Bethlehem Road (35 page)

“I’d rather you didn’t mention my part,” Royce said quickly. “It would seem ...” He left the rest unsaid. “And I—I’d like to pay for a decent burial for her. She was a good servant before ... before she lost her reason.”

Pitt climbed back up onto the cab box. Drummond opened the door for Royce to climb in, and Pitt lifted the reins to urge the horse on.

Charlotte was asleep when Pitt got home, and he did not awaken her. He had no sense of the euphoria of having brought to a conclusion a long and dreadful case. The release of tension brought mostly weariness, and the next morning he slept in and had to rush out without breakfast.

He told Charlotte nothing. First he would make sure that what had seemed so apparent last night was really the truth. There would be time then to send her a message so she could tell Great-aunt Vespasia that Florence Ivory was no longer under suspicion. He simply told her the case was close to a conclusion, kissed her, and strode out of the house with her calling after him to explain.

Micah Drummond was already at the Bow Street Station. For the first time in weeks he looked as if he had slept without nightmares or frequent waking.

“Good morning, Pitt,” he said, and held out his hand. “Congratulations, Chief Inspector. The case is closed. There is no doubt that wretched woman was responsible. There were other bloodstains on her clothes, old stains on her sleeves and apron, as there would be from the first murders. The razor had bloodstains on the blade and the handle. We checked with the chief medical officer at the Bethlehem lunatic asylum: she is Elsie Draper, committed for acute melancholia seventeen years ago and released from Bedlam two weeks before the murder of Lockwood Hamilton. She had never given them any trouble and seemed to have been a trifle simple, but never violent. A dreadful misjudgment, but there is nothing anyone can do now. The case is closed. The Home Secretary sent his congratulations this morning. The newspapers have printed extras.” He smiled slowly. “Well done, Pitt. You can go home and take a few days off—you’ve earned it. You’ll come back next week as Chief Inspector, with an office upstairs.” He held out his hand.

Pitt took it and held it hard. “Thank you, sir,” he said graciously—but it was not what he wanted.

P
ITT RETURNED HOME
with a sense of relief only very slightly marred by a small question like a gnat bite at the back of his mind. The matter was closed. There could be no doubt whatsoever that Elsie Draper had been a criminal lunatic. She had murdered three men on Westminster Bridge and had tried to murder a fourth. Only Royce’s courage in setting himself up as a decoy and the police who had warned and guarded him had prevented her almost certain success. And if it had not been Royce, it would have been someone else.

Now Pitt could take some time off and spend it with Charlotte and the children. Perhaps he could even get out into the garden. They could all work together, he with a spade, Jemima pulling weeds, Daniel carrying away rubbish, and Charlotte supervising. She was the only one who knew the overall design. He found himself smiling as he thought of it, as if his fingers were already in the earth, the warm sun on his back, and his family laughing and talking around him.

First Charlotte would go and tell Great-aunt Vespasia that Florence Ivory and Africa Dowell were no longer suspects. That would be one of the few real pleasures in this whole affair: to watch the fear and the anger disappear, to know the two women could pick up their lives again and begin to heal—that was, if they chose to, if Florence Ivory could let go of her rage.

He strode through the doorway and along the corridor to find Charlotte in the kitchen with her sleeves rolled up, kneading dough, and Gracie on the floor on her hands and knees. The whole room was filled with the smell of new bread. Daniel was outside in the garden running around with a hoop and Pitt could hear his crows of delight through the open window.

He put his arm round Charlotte and kissed her cheek and neck and throat, regardless of the flour and entirely ignoring Gracie.

“We’ve solved it!” he said after several minutes. “We caught the woman last night—in the act. Garnet Royce played decoy for us. She flew at him with a razor, and I jumped off the cab box to stop her, and Royce shot her, more or less to save me.”

Charlotte stiffened and tried to draw back, fear rushing up inside her.

“No,” he said quickly. “She wouldn’t have gotten me; I had already struck her with a truncheon, and there were others coming. But it must have looked bad to Royce. Anyway, she was completely insane, poor creature, and this is better than a trial and a hanging. It’s all over. And I’m a chief inspector.”

