Southampton Row (18 page)

CHAPTER
SEVEN

Charlotte and Gracie worked together in the cottage kitchen. Gracie was cleaning the cooking range after having scrubbed the stone floor, Charlotte was kneading bread, and the butter churn stood on the marble-topped table in the cool of the scullery. Sunlight streamed through the open door; the slight breeze from the moors rising in the distance was sweet and sharp with the aroma of tussock and herbs and the lush grasses of the bogs. The children were playing on the apple tree and every so often they shouted with laughter.

“If that boy rips ’is trousers one more time sliding out o’ that tree, I don’ know wot you’re goin’ ter tell ’is mother!” Gracie said exasperatedly, referring to Edward, who was having the time of his life and had torn every piece of clothing he had brought with him. Charlotte had spent time each evening doing her best to repair them. One pair of Daniel’s trousers had been sacrificed to make patches for both boys. Even Jemima had rebelled against the restrictions of skirts and tucked them up as she had scrambled over stone walls and loudly declared that there was no natural or moral law that girls should not have just as much fun as boys.

They ate bread and cheese and fruit, raspberries, wild strawberries, and plums, till they were fortunate not to be sick, and fresh sausages from the butcher in the village. It would have been perfect, if only Pitt could have been with them.

Charlotte understood that it was impossible, even if not the details of why. And although Voisey could not know where they were, she was aware all the time of listening to make sure she could hear the children’s voices, and every ten minutes or so she went to the door and looked out to see them.

Gracie said nothing about it. Not once did she remark on the fact that they were alone here, but Charlotte heard her going around the windows and doors at night, checking after her that they were locked. Neither did Gracie mention Tellman’s name, but Charlotte knew she must be thinking of him, after their closeness during the Whitechapel affair. Her silence was in some ways more telling than words. Perhaps at last her feelings for him were greater than friendship?

Charlotte finished the bread and set it in its tins to rise, then went out to the garden to wash her hands under the pump. She looked up at the apple tree and saw Daniel on the highest branch strong enough to take his weight, and Jemima clinging to the one immediately below. She waited a moment for the stirring of leaves that would tell her where Edward was, and it did not come.

“Edward!” she called. It could only have been minutes. “Edward!”

Silence, then Daniel looked over to her.

“Edward!” she shouted, running towards the tree.

Daniel slid down hand over hand, scrambling into the fork of the branches, and then dropped to the ground. Jemima started to come down a great deal more carefully, hampered by inexperience and the fabric of skirts.

“We can see over the garden wall from up there,” Daniel said reasonably. “And there’s a patch of wild strawberries that way.” He pointed, smiling.

“Is he there?” she demanded, her voice high and sharp beyond her control. Even as she heard it she knew she was being ridiculous, and yet she could not help it. He had only gone to pick fruit, as any child would. There was no need even to be worried, let alone panic. She was allowing imagination to take over her reason. “Is he?” she repeated only a fraction more calmly.

“I don’t know.” Daniel was looking at her anxiously now. “Do you want me to go up again and look?”

“Yes! Yes, please.”

Jemima landed on the grass and straightened up, regarding a small tear in her dress with irritation. She saw Charlotte looking at her and shrugged. “Skirts are stupid sometimes!” she said in disgust.

Daniel went back up the tree, nimbly, hand over hand. He knew exactly the way to go now. “No!” he called from the top. “He must have found another one, maybe better. I can’t see him!”

Charlotte felt her heart lurch and the beating of the blood in her ears was deafening. Her vision blurred. What if Voisey had taken revenge on Pitt by hurting Emily’s child? Or maybe he didn’t even know who was who! What should she do?

“Gracie!” she yelled. “Gracie!”

“Wot?” Gracie flung open the back door and came running out, fear wide in her eyes. “Wot’s ’appened?”

Charlotte swallowed, trying to steady herself. She should not panic and frighten Gracie. It was stupid and unfair. She knew she was doing it and still could not help herself. “Edward has gone . . . gone to pick strawberries,” she gulped. “But he’s not there anymore.” Her mind raced to find a reasonable excuse for the terror which Gracie must see and hear in her. “I’m afraid of the bogs out there. Even the wild animals get caught in them sometimes. I . . .”

