Southampton Row (19 page)

But as he thanked the clerk and walked down the steps and into the clearing air, the pavement cloud and sunshine patterned, he felt emotion constricting his chest, pride and shame and a desperate desire to preserve all that was good in a land and a people he loved. The men who had faced the enemy at Rorke’s Drift stood for something far simpler and cleaner than the secrecy of the Inner Circle and political betrayal for ambition’s sake.

He took a cab as far as Narraway’s office and then paced the floor with mounting anger as he was obliged to wait for him.

When Narraway arrived nearly an hour later he was mildly amused to find Pitt glaring at him. He closed the door. “I assume from your expression that you have found something of interest?” He made it a question. “For heaven’s sake, Pitt, sit down and make a proper report. Is Rose Serracold guilty of something?”

“Self-indulgence,” Pitt answered, obeying the instruction. “Nothing else, so far as I know, but I have not stopped looking.”

“Good!” Narraway said dryly. “That is what Her Majesty pays you for.”

“I think Her Majesty, like God, would be horrified at much of what is done in her name,” Pitt snapped back. “If she knew about it!” Then, before Narraway could interrupt, he went on. “Actually, I’ve been looking at Major General Kingsley to see why he went to Maude Lamont and why his letters to the newspapers condemning Serracold are so at odds with the opinions in his ordinary speech.”

“Have you indeed?” Narraway’s eyes were very sharp and still. “And what have you found?”

“Only his military record,” Pitt replied guardedly. “And that he lost his son in a skirmish in Africa in the same Zulu Wars in which he himself was highly distinguished. It was a bereavement from which he doesn’t seem to have recovered.”

“It was his only son,” Narraway said. “Only child, actually. His wife died young.”

Pitt searched his face, trying to read the man’s feelings behind the repeating of simple and terrible facts. He saw nothing he was sure of. Did Narraway deal in death so often, in other people’s grief, that it no longer marked him? Or could he not afford to feel, in case it swayed judgments that had to be made in the interest of all, not simply those for whom he cared? The closest look at Narraway’s clever, line-seamed face told him nothing. There was passion there, but was it of the heart or only the mind?

“How did he die?” Pitt asked aloud.

Narraway raised his eyebrows in surprise that Pitt should want to know. “He was one of the three who was killed during the reconnaissance at White Mfolozi. They ran straight into a rather well-laid Zulu ambush.”

“Yes, I saw that in the records. But why is Kingsley pursuing it through a woman like Maude Lamont?” Pitt asked. “And why now? Mfolozi was thirteen years ago!”

Anger flashed in Narraway’s eyes, then pain. “If you had lost anyone, Pitt, you would know that the hurt doesn’t go away. People learn to live with it, to hide it, most of the time; but you never know what is going to wake it again, and suddenly, for a space, it is out of control.” His voice was very quiet. “I’ve seen it many times. Who knows what it was? The sight of a young man whose face reminded him of his son? Another man who has the grandchildren he doesn’t? An old tune . . . anything. The dead don’t go away, they just fall silent for a while.”

Pitt was aware of something intensely personal in the room. These words were not practical, they were from the passion of the moment. But the shadow in the eyes, the set of Narraway’s lips, forbade the intrusion of any words that touched them.

Pitt affected not to have noticed.

“Is there any connection between Kingsley and Charles Voisey?” he asked.

Narraway’s dark eyes widened suddenly. “For God’s sake, Pitt, don’t you think I’d tell you that if I knew?”

“You might prefer me to find it for myself . . .”

Narraway jerked forward, the muscles of his body locked. “We haven’t time for games!” he said between his teeth. “I can’t afford to give a damn what you think of me! If Charles Voisey gets into Parliament there’ll be no stopping him until he has the power to corrupt the highest office in the land. He’s still head of the Inner Circle.” A shadow crossed his face. “At least I think he is. There is another power there. I don’t know who it is . . . yet.”

He held up his hand, finger and thumb an inch apart. “He came that close to losing it! We did that, Pitt! And he won’t forget it. But we didn’t finish him. He will have a new Number Two, and Three, and I haven’t the faintest idea who they are. It is a disease eating at the bowels of the true government of the land, whichever party sits in Westminster. We can’t deal without power—and we can’t deal with it! It’s a balancing act. If we stay one step ahead, keep changing often enough, weed out the infection of madness as soon as we recognize it, the delusion that you can do anything and get away with it, that you’re infallible, untouchable, then we win—until next time. Then we start all over again, with new players and a new game.”

