“I know what you mean. There may not be such a thing as an honest politician, but there are degrees. Is it Godfrey Duncannon you distrust, or the people behind him?”
“I think it’s the circumstances,” Emily replied, finishing the mince pie. “Cecily told me that Alexander’s closest friend was Dylan Lezant, a young man who was hanged for murdering a passerby when he was arrested during a major drug purchase. Alexander is convinced Dylan was innocent, and he can’t or won’t let the matter rest. He believes the police are corrupt…that they let the real killer go and planted false evidence to implicate Dylan.”
“If he’s still in great pain, and on opium-as I understand from Thomas-is it not possible that he is a little mad?” Charlotte said softly.
“I don’t know…maybe…”
They sat in silence for a moment. Emily took another pie.
Charlotte took one too. “He’s a young man, Emily.” She went on with the thread, following it all the way. “If he feels an injustice has been done and his friend was an innocent man, hanged for a crime he did not commit, if he has any decency at all, he must have tried to save him. It’s too late now, but won’t he try to clear his name, at least?”
“Yes, Cecily said he has tried repeatedly to do that. But bombing the house in Lancaster Gate isn’t going to help!”
“Special Branch will have to look into his possible involvement if they don’t find anyone else guilty of it. I understand people who know about bombs can make them quite easily, using dynamite, which is tightly controlled but can be stolen, from quarries or when it’s used for demolition.”
“You think Alexander Duncannon would have broken into a quarry’s storehouse and stolen dynamite?” Emily said incredulously.
“No, I think it’s more likely someone else stole it and sold it on. Does Alexander spend his time in his parents’ home in the city, or in the country? Or has he his own apartment and live on his private means, attending parties, or whatever amuses him?”
“He has his own place,” Emily agreed quietly. It was all becoming dreadfully clear as a possibility. Was this what Cecily feared? “And he keeps some odd company.”
“Most young gentlemen with time to spare do,” Charlotte pointed out. “Which you know as well as I do. Some of them have a few very strange ideas. Some are aggressive, a great deal more are idealistic, longing for reform, for greater fairness, freedom…however they see that.”
“But his family…” Emily began.
“Have you ever listened to Aunt Vespasia tell you about fighting on the barricades of the revolutions that swept Europe in ’48?” Charlotte asked earnestly. “It was a noble cause. They nearly won…in some places.”
“Yes, I know,” Emily said quietly, looking down at the crumbs on her plate. “And then the repression clamped down again like an iron lid, and, if anything, it was worse than before.”
“We need the young to believe that they will one day succeed,” Charlotte said urgently. “If they have no dreams, no passion to change the injustice and create something better, then we are as good as dead. It doesn’t matter whether it’s political freedom across Europe, or fairer pay for people in hard and dangerous jobs, or women’s rights to their own property, or against disease, usury…bad plumbing…or anything you like. We have to care. Alexander Duncannon isn’t wicked because he wants to fight against police corruption, but if he’s guilty of the Lancaster Gate bombing, that’s a totally different thing. Is that what his mother is afraid of?”
“Yes, I think so,” Emily answered. “Is it impossible?”
Charlotte took a breath to answer, and then let it out again silently.
Emily waited.
At last Charlotte smiled, picking her words carefully, and reluctantly.
“I think Thomas is afraid that there is some pretty deep corruption, at least where those particular men are concerned. He doesn’t want to investigate it, but he’s going to have to. The trouble is, as soon as he starts it will become clear what he’s doing, and why. There’s going to be anger and, worse than that, fear. Suspicion can make people do all sorts of stupid things.”
“What are you thinking?” Emily was uncertain, her imagination darting in several directions. “Lies? Blaming others, innocent people? Thomas isn’t in any danger, is he? They wouldn’t try to-” She saw Charlotte’s face and stopped herself, but it was too late.
“I don’t think so,” Charlotte said slowly. “Of course it’s possible, especially when the people who are the victims could also be part of the crime. Nobody wants to believe it, but when we’re frightened we can act without thought. We lash out at the people who are telling us what we don’t want to know.”
Emily wanted to say something helpful, but no words would come. There was no point in suggesting the corruption could be slight. It was the fear of it, the possibility, that was poisonous.
Charlotte sat up straight. “We are way ahead of any reality. We still have time to find out who the bomber is, and deal with him. Even if it’s Alexander Duncannon. Actually, it does seem more likely that someone who is against this contract, for whatever reason, probably financial, is trying to make it look like Alexander, so as to discredit his father. Apparently the success of the negotiations depends a great deal upon him.”
“That’s what Jack says,” Emily agreed. “He’s not only gifted but he has all the right contacts. People like him, and trust him, and the trust is what matters. Alexander being even suspected, never mind charged, might affect that pretty badly.”
“We don’t have a really good alternative theory of who is behind the bombing,” Charlotte said unhappily, “except police corruption of who knows what quality. I think Thomas is going to find this far more painful than he expects. I’ve watched him…I can see it in his face. Emily, I’m frightened too. It’s the destruction of things we’ve believed in all the time I can remember.”
Emily did not argue; there was no denial to be made.
Chapter 8
Pitt returned his attention to the physical evidence of the bombing again, hoping that the break would bring him fresh perception. He concentrated on that which was incontrovertible and had no alternative interpretations.
“Sorry, sir,” Stoker said when they had reexamined everything, all the fragments from the building, sketches and photographs of what was left of the house at Lancaster Gate, and the architect’s drawings of what the house had been like before the bomb.
They reread every report from the police who had survived, and from the fire brigade. Separately they went through the medical reports on those alive, and the police surgeon’s autopsy reports on the dead.
They checked the information provided by the informer who called himself Anno Domini, and went over every noted time so there were no discrepancies. Was Anno Domini-A.D.-actually Alexander Duncannon? Trying yet another way to force police attention? It looked like it to Pitt.
They could trace the dynamite from the quarry from which it had been stolen, through the foreman and to the first man to whom he had sold it. From then on it disappeared. “An anarchist” was all the description they could gain. Dark-haired, young. It could apply to Alexander Duncannon-but also to three-quarters of all the anarchists, nihilists, and fugitives from European and Russian law that they knew of.
“We’re no closer to solving this,” Stoker said when they had finished. “And we are as sure as we ever can be that we know them all. I’ve even looked at all the odd military or would-be military groups, or arrogant young would-be generals. We can’t hide it anymore, sir. We’ve got to look at Duncannon. I don’t care who his father is.” Stoker stood facing Pitt, his lean shoulders square, his eyes undeviating. Every angle of his body said he disliked the task as much as Pitt did, and therefore he was bent on getting it over with.
Neither of them had said so, but both of them knew that the rather delicate relationship between Special Branch and the police would be strained by even the suggestion that the murdered men were in any way responsible for their own appalling deaths, or the burns that Bossiney would carry for the rest of his life, or Yarcombe’s lost arm. To look into the possibility at all would be seen as a slur on the maimed and the dead, and an insult to every other officer or man who daily worked to keep the law and serve the public.