There was a low murmur of impatience, a couple of catcalls. More people drifted in. Half a dozen left, grumbling loudly.
Pitt shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He tried to overhear conversations. What did these people think, what did they want? Did anything make any difference to the way they voted, except to a handful of them? Jack had been a good constituency member, but did they realize that? His majority was not large. On a wave of Liberal success he would have had no cause to worry, but this was an election even Gladstone did not wholly desire to win. He fought it from passion and instinct, and because he had always fought, but his reasoning mind was not in it.
There was a sudden flurry of attention and Pitt looked up. Jack had arrived and was walking through the crowd, clasping people by the hand, men and women alike, even one or two of the children. Then he climbed onto the tail of a cart which had been drawn up to form a makeshift platform for him, and began to speak.
Almost immediately he was heckled. A semibald man in a brown coat waved his arm and demanded to know how many hours a day he worked. There was a roar of laughter and more catcalls.
“Well, if I don’t get returned to the House, I’ll be out of work!” Jack called back at him. “And the answer will be none!”
Now the laughter was directed the other way-humor, not jeering. There followed immediately an argument about the working week. Voices grew harsher and the underlying anger had an ugly edge. Someone threw a stone, but it went yards wide and clattered off the warehouse wall and rolled away.
Looking at Jack’s face, handsome and easy-natured as it seemed to be, Pitt could see he was holding his temper with an effort. A few years ago he might not even have tried.
“Vote for the Tories,” Jack offered with an expansive gesture. “If you think they’ll give it to you.”
There were curses and hoots and whistles of derision.
“None of yer’s any good!” a scrawny woman yelled, her lips drawn back from broken teeth. “All yer do is bleed us fer taxes and tie us up in laws no one understands.”
And so it continued for another half hour. Slowly, Jack’s patience and occasional banter began to win over more of them, but Pitt could see in the growing tension in his face and the tiredness of his body the effort it cost him. An hour later, dusty, exhausted and hot from the press of the crowd and the stale, clinging air of the dockside, he climbed down from the cart and Pitt caught up with him as he walked towards the open street where he would be able to find a hansom. Like Voisey he had had the tactical sense not to bring his own carriage.
He turned to Pitt with surprise.
Pitt smiled at him. “An accomplished performance,” he said sincerely. He did not add any facile words about winning. As close to Jack as he was, he could see the exhaustion in his eyes and the grime in the fine lines of his skin. It was dusk and the street lamps were glowing. They must have passed the lamplighter without noticing him.
“Are you here for moral support?” Jack asked dubiously.
“No,” Pitt admitted. “I need to know more about Mrs. Serracold.”
Jack looked at him in surprise.
“Have you eaten?” Pitt asked.
“Not yet. Do you think Rose could be involved in this wretched murder?” He stopped, turning to face Pitt. “I’ve known her for a couple of years, Thomas. She’s eccentric, certainly, and has some idealistic beliefs which are highly impractical, but that’s a very different thing from killing anyone.” He pushed his hands into his pockets, which was uncharacteristic in him; he cared too much about the cut of his suits to so misuse them. “I don’t know what on earth possessed her to go to this medium now, of all times.” He winced. “I can imagine how the press would ridicule it. But honestly, Voisey’s making pretty heavy inroads into the Liberal position. I started off believing Aubrey would get in as long as he didn’t do anything totally stupid. Now I’m afraid Voisey’s winning is not as impossible as it seemed even a couple of days ago.” He continued walking, looking straight ahead of him. They were both dimly aware of supporters, out of uniform, twenty yards behind.
“Rose Serracold,” Pitt reminded him. “Her family?”
“Her mother was a society beauty, as far as I know,” Jack replied. “Her father was from a good family. I did know who, but I forget. I think he died quite young, but it was illness, nothing suspicious, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Pitt was reaching after every possibility. “A lot of money?”
They crossed the alley and turned left, feet echoing on the cobbles.
“I don’t think so,” Jack answered. “No. Aubrey has the money.”
“Any connection with Voisey?” Pitt asked, trying to keep his voice light, free from the emotion that surged up in him at even the mention of his name.
Jack glanced at him, then away again. “Rose, you mean? If she has, then she’s lying, at least by implication. She wants Aubrey to win. Surely if she knew anything about him at all, she would say so?”
“And General Kingsley?”
Jack was puzzled. “General Kingsley? You mean the fellow who wrote that harsh piece in the newspaper about Aubrey?”
“Several harsh pieces,” Pitt corrected. “Yes. Has he any personal enmity against Serracold?”
“None that Aubrey knows of, unless he’s concealing something as well, and I’d swear he isn’t. He’s actually quite transparent. He was pretty shaken by it. He’s not used to personal attack.”
“Could Rose know him?”
They were halfway along a stretch of narrow pavement outside a warehouse wall. The single street lamp lit only a few yards on either side, cobbles and a dry gutter.
Jack stopped again, his brows drawn together, his eyes narrow. “I presume that is a euphemism for having an affair?”
“Probably, but I mean any kind of knowing,” Pitt said with rising urgency. “Jack, I have to find out who killed Maude Lamont, preferably show beyond any doubt at all that it was not Rose. Mocking her for attending seances will be nothing compared with what Voisey will see that the newspapers do to her if any secret emerges which suggests she committed murder to hide it.”
They were still under the light. Pitt saw Jack wince, and he seemed almost to shrink into himself. His shoulders drooped and the color ebbed from his face.
“It’s a hell of a mess, Thomas,” he said wearily. “The more I know of it the less I understand, and I can explain almost nothing at all to people like those.” He jerked a hand backwards to indicate the crowd near the dockside, now out of sight beyond the jutting mass of the warehouse.
Pitt did not ask him to explain; he knew he was going to.
“I used to imagine the election rested on some kind of argument,” Jack went on, starting to walk again. Ahead of them, the Goat and Compasses public house was glowing invitingly in the rapidly thickening dusk. “It’s all emotion,” he went on. “Feeling, not thought. I don’t even know if I want us to win. . as a party, I mean. Of course I want power! Without it we can’t do anything. We might as well pack up and leave the field to the opposition!” He glanced at Pitt quickly. “We were the first country in the world to be industrialized. We manufacture millions of pounds worth of goods every year, and the money that earns pays most of our population.”
Pitt waited for the rest of it after they entered the Goat and Compasses, found a table and Jack sank into a chair and requested a large ale. Pitt fetched his usual cider and returned with both tankards.
Jack drank for several moments before continuing. “More and more goods all the time. If we are to survive, then we need to sell all those goods to someone!”
Pitt had a sudden perception where Jack was reaching. “The Empire,” he said quietly. “Are we back to Home Rule again?”
“More than that,” Jack replied. “We’re on the whole moral subject of should we have an empire at all!”
“Bit late for that, isn’t it?” Pitt asked dryly.
“Several hundred years. As I said, it isn’t based on thought. If we divest ourselves of the Empire now, who do we sell all our goods to? France and Germany and the rest of Europe, not to mention America, are all manufacturing now as well.” He bit his lip. “The goods are growing more and the markets less. It’s a wonderful ideal to give it all back, but if we lose our markets, untold numbers of our own people will starve. If the country’s economy is ruined there’ll be no one with the power to help them, for all the good intentions in the world.” A wet glass slipped from someone’s hand and splintered on the floor. They cursed fluently. A woman laughed too loudly at a joke.