He threw himself back in the chair suddenly. “Find the connection between Kingsley and Charles Voisey yourself, whether it has to do with that woman’s death or not. And be careful, Pitt! You were a detective before for Cornwallis, a watcher, a judge. For me you’re a player. You too will win—or lose. Don’t forget that.”

“And you?” Pitt asked a little huskily.

Narraway flashed him a sudden smile that lit his face, but his eyes were hard as coal. “Oh, I intend to win!” He did not say he would die before letting loose his hold, like an animal whose jaws do not unlock even in death. He did not need to.

Pitt rose to his feet, muttered a few words of acknowledgment, and went outside, his mind whirling with unanswered questions, not about Kingsley or Charles Voisey, but about Narraway himself.

He returned home briefly, and on the footpath at the end of Keppel Street heard a voice addressing him.

“Afternoon, Mr. Pitt!”

He turned around, startled. It was the postman again, smiling, holding out a letter for him.

“Good afternoon,” he replied hastily, a sudden excitement inside him, hope surging that it was from Charlotte.

“From Mrs. Pitt, is it?” the postman asked cheerfully. “Somewhere nice, is she?”

Pitt looked down at the letter in his hand. The writing was so like Charlotte’s, and yet it was not, and the postmark was London. “No,” he said, unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

“She’s only been gone a day or two,” the postman comforted him. “Takes a while from farther off. You tell me where she’s gone, I’ll tell you ’ow long it’ll take for ’er letter ter get ’ome.”

Pitt drew in his breath to say “Dartmoor,” and then looked at the man’s smiling face, and sharp eyes, and felt the coldness well up inside him. He forced himself to remain calm, and it took such an effort that it was a moment before he could reply.

The postman waited.

“Thank you,” Pitt said then answered with the first place that came to his mind: “Whitby.”

“Yorkshire?” The man looked extraordinarily pleased with himself. “Oh, that shouldn’t be more than two days at the most this time of year, maybe only one. You’ll ’ear soon, sir. Maybe they’re ’aving too much fun ter get down ter writing. Good day, sir.”

“Good day.” Pitt swallowed, and found his hands shaking as he tore open the letter. It was from Emily, dated the previous afternoon.

Dear Thomas,

Rose Serracold is a friend of mine, and after visiting her yesterday I feel that I know certain things which may be of some meaning to you.

Please call upon me when you have the opportunity.

Emily

He folded it up and slipped it back into the envelope. It was the middle of the afternoon, a time when she would normally be out visiting, or receiving calls, but there would be no better opportunity, and perhaps what she had to say would help. He could not afford to decline any chance at all.

He turned around and walked back towards Tottenham Court Road again. Half an hour later he was in Emily’s sitting room and she was telling him, with awkward phrases and some self-consciousness, of her quarrel with Rose Serracold. She spoke of her growing conviction that Rose was so deeply afraid of something that she was impelled to visit Maude Lamont in spite of the danger of ridicule, and that she had, if not deceived him, at least omitted to tell Aubrey anything about it.

Emily’s warning had produced anger in her to the point of endangering their friendship.

When she finished she stared at him, her eyes filled with guilt.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“Thomas . . .” she began.

“No,” he answered before she could ask any further. “I don’t know whether she killed her or not, but I cannot look the other way, no matter who gets hurt. All I can promise is that I will cause no more pain than I have to, and I hope you knew that already.”

“Yes.” She nodded, her body stiff, her face pale. “Of course I did.” She took a breath as if to say something more, then changed her mind and offered him tea, which he did not accept. He would have liked to accept—he was tired and thirsty, hungry also if he thought about it—but there was too much emotion between them, too much knowledge for it to be comfortable. He thanked her again and took his leave.

That evening Pitt telephoned Jack’s political offices to find out where he was going to speak, and on being informed of the place, he set out to join him, first to listen, feel the political temper of the crowd, then maybe to judge from it more accurately what Aubrey Serracold faced.

