Southampton Row (33 page)

“I dunno! But they could be, couldn’t they?” She started to take things out of the cupboards and put them into a wicker laundry basket. In the dim candlelight he saw two loaves of bread, a large pot of butter, a leg of ham, biscuits, half a cake, two jars of jam, and other tins and boxes he couldn’t name.

When the basket was full enough he shaded the candle with his hand, opened the door, and then, blowing out the flame and picking up the basket, he stumbled his way to the cart, several times barely missing tripping over the uneven path.

Fifteen minutes later they were all sitting wedged in, Edward shivering, Daniel half asleep, Jemima sitting awkwardly between Gracie and Charlotte, her arms gripped tightly around herself. Tellman urged the horse forward and they began to move, but the feeling was extremely different from when he had driven in. Now the cart was heavily laden and the night was so black it was hard to know how even the horse could find its way. He also had very little idea where they were going. Paignton was the obvious place, the first that anyone Voisey employed would think to look. Perhaps the opposite direction was equally obvious? Maybe there was somewhere off to the side? Where else was there a station? By train they could go anywhere! How much money had he left? They had to pay for lodgings and food as well as tickets.

Pitt had said a town, somewhere with lots of people. That meant Paignton or Torquay. But back at the Ivybridge station they would be remembered all standing together waiting for the first train. The stationmaster would be able to tell anyone who asked exactly where they went.

As if reading his thoughts, even in the dark, Gracie spoke. “Where are we goin’, then?”

“Exeter,” he said without hesitation.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because it isn’t really a holiday place,” he replied. It seemed as good an answer as any other.

They drove in silence for a quarter of an hour. The darkness and the weight of the cart made them slow, but he could not urge the horse any more. If it slipped, or went lame, they were lost. They must be over a mile from Harford and the cottage by now. The road was not bad and the horse was finding its way with more ease. Tellman began to relax a little. None of the difficulties he had feared had come to pass.

The horse pulled up abruptly. Tellman nearly fell off the seat, and saved himself only by grabbing hold of it at the last moment.

Gracie stifled a shriek.

“What is it?” Charlotte said sharply.

There was someone on the road ahead of them. Peering forward, Tellman could just make out the dark shape in the gloom. Then a voice spoke quite clearly, only a yard or so away.

“Now, where are you going at this time o’ the night? Mistress Pitt, isn’t it? From Harford way? You shouldn’t be out at this hour. Get lost, you will. Or have an accident.” It was a man’s voice, deep and with a lift of sarcasm to it.

Tellman heard Gracie gasp with fear. The fact that the man had used Charlotte’s name meant that he knew them. Was it intended as a threat? Was he the watcher who had told Voisey where they were?

The horse shook its head as if someone were holding its bridle. The darkness prevented Tellman from seeing. He hoped it also prevented the man from seeing him. How did he know who they were? He must have been watching and ridden ahead, knowing they would come this way. If he had seen Tellman go to the cottage door and then carry the boxes out, then it meant he had been there all the time. He had to be Voisey’s man. He had come ahead of them here into this lonely stretch of road between Harford and Ivybridge to catch them where there was no one to see, or to help. And there was no one—except Tellman. Everything rested with him.

What could he use for a weapon? He remembered packing a bottle of vinegar. It was half empty, but there was enough in it still to give it weight. But he daren’t ask Gracie for it aloud. The man would hear him. And he did not know how she had stacked the basket!

He leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Vinegar!”

“Wha . . . oh.” She understood. She slid back a little and started feeling for the bottle. Tellman made some move himself to cover the sounds, climbing off the box and slithering down the side of the cart until his feet touched the ground. He felt his way around to the back, hand over hand on the rough wood, and was coming around on the other side when he made out in the gloom the figure of a man ahead of him. Then he felt a smooth weight against his forearm and Gracie’s breath on his cheek. He took the vinegar bottle from her hand. He could see the dark shape of Charlotte, with her arms around the children.

“It’s you again!” Gracie’s voice came clearly from just beside him, but she was speaking to the man at the horse’s head, drawing his attention. “Wot yer doin’ out ’ere in the middle o’ the night, then? We’re goin’ ’cos we got a family emergency. Yer got one, too, ‘ave yer?”

“That’s a shame,” the man replied, the expression in his voice impossible to read. “Going back to London, then?”

“We never said we come from London!” Gracie challenged him, but Tellman could hear the fear in her, the slight quiver, the higher pitch. He was only a yard away from the man now. The vinegar bottle was heavy in his hand. He swung it back, and as if he had caught the movement in the corner of his eye, the man swiveled and shot out his fist, sending Tellman sprawling backwards onto the ground, the vinegar bottle flying out of his grasp and rolling away on the grass.

