Bethlehem Road (14 page)

Which was all very silly. She would not have changed Pitt for Jack Radley, or anyone else. Nor would she have changed her life for Emily’s ... except perhaps just at the moment... .

She heard Gracie’s feet clacking along the corridor, outrage audible in every step as she came from the front door having had words with the fishmonger. Gracie had no time for tradesmen who got above themselves.

“I know,” Charlotte said as soon as Gracie appeared and before she could begin her expostulations. “He’s impertinent!”

Gracie saw she would find no sympathy and instantly changed tack. She was all of sixteen now, and thoroughly experienced.

“What’s Mr. Pitt working on now, ma’am?”

“A political case.”

“Oh. What a pity! Well never mind—maybe it’ll be better next time!” And Gracie set about riddling the grate and restarting the fire.

Pitt discovered from Micah Drummond that he himself had already been to the House of Commons and spoken to several of Etheridge’s colleagues.

“Nothing that I can see helps us,” he said, shaking his head. He said nothing of pressure from the Commissioner of Police, or from the Home Office, but Pitt did not need to be told. They would still be subtle—it was early days yet—but the air of fear would be there, the anxiety to meet public demand, to answer the questions, quiet anxiety, and to appear to have everything in control. Some individuals would fear charges of incompetence, loss of status, even of office, and they would seek someone to blame.

“Political enemies?” Pitt asked.

“Rivals.” Drummond shrugged. “But he wasn’t ambitious enough to have enemies, or controversial enough to have stirred anyone to passion. And he had enough private income not to be greedy or to be tempted into graft.”

“The Irish question?”

“Against Home Rule, but so were three hundred forty-two others three years ago, more in ’eighty-six. And anyway, Hamilton was for it. And on other issues Etheridge seems to have been moderate, humane without being radical. For penal reform, poor law reform, the Factories Acts—but change should be gradual, nothing that would destabilize society or industry. Very unremarkable all the way along.”

Pitt sighed. “The more I look at it, the more it seems as if it might be personal after all, and poor Hamilton was simply a mistake.”

“Who?” Drummond looked up with a frown. “His son-in-law, for the money? Seems a bit hysterical. He’d get it anyway in due course. No plans for disinheritance, were there? Wife not likely to leave him, surely? It would be social suicide!”

“No.” Helen Carfax’s worried, vulnerable face came sharply to his mind. “No, on the contrary, she’s obviously very much in love with him. And probably gives him all the money he asks for; it seems to be the most attractive thing about her, to him.”

“Oh.” Drummond leaned back wearily. “Well you’d better go on looking at that. Unless of course Hamilton was the intended victim, and Etheridge was added to conceal the motive? But I agree, that is a bit farfetched—more of a risk than it would be worth. And there doesn’t seem to be anyone in Hamilton’s family or among his acquaintances with any motive that we can find. What about this picture you say Helen Carfax sold? What was it worth?”

“I don’t know yet. I was going to look into that today. Could be anything from a few pounds to a small fortune.”

“I’ll have Burrage do that. You go back to the Carfaxes’ house. I don’t know what else you can do, but keep trying. See if there’re any women James Carfax is involved with, not just using. See if his debts are serious, or pressing. Perhaps he couldn’t afford to wait?”

“Yes sir. I’ll be back at lunchtime to see if Burrage has anything on the painting.”

Drummond opened his mouth to protest, then changed his mind and said nothing, merely watching Pitt go out the door.

But when Pitt came back long after luncheon at half past two, the news that greeted him had nothing to do with the painting. There was a hand-delivered note from Helen Carfax saying that she had remembered the exact nature of the threat her father had received, and if Pitt wished to call at the house in Paris Road, she would tell him what it had been.

He was surprised. He had believed it to be an invention, born of her desire to persuade both him and herself that the violence and the hatred that surrounded the murder had its origin far from her home or family, that it was something outside, beyond in the darkness of the streets where she never went; east in the slum and docklands, the taverns and alleys of discontent. He had not expected her to mention it again, except as a vague possibility, undefined.

Still, she had sent for him, so he left Bow Street and took a cab south across the river to Paris Road.