Gracie did not wait. “You stay ’ere wi’ them!” She waved at Daniel and Jemima. “I’ll go look for ’im.” And without waiting to see if Charlotte agreed or not, she picked up her skirts and ran with amazing speed across the grass and out of the gate, leaving it swinging behind her.

Daniel turned to Charlotte, his face pale. “He wouldn’t go into a bog, Mama. You showed us what they look like, all green and bright. He knows that!”

“No, of course not,” she agreed, staring at the gate. Should she take Daniel and Jemima with her and go, too, or were they safer here? She should not leave Gracie alone to look for Edward. What was she thinking of! Don’t separate! “Come on!” She darted and grasped Daniel’s hand, almost pulling him off balance as she started towards the gate. “Jemima! Come with me. We’ll all go and look for Edward. But stay together! We must stay together!”

They were only a hundred yards along the lane, the small, straight-backed figure of Gracie another hundred yards ahead of them, when the dogcart came over the rise and with a flood of relief that brought tears to her eyes, Charlotte saw Edward sitting beside the driver, balancing precariously and grinning with satisfaction.

Now she was so furious with him for the fear she had felt that she would happily have spanked him until he had to eat supper off the mantelpiece—and breakfast, too! But it would be totally unfair; he had not meant harm. Looking at his pleasure, she forced back her emotions, called out to Gracie, then picked her way over the ruts in the track to speak to the driver, who had pulled up in seeing them.

Gracie came back and for a moment her eyes met Charlotte’s, and she blinked hard to mask the depth of her own relief. In that instant Charlotte realized just how much they had been hiding from each other, trying to protect, pretend it was not there, and she was filled with gratitude and a startling depth of love for the girl with whom she had so little in common on the surface, and so much in reality.

Pitt’s house in Keppel Street was exactly as always, not an ornament or a book out of place. There were even flowers in the vase on the mantel shelf in the parlor, and early sunlight poured through the windows onto the kitchen bench and splashed warm across the floor. Archie and Angus lay curled up together in the clothes basket, purring gently. And yet everything was so different in its emptiness that it seemed more like a painting than a reality. The kettle was beginning to boil on the stove but it only served to elaborate the silence. There were no footsteps on the stairs, no rattle and clatter of Gracie in the larder or the scullery. No one called out asking where a lost shoe or sock was, or a schoolbook. There was no answer from Charlotte, no reminder of the time. The ticking of the kitchen clock seemed to echo.

But Pitt was at ease that they were away from London, safely anonymous in Devon. He had told himself that he did not think anyone in the Inner Circle would revenge themselves on him by hurting his family at Voisey’s command. Voisey would not hire someone he did not trust, he could not afford the risk to himself, and Pitt’s turning of the events in Whitechapel had made Voisey appear to betray not only his allies and friends but his cause as well. It should have divided the Circle along lines of personal loyalties and self-interest, but Pitt had no way of knowing if it had.

He could not clear from his mind the look of hatred in Voisey’s eyes as he had passed him in Buckingham Palace the moment after the knighthood which he and Vespasia had contrived, using Mario Corena’s sacrifice. It had ended forever Voisey’s ambitions to be republican president of Britain.

And that same hatred had been there in his eyes again when they had met in the House of Commons. Passion like that did not die. Pitt could sit here at his own kitchen table with some measure of calmness only because he knew his family was hidden and safe, miles away. No matter how much he missed the mere knowledge of their presence in the house, the loneliness was a small price to pay for that.

Was the murder of Maude Lamont connected with Voisey’s bid for a parliamentary seat? There were at least two possible connections: the fact that Rose Serracold had been at the séance that night; and the fact that Roland Kingsley, who was also there, had written to the newspapers so vehemently against Aubrey Serracold. Pitt had found nothing in Kingsley’s previous political views to lead anyone to expect such an opinion now.

But then elections brought out extreme views. The threat of losing exposed some ugly sides of nature, just as some were surprisingly brash in victory where one had expected grace, even generosity.

