“I will be, when they find those papers!” He sounded shrill, the pity gone.
“Well, I don’t know where they are!” she retorted. “Why . . . why don’t we ask Miss Lamont?”
“What?”
“Ask her!” she repeated. “Don’t you want to know if there’s life after death, or if this is the end? Isn’t that why you came here in the first place? If anyone should be able to come back to tell us, it’s her!”
“Oh yes?” His tone was razor-edged with sarcasm, and yet he could not keep the thin thread of hope out of it. “And how are we going to do that?”
“I told you!” Now she was sharp, too. “I have powers.”
“You mean you learned some of her tricks!” The voice was filled with contempt.
“Yes, of course I did!” she said witheringly. “I already told you that. But I’ve been looking ever since Nell died. I’m not easily taken in. There was some truth as well, before the blackmailing started. Spirits can be called up, if the circumstances are right. Draw the curtains. I’ll show you.”
There was silence.
Narraway turned and looked at Pitt, questioning in his eyes.
Pitt had no idea what Lena was going to do, or if they should allow it to go ahead.
Narraway pursed his lips.
They heard the very slight sound of fabric against fabric, then footsteps. Pitt grasped Narraway by the shoulders and half dragged him backwards, and they were in the drawing room opposite, still with the door open, only just in time to avoid being seen by Lena as she came out of the parlor and disappeared towards the kitchen.
She was gone for several minutes. There was no sound from Cartouche, in the parlor.
Lena returned and went into the room again, closing the door.
Pitt and Narraway resumed their listening position, but could make out only the occasional word.
“Maude!” That was Lena’s voice.
Then nothing.
“Maude! Miss Lamont!” That was Cartouche, unmistakable, even though his voice was higher pitched with urgency.
Narraway swung around to look at Pitt, his eyes wide.
“Miss Lamont!” It was Cartouche again, but this time with excitement, almost awe. “You know me! You wrote my name down! Where are the papers?”
There was a long moan, impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman. In fact, it could even have been an animal, so strange and stifled in the throat was it.
“Where are you? Where are you?” he begged. “What is it like? Can you see? Can you hear? Tell me!”
There was a loud bang, and a shriek, and an even louder crash as if something made of glass had broken.
Narraway put his hand on the door just as an explosion shook the whole house, and there was a roaring like a sheet of flame and the smell of burning was thick in the air.
Pitt threw himself at Narraway and dragged him away from the door handle, Narraway kicking and struggling against him.
“They’re in there!” he shouted furiously. “The stupid woman has set fire to something. They’ll suffocate! Let go of me, damn it! Pitt! Do you want them to burn?”
“Gas!” Pitt yelled back at him, just as the whole side of the house erupted, hurling them backwards to land sprawled on the floor a couple of yards from the front door, which now hung crazily on its hinges, gaping open. Pitt scrambled to his feet.
The parlor door had gone altogether, and the room was full of flame and smoke. A gust from the hall blew across it and it cleared for a moment. Bishop Underhill lay on his back with his head towards the doorway, a look of amazement on his face. Lena Forrest was slumped in the chair at the end of the table, blood on her head and shoulders.
Then the fire took renewed hold as the flames roared upwards, consuming the curtains and the woodwork.
Narraway was on his feet now, too, his face ashen under the dust and smoke.
“We can’t do anything for them,” Pitt said shakily.
“The whole house could go up any moment.” Narraway coughed and choked. “Come on out! Pitt! Run!” And he yanked him around by the arm and plunged for the front door.
They went careering out over the step and fell into the street side by side just as the third explosion rent the air and a gout of flame shot out through the windows with glass flying everywhere.
“Did you know?” Narraway demanded, on his hands and knees. “Did you know it was Lena who killed Maude Lamont?”
“I did by this morning,” Pitt replied, rolling over to sit. His knees were scraped, his hands scarred and he was scorched and filthy. “When I realized it was her sister who died in Teddington. Nell is short for Penelope.” He bared his teeth savagely. “Voisey missed that one!”
There were several people in the street now, running, shouting. In a little while the fire engines would be here.
“Yes,” Narraway agreed, his smoke-grimed face splitting into a white-toothed grin. “He did—didn’t he!”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
There was little to be salvaged from the ruins of the house on Southampton Row, but the fire engines did at least stop the flames from spreading to the house to the south, or across Cosmo Place to the north.
There was no question that it was the curtains catching fire and the flames spreading to the gas brackets which had caused the first explosion, which had then cracked other gas mains throughout the north part of the house. Gas had leaked out, and as soon as the open flame had reached it, it had made a bomb out of the parlor and its immediate surrounds.
Pitt and Narraway were fortunate to be no more seriously hurt than a few scratches and bruises, and clothing that would never again be fit to wear. It would be late tonight, or even tomorrow morning, before it would be safe for anyone to go into the ruins to look for what was left of Lena Forrest and Bishop Underhill.
And unless there was a connection between Maude Lamont and Voisey in the papers they already had, there was no way in which they could prove such a thing now. Certainly there would be nothing in Southampton Row, nor would Lena Forrest be able to speak again.
“The solution, for what it’s worth,” Narraway said when the firemen had asked them all they wished and were satisfied there was nothing more to add.
Pitt knew what he meant. There was little satisfaction in it, except that of the mind, and perhaps that Rose Serracold was not guilty. But there was none of the connection to Voisey they had hoped for. It was there, but impossible to prove, which made it more acutely painful. Voisey could look at them and know they knew very clearly what he had done, and why, and that he would succeed.
“I’m going to Teddington,” Pitt said after a moment or two as they walked along the footpath out of the way of the horses and the fire engines. “Even if there’s nothing I can prove, I want to know that Francis Wray didn’t kill himself.”
“I’ll come with you,” Narraway said flatly. He gave a thin smile. “Not for your sake! I want to catch Voisey enough to take any chance there is, no matter how slight. But first one of us had better tell Bow Street what’s happened here. We’ve solved their case for them!” He said that with considerable satisfaction. Then he frowned. “Why the devil isn’t Tellman here?”
Pitt was too tired to bother with a lie. “I sent him to Devon to move my family.” He saw Narraway start. “Voisey knew where they were. He told me so himself.”
“Did he get there?”
“Yes.” Pitt said it with infinite satisfaction. “Yes, he did!”
Narraway grunted. There was no comment worth making. The darkness seemed to be gathering on all sides around Pitt, and facile remarks would be worse than useless. “I’ll tell Wetron about this,” he said instead. “You might tell Cornwallis. He deserves to know.”
“I will. And someone has to tell the Bishop’s wife. It will be a while before the firemen get to know who he is.”
“Cornwallis will find someone,” Narraway said quickly. “You haven’t time. And you can’t go looking like that anyway.”