Long Spoon Lane (38 page)

It was a sudden act of humanity, a gentleness that gave Magnus Landsborough a dimension infinitely larger than nameless idealism. Pitt found himself choked with fury that he should have been killed simply to provoke a public outrage and create the climate for a piece of monstrous legislation.

“No, it wasn’t his father,” he said harshly. “All he wanted was to change Magnus’s mind. It was his cousin, Piers Denoon. That’s who I was looking for on the barge, to arrest him before he fled the country. Easy to go downriver from here and across the Channel.”

“Piers?” Kydd was incredulous. “What for? That makes no sense. I don’t believe it.” His eyes were bright and hard.

“Because he raised money for you?” Pitt asked.

“If you knew that, then you’ll know why I don’t believe it. Why would he kill Magnus?” Kydd unhooked Mite from his shoulder and sat down on the chair.

“For the same reason he did everything else to do with anarchy,” Pitt replied. “Because he was being blackmailed. He couldn’t afford to refuse, or he’d have gone to prison, where I doubt he’d have survived.”

“We’d have helped him. As you pointed out, it’s not hard to get across the Channel to France, or even Portugal.”

“For anarchy, perhaps. Would you for rape?”

Kydd was stunned. “Rape!” he repeated. “Rape?”

“About three years ago. An ordinary girl. Mistook what she was, I think. But it was violent and nasty, and could have been made to sound even worse. Girl who could have been the sister or daughter of the kind of man he’d meet in prison.”

Kydd’s face showed his bleak understanding of what that would mean, and perhaps, momentarily, a bright shard of pity. Then it was gone.

“What are you going to do now? He killed Magnus. I suppose you’re sure of that?”

“Aren’t you! If you think about it?” Pitt asked. “It had to be someone who knew you would go back to Long Spoon Lane, because he was waiting there. He knew Magnus by sight, and killed no one else. He didn’t even shoot at Welling or Carmody. Also he kept out of sight himself.”

Kydd’s face tightened. “All right, it must have been Piers. It’s the only answer that makes sense. Poor devil. I suppose I want to see him on the end of a rope, but I’m not as sure as I was.” He put his hand over Mite again and stroked her, being rewarded by an instant rattle. “Go and do whatever you have to. Turn left at the door. Follow the London Road to the Onega Yard, past the Norway Dock to where it goes into Brickley Road right to the Rotherhithe Pier. You’ll get a ferry there.” He did not get up.

Pitt nodded. “Thank you.”

“Don’t bother looking for me here again.”

“I wasn’t going to. As you pointed out, I owe you a favor.” He stopped in the doorway. “I suppose you had nothing to do with Scarborough Street?”

The contempt in Kydd’s face was unseen, but he spoke. “That’s another one I’ll see on the end of a rope with pleasure, if you can catch him. That’s why I fished you out—I reckon you’re the only one who’s ever going to try.”

Vespasia was about to set out for a late dinner with friends when her butler informed her that Mr. Pitt was in the hall.

“Have the carriage wait and show Mr. Pitt in,” she ordered without hesitation. She went to her sitting room. The curtains were drawn because the evening was wet and she did not want to look at light reflected on dripping trees. She was barely there when she heard Pitt’s voice thanking the butler, and then he was there, closing the door behind him. He looked pale and cold. His unruly hair was wet with the rain and curling wildly. There was a considerable amount of dirt on his face and his clothes.

“You were about to go out,” he said, looking at her magnificent gown with its high, full-shouldered sleeves and the sheen of dove-gray satin under the falls of ivory lace. “I’m sorry.” There was a finality in his voice and the short, shivering attitude of his body that canceled even the possibility of her wishing to leave.

“It is of no importance.” She dismissed it with a tiny gesture of her hand, the diamonds on her fingers catching the light. “Shall I ask Cook to prepare us something? You look a little like a horse that has run a hard race…and lost.”

He smiled. “Actually, I think I might have won. Yes. I’m cold more than hungry. I…” He stopped. He was trembling.

“Sit down,” she ordered. “But for heaven’s sake take that coat off!” She reached for the bell. When it was answered, she dispatched the butler to send the coachman with an apology for her absence at the dinner party. The cook was requested to prepare a meal for two, and the butler to bring back a hot toddy immediately, and, when he had time, to sponge clean and dry Pitt’s coat.

