Bethlehem Road (24 page)

“What makes you certain the police suspect you so strongly, Mrs. Ivory?” she asked rather brusquely.

Florence’s face held both pain and contempt. “The look on the policeman’s face,” she answered.

Charlotte was incredulous. “I beg your pardon?”

“It was in his eyes,” Florence repeated. “A mixture of pity and judgment. For heaven’s sake, Miss Ellison! I have motive enough, and I wrote to Etheridge and said so—no doubt the police will find my letters before long. I have the means: anyone can purchase a razor, and the kitchen is full of knives of excellent sharpness! And I was alone in the house the night he was killed; Africa went to visit a neighbor who was sick and sat up with her half the night. But the woman was delirious, so I don’t suppose she knows whether Africa remained there or not! You may be very good at solving petty thefts and discovering the authors of unpleasant letters, Miss Ellison, but proving me innocent is beyond your abilities. But I am grateful for your well-meaning efforts. And it was kind of Lady Cumming-Gould to be concerned for us. Please thank her for me.”

Charlotte was so angry it took all her strength of will to force herself to remember how dreadfully the woman had already been hurt. Only by recalling Jemima’s face to her inner vision, by remembering the feel of her slender little body in her arms, the smell of her hair, did she quell the fury. In its place came a pity so wrenching it left her almost breathless.

“You may not be the only person he betrayed, Mrs. Ivory; and if you did not kill him, then we shall continue to search for whoever did. And I will do it because I wish to. Thank you for your time. Good day. Good day, Miss Dowell.” And she turned and walked back towards the hall, out of the front door, and into the late spring sunlight feeling exhausted and frightened. She did not even know whether she believed Florence Ivory to have killed Etheridge or not. Certainly the cause was there, and the passion!

W
ALLACE
L
OUGHLEY,
M.P., stood almost under the immense tower of Big Ben. It had been a long sitting, and he was tired. The debate had been really rather pointless, and in the end, nothing had been achieved. It was a lovely evening; he could think of a dozen better places to spend it than cooped up in the House of Commons listening to arguments he had heard a dozen times before. There was a jolly good Gilbert and Sullivan opera on at the Savoy Theatre, and several charming ladies he knew would be there.

The offshore breeze carried the smoke and the fog away, and he could see a dazzle of stars overhead. He had been meaning to say to Sheridan—blast! He had been a few yards away only moments ago. He could not have gone far, bound to walk on an evening like this. Only lived off the Waterloo Road.

Loughley set out smartly towards the bridge, past the statue of Boadicea with her horses and chariot outlined black against the sky, the lights along the Embankment a row of yellow moons down the course of the river. He loved this city, especially the heart of it. Here was the seat of power hallowed back to Simon de Montfort and the first Parliament in the thirteenth century, to even its concept in the Magna Charta, and Henry II’s charter before that. Now it was the center of an Empire none of them could have conceived. Heavens, they had not even known the world was round, let alone a quarter of its face would be British!

Ah, there was Sheridan, leaning up against the last lamppost, almost as if he were waiting for him.

“Sheridan!” Loughley called out, raising his elegant cane to wave. “Sheridan! Meant to ask you if you’d come to dine with me next week, at my club. Wanted to talk about the ... Whatever’s the matter with you, man? Are you ill? You look ...”The rest died away in blasphemy wrung from his heart so intensely that perhaps it was no blasphemy at all.

Cuthbert Sheridan was draped half backwards against the lamppost, his head a little on one side, his hat on the crown of his head, and one lock of pale hair over his brow, looking colorless in the strange quality of the artificial light. The white scarf round his neck was so tight his chin was tipped up, and already the dark blood was soaking the silk and running under to stain his shirtfront. His face was ghastly, eyes staring, mouth a little open.

Loughley felt the sky and the river whirl about him, and his stomach lurched; he lost his balance, stumbling and grasping for the balustrade. It had happened again, and he was alone on Westminster Bridge with the appalling corpse, so horrified he could not even shout.

He turned and stumbled away back towards the north end and the Palace of Westminster, feet slipping on the damp pavement, the lights dancing in his blurred vision.

“You or’right, sir?” a voice said suspiciously.

Loughley looked up and saw light gleaming on silver buttons and the blessed uniform of a constable. He grasped the man’s arm.

