need him back in the Circle,” he answered. That was true. “And he’d be a fool to trust him.” There was a corroding irony in that! Was anyone a fool to trust Voisey?

“Would you trust him?” she asked. It was a blank question, honest.

“I would trust him to act in his own self-interest,” he said. “To follow his chance for revenge, if you like.” He was making it worse. Now he had backed himself into a corner where it was impossible to tell her that he was going to work with Voisey, and yet neither was he prepared to sacrifice as much of himself as he would have to in order to lie. He wanted to retreat into simply asking her not to pursue it. But that evasion would only make the fear worse.

“Voisey’s involved in this, isn’t he.” She made it a statement, but there was a pleading in her face that he would deny it all the same.

“Of course he is,” he admitted. “He’ll do everything he can to thwart Wetron, and if he succeeds I shall be delighted. But if you are asking me if I know what he plans to do, then no, I don’t.”

“But he’ll do something!” she insisted.

“I believe so. I’m expecting it.”

She let out her breath in a sigh. “I see.”

He wanted to lean forward and touch her, take her in his arms, but the awareness of his evasion kept him back.

He slid a little farther down in the seat, as if he were exhausted, and smiled at her. He meant it far more than she would ever know. “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “I haven’t forgotten what he did, any more than you have, or Vespasia.”

5

T
HE MORNING THAT
Pitt went to St. Paul’s to meet with Voisey, Charlotte telephoned Emily to say that she was coming, and the matter she wished to discuss was of some importance. Emily obligingly canceled her proposed errands to her milliner and her dressmaker, and was at home when Charlotte arrived.

She received her in her private sitting room with the big floral-patterned cushions. The embroidery frame stood with the basket of silks below the painting of Bamburgh Castle outlined against the sea.

Emily was wearing a morning dress of fine muslin in her favorite shade of pale green. It was actually last year’s cut, but no one would have noticed it unless they were a devotee of the minutiae of fashion.

The years had been extremely kind to Emily. In her mid-thirties, she still had a slender figure—she had had only two children rather than the half dozen or so that many of her friends had had—and her skin had the alabaster delicacy of the naturally fair. She was not quite beautiful, but she had elegance and character. Best of all, she knew exactly what flattered her and what did not. She avoided the obvious, choosing the cool colors, the blues and greens of water, the grays and cold plums of shadow, for all important occasions. She would not have worn red even if freezing had been the only alternative.

When it came to fashion, Charlotte was limited by finances. There had been many occasions when, if she wished to move in society, she had been obliged to borrow clothing either from Emily, which was awkward because she was a couple of inches taller, or from great-aunt Vespasia.

“Charlotte!” Emily met her at the sitting room door, her face full of animation. She hugged her quickly, then stepped back. “What is it? Something has happened, or you would not be here at this hour. Is it one of Thomas’s cases?” There was a note of urgency in her voice, almost of hope.

Charlotte remembered the time when the two of them had involved themselves in Pitt’s investigations. These had usually been murders, driven by personal greed and hunger, or by fear of the exposure of some private sin. Together they had done things in the name of detection that now seemed outrageous, and yet she was not ashamed. They had uncovered truths and obtained at least some kind of justice, even if there had been tragedy as well. She also missed those times, even though much of what had made such exploits impossible now were Jack taking his career in Parliament too seriously for Emily to risk a wild indiscretion, and Pitt’s move to secret and more dangerous work in Special Branch. Jack’s move was good; Pitt’s was unavoidable; and therefore it was foolish to grieve over either.

“In a sense it is related to Thomas’s work,” she answered the question. She followed Emily into the room and sat down. “It is to do with this anarchist bombing in Myrdle Street, where Magnus Landsborough was killed,” she finished.

The light went out of Emily’s face. “Oh, that’s appalling! I mean it’s awful for the destruction, of course, and Magnus Landsborough’s death, although one wonders what on earth he was doing with such people! But there is a group in Parliament who are trying to bring in a bill to arm the police and make it possible to search people’s homes at the drop of a hat. Jack is afraid it will undo years of goodwill, and far from helping the police, it will actually make their day-to-day work much harder.” Her eyes were now deeply shadowed. “I’m not sure that it matters as much as he says, but nothing I can do persuades him not to fight against it.”

Charlotte looked at Emily, sitting hunched forward on the elegant sofa. Her hands were stiff, her face tight with anxiety. For all the sunshine and the colors around them, the bowls of flowers and the scent of cut grass blowing in through the half-open window, there was fear in the room.

“You don’t want him to?” Charlotte asked. Surely after all the wasted years of Jack’s youth, Emily should be proud of him for taking up a battle, even relieved that he had such a sense of purpose. She had wanted it long enough, fought, cajoled, and persuaded him.

Emily’s delicate mouth tightened impatiently. “It’s an ugly battle, Charlotte!” she said tersely. “A lot of people care about it very much. They’re frightened, and fear makes people dangerous. Tanqueray is nobody in particular, but he’s only the spokesman. There are powerful interests behind him, and they are not going to have patience, or mercy, with anyone who tries to block them.”

“Do you know who else is involved?” Charlotte asked, avoiding the subject of danger until she was certain her own anger would not show through.

“I could give you a dozen names!” Emily responded immediately. “Some of them are in very high office, and quite willing to ruin Jack, or anyone else who stands in their way. What does Thomas think? Does he want guns for the police? Jack said he wouldn’t, but perhaps after the gun battle in Long Spoon Lane he might feel differently.”

Charlotte bit her lip. She had not intended to confide her sense of exclusion to Emily, but she found it almost impossible to hold it secret any longer. She understood Emily’s fear so very well. They should not be separate even in this.

“He doesn’t,” she said quietly, meeting Emily’s eyes. “There is something troubling him far more than he is telling me, and I think it is not only a danger, but something that he is both sad and ashamed of, which is why he won’t discuss it.”

“Thomas?” Emily said in surprise. “Ashamed?”

“Not for himself,” Charlotte corrected the error defensively. “For the police. He has mentioned corruption, but I think it is worse than he is saying. There’s hardly anyone he can trust.”

“Corruption!” Emily said sharply, the last vestige of ease vanishing from her face. “No wonder Jack hates the thought of them having guns. If he could show that, then—”

“No!” Charlotte put out her hand as if she could physically stop her. “Remember, Wetron is in charge in Bow Street. That could mean the whole of the Inner Circle might be involved, which could mean Parliament, or at least some of it.”

The muscles in Emily’s face tightened. “The Circle wanted Jack to become a member, you know? He refused.” She swallowed. “Sometimes I wish he hadn’t won a seat. Then he could have followed some other profession with an easy conscience, and been safe.” She bit her lip, embarrassed at the confession.

“Do you? Is that who you want him to be?” Charlotte asked. Then she smiled, halfheartedly, at her own weakness. “I wish that too, sometimes. If Thomas could have stayed in the police, just doing what somebody else told him to, as a constable, he wouldn’t have had to make any decisions that other people might not have liked, and he wouldn’t be in much danger. Poorer of course. And if Jack had stayed in a junior position, that wouldn’t affect you, because of the money you inherited, but it would affect Jack. He’d hate it.”