She greeted him quietly, her eyes one minute downcast, the next seeking his face. Her hands, clenching and unclenching at her sides, seemed stiff, and she fumbled with the door handle as she led him into the morning room. But then she was speaking of people whom she considered might have cut her father’s throat and tied him to a lamppost like an effigy, a lampoon of authority and order.

“I daresay you know of it, Mr. Pitt, being a policeman,” she began, looking not at him but at a patch of sunlight on the carpet in front of her. “But three years ago there was a woman named Helen Taylor who tried to become a candidate for Parliament! A woman!” Her voice was growing a little sharp, as though underneath her stillness there was a rising hysteria. “Naturally it caused a certain amount of feeling. She was a very odd person—to call her eccentric would be charitable. She wore trousers! Dr. Pankhurst—you may have heard of him—chose to walk with her in public. It was most unbecoming, and quite naturally Mrs. Pankhurst objected, and I believe he ceased to do so. Mrs. Pankhurst is one of those who desires women to be given the franchise.”

“Yes, Mrs. Carfax, I had heard there was such a movement. John Stuart Mill wrote a very powerful tract on the Admission of Women to Electoral Franchise in 1867. And a Mary Wollstonecraft wrote about political and civil equality for women in 1792.”

“Yes, yes I suppose so. It is something in which I have no interest. But some of the women who espouse the cause do so very violently. Miss Taylor’s behavior is surely an example of their—their disregard of the normal rules of society.”

Pitt kept his expression one of continued interest. “Indeed it would seem to have been unwise at the least,” he offered.

“Unwise?” Her eyes flew wide open and for a moment her hands were perfectly still.

“It failed to produce any of the results she desired,” he answered.

“Surely it was bound to? No sane person could imagine she might succeed?”

“Who is it you believe threatened your father, Mrs. Carfax?”

“A woman—one of the women who want suffrage. He was opposed to it, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know. But surely he is with the majority in Parliament, and in the country. Quite a considerable majority.”

“Of course, Mr. Pitt.” The nervous tension in her was so great she was shaking. The color drained out of her skin and her voice was a whisper. “Mr. Pitt, I do not say they are sane. A person who would do ... what was done to my father, and to Sir Lockwood Hamilton, cannot be explained by any normal means.”

“No, Mrs. Carfax. I am sorry to have pressed you.” He was apologizing for being there to witness her distress, not for asking her to explain, but it did not matter if she did not understand that. All that mattered was that she should know of his sympathy for her.

“I appreciate your—your tact, Mr. Pitt. Now I must not take more of your time. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

Pitt left in deep thought. Was it really conceivable that some woman, passionate for electoral justice, should cut the throat of two members of Parliament, simply because they were among the vast majority who felt her cause was untimely, or even ridiculous? It did not seem sane. But then as Helen Carfax had pointed out, such an act was not that of a person whose mind worked as others did, whatever the reason for it.

He still found his own thoughts returning to James Carfax, whose motive was far easier to understand, and to believe. He wanted to know more about him, see something besides the rather spoiled and shallow young man seen by Barclay Hamilton, or the shocked and rattled husband he had seen himself.

Accordingly at a little after four o’clock he presented his card to the parlormaid at Lady Mary Carfax’s Kensington residence and requested half an hour of her time, if she would be so gracious. It was in the matter of the recent violent death of Vyvyan Etheridge, M.P.

She sent back a message that he should wait in the morning room, and when it was convenient she would see him.

She chose to make it three quarters of an hour, in order that he should not give himself airs or imagine she had nothing better to do. Then she yielded to her curiosity and sent the maid to fetch him to the withdrawing room, where she sat in a bright pink overstuffed chair. It and three similar chairs and a chaise longue almost filled the room. There were one or two agreeable paintings on the walls and many photographs and portraits of family groups. At least a dozen of them showed the development of James Carfax from an infant to the thoughtful, rather self-conscious young man pictured with his arm round his mother’s shoulders.