“Oh, no you don’t, mister!” the man said, his voice suddenly altered to a vicious anger, and the next moment Tellman felt a tremendous weight on top of him, knocking the air out of his lungs. He was no match for the man in strength and he knew it. But he had grown up in the streets and the instinct to survive was above almost everything else; the only thing greater was the passion to protect Gracie . . . and of course Charlotte and the children. He kneed the man in the groin and heard him gasp, then poked at his eyes with stiff fingers, or at any piece of flesh he could reach.

The fight was short, intense and absolute. It was only moments later that his hands reached the unbroken vinegar bottle and he finished the job, cracking the man over the head with it and laying him senseless.

He scrambled to his feet and staggered around to where the other horse was standing with a dogcart pulled across the track, and led it off onto the side. Then he ran back and with difficulty in the dark, took the bridle of their own horse and led it past, before climbing up onto the box again and urging it forward as fast as it was capable of going. The east was already fading a little ahead of them and dawn would not be far away.

“Thank you,” Charlotte said quietly, holding a shivering Jemima close to her and Daniel by the other hand. Edward was clinging on at the farther end. “I think he has been watching us almost since we got here.” Charlotte did not add anything further, or mention Voisey’s name, or the Inner Circle. It was in all their minds.

“Yes,” Gracie agreed, a quiet pride in her voice and in the stiff, square-shouldered way she sat. “Thank you, Samuel.”

Tellman was bruised, his blood was beating so hard he was dizzy, but above all he was astounded by the savagery which had driven him. He had behaved like something primitive and it was exhilarating, and frightening.

“You’re going to stay in Exeter until the election is over and we know whether Voisey has won or lost,” he answered.

“No, I think I shall return to London,” Charlotte contradicted. “If they are blaming Thomas for this man’s death then I should be there with him.”

“You’re to stay here,” Tellman said flatly. “That’s an order. I’ll send a telephone message to Mr. Pitt to say as you’re all right and safe.”

“Inspector Tellman, I . . .” she began.

“It’s an order,” he said again. “Sorry, but that’s the end of it.”

“Yes, Samuel,” Gracie murmured.

Charlotte tightened her arms around Jemima and said nothing more.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

Isadora sat at the breakfast table across from the Bishop and watched him toy with his food, pushing bacon, eggs, sausage and kidney around his plate. He did not look well, but then he so often complained of some minor ailment, and she knew that if she asked him he would tell her. She would be required, in ordinary civility, to listen and to offer some condolence. Kindness dictated she do more than that, and she could not bring herself to feel such a thing. So she ate her own breakfast of toast and marmalade, and avoided his eyes.

The butler brought in the morning newspaper and the Bishop motioned him to lay it on the table at his end, where he could reach it in a moment or two when he was ready.

“Take my plate away,” he directed.

“Yes, my lord. Is there something else you would prefer?” the butler asked solicitously, doing as he was bidden. “I am sure Cook would oblige.”

“No, thank you,” the Bishop declined. “I’m not hungry. Just pour the tea, would you.”

“Yes, my lord.” Again he did as he was bidden, and then discreetly withdrew.

“Are you feeling unwell?” Isadora asked before checking herself. It was so much habit with her that it required a conscious effort not to do so.

“The news is depressing,” he answered, but without picking up the paper. “The Liberals will win and Gladstone will form a government again, but it won’t last. But then nothing does.”

She must make the effort. She had promised him, and she sensed the fear in him across the table as if it were an odor in the air. “Governments don’t last, but neither should they,” she said gently. “The good things do. You’ve preached that all your life. You know it’s true. And the things that are destroyed, but in righteousness, God can rebuild. Isn’t that what the resurrection is all about?”

“That is the idea, the hope,” he replied, but his voice was flat, and he did not look up at her.

“Is it not the truth?” She thought that by provoking him into arguing it, the sound of his own words would strengthen him. He would realize that he did believe it.

“Really . . . I have no idea,” he answered instead. “It is a habit of thought. I repeat it over and over every Sunday because it is my job. I can’t afford to stop. But I don’t know that I believe it any more than the members of my congregation who come because it is the thing to be seen to do. Kneel in your pew every Sunday, repeat all the prayers, sing all the hymns and look as if you are listening to the sermon, and you will seem to be a good man. Your mind can be anywhere . . . on your neighbor’s wife, or his goods, or relishing his sins, and who will know?”

“God will know,” she said, startled by the anger in her voice. “And quite apart from that, you will know yourself.”