“Dear God! It’s happened again! Over there ... Cuthbert Sheridan.”

“Wot’s ’appened sir?” The voice was heavy with skepticism.

“Another murder. Cuthbert Sheridan—with his throat cut, poor devil! For God’s sake, do something!”

At any other time P.C. Blackett would have regarded the shaking, semicoherent man in front of him as a hallucinating drunk, but there was something hideously familiar about this.

“You come wiv me an’ show me, sir.” He was not going to let the man out of his sight. It crossed his mind that perhaps he even had the Westminster Cutthroat in his grasp now, although he doubted it. This man looked too genuinely shocked. But he was unquestionably a witness.

Reluctantly Loughley returned, feeling nauseated by horror. It was exactly as had been burned indelibly in his mind. Now it had the quality of a nightmare.

“Ah,” P.C. Blackett said heavily. He looked back at Big Ben, noted the time, then pulled out his whistle and blew it long, shrilly, and with piercing intensity.

When Pitt arrived Micah Drummond was already there, dressed in a smoking jacket, as if he had just left his own fireside, and looking cold and sad. There was a hollowness in his eyes, even in the lamplight, and the bridge of his nose was even more pinched.

“Ah, Pitt.” He turned and left the small group of men huddled together by the mortuary coach. “Another one, exactly the same. I thought perhaps with Etheridge we’d seen the last of it. Well, it looks as if it wasn’t your woman after all. We’re back to a lunatic.”

For a moment Pitt felt a surge of relief mixed with the mounting horror. He did not want Florence Ivory to be guilty. Then her face came to his memory as clearly as if he had seen her the instant before. There was passion in it, intensity violent enough to carry out her will, whatever it was, and also a keen and subtle intelligence, quite enough to foresee precisely this conversation.

“Probably,” he agreed.

“Probably!”

“There are many possibilities.” Pitt stood still, staring at the lamppost. The body had been removed and had been laid out on the ground in an attempt at decency. He looked down at it, his mind taking in the details of clothing, the hands, the wound exactly like the two others’, the pallid, terrible face with its strong nose and deep-set eyes, the hair that might have been gray or blond, silvery in the lamplight. “It could be a madman,” he went on. “Or anarchists, though I doubt that; or there may be some political plot afoot that we have had no whisper of as yet. Or it could be that this has nothing to do with the other two, just someone copying. It happens. Or it could be three murders, only one of which the murderer cares about, the other two meant to lead us astray.”

Drummond closed his eyes, as if his eyelids could keep out the fearfulness of the thought. He put his long hands up to cover his face for a moment before taking them away with a sigh.

“Dear God, I hope not! Could anyone be so ...” But he could not find the word, and he let it go.

“Who is he?” Pitt asked.

“Cuthbert Sheridan.”

“Member of Parliament?”

“Yes. Oh yes, he’s another member of Parliament. About thirty-eight or forty, married, with three children. Lives on the south side of the river, Baron’s Court, off the Waterloo Road. Up-and-coming young backbencher, member for a constituency in Warwickshire. A bit conservative, against Home Rule, against penal reform; for better working conditions in mines and factories, better poor laws and child labor laws. Very definitely against any vote for women.” He looked up at Pitt and held his eyes steadily. “So is almost everyone else.”

“You know a lot about him,” said Pitt, surprised. “I thought he was found only half an hour ago.”

“But it was one of his colleagues, following him to ask him to dine, who found him. So he knew him straightaway and told us. Poor fellow’s pretty cut up. A Wallace Loughley, over there sitting on the ground by the mortuary coach. Somebody gave him a tot of brandy, but it would be a charity to see him as soon as you can and let the poor beggar go home.”

“What did the surgeon say?”

“Same as the others; at least, it seems so at first glance. A single wound, almost certainly delivered from behind. Victim doesn’t seem to have suspected anyone or offered any resistance.”

“Odd.” Pitt tried to imagine it. “If he was walking across the bridge, going home after a late sitting, he would presumably be moving at quite a good pace. Someone must have been going very briskly to overtake him. Wouldn’t you think a man alone on the bridge, especially after two other murders, would at least turn round if he heard rapid footsteps approaching him from behind? I certainly would!”