“Now.” She sat down facing him. “What has happened, Thomas?”

Briefly he told her, elaborating only when he came to the death of Magnus Landsborough, and what Kydd had told him. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “It is going to be very hard for the Landsborough family, but I cannot let it go.”

“Of course not,” she agreed, her throat so tight she could barely swallow. She thought of Sheridan, then the instant after of Enid. They were so close to each other, and yet her son had killed his. How would they bear it? “I assume you would not have told me if there could be any doubt.” That was not really a question. It all made an ugly and terrible sense. At least Pitt was safe, even if Voisey was still alive. “And this Kydd said that Magnus’s father had been there, and tried to persuade him to abandon his anarchist beliefs?”

“Yes. That is a natural thing to do. Were it my son, I would have done so too. Kydd spoke of Magnus with respect, and I thought considerable affection. He had even adopted Magnus’s kitten.”

“Magnus’s kitten?” she said. It was extraordinary. Surely Magnus was as sensitive to cats as the rest of the family? He would not keep a kitten. He would be sneezing all the time, scarcely able to breathe.

“Yes,” Pitt answered. “A little black thing he named Mite. It can’t have been more than a few weeks old. Not had its eyes open long.”

“He must have been lying to you, Thomas. All the Landsboroughs are sensitive to cats.”

“It seems a pointless lie,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “It made no difference to anything. Are you sure?”

“I…” she began, about to say that she was, and then realized that she had assumed it, knowing that Sheridan and Enid both were. It had seemed that their father had been also, and so was Piers. Perhaps Magnus had escaped it. He resembled his mother more in some respects—the dark coloring for instance. With build, it was impossible to tell. Both Sheridan and Cordelia were fairly tall. He had remained spare, she had put on a little extra flesh. Magnus had not looked particularly like the Landsborough side when she had last seen him a few years ago. His coloring was different, the bones of his face. She remembered his smile, the strong teeth.

Then she remembered where once, very briefly, she had seen a smile that reminded her of Magnus, and a dozen impressions collided in her mind. One new, revelatory one emerged that replaced the passions she had felt below the surface of every encounter she had witnessed in the Landsborough house: Enid’s hatred, Cordelia’s fury, Sheridan’s indifference. If that were true, it made hideous sense, even of the kitten.

Pitt was watching her, waiting.

She felt dazed, and overwhelmed with sorrow far from untouched by guilt of her own. She had liked Sheridan so much, found a companionship with him, a comfortable laughter, a friendship that had nothing of duty in it, nothing of expectation or advantage for either of them. It was a shared loneliness, an understanding of beauty missed, of infinite small pleasures that could not be fully savored alone. She had not even guessed at that love or loss. When had Sheridan known?

“What is it?” Pitt had to ask. The answer might be one he could not ignore.

She looked up at him. It surprised her how easy it was to tell him. Vespasia was an earl’s daughter and Pitt’s mother a domestic servant whose husband had been transported to Australia for poaching his master’s game. There was an irony to it, and a value truer than most men would grasp.

“I believe Cordelia had an affair,” she told him. “Magnus is not sensitive to cats because Sheridan Landsborough is not his father, Edward Denoon is. That is why Enid hates her husband, and her sister-in-law. It is why Sheridan has no feeling for his wife, and his indifference is the greatest insult she could imagine. It explains everything I’ve half-seen, half-understood before.”

He said nothing. She could see in his face that he was weighing it, thinking of all the other things it meant, and how much it bore upon the murder, if it did at all. Had Piers Denoon known that it was not his cousin but his half-brother that he had been forced into killing? Had Wetron known, or cared? Probably not. It was just another, parallel tragedy.

“What will you do?” she asked him.

He looked tired. “I don’t know. We have to arrest Piers Denoon and charge him, but Tanqueray’s bill is more important at the moment.” His face was tight, his skin pale and shadowed around the eyes. “At the moment Voisey is winning. He still has the proof of Simbister’s guilt in the Scarborough Street bombing, and his connection with Wetron. That is, if he was telling me the truth about it, and I dare not assume he wasn’t.”