“There are millions of us, Isadora! Do you suppose God has nothing better to do than listen to our witterings? ‘I want this’ and ‘Give me that,’ ‘Bless so and so, which will release me of the necessity of doing anything about him.’ Those are the sort of orders I give my servants, which is why we have them in the first place, so we don’t have to do everything ourselves.” His face twisted with disgust. “That isn’t worship, it’s a ritual performed for ourselves, and to impress each other. What kind of a God wants that, or has any use for it at all?” There was contempt in his eyes, and anger, as if he had been let down unfairly and was just realizing the fullness of it.

“Who decided that it was what God wanted?” she asked.

He was startled. “It is what the church has done for the best part of two thousand years!” he retorted. “In fact, always!”

“I thought it was only meant to be the instrument of our growth,” she replied to him. “Not an end in itself.”

His brow creased with irritation. “Sometimes you talk the most arrant nonsense, Isadora. I am a bishop, ordained of God. Don’t try to tell me what the church is for. You make yourself ridiculous.”

“If you are ordained of God, then you should not doubt Him,” she snapped. “But if you are ordained of man, then perhaps you should be looking for what God wishes instead. It may not be the same at all.”

His face froze. He sat motionless for a moment, then leaned over and picked up the newspaper, holding it high enough to hide behind.

“Francis Wray committed suicide,” he said after a few moments. “It seems that damned policeman Pitt was hounding him over the murder of the spirit medium, imagining he knew something about it. Stupid man!”

She was horrified. She remembered Pitt; he had been one of Cornwallis’s men, one he was particularly fond of. Her first thought was for how it would hurt Cornwallis, for the injustice if it were not true, and for the disillusion, if by some terrible chance it were.

“Why on earth would he think that?” she said aloud.

“Heaven knows.” He sounded final, as if that closed the matter.

“Well, what do they say?” she demanded. “You’ve got it in front of you.”

He was irritated. “That was yesterday’s paper. There’s very little about it today.”

“What did they say?” she insisted. “What are they blaming Pitt for? Why would he think Francis Wray, of all people, would know anything about a spirit medium?”

“It really doesn’t matter,” he replied without lowering the paper. “And Pitt was quite wrong anyway. Wray had nothing to do with it, that has been proved.” And he refused to say anything further.

She poured a second cup of tea and drank it in silence.

Then she heard his suddenly indrawn breath and a gasp. The paper slid from his hands and fell in loose sheets in his lap and over his plate. His face was ashen.

“What is it?” she said with alarm, afraid he was having some kind of attack. “What’s happened? Have you pain? Reginald? Shall—“ She stopped. He was struggling to his feet.

“I . . . I have to go out,” he mumbled. He thrashed at the newspaper, sending the sheets slithering to the floor, rattling together.

“But you have the Reverend Williams coming in half an hour!” she protested. “He’s come all the way from Brighton!”

“Tell him to wait.” He flapped a hand at her.

“Where are you going?” She was on her feet also. “Reginald! Where are you going?”

“Not far,” he said from the doorway. “Tell him to wait!”

There was no use asking anymore. He was not going to tell her. It had to be something in the newspaper which had created such a panic of emotion in him. She bent and picked it up, starting her search on the second page, roughly where she guessed he had been reading.

She saw it almost immediately. It was an announcement by the police on the Maude Lamont case. There had been three clients at her house on Southampton Row for the last séance she had given. Two of them were named in her diary of engagements, the third had been represented by a little drawing, a pictograph or cartouche. It was like a small
f
hastily written, under a half circle. Or to Isadora’s eye, a bishop’s crozier under a roughly drawn hill—Underhill.

The police said that there was something in Maude Lamont’s papers which indicated that she had known who the third man was, and that he, like the other two, had been blackmailed by her. They were close to a breakthrough, and when they read her diaries again, with this new understanding, they would have the identity of Cartouche, and of her murderer.

The Bishop had gone to Southampton Row. She knew it as surely as if she had followed him there. He was the one who had gone to Maude Lamont’s séances, hoping to find some kind of proof that there was life after death, that his spirit would live on in a form he could recognize. It was not extinction that awaited him, but merely change. All the Christian teachings of his lifetime had built no sure faith in him. In his desperation he had turned to a spirit medium, with her table rappings, levitation, ectoplasm. Far worse than that, which held more horror, doubt and weakness, and which she could understand only too easily, he had known fear, loneliness soul-deep, even the hollow, consuming well of despair. But he had done it secretly, and even when Maude Lamont had been murdered, he had not come forward. He had allowed Francis Wray to be suspected of being the third person, and to have his reputation ruined, and now Pitt’s as well.

