Treachery at Lancaster Gate (5 page)

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. “Touché,” 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.

“Indeed,” he said quietly, looking at the next painting, a rather flat still life with flowers. “Anarchists, for example. Destroy everything and create nothing.”

Alexander did not reply for several moments.

Pitt was about to speak again.

“Sometimes it's only the destroyers who get noticed,” Alexander answered then. “Everybody remembers the man or men who assassinate a president that oppresses his people and puts to death hundreds of the poor who dare to protest. Who's going to remember the man who drew the mice? Are you?”

Pitt felt a moment's embarrassment. He had been too absorbed in the drawing to look for the artist's name.

“No,” he admitted. “Who was he?”

Alexander smiled, a wide, flashing radiance that was instantly gone as the darkness swept back in again. “Actually it was a woman. Mary Ann Church.”

“And the anarchists?” Pitt said.

Now Alexander's face was shadowed and his body tense, visibly so, even under his beautifully cut jacket. “I wouldn't tell you, even if I knew.”

Pitt did not hide his surprise.

Alexander shrugged. “Well, perhaps if I knew, and they got the wrong people, and were going to hang them, I would,” he amended. “Justice is a very big thing, kind of ugly and beautiful at the same time. Like that tiger over there!” He pointed vaguely.

Pitt searched the paintings on the far wall.

“I can't see a tiger.”

“That's rather my point,” Alexander replied. “There are some more nice things in here, if you look. I must go.” He turned and walked away, and as Pitt watched him he was aware of a considerable limp, as if the young man's back gave him constant pain.

Pitt looked at the mice, tiny, pulsing with life, and now immortal, at least in the mind.

T
ELLMAN CAME TO
P
ITT'S
office late, just as Pitt was thinking of going home. Tellman looked tired and his lean face was pinched with unhappiness. He stood stiffly in front of Pitt's desk. He would not sit down until he had been given permission. It was as if he were making a statement that he did not belong here. He had an overcoat on, but no gloves, and Pitt noticed that his hands were red from the cold air outside.

“Tea?” Pitt offered. These days he had someone who would make it for him and bring it.

“I've little to report,” Tellman replied. “Not be here long enough to take tea. But thank you…sir.”

“Yes, you will. Please sit,” Pitt told him, pulling the bell cord for someone to come. As soon as they did, he asked for tea, and biscuits as well.

Reluctantly Tellman took off his coat and hung it on the coat stand by the door, then sat down.

“Haven't got anything very helpful yet, sir,” he repeated. “Been to all our usual informers, and nobody seems to have anything. Sorry, but it looks as if you've got a new and very bad sort of anarchist in the city. Might have got the dynamite from one of the quarries inland a bit. Bessemer and Sons is missing a noticeable amount. A dozen sticks or more. Reported it unwillingly. Didn't want to look as incompetent as it seems they are. Somebody's head will roll for that. Probably the foreman's.”

“Any idea who took it?” Pitt asked. It could be a lead, and so far the only certain direction in which to look.

“Working on it,” Tellman replied.

The tea with biscuits came, and Pitt thanked the man as he left.

Tellman glanced at the teapot reluctantly, but could not resist the fragrant steam and the suggestion of warmth. He took a biscuit and bit into it, clearly suddenly hungry.

“You find anything?” he asked with his mouth full.

“I'm not sure,” Pitt replied. He looked at Tellman's tired, unhappy face, and knew that he was still deeply shocked by the violence of the bombing. Of course policemen were killed in the line of duty every now and then, and there were traffic accidents, even train wrecks where the casualties were appalling. Buildings burned, bridges collapsed, sometimes floods caused terrible damage. But this was deliberate, created by human imagination and intent, and directed specifically at police, men that Tellman knew.

“Not sure?” Tellman said with surprise. He put his mug down, no longer warming his hands on it. “What do you mean?”

“Isadora Cornwallis came to see me, privately, so this is confidential,” Pitt told him. “If she chooses to tell her husband that's up to her. I don't want it getting back to him through police gossip. I'm telling you it was she simply so that you know what I learned was not lightly given, or something I can afford to ignore.” He watched Tellman's expression to be certain he understood.

“What does she know about anarchy?” Tellman pursed his lips, doubt in his face.

“Some anarchists come from privileged backgrounds,” Pitt told him. “They aren't all peasants or laborers with a pittance to live on.”

