discovered it more by luck than deduction.
‘Here,’ Stoker held out a piece of paper with a note scrawled across the bottom.
Pitt read it. It was a memorandum of one man, written to himself, saying that he must see Austwick at a gentlemen’s club, and report a fact to him.
‘Does this matter?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘It’s nothing to do with socialists or any kind of violence or change, it’s just an observation of someone, which turned out to be irrelevant.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Stoker agreed. ‘But it’s this.’ He handed Pitt another note with something written on the bottom in the same hand.
‘Gave the message on Hibbert to Gower to pass on to Austwick at the Hyde Club. Matter settled.’
The place was a small, very select gentlemen’s club in the West End of London. He looked up at Stoker. ‘How the devil did Gower get to be a member of the Hyde Club?’
‘I looked at that, sir. Austwick recommended him. And that means that he must know him pretty well.’
‘Then we’ll look a lot more closely at all the cases Gower’s worked on, and Austwick as well,’ Pitt replied.
‘But we already know they’re connected,’ Stoker pointed out.
‘And who else?’ Pitt asked. ‘There are more than two of them. But with this we’ve got a better place to start. Keep working. We can’t afford even one oversight.’
Silently Stoker obeyed. He concentrated on Gower while Pitt looked at every record he could find of Austwick.
By nine o’clock in the evening they were both exhausted. Pitt’s head thumped and his eyes felt hot and gritty. He knew Stoker must feel the same. There was little time left.
Pitt put down the piece of paper he had been reading until the writing on it blurred in front of his vision.
‘Any conclusions?’ he asked.
‘Some of these letters, sir, make me think Sir Gerald Croxdale was just about onto him. He was pretty close to putting it together,’ Stoker replied. ‘I think that might be what made Austwick hurry it all up and act when he did. By getting rid of Narraway he shook everybody pretty badly. Took the attention away from himself.’
‘And also put him in charge,’ Pitt added. ‘It wasn’t for long, but maybe it was long enough.’ The last paper he had read was a memorandum from Austwick to Croxdale, but it was a different thought that was in his mind.
Stoker was waiting.
‘Do you think Austwick is the leader?’ he asked. ‘Is he actually a great deal cleverer than we thought? Or at any rate, than I thought?’
Stoker looked unhappy. ‘I don’t think so, sir. It seems to me like he’s not making the decisions. I’ve read a lot of Mr Narraway’s letters, and they’re not like this. He doesn’t suggest, he just tells you. And it isn’t that he’s any less of a gentleman, just that he knows he’s in charge, and he expects you to know it too. Maybe that wasn’t how he spoke to you, but it’s how he did to the rest of us. No hesitation. You ask, you get your answer. I reckon that Austwick’s asking someone else first.’
That was exactly the impression Pitt had had: a hesitation, as if checking with the man in control of master plan.
But if Croxdale was almost onto him, why was Narraway not?
‘Who can we trust?’ he asked aloud. ‘We have to take a small force, no more than a couple of dozen men at the very most. Any more than that and we’ll alert them. They’ll have people watching for exactly that.’
Stoker wrote a list on a piece of paper and passed it across. ‘These I’m sure of,’ he said quietly.
Pitt read it, crossed out three and put in two more. ‘Now we must tell Croxdale, and have Austwick arrested.’
He stood up and felt his muscles momentarily lock. He had forgotten how long he had been sitting, shoulders bent, reading paper after paper.
‘Yes, sir. I suppose we have to?’
‘We need an armed force, Stoker. We can’t go and storm the Queen’s residence, whatever the reason, without the Minister’s approval. Don’t worry, we’ve got a good enough case here.’ He picked up a small leather satchel and put into it the pages vital to the conclusions they had reached. ‘Come on.’
At Osborne, Charlotte, Vespasia and Narraway were kept in the same comfortable sitting room as the Queen. One terrified lady’s maid was permitted to come and go in order to attend to Queen’s wishes. They were given food by one of the men who kept them prisoner, and watched as they availed themselves of the necessary facilities for personal relief.
The conversation was stilted. In front of the Queen no one felt able to speak naturally. Charlotte looked at the old lady. This close to her, with no distance of formality possible, she was not unlike Charlotte’s own grandmother, someone she had loved and hated, feared and pitied over the years. As a child Charlotte had never dared to say anything that might be construed as impertinent. Later, exasperation had overcome both fear and respect, and she had spoken her own mind with forthrightness. More recently she had learned terrible secrets about that woman, and loathing had melted into compassion.
Now she looked at the short, dumpy old lady whose skin showed the weariness of age, whose hair was thin and almost invisible under her lace cap. Victoria was in her late seventies, and had been on the throne for nearly half a century. However, it was not the responsibility of that that wore her down, it was the bitter loneliness of widowhood. To the world she was Queen, Empress, Defender of the Faith, and her numerous children had married into half the Royal Houses of Europe.
Here at Osborne, standing looking out of the upstairs window across the fields and trees in the waning afternoon light, she was a tired old woman who had servants and subjects, but no equals. She would probably never know if any of them would have cared a jot for her if she were a commoner. The loneliness of it was unimaginable.
Would they kill her, those men in the hallway with guns and violent dreams of justice for people who would never want it, purchased this way? If they did, would Victoria mind so very much? A clean shot through the heart, and she would join her beloved Albert at last.
Would they kill the rest of them too: Narraway and Vespasia, and Charlotte herself? What about all the servants? Or did the hostage-takers consider the servants to be ordinary people like themselves? Charlotte was sure the servants didn’t think anything of the sort.
Charlotte had been sitting quietly on a chair at the far side of the room. On a sudden impulse she stood up and walked over towards the window. She stopped several feet short of the Queen. It would be disrespectful to stand beside her. Perhaps it was disrespectful to stand here at all, but she did so anyway.
The view was magnificent. She could even see a bright glint of sunlight on the sea in the distance.
The hard light picked out every line on Victoria’s face: the marks of tiredness, sorrow, ill temper, and perhaps also the inner pain of emotional isolation. Was she afraid?
‘It is very beautiful, ma’am,’ Charlotte said quietly.
‘Where do you live?’ Victoria asked.
‘In London, in Keppel Street, ma’am.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘I have always lived in London, but I think I might like it less if I had the choice of living where I could see something like this, and just hear the wind in the trees, instead of the traffic.’
‘Can you not be a nurse in the country?’ Victoria asked, still staring straight ahead of her.
Charlotte hesitated. Surely this was a time for the truth? It was only conversation. The Queen did not care in the slightest where she lived. Any answer would do. If they were all to be shot, what sort of an answer mattered? An honest one? No, a kind one.
She turned and looked quickly at Vespasia.
Vespasia nodded.
Charlotte moved half a step closer to the Queen. ‘No, ma’am. I’m afraid I’m not a nurse at all. I told the man at the door that I was in order for them to allow me in.’
Victoria twisted her head to stare at Charlotte with cold eyes. ‘And why was that?’
Charlotte found her mouth dry. She had to lick her lips before she could speak. ‘My husband is in Special Branch, ma’am. Yesterday he became aware what these men planned to do. He returned to London to get help