Or was the connection the man whose name was concealed by a cartouche, and who might have had a far more personal relationship with Maude Lamont? Was the connection with Voisey even a real one, or was it Narraway’s attempt to use any means possible to block his path to power?

If Narraway had been Cornwallis, Pitt would have known every attack he made would be clever but fair. Cornwallis was a man trained by the rigor of the sea who went into battle with his face forward and fought to the end.

Pitt did not know Narraway’s beliefs, the motives which drove him, or the experience, the triumphs and the losses which had formed his character. He did not even know whether Narraway would lie to the men under his command in order to make them do whatever would achieve his own ends. Pitt was moving step by step in the dark. For his safety, so he was not manipulated to serve a purpose he did not believe in, he must learn a great deal more about Narraway.

But for the present he needed to discover why Roland Kingsley had proclaimed himself so virulently against Serracold. It was not the opinion he had expressed when Pitt had spoken to him. Had Maude Lamont been manipulating him with the threat of disclosure of something she had learned from his questions to the dead?

What made a man of the successful, practical nature he seemed to possess go to a spirit medium? Tragically, many people lost sons and daughters. Most of them found a fortitude based in the love they shared in the past and an inner belief in some religion, formal or not, that there was a divine power that would reunite them one day. They continued with life the best way they could, with work, the comfort of others they loved, perhaps a retreat into great music or literature, or the solitude of nature, or even exhausting oneself in the care of those less fortunate. They did not turn to notions of Ouija boards and ectoplasm.

What was there in his son’s death that had driven Kingsley so far? And if the answer were blackmail, was it by Maude Lamont herself, or had she only supplied the information to someone else, someone still alive, and who would continue to use it?

Such as a member of the Inner Circle—even Charles Voisey himself?

That was what Narraway would like it to be! And it had nothing to do with whether it was the truth or not. Perhaps Pitt was seeing Voisey where he had no part. Fear itself could be an element of his revenge, maybe better even than the actuality of the blow.

He stood up, leaving his dishes on the table where Mrs. Brody would find them and clear them away. He went outside. He was hot by the time he had walked as far as Tottenham Court Road and stopped on the pavement to hail a hansom.

He spent the morning with the official military records tracing the career of Roland Kingsley. No doubt Narraway would have searched them, if he did not already know the facts, but Pitt wanted to see for himself, in case his interpretation of the records was different.

There was little personal comment. He read through it all quickly. Roland James Walford Kingsley had joined the army at eighteen, like his father and grandfather before him. His career spanned over forty years, from his early discipline and training, his first foreign posting in the Sikh Wars of the late 1840s, the horror of the Crimean War of the mid-1850s, where he had been mentioned several times in dispatches, and the immediately following bloodbath of the Indian Mutiny.

Later he had turned to Africa, the Ashanti Campaign of the mid-1870s, and the Zulu War at the end of the decade, where he had been decorated for extraordinary valor.

After that he had returned to England, seriously injured, and seemingly also wounded in spirit. He never again left the country, although still honoring all his commitments, and retiring in 1890 at the age of sixty.

Pitt then looked up Kingsley’s son, seeking his death in those same Zulu Wars, and found it recorded on July 3, 1879, during the fiasco crossing the White Mfolozi. It was the action in which Captain Lord William Beresford had won a Victoria Cross, the highest honor given for supreme gallantry on the field of battle. Two other men had also been killed, and several wounded, in a superbly executed Zulu ambush. But then Isandlwana had proved the Zulu as warriors of not only courage but exceptional military skill. At Rorke’s Drift they had brought out the best in British discipline and honor. That action lived in history and fired the imagination of men and boys as they heard the story of how eight officers and a hundred and thirty-one men, thirty-five of whom were sick, had withstood the siege of nearly four thousand Zulu warriors. Seventeen British had been killed, and eleven Victoria Crosses awarded.

Pitt stood in the middle of the floor and closed the book holding the records, the bare words which made little attempt to describe the burning, dusty countryside of another continent, and the men—good and bad, cowardly and brave—who had gone there out of service or adventure, obedience to an inner voice or an outer necessity, and lived and died in the conflicts.