Pitt was startled.
“Why would they do that, for heaven’s sake?”
“Carelessness…panic,” she said. “But then they had to blame someone else, because they shouldn’t have had guns with them anyway. I know what you think: He was a young man who was devoted to his friend, perhaps the one person who understood his addiction and did not blame him. He believed what he had to, to preserve his own emotional values and possibly even to justify the battle he put up to save Lezant from the rope-and failed. Who knows all the reasons why we do things?”
He could not argue with her. “So you think Alexander could have placed the bomb that blew up the Lancaster Gate house, killing two policemen and critically injuring three more? Is that not…extreme?”
“Yes, it is,” she agreed. “And I very much hope that I am totally mistaken. Believe me, I debated long and deeply whether I should even mention it to you. It seems disloyal to my friend. Maybe it is worse than that. I am not certain John would approve. I suppose that is obvious, since I have not told him.” Now her face was pinched with a painful memory. “But I know that people you have loved, that you have known all your life, can be quite different from what you have supposed. Why would you even entertain the idea that they are really strangers to you, full of passions that you did not dream of?”
He knew now that she was speaking of her brother, who would have been willing to see her blamed for a crime she had not committed. She would never know if he would even have seen her hanged for it without speaking out to save her with the truth.
The shadow of that time was there in the room. What did she recall of it now? It had been years ago and it had been Pitt who had saved her. It was also Pitt who had caused the downfall of her brother, and his death, in another case after that. So much old pain. And yet Isadora had come to him now with this, not choosing to look aside, not even choosing to confide in Cornwallis, the husband she loved so deeply, because he had once been assistant commissioner of the very police they were speaking of.
Was that because she trusted Pitt to face the truth, whatever the cost?
“I’ll speak to Mr. Duncannon tomorrow,” he promised. “Where can I find him?”
She had wanted him to say just this; it was the reason she had come. And yet now she also looked stricken. The die was cast. It was too late to change her mind.
With stiff fingers she opened her reticule and passed him a small piece of paper. On it was written the address of the flat in which Alexander Duncannon lived. He was of the social class and income that did not necessitate any occupation, except whatever he chose with which to pass his time.
“When might I find him there?” he asked.
“I would try about ten o’clock in the morning,” she answered. “I don’t imagine he will be an early riser. Later, and he might have gone out. He has friends.”
“Thank you. I certainly will not mention your name when I talk to him,” Pitt promised.
She hesitated for a moment, at a loss for words herself. Then she gave a brief smile and allowed him to escort her to the door and the street, where her carriage was waiting.
Pitt found Alexander Duncannon not at his flat but at an art exhibition three blocks away from the Autonomy Club. The man at the door told him who he was. Apparently he came often. A dark, slender young man. He looked about twenty-five. He was standing alone in front of a large painting of a country scene. Laborers stood with scythes in hand. The August sun shone out of a clear blue sky onto the golden cornfield. A few scarlet poppies burned bright at the margins.
Pitt had grown up in the country. This looked idyllic, and quite unreal to him. It had a kind of beauty, but it was set back from the smell of the earth, the relentless heat of harvesttime, the ache of backs too long bent.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
The softness of Alexander’s youth was in his cheeks when he turned, but there were hard shadows around his eyes. He was clearly familiar with pain. He smiled, suddenly and charmingly. It lit his face. “No,” he said with candor. “Do you? Or have you not looked at it long enough?”
Pitt smiled back. “How long do I need to look at it in order to like it?” he asked.
Alexander was amused. “I don’t know, but longer than I have. What do you not like about it? It’s pretty enough…isn’t it?”
Pitt decided in that moment to engage him in an honest conversation. “Is that what you think it should be, pretty?” he asked.
“You don’t like pretty pictures?” He took him up on the challenge instantly and-from the grace of his posture and the sudden life in his eyes-with pleasure.
Pitt gave it consideration. “No, I think I don’t. At least not if it is at the expense of the real. Artifice has its own kind of ugliness.”
Now Alexander was eager, his eyes alight.
“Do you know the place?”
“Not recognizably.”
Alexander laughed. “Touche,” he said cheerfully. “But are you familiar with what it is meant to be? What it was, before it was sentimentalized?”
“Many like it, yes,” Pitt admitted, for a moment caught back in a memory so sharp it was almost physical.
“Funny. I don’t.” Alexander shrugged. “And yet I know it’s wrong. Perhaps anyone can develop a distaste for the artificial, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I agree.” Long ago, before graduating to murder cases, Pitt had dealt with theft, especially of fine art. He had learned a lot more about it than he had expected to, and found it gave him great pleasure. He need not tell this young man who he was, not just yet. Special Branch was not police. No such disclosure was required. “It is an emotional lie,” he added.
Now he had Alexander’s complete attention. “How perceptive of you, Mr….?”
“Pitt.” There was no escaping giving his name without just the kind of dishonesty he had spoken of. “Thomas Pitt.”
“Alexander Duncannon.” He held out his hand.
Pitt shook it. “There has to be something better here, surely?” he asked. “What do you like?”
“Ah! Let me show you something lovely,” Alexander responded. “It’s very small, but quite beautiful.” He turned away and began walking rather unevenly toward the next room.
Pitt followed, interested to see what the young man would like.
Alexander stopped in front of a small pencil drawing of a clump of grass depicted in intense detail. Every blade was perfectly drawn. In the heart of it was a nest of field mice. He stared at Pitt, waiting for his verdict.
Pitt looked at the picture for several moments. He was uncomfortable. Alexander had shown him something that was truly beautiful. His appreciation of it revealed some part of himself. He was not going to break the silence. He would wait until Pitt delivered an equally honest answer.
“That’s real,” Pitt said sincerely. “I almost expect them to move. I can smell the dry earth and hear the wind whisper in the grass.”
Alexander did not hide his pleasure. For a moment in time they stood side by side and looked at the drawing. Then Pitt dragged his attention from the tiny lives caught both by a man’s pencil and by his heart, and thought again of bombs, burning wreckage, and dead police.
“Wonderful,” he said quietly, “how a man can catch something so small, and make it eternal. Thank you for showing me.”
“Worth it, isn’t it?” Alexander replied, his thin face alight. “The whole trip, just to have seen that. Life’s full of small things that matter passionately. Absurd-a man that doesn’t, and mice that do.”
“You say that as if you had someone particular in mind?” Pitt prompted, wondering if he was speaking of Lezant.
Suddenly the pain was back in Alexander’s face, and with it a startling bitterness. “Too many,” he replied. “People dead, who shouldn’t be. People alive who do only harm.”
Pitt felt faintly deceitful in broaching the subject, but perhaps this young man had nothing to do with the Lancaster Gate bombing either. He would be pleased if that proved to be so.