Pitt was stunned. In a matter of a quarter of an hour his world had been shattered. Charlotte and the children were safe; Voisey had no idea where they were, but then possibly he had never tried to find out! His vengeance was subtler and more appropriate than simple violence. Pitt had ruined him in the eyes of the republicans. And in return he had ruined Pitt in the eyes of the people he served and who had once thought so well of him.
“Courage, my dear,” Vespasia said gently, but her voice cracked. “I think this is going to be very hard, but we will not cease to fight. We will not allow evil to triumph without giving everything we have in the cause against it.”
He looked at her, frailer now than she used to be, her back ramrod stiff, her thin shoulders square, her eyes burning with tears. He could not possibly let her down.
“No, of course not,” he agreed, though he had not the faintest idea even where or how to begin.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
The next morning was one of the worst in Pitt’s life. He had finally gone to sleep holding on to his gratitude that at least Charlotte, the children and Gracie were safe. He awoke with them pictured in his mind and found himself smiling.
Then memory returned and he knew that Francis Wray was dead, possibly by his own hand, alone and in despair. He could remember him so clearly sitting at the tea table, apologizing for having no cake or raspberry jam to offer, and giving Pitt the precious greengage instead, with such pride.
Pitt lay on his back staring up at the ceiling. The house was silent. It was shortly after six, two hours before Mrs. Brody would come. He could think of nothing to get up for, but his mind would not let him go back to sleep. This was Voisey’s revenge, and it was perfect. Had Wetron known he was helping to accomplish it for him when he had sent Tellman to prompt Pitt to go back to Teddington a second time and ask around the village?
Wray was the perfect victim, a bereaved and forgetful old man, too honest to guard his tongue in his hatred of what was to him a sin against God in the calling up of the dead. Voisey would certainly have known the story of the young woman, Penelope, who had lost her child and in her grief sought a spirit medium who had used her, duped her, taken her money and then been caught in a cheap fraud. After all, it had happened in the very village where his sister lived! A situation too ideal to pass by.
Perhaps it was even Octavia Cavendish who had left the tract on Maude Lamont in Wray’s house. Simple enough to do, and right where Pitt would see it. They had both been led like lambs to the slaughter . . . and in Wray’s case it was literal. In Pitt’s it would be slower, more exquisite. He would suffer and Voisey would watch, taking his pleasure sip by sip.
It was stupid lying here thinking about it. He got up quickly, washed, shaved and dressed, then went downstairs in the silence to make himself a cup of tea and feed Archie and Angus. He did not feel like eating.
What would he tell Charlotte? How could he explain to her yet another disaster in their fortunes? His mind was almost numb with pain at the thought.
He was not aware of time as he sat letting his tea go cold, before finally standing up, fishing in his pockets to see what change he had, and going out to buy a newspaper.
It was still not yet eight o’clock, a calm summer morning, the light pale through the haze of the city, but the sun already high. It was the middle of summer, and the nights were short. There were many people up and busy, errand boys, delivery carts, peddlers looking for early business, maids banging around in the areaways as they put out rubbish, bossed around the bootboys and scullery maids, or told the tweenies what to do and how to do it. Every now and again he heard the hard thwack of someone beating a rug and saw a fine cloud of dust rise in the air.
There was a newsboy on the corner, the same one he knew from every other day, but this time there was no smile, no greeting.
“Yer’ll not be wantin’ it, I should think,” he said grimly. “I’m surprised, I’ll say that for yer. Knew yer was a rozzer, for all yer live in a nice area ’n all. Never thought yer’d ’ound an old man ter ’is death. That’ll be tuppence, if yer please.”
Pitt held the money and the newsboy took it without a word, half turning his back as soon as the exchange was made.
Pitt walked home without opening the paper. Two or three other people passed him. None of them spoke. He had no idea whether they would have normally. He was too dazed to think.
Once inside he sat down at the kitchen table again and spread the paper open. It was not in the front pages—they were dominated by the election, as he had expected them to be—but as soon as he was past that, on page 5, it was there at the top, in the middle.
We are deeply sorry to report the death of the Reverend Francis W. Wray, discovered at his home in Teddington yesterday. He was seventy-three years old, and was still grief-stricken at the recent death of his beloved wife, Eliza. He leaves no children, all having died in their early years.
The police, in the person of Thomas Pitt, lately relieved of his command of the Bow Street station, and with no acknowledged authority, called upon Mr. Wray several times, and spoke to other residents in the area, asking them many intrusive and personal questions regarding Mr. Wray’s life and beliefs and his recent behavior. He denied that this was in his so-far-unsuccessful pursuit of the murder in Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, of the spirit medium and conductor of séances, Miss Maude Lamont.
After Mr. Pitt’s latest enquiries in the village he visited Mr. Wray in his home, and a later caller found Mr. Wray in a state of extreme distress, as if he had been reduced to weeping.
The next morning Mr. Wray’s housekeeper, Mary Ann Smith, found Mr. Wray dead in his armchair, leaving no letter, but a book of poetry marked at the verse by the late Matthew Arnold which appears his tragic, despairing farewell to a world he could no longer endure.
The doctor was called, and gave his opinion that the cause of death was poison, most likely of the type that creates damage to the heart. Speculation has occurred that it might have been something from the wide variety of plants within Mr. Wray’s garden, because it is known that he did not leave home after Mr. Pitt’s call.
Francis Wray had an outstanding academic career . . .
It then went on to list the achievements of Wray’s life, followed by tributes from a number of prominent people, all of whom mourned his death and were shocked and grieved by the manner of it.
Pitt closed the paper and made himself another cup of tea. He sat down again, nursing his tea between his hands, trying to think exactly what he had said to the people in Teddington that could have gone back so quickly to Wray, and how it could possibly have hurt him so deeply. Had he really been guilty of such crass clumsiness? Certainly he had said nothing to Wray himself. The distress Octavia Cavendish had seen was the grief for his wife . . . but of course she could not know that, nor in the circumstances would she be likely to believe it. No one would. That Wray had grieved for his wife only added to Pitt’s sin.
How could he fight Voisey now? The election was too close. Aubrey Serracold was losing ground, and Voisey gaining it with each hour. Pitt had made not the slightest mark in Voisey’s success. He had watched it all happen and had about as much effect on it as a member of the audience has on a play on the stage in front of him, visible, audible, but totally beyond his reach.
He did not even know which one of her three clients had killed Maude Lamont. All he felt certain of was that the motive had been the blackmail she was exercising over them because of their different fears: Kingsley that his son had died a coward’s death; Rose Serracold that her father had died insane, and the truth or falsity of that was still unknown; and the man represented by the cartouche, and Pitt had no idea who that was or what his vulnerability might be. Nothing he had heard from Rose Serracold or Kingsley shed any light on it. There was not even a suggestion. Those already dead could in theory know anything at all. It could be a family secret, a dead friend betrayed, a child, a lover, a crime concealed, or simply some foolishness that would embarrass by its intimacy. All it had to be was sufficient for the knowledge of it to be worth paying a price to keep hidden.