Lady Mary Carfax was not a tall woman, but she sat with imperious rigidity, and of course she did not rise when he came in. She had a coronet of gray hair, naturally curling. She must have been a beauty in her youth; her skin was still fine and her nose straight and delicate, but there was a coldness in her blue-gray eyes and a slack line now to her jaw and throat. Her mourn might have been charming in her early years; now there was a tightness in it that betrayed an inner chill, a ruthlessness that for Pitt dominated her face.

She did not care to crane her neck backwards, so reluctantly she gave him permission to sit.

“Thank you, Lady Mary,” he said, and sat down opposite her.

“Well, what can I do for you? I know a certain amount about politics, but I doubt I can tell you anything of anarchists or other revolutionaries and malcontents.”

“Your daughter-in-law, Mrs. James Carfax, believes that her father was threatened by a woman who was passionate about obtaining the right to vote for Parliament.”

Lady Mary’s slightly downward sloping eyebrows shot upward. “Good gracious! I knew of course that they were the most brazen creatures, bereft of the sensitivities of feeling, the refinements that are natural to a woman. But I must admit that until now it had not entered my mind that they might take such complete leave of all sanity. Of course I did advise Mr. Etheridge against having any sympathy with them, right from the beginning. It is not natural for women to desire to dominate public affairs. We do not have the brusqueness of nature; it is not our place.”

Pitt was surprised. “You mean that at some time there was a question of his being in favor of the franchise for women?”

Her face was full of distaste. “I am not sure that he would have gone as far as that! He did consider there was some argument that women of maturity and a certain degree of property—not just any woman—should be able to vote for local councils and, in certain cases, should have the right to custody of their children when separated from their husbands.”

“Women of property? What about other women, poorer women?”

“Are you trying to be amusing, Mr.—what was your name?”

“Pitt, ma’am. No, I just wondered what Mr. Etheridge’s ideas were.”

“They were misplaced, Mr. Pitt. Women have no education, no understanding of political or governmental affairs, no knowledge of the law and seldom any of finance, other than of a merely domestic nature. Can you imagine the sort of people they would elect to Parliament if they had the vote? We might find ourselves governed by a romantic novelist, or an actor! Who else in the world would take us seriously? If we became weak and foolish at home it would be the beginning of the end of the Empire, and then the whole Christian world would suffer! Can anyone wish that? Of course not!”

“And would women having the vote do that, Lady Mary?”

“There is a certain order in society, Mr. Pitt. We break it at our peril.”

“But Mr. Etheridge did not agree?”

Her face tightened at the memory, but there was only irritation and impatience at the foolishness that had required her guiding hand.

“Not at first, but he came to see that he had allowed to get out of hand his natural sympathies for a certain woman who had behaved quite irresponsibly and brought upon herself a domestic misfortune. She appealed to him, in his parliamentary capacity, and for a short while his judgment was affected by her extreme and rather hysterical views. However, he did realize, of course, that the whole suggestion was absurd, and after all, it was not as if it were the desire of a large number of people! No one but a few hotheaded women of a most undesirable type has ever entertained such an idea.”

“Was that Mr. Etheridge’s conclusion?”

“Naturally!” The slightest smile flickered over her lips. “He was not a foolish man, only susceptible to a sentimental pity for people who do not warrant it. And Florence Ivory certainly did not. Her influence was short-lived; he very soon perceived that she was a most undesirable person, in all ways.”

“Florence Ivory?”

“A very strident and unwomanly creature. If you are looking for a political assassin, Mr. Pitt, I should look to her, and her associates. I believe she lives in the same area across the river, somewhere near the Westminster Bridge. At least, that is what Mr. Etheridge told me.”

“I see. Thank you, Lady Mary.”

“My duty,” she said with a lift of her chin. “Unpleasant, but necessary. Good afternoon, Mr. Pitt!”

I
T TOOK
P
ITT
all the morning of the next day to catch up on the news which had reached Bow Street regarding the case, namely that Helen Carfax’s painting had been very fine and fetched five hundred pounds—enough to employ a maid every day of her life from childhood to old age and still have some to spare. What had she done with so much money? Surely it had gone to James, in some form or other: a present? an allowance? in payment of his debts at Boodle’s?