“He was a great republican,” Narraway said with an edge to his voice, a mixture of passion and sarcasm that Pitt could not read.
“Yes …” Voisey hesitated “Yes, he was. But …” Again he stopped, uncertainty in his eyes. He looked at Pitt, and for a moment the hatred in his face was naked. Then as quickly he masked it again, lowering his gaze. “He believed in many reforms, and fought for them with all his courage and intelligence. But I could not deny the law. Corena could not understand that There was something of the … savage … in him. I had no choice. He came at me like a lunatic, swearing to kill me. I struggled with him, but I could not take the gun from him.” The flicker of a smile touched his lips, more in amazement than any kind of humor. “He had extraordinary strength for an old man. The gun went off.” He did not add any more; it would have been unnecessary.
Pitt looked at him and saw the blood on his own shirtfront, at the right height to have matched Corena’s wound It could have been true.
“I see,” Narraway said grimly. “So you are saying it was self-defense?”
Voisey’s eyebrows shot up. “Of course I am! Good God—do you think I would have shot the man on purpose?” The amazement and incredulity were so intense in his whole being that in spite of his own feelings, Pitt could not help but believe him.
Narraway turned on his heel and strode out, leaving the door swinging on its hinges.
Pitt looked at Voisey once more, then followed after Narraway.
In the hall, Narraway stopped. As soon as Pitt caught up with him he spoke very quietly.
“You know Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, don’t you?” It was barely a question. He did not even wait for an answer. “Perhaps you didn’t know that Corena was the greatest love of her life. Don’t ask me how I know; I do, that is enough. You should be the one to tell her this. Don’t let her read it in the newspapers or hear it from someone who doesn’t know what it means to her.”
Pitt felt as if he had been hit so hard the breath had been forced out of him, and he could not fill his lungs again. Instead there was an ache inside him almost enough to make him cry out.
Vespasia!
“Please do it,” Narraway said urgently. “It shouldn’t be a stranger.” He did not beg, but it was there in his eyes.
There was only one possible answer. Pitt nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and went back to the front door and out to the quiet street.
He took the first hansom and gave Vespasia’s address. He rode through the darkness without thinking. There was no point in rehearsing how he would say such a thing. There was no way.
The cab pulled up and he alighted. He rang the doorbell and to his surprise it was answered within moments.
“Good evening, sir,” the butler said quietly. “Her Ladyship is still up. Would you care to come in, and I shall tell her you are here.”
“Thank you …” Pitt was confused, walking in a nightmare. He followed the butler into the yellow room and stood waiting.
He had no idea whether it was two or three minutes, or ten, before the door opened and Vespasia came in. She was wearing a long silk robe of almost white, her hair still coiled loosely on her head. She looked fragile, old, and almost ethereally beautiful. It was impossible not to think of her as a passionate woman who had loved unforgettably one Roman summer half a century ago.
Pitt found the tears choking his throat and stinging his eyes.
“It’s all right, Thomas,” she said so quietly he barely heard her. “I know he’s dead. He wrote to me, telling me what he would do. It was he who killed James Sissons, believing it was what Sissons himself had intended, but at the last moment lost his nerve to be a hero after all.” She stopped for a moment, struggling to keep her composure. “You are free to use this, to see that Isaac Karansky is not blamed for a crime he did not commit—and perhaps that Charles Voisey is, although I am not certain how you can accomplish that.”
Pitt loathed telling her, but it was not a lie that could live.
“Voisey says he shot him in self-defense. I don’t know that we can prove otherwise.”
Vespasia almost smiled. “I’m sure he did,” she agreed. “Charles Voisey is the leader of the Inner Circle. If they had succeeded in their conspiracy to cause revolution, he would have become the first president of Britain.”
For an instant, the beat of a heart, Pitt was astonished. Then the beat passed, and it all made perfect sense: Martin Fetters’s discovery of the plot, his facing Adinett—who was probably Voisey’s friend and lieutenant—and being killed because he wanted reform but not revolution. And then for all his power and his loyalty, Voisey could not save Adinett. No wonder he hated Pitt and had used all his influence to destroy him.
And Mario Corena, a man driven by a simpler, purer fire, had been used and deceived to destroy Sissons. Now, realizing it at last, he had tried to turn it back on Voisey.
“You don’t understand, do you?” Vespasia said softly. “Voisey meant to be the ultimate hero of all reform, to be the leader into a new age … perhaps originally his aims were good. He certainly had some good men with him. Only his arrogance led him to believe he had the right to decide for the rest of us what was in our best good and then force it upon us, with or without our consent.”
“Yes … I know …” Pitt began.
She shook her head, the tears glistening in her eyes. “But he can never do that now. He has killed the greatest republican hero of the century … above any one country’s individuality or nationalism.”
He thought he began to see just a glimmer, like a distant star. “But it was self-defense,” he said slowly.
She smiled, and the tears slid down her cheeks. “Because he discovered the conspiracy to overturn the throne, to invent this spurious debt of the Prince of Wales, and murder Sissons and create riot—and when Mario realized he knew, he attacked him, so of course Voisey had to shoot. He is a very brave man! Almost single-handedly he has uncovered a terrible conspiracy and named the men in it—who will certainly be at the least disgraced, maybe arrested. Perhaps the Queen will even knight him … don’t you think? I must speak to Somerset Carlisle and see if it
