reality. The kettle was beginning to boil on the stove but it only served to elaborate the silence. There were no footsteps on the stairs, no rattle and clatter of Gracie in the larder or the scullery. No one called out asking where a lost shoe or sock was, or a schoolbook. There was no answer from Charlotte, no reminder of the time. The ticking of the kitchen clock seemed to echo.
But Pitt was at ease that they were away from London, safely anonymous in Devon. He had told himself that he did not think anyone in the Inner Circle would revenge themselves on him by hurting his family at Voisey’s command. Voisey would not hire someone he did not trust, he could not afford the risk to himself, and Pitt’s turning of the events in Whitechapel had made Voisey appear to betray not only his allies and friends but his cause as well. It should have divided the Circle along lines of personal loyalties and self-interest, but Pitt had no way of knowing if it had.
He could not clear from his mind the look of hatred in Voisey’s eyes as he had passed him in Buckingham Palace the moment after the knighthood which he and Vespasia had contrived, using Mario Corena’s sacrifice. It had ended forever Voisey’s ambitions to be republican president of Britain.
And that same hatred had been there in his eyes again when they had met in the House of Commons. Passion like that did not die. Pitt could sit here at his own kitchen table with some measure of calmness only because he knew his family was hidden and safe, miles away. No matter how much he missed the mere knowledge of their presence in the house, the loneliness was a small price to pay for that.
Was the murder of Maude Lamont connected with Voisey’s bid for a parliamentary seat? There were at least two possible connections: the fact that Rose Serracold had been at the seance that night; and the fact that Roland Kingsley, who was also there, had written to the newspapers so vehemently against Aubrey Serracold. Pitt had found nothing in Kingsley’s previous political views to lead anyone to expect such an opinion now.
But then elections brought out extreme views. The threat of losing exposed some ugly sides of nature, just as some were surprisingly brash in victory where one had expected grace, even generosity.
Or was the connection the man whose name was concealed by a cartouche, and who might have had a far more personal relationship with Maude Lamont? Was the connection with Voisey even a real one, or was it Narraway’s attempt to use any means possible to block his path to power?
If Narraway had been Cornwallis, Pitt would have known every attack he made would be clever but fair. Cornwallis was a man trained by the rigor of the sea who went into battle with his face forward and fought to the end.
Pitt did not know Narraway’s beliefs, the motives which drove him, or the experience, the triumphs and the losses which had formed his character. He did not even know whether Narraway would lie to the men under his command in order to make them do whatever would achieve his own ends. Pitt was moving step by step in the dark. For his safety, so he was not manipulated to serve a purpose he did not believe in, he must learn a great deal more about Narraway.
But for the present he needed to discover why Roland Kingsley had proclaimed himself so virulently against Serracold. It was not the opinion he had expressed when Pitt had spoken to him. Had Maude Lamont been manipulating him with the threat of disclosure of something she had learned from his questions to the dead?
What made a man of the successful, practical nature he seemed to possess go to a spirit medium? Tragically, many people lost sons and daughters. Most of them found a fortitude based in the love they shared in the past and an inner belief in some religion, formal or not, that there was a divine power that would reunite them one day. They continued with life the best way they could, with work, the comfort of others they loved, perhaps a retreat into great music or literature, or the solitude of nature, or even exhausting oneself in the care of those less fortunate. They did not turn to notions of Ouija boards and ectoplasm.
What was there in his son’s death that had driven Kingsley so far? And if the answer were blackmail, was it by Maude Lamont herself, or had she only supplied the information to someone else, someone still alive, and who would continue to use it?
Such as a member of the Inner Circle-even Charles Voisey himself?
That was what Narraway would like it to be! And it had nothing to do with whether it was the truth or not. Perhaps Pitt was seeing Voisey where he had no part. Fear itself could be an element of his revenge, maybe better even than the actuality of the blow.
He stood up, leaving his dishes on the table where Mrs. Brody would find them and clear them away. He went outside. He was hot by the time he had walked as far as Tottenham Court Road and stopped on the pavement to hail a hansom.
He spent the morning with the official military records tracing the career of Roland Kingsley. No doubt Narraway would have searched them, if he did not already know the facts, but Pitt wanted to see for himself, in case his interpretation of the records was different.
There was little personal comment. He read through it all quickly. Roland James Walford Kingsley had joined the army at eighteen, like his father and grandfather before him. His career spanned over forty years, from his early discipline and training, his first foreign posting in the Sikh Wars of the late 1840s, the horror of the Crimean War of the mid-1850s, where he had been mentioned several times in dispatches, and the immediately following bloodbath of the Indian Mutiny.
Later he had turned to Africa, the Ashanti Campaign of the mid-1870s, and the Zulu War at the end of the decade, where he had been decorated for extraordinary valor.
After that he had returned to England, seriously injured, and seemingly also wounded in spirit. He never again left the country, although still honoring all his commitments, and retiring in 1890 at the age of sixty.
Pitt then looked up Kingsley’s son, seeking his death in those same Zulu Wars, and found it recorded on July 3, 1879, during the fiasco crossing the White Mfolozi. It was the action in which Captain Lord William Beresford had won a Victoria Cross, the highest honor given for supreme gallantry on the field of battle. Two other men had also been killed, and several wounded, in a superbly executed Zulu ambush. But then Isandlwana had proved the Zulu as warriors of not only courage but exceptional military skill. At Rorke’s Drift they had brought out the best in British discipline and honor. That action lived in history and fired the imagination of men and boys as they heard the story of how eight officers and a hundred and thirty-one men, thirty-five of whom were sick, had withstood the siege of nearly four thousand Zulu warriors. Seventeen British had been killed, and eleven Victoria Crosses awarded.
Pitt stood in the middle of the floor and closed the book holding the records, the bare words which made little attempt to describe the burning, dusty countryside of another continent, and the men-good and bad, cowardly and brave-who had gone there out of service or adventure, obedience to an inner voice or an outer necessity, and lived and died in the conflicts.
But as he thanked the clerk and walked down the steps and into the clearing air, the pavement cloud and sunshine patterned, he felt emotion constricting his chest, pride and shame and a desperate desire to preserve all that was good in a land and a people he loved. The men who had faced the enemy at Rorke’s Drift stood for something far simpler and cleaner than the secrecy of the Inner Circle and political betrayal for ambition’s sake.
He took a cab as far as Narraway’s office and then paced the floor with mounting anger as he was obliged to wait for him.
When Narraway arrived nearly an hour later he was mildly amused to find Pitt glaring at him. He closed the door. “I assume from your expression that you have found something of interest?” He made it a question. “For heaven’s sake, Pitt, sit down and make a proper report. Is Rose Serracold guilty of something?”
“Self-indulgence,” Pitt answered, obeying the instruction. “Nothing else, so far as I know, but I have not stopped looking.”
“Good!” Narraway said dryly. “That is what Her Majesty pays you for.”
“I think Her Majesty, like God, would be horrified at much of what is done in her name,” Pitt snapped back. “If she knew about it!” Then, before Narraway could interrupt, he went on. “Actually, I’ve been looking at Major General Kingsley to see why he went to Maude Lamont and why his letters to the newspapers condemning Serracold are so at odds with the opinions in his ordinary speech.”
“Have you indeed?” Narraway’s eyes were very sharp and still. “And what have you found?”
“Only his military record,” Pitt replied guardedly. “And that he lost his son in a skirmish in Africa in the same Zulu Wars in which he himself was highly distinguished. It was a bereavement from which he doesn’t seem to have recovered.”
“It was his only son,” Narraway said. “Only child, actually. His wife died young.”