Tellman stared at him, waiting.

“She is acquainted with a young man of excellent family who has a profound grudge against the police, many of whom he believes are corrupt,” he continued. “He also has possible connections with anarchists. Only philosophically, so far as we know, but he might know where to go to purchase dynamite, possibly stolen from a quarry such as Bessemer and Sons, who you say are presently missing about a dozen sticks.”

Tellman put his hands back around the mug. “What's his complaint about the police? Thinks he's above having to accept order and behave himself?”

“It's a great deal more serious than that. At least, he believes it is.”

“Like what?” Tellman said sharply.

“Like police accidentally shooting someone and then blaming an innocent man, Dylan Lezant, and seeing him hang for it.”

“Oh, yes?” Tellman sneered. “And who says Lezant was innocent? His good friend the anarchist sympathizer?”

Pitt put down his own tea. “They were good friends, it's true. And what actually happened doesn't matter, Tellman. If this young man
thinks
that's what happened, then that's what he's going to act on.”

“That's what he says,” Tellman argued. “Have you any reason to believe this man of yours isn't just an ordinary bomber who thinks he can terrify us into doing whatever political madness he wants?” There was an edge of challenge in his voice, as if Pitt had deliberately suggested there were some justification for the murder of the policemen.

Pitt measured his reply carefully, but he felt his own anger rise, even though he understood Tellman's grief. He had seen those broken bodies himself.

“I don't know,” he admitted. “I don't know if he had anything to do with it. I'm telling you that we can't rule him out as a possibility.”

“What's his name?” Tellman asked.

“I'll deal with it, for the time being.”

Tellman froze, the color flushing up his cheeks. “You don't trust me to tread softly with this young gentleman of yours?” His voice was strained, his jaw tight. “I'm an inspector, Commander Pitt. I'm just as capable and used to speaking to quality as you are, even if I'm not married to a lady. And maybe I appreciate the ordinary policemen, like those in the hospital, or the morgue, a bit more than you do.” He put his mug down and rose to his feet. “I answer ultimately to the police commissioner, not to their lordships in Parliament. I'll find the man that set that bomb, whoever's son he is.”

Pitt was momentarily taken aback. He had not been sensitive to just how deeply Tellman had been hurt by the bombing, or, to tell the truth, to how profound his loyalty was to the force. There was an element of truth to the insinuation that Pitt's identity had changed when he left the police and joined Special Branch. He'd had no choice, if he was to succeed in his new position.

Pitt remained seated. “You may prefer then that I don't tell you in future, should there be anything further to this lead. If that is the case, then I shall have to take it directly to Bradshaw. But I would rather not. He doesn't know the dead men personally; you do.”

Tellman looked confused. He had made something of a fool of himself, and he was now aware of it, but unwilling to step back.

“I suppose you'd better keep me informed,” he said unhappily. “Somebody has to fight for the men. God knows, two of them are dead and more could follow.” He met Pitt's eyes defiantly. “I'm not going to let them be murdered, blown apart, burned and crippled, then when they can't speak for themselves, blamed for it as well.”

Pitt hesitated only a moment. If he allowed Tellman to get away with that insult, something would be lost between them.

“Is that what you are suggesting I am going to do, Inspector Tellman?” he asked quietly.

Long tense seconds of silence hung in the room before Tellman answered.

“That possibility won't arise…sir,” he said. He gave a curt nod and walked out.

Pitt leaned back in his chair feeling acutely miserable. He had had no choice but to inform Tellman of the general situation, because it could be part of the case. In fact, at the moment it was the only lead they had. But he had not handled it well.

H
IS LAST VISITOR OF
the day was completely unexpected, and did not come to Special Branch in Lisson Grove, but was waiting for Pitt when he finally arrived home at Keppel Street. He had barely got through the front door and hung his wet coat on the rack in the hall when Charlotte came out of the parlor. He knew the instant he saw her face that something was disturbing her.

She smiled, but there was a warning in her eyes. She came forward and kissed him gently, just a moment of sweetness he would dearly like to have clung on to, but she pulled away.

“Jack has come to see you,” she said almost under her breath. “There is something about which he is deeply concerned. I'll leave you to talk to him in the parlor. The fire is burning up well and there is sherry, if you want to pour him a little. I'll be in the kitchen.” And after a moment of meeting his eyes again, she turned and went down the corridor and around the short corner into the kitchen.