This time she did pull away. She stared up at him, her cheeks flushed, her eyes wide, questioning.

“I’m proud of you, Thomas; you more than deserve it,” she said. “But is it what you want?”

“Want?” Surely he had totally hidden his reluctance, his dislike of leaving the streets.

“You can have the honor of being asked, and still refuse,” she said gently. “You don’t have to take preferment if it means sitting in the station directing other men.” Her eyes were perfectly steady and showed no shadow of wavering, nor any trace of regret for her words. “We don’t need the money. You could stay as you are, doing what you are so good at. If you had been directing others instead of speaking to the people yourself, would this case be solved now?”

He thought of Maisie Willis and the violets, the long cold hours spent on the cab box, and the moment when he had realized the M.P. who had accosted him for a ride had fresh primroses in his buttonhole.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “It might be.”

“And it might not! Thomas,” she said, smiling now, “I want you to be doing what you enjoy and are best at. Anything else is too high a price to pay for a little more money, which we don’t need. We can meet our expenses, and that is enough. What would we do with more? What is more precious than being able to do what you want?”

“I’ve accepted it,” he said slowly.

“Then go back and tell him you have changed your mind. Please, Thomas.”

He did not argue, he simply held her very closely for a long time, happiness singing inside him, beating like the wings of a great bird.

Gracie picked up her bucket and, humming a little song to herself, went out the back door to empty it down the drain.

“Tell me about it,” Charlotte said presently. “How did you catch her—and who was she? Why did she do it? Why members of Parliament? Have you told Florence Ivory? Have you told Aunt Vespasia?”

“I haven’t told anyone; I thought you’d like to.”

“Oh yes—yes I would. I wish we had one of those telephones! Shall we go on the omnibus and tell her? Would you like a cup of tea first? Or are you hungry? What about luncheon?”

“Yes, yes, no, and it’s too early,” he replied.

“What?”

“Yes we’ll go and see Aunt Vespasia, yes I’d like a cup of tea, no I’m not hungry, and it’s too early for lunch. And your bread is rising.”

“Oh. Then put on the kettle. I’ll finish kneading the dough, and you can tell me who she was and how you caught her—and why she did it.” And she went to the sink, washed her hands, and began again to pummel the bread dough, sprinkling more flour on the board.

Pitt filled the kettle and put it on the stove as he was bidden, then began to recount the story of Royce’s offer and how they had carried it out. Of course she already knew about the abortive attempts with Micah Drummond.

“So it wasn’t blind,” she said when he finished. “I mean, she wasn’t after members of Parliament in general. She knew Royce—you said she called out his name.”

Pitt remembered the blaze of hatred in the woman’s voice, the triumph in the moment she recognized him and knew beyond doubt it was he. “I’ve got you at last,” she had said, and careless of the cab looming behind her, or Pitt leaping from it, she had lifted and swung the razor to kill. She was insane, a creature beyond the reach of reason, a destroyer—and yet there had been something very human in that hatred.

Charlotte’s voice cut into his thoughts.

“Do you think she was after Royce all the time, and mistook the others for him? They all lived on the south side of the river, they all walked home, as it was not far, and they all had fair or gray hair.”

“They were all Parliamentary Private Secretaries to the Home Secretary at some part in their careers. Except perhaps Royce himself—I don’t know about him,” he answered slowly. “I wonder what he was doing seventeen years ago.”

She split the dough and put it into three tins and left them to rise. “You do think so! Why? Why did she hate Royce so much? Because he put her into Bedlam?”

“Perhaps.” The faint dissatisfaction at the back of his mind was stronger, more like a prickle. It was Garnet Royce she had attacked, not Jasper, the doctor. Was that simply because he was the elder brother, the stronger, the one in whose house she had served? But what had turned melancholia over the death of her mistress into a homicidal mania such as he had seen on Westminster Bridge?

He finished his tea and stood up. “You go and tell Aunt Vespasia. I think I shall go back and talk to Drummond again.”

“About Elsie Draper?”

“Yes; yes I think so.”