“No.” Vespasia felt oddly empty inside. She had expected Voisey to betray Pitt if he could. One needed a very long spoon indeed to dine with the devil. Pitt was a man who had seen tragedy and all kinds of human selfishness, arrogance, and hatred, but he still encountered evil with surprise. He saw humanity where simpler and less generous men would have seen only the crime. There was no point in telling him that he should have been less trusting. He probably knew it. And anyway, she did not wish him to lose that peculiar quality that was his strength as well as his weakness. “There will be time to think of him later, perhaps.” She smiled bleakly, but with intense gentleness. “But I am afraid it may require all the imagination and intelligence we have. Voisey does not yet know that you are still alive. He may well proceed tomorrow as if you were not.”

“The bill?” His voice was tight. “Will he change sides, and back it now?”

“If I were he,” she said slowly, “I would expose Simbister for the Scarborough Street bombing, and use that evidence of corruption to block the bill, at least for the time being.”

“And after that?” His eyes told her he knew the answer.

“Destroy Wetron too,” she answered. “And then take his place, unite the old Inner Circle again, and rule it as before. Knowing Voisey, he will exert a terrible revenge upon those who betrayed him.” She told him the truth. He did not deserve less, nor could they afford evasions now.

He sat quite still. “Yes.” He was thinking deeply, his face reflecting a desperate weariness.

She sat silent for some moments. “He will not forgive you, Thomas,” she said at last.

He looked up. “I know. I still have the evidence implicating his sister in the murder of Rae. Should I use it? If I do, then I have nothing else left to protect Charlotte. And he knows that.”

“Of course,” she answered. “That is the trouble with the ultimate weapon. What is there left after you have used it?”

He looked at her with a searing honesty, his fear naked. A very slight smile at his own vulnerability softening his tiredness. “I expect Charlotte wouldn’t use it either, even if I were dead in the river. She’d keep it to protect Daniel and Jemima. And he knows that. I wondered why he wasn’t afraid to have me killed. I should have thought of that.”

“There is no profit in what we should have done, my dear,” she answered. “Let us sleep on tonight’s events, and see what the morning brings. I shall call upon you at nine o’clock, when we see the newspapers. Now you must allow me to have my coachman take you home. Please don’t argue with me.”

He did not. He was grateful for it, and said so.

Pitt slept better than he had expected. He had gone home not intending to tell Charlotte the details of what had happened. He not only wanted not to frighten her more than need be, but also he was aware how foolish he had been to take anything Voisey said as true, no matter how likely, or how rushed he was by circumstance.

In the event, she guessed too much for him to conceal it without deliberately lying to her, and he found her far more understanding than he had feared. She was too relieved to criticize him. She even agreed that she would not have used the evidence against Mrs. Cavendish, precisely for the reasons he had supposed.

When he rose in the morning and went downstairs, he was consumed in domestic matters until the children had left for school. Then he, Charlotte, and Gracie opened the morning newspapers. They had read little more than the headlines when Vespasia arrived, closely followed by Tellman, and then Victor Narraway. They all looked deeply serious.

“Good morning, Thomas, Charlotte,” Vespasia said briefly. “I took the liberty of calling Mr. Narraway to join us. It seems Sergeant Tellman must have had the same thought.”

The
Times
was lying open on the kitchen table. All the other newspapers carried the same story. The only variations lay in which aspect of it they emphasized the most.

It had all happened yesterday evening, in time for today’s press. Of course, Pitt thought ruefully. Voisey would have prepared everything he needed exactly so that should be the case. He could not afford to give Narraway time to react, or assume that Pitt was dead, and therefore could do nothing.

It seemed Voisey had gone directly to the home secretary himself with the proof of Simbister’s corruption. He had chosen to expose not Piers Denoon’s murder of Magnus Landsborough, but the systematic extortion from small businesses such as publicans, shopkeepers, and manufacturers—ordinary people dealing in pennies and shillings, who made up the vast majority of the population.

He had progressed from that through the finding of the explosives on the
Josephine,
proof that they were placed there by Grover, and his close connection with Simbister. He added a dramatic account of Grover’s attempted murder of Voisey himself, and an unnamed officer of Special Branch, whose identity needed to be protected.