Her anger and her contempt for him burned in a pain that ran through her mind and body, consuming her. She sat down suddenly in his chair, the newspaper dropped onto the table, still open at the article. It had been proved that Francis Wray was not the third person, but too late to save his grief, or his sense that all his life’s meaning had been denied as far as those who had loved and cherished him could see. Too late, above all, to prevent him from committing the irretrievable act of taking his own life.

Could she ever forgive Reginald for his part in letting that happen, for his utter cowardice?

What was she going to do? Reginald was even now going to Southampton Row to see if he could find and destroy the evidence that implicated him. What loyalty did she owe him?

He was doing something she believed to be profoundly wrong. It was hypocritical and ugly, but it was largely his own destruction rather than anyone else’s. Worse, he had allowed Francis Wray to be blamed for long enough to destroy him, to be the last weight of misery on top of his grief, which had broken him, perhaps not only for this life but for the life to come. Although she could not accept that God would condemn forever any man, or woman, who had finally broken, perhaps only for one fatal instant, beneath something too great for them to bear.

It could not be undone. Wray was gone. The degree of sin in his death was beyond anyone to alter. If the church concealed it and gave him a decent burial that would redeem him to the world, but it altered none of the truth.

What was her deepest loyalty now? How far along the road of his cowardice did she have to go with her husband? Not all the way. You did not owe it to anyone to drown yourself along with him.

And yet she was perfectly sure that he would regard it as betrayal whenever she left him.

Did he know who had killed Maude Lamont? Was it even imaginable that he had done it himself? Surely not! No! He was shallow, self-important, condescending, totally absorbed in his own feelings and oblivious of the joy or the pain of anyone else. And he was a coward. But he would not have committed any of the open sins, the ones that even he could not deny because they were against the law of the land, and he would be forced to conceal them. Even he could not justify murdering Maude Lamont, no matter what she had blackmailed him for.

But he might know who had, and why. The police must know the truth. She had no idea how to contact Pitt at Special Branch, and the new commander of Bow Street was a stranger to her. She needed to speak to someone she knew. This was going to be agonizing enough without trying to explain to a stranger. She would go to Cornwallis. He would begin halfway towards understanding.

Now that she had made up her mind she did not hesitate. It hardly mattered what she wore, simply that she composed her mind to speak sensibly and to tell only the truth she knew and allow him to make all deductions. She must not permit her anger or her contempt to show through, or the bitterness that welled up inside her. There must be no manipulation of emotions. She must tell him as one person to another, no more, and with no reminder, however subtle, of what either of them might feel.

Cornwallis was in his office but occupied with someone. She asked if she might wait, and nearly half an hour later she was taken up by a constable and found Cornwallis standing in the middle of his room waiting for her.

The constable closed the door behind her and she remained standing.

Cornwallis opened his mouth to say something, the conventional greeting, to give himself time to adjust to her presence. And then before he could speak, he saw the pain in her eyes.

He took half a step forward. “What is it?”

She stood where she was, keeping the distance between them. This must be done carefully, and without ever losing her self-control.

“This morning something occurred which makes me believe that I know who the third person was who visited Maude Lamont on the night of her death,” she began. “He was indicated only by the little drawing which looks rather like a small
f
with a semicircle over the top.” Now it was too late to retreat. She had committed herself. What would he think of her? That she was disloyal? He probably regarded that as the ultimate human sin. One does not betray one’s own, no matter what the circumstances. She stared at him, and could read nothing of what was in his face.

He looked at the chair as if to invite her to sit down, then changed his mind. “What was it that happened?” he asked.

“The police have issued a statement saying that they believe Maude Lamont knew the identity of that person,” she replied. “She was blackmailing him, and there are papers still in her house in Southampton Row, together with the information that Mr. Pitt gathered from the Reverend Francis Wray.” Her voice dropped at mention of Wray’s name, and for all her intentions not to allow it, her anger came through. “It will make his identity plain.”

“Yes,” he agreed, frowning. “Superintendent Wetron told the press.”

She took a deep breath. She wished she could control the lurching of her heart and the dizziness in her, the sheer physical reactions that were going to let her down. “When my husband read that at the breakfast table he went completely white,” she continued. “And then he rose and said that he was canceling his appointments this morning, and has left the house.” Put like that it sounded absurd, as if she wanted to believe it was Reginald. That was proof of nothing at all, except what was going on in her own mind. No wife who loved her husband would have leaped to such a conclusion. Cornwallis must see that—and despise her for it! Did he think she was trying to create some excuse to leave Reginald?

That was terrible! She must make him understand that she truly believed it, and that it had come to her only slowly, and reluctantly.

“He is ill!” she said jerkily.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. He looked terribly awkward, not knowing whether to offer any more sympathy, as if it were an irrelevance.