All the way back to Bow Street he saw the newsboys carrying placards for extra editions. Headlines screamed
WEST-MINSTER CUTTHROAT CAUGHT! PARLIAMENT SAFE AGAIN! MANIAC SHOT DEAD ON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE!
He bought a paper just before he went into the police station. Under the big black leader was an article on how the threat of anarchy had receded and law had prevailed once more, thanks to the skill and dedication of the Metropolitan Police and the daring of an unknown member of Parliament. The whole of the nation’s capital rejoiced in the return of order and safety to the streets.

Micah Drummond was startled to see Pitt back so soon, and on a spring day when he might have found gardening such a pleasure.

“What is it, Pitt?” There was a shadow of alarm in his face.

Pitt closed the door behind him. “First of all, sir,” he began, “I thank you for the promotion, but I would rather remain at my present rank, where I can go out on investigations myself, rather than supervise other men to do it. I think that is where my skill lies, and it is what I want to do.”

Drummond smiled. There was a certain ruefulness in his eyes, and a relief. Either he had been expecting something less pleasant, or else in part at least he understood.

“I am not surprised,” he said candidly. “And not entirely sorry. You would have made a good senior officer, but we should have lost a lot by taking you away from the streets. Secondhand judgment is never the same. I admire you for the choice; it is not easy to decline money, or status.”

Pitt found himself blushing. The admiration of a man he both liked and respected was a precious thing. He hated now to have to pursue the matter of Elsie Draper, instead of merely thanking Drummond and going out. But the question pressed on his mind, clamoring for an answer. He felt an incompleteness like hunger.

“Thank you, sir.” He let out his breath slowly. “Sir, I would like to find out more about Elsie Draper—the madwoman. Just before she struck at Royce she called him by name. She wasn’t killing at random; she hated him—personally. I’d like to know why.”

Drummond stood still, looking down at the empty space on his desk, the quill and inkstand set in dark Welsh slate, unostentatious.

“I wanted to know too,” he said. “I wondered if she were after Royce all the time, and she mistook the first three for him. I couldn’t find anything in common among them, except that they live on the south side of the river not far from Westminster Bridge, within walking distance, and they have a superficial physical resemblance. They have no special political opinions in common, but then a madwoman who has spent the last seventeen years in Bedlam would hardly care about such things. But I did inquire what Royce was doing seventeen years ago.”

“Yes?”

Drummond’s smile was tight, bleak. “He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary.” His eyes met Pitt’s.

“So they all held that office!” Pitt exclaimed. “Perhaps that is why they died. She was looking for Royce, and she still thought of him in connection with the office he held when she worked in his house. She must have asked around, and she found three other men living south of the river who had held that position before she got the right one! But why did she hate him so long and so passionately?”

“Because he had her committed to Bedlam!”

“For melancholia? Perhaps. But may I go to Bedlam and ask about her, to see what they know?”

“Yes. Yes, Pitt—and tell me what you find.”

The Bethlem Royal Hospital was in a huge old building on the Lambeth Road on the south side of the river, a block away from the Westminster Bridge Road where it curved up the hill away from the water and the Lambeth Palace Gardens, the official house of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England. Bedlam, as it was commonly known, was another world, shut in, as far from sweetness and ease as the nightmare is from the sleeper’s sane and healthful room, where flowers sit in a vase and the morning sunlight will presently stream through the curtains onto a solid floor.

Inside Bedlam was madness and despair. For centuries this hospital, whether within these walls or others, had been the last resort for those no human reason could reach. In earlier times they had been shackled night and day and tormented to exorcise them of devils. Those with a taste for such things had come by to watch them and taunt them for entertainment, as later generations might go to a carnival or a zoo, or a hanging.

Now treatment was more enlightened. Most of the restraining devices were gone, except for the most violent; but tortures of the mind still persisted, the terror and delusion, the misery, the endless imprisonment without hope.

Pitt had been in Newgate and Coldbath Fields, and for all the superintendent in his frock coat and the stewards and medical staff, the walls smelled the same and the air had a fetid taste. Pitt’s credentials were examined before he was permitted the slightest courtesy.