And he admitted he was also increasingly concerned for Jack himself. It was going to be a far closer election than last time. Many Liberals could lose their seats.

He arrived as some two or three hundred people were gathering, mostly men from the nearby factories, but also a good number of women, dressed in drab skirts and blouses grained with the sweat and dirt of hard work. Some were even as young as fourteen or fifteen, others with skins so tired and gaunt, bodies so shapeless, that it was hard to tell how old they were. They might have been the sixty that they looked, but Pitt knew very well it was more likely they were still under forty, just exhausted and poorly fed. Many of them would have borne too many children, and the best would have been given to them, and to the men.

There was a low murmur of impatience, a couple of catcalls. More people drifted in. Half a dozen left, grumbling loudly.

Pitt shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He tried to overhear conversations. What did these people think, what did they want? Did anything make any difference to the way they voted, except to a handful of them? Jack had been a good constituency member, but did they realize that? His majority was not large. On a wave of Liberal success he would have had no cause to worry, but this was an election even Gladstone did not wholly desire to win. He fought it from passion and instinct, and because he had always fought, but his reasoning mind was not in it.

There was a sudden flurry of attention and Pitt looked up. Jack had arrived and was walking through the crowd, clasping people by the hand, men and women alike, even one or two of the children. Then he climbed onto the tail of a cart which had been drawn up to form a makeshift platform for him, and began to speak.

Almost immediately he was heckled. A semibald man in a brown coat waved his arm and demanded to know how many hours a day he worked. There was a roar of laughter and more catcalls.

“Well, if I don’t get returned to the House, I’ll be out of work!” Jack called back at him. “And the answer will be none!”

Now the laughter was directed the other way—humor, not jeering. There followed immediately an argument about the working week. Voices grew harsher and the underlying anger had an ugly edge. Someone threw a stone, but it went yards wide and clattered off the warehouse wall and rolled away.

Looking at Jack’s face, handsome and easy-natured as it seemed to be, Pitt could see he was holding his temper with an effort. A few years ago he might not even have tried.

“Vote for the Tories,” Jack offered with an expansive gesture. “If you think they’ll give it to you.”

There were curses and hoots and whistles of derision.

“None of yer’s any good!” a scrawny woman yelled, her lips drawn back from broken teeth. “All yer do is bleed us fer taxes and tie us up in laws no one understands.”

And so it continued for another half hour. Slowly, Jack’s patience and occasional banter began to win over more of them, but Pitt could see in the growing tension in his face and the tiredness of his body the effort it cost him. An hour later, dusty, exhausted and hot from the press of the crowd and the stale, clinging air of the dockside, he climbed down from the cart and Pitt caught up with him as he walked towards the open street where he would be able to find a hansom. Like Voisey he had had the tactical sense not to bring his own carriage.

He turned to Pitt with surprise.

Pitt smiled at him. “An accomplished performance,” he said sincerely. He did not add any facile words about winning. As close to Jack as he was, he could see the exhaustion in his eyes and the grime in the fine lines of his skin. It was dusk and the street lamps were glowing. They must have passed the lamplighter without noticing him.

“Are you here for moral support?” Jack asked dubiously.

“No,” Pitt admitted. “I need to know more about Mrs. Serracold.”

Jack looked at him in surprise.

“Have you eaten?” Pitt asked.

“Not yet. Do you think Rose could be involved in this wretched murder?” He stopped, turning to face Pitt. “I’ve known her for a couple of years, Thomas. She’s eccentric, certainly, and has some idealistic beliefs which are highly impractical, but that’s a very different thing from killing anyone.” He pushed his hands into his pockets, which was uncharacteristic in him; he cared too much about the cut of his suits to so misuse them. “I don’t know what on earth possessed her to go to this medium now, of all times.” He winced. “I can imagine how the press would ridicule it. But honestly, Voisey’s making pretty heavy inroads into the Liberal position. I started off believing Aubrey would get in as long as he didn’t do anything totally stupid. Now I’m afraid Voisey’s winning is not as impossible as it seemed even a couple of days ago.” He continued walking, looking straight ahead of him. They were both dimly aware of supporters, out of uniform, twenty yards behind.