“I would too,” Drummond agreed with a deepening frown. “And I’d shout and probably run. Unless of course it was someone coming towards him, from the south side. But in any case, I certainly wouldn’t stand still and wait for someone to come close enough to strike me from either direction.” He let his breath out shakily. The air was so silent they could hear the water swirling round the piers of the bridge, and far away along the Embankment the rattle of a hansom cab. “Unless, of course,” Drummond finished, “it was someone I knew, and trusted.” He bit his lip. “Certainly not some unknown madman.”

“What about Wallace Loughley?” Pitt raised his eyebrows. “What do we know about him?”

“Nothing yet. But it won’t be hard to find out. For a start I’d better see if he is who he says he is. I suppose it would be easy enough to claim. I certainly don’t know all six hundred seventy members of Parliament by sight! I’d better not let him go home until someone has identified him, poor devil.”

“I’ll see him.” Pitt pushed his hands hard down in his pockets. He left Drummond and walked over to the mortuary carriage and the group of half a dozen men gathered round it. One was obviously the driver; he still had half his attention on the horse, although the reins were hooked to the stay. A man in early middle age, haggard, hands shaking, hair streaked across his brow, was presumably Loughley. He had been sitting on the curbside, and he stood up as Pitt approached, waiting, but he did not speak. He was very clearly suffering from shock, but there was no hysteria in him, no arrogance, no panic that Pitt could see. If he had followed Sheridan and murdered him, he had a mastery of himself to the finest detail, a brain as cold as the water of the Thames beneath them.

“Good evening, Mr. Loughley,” Pitt said quietly. “What time did you last see Mr. Sheridan alive?”

Loughley swallowed, finding his voice with difficulty. “It must have been a little after half past ten, I think. I left the House at twenty minutes past, and spoke to one or two people. I—I’m not sure for how long, but I said only a few words to each of them. I saw Sheridan and said good night to him; then after he had gone Colonel Devon said something to me about business. Then I remembered I wanted to speak to Sheridan; he’d only been gone a few minutes, so I went after him, and—and you know what I found.”

“Is Colonel Devon a Member of Parliament?”

“Yes—dear God! You don’t think—! You can check with him. He’ll remember what was said; it was about tonight’s debate.”

“Did you see anyone else on the bridge, either ahead of you or behind, Mr. Loughley?”

“No. No I didn’t. That’s the extraordinary thing: I don’t remember seeing anyone else! And yet it must have been only—” He took a deep, shaky breath. “Only minutes after ...”

There was a slight commotion at the north end of the bridge, a loud cry from some of the people being held back by the police. A woman started to scream and was led away. There were brisk footsteps, and a dark figure emerged and came towards them, overcoat flapping. As he passed under the light Pitt recognized Garnet Royce.

“Good evening, sir,” Pitt said clearly.

Royce came up to him, glanced at Loughley, and greeted him by name, then looked back at Pitt and at Drummond, who had rejoined him.

“This is getting very serious, man!” he said grimly. “Have you any idea how close people are to losing control? We seem to be on the very brink of anarchy. Perfectly sane and steady people are panicking, talking about conspiracies to overthrow the throne, uprisings of workers, strikes, even revolution! I know that’s absurd.” He shook his head very slightly, dismissing their hysteria rather than the ideas. “It is probably an isolated lunatic—but we’ve got to apprehend him! This must stop! For God’s sake, gentlemen, let us bend every resource we have and put an end to this horror! It is our responsibility. The weaker and less fortunate rely on us to defend them from the depredations of the lunatic underworld, and from political anarchists who would destroy the very fabric of the Empire. In God’s name, it is our duty!” He was deeply earnest; there was a fire of sincerity in his eyes neither Pitt nor Drummond could doubt. “If there is anything I can do, anything whatsoever, tell me! I have friends, colleagues, influence. What do you need?” He looked urgently from one to the other of them and back again. “Name it!”

“If I knew what would help, Sir Garnet, I would assuredly ask,” Drummond replied wearily. “But we have no idea of the motive.”

“Surely we cannot hope to understand the reasons of a madman?” Royce argued. “You’re not suggesting this is personal, are you? That there is some enemy common to all three men?” His face reflected his incredulity, and there was even a harsh gleam of humor in the brilliant eyes.