bond between them unlike any other.
Therefore it was with confidence that he presented himself at the front door of her house and told the maid who answered it that he wished to speak with Lady Vespasia on a matter of some urgency. He would await her convenience, however long that might be.
He was left in the morning room, but it proved to be only for a matter of minutes, then he was shown into her sitting room, which faced onto the garden and always seemed to be full of peace and a soft light, whatever the season or the weather.
She was wearing a shade of clover pink, so subtle it was hardly pink at all, and the usual pearls around her neck. She smiled to greet him, and held out her hand very slightly, not for him to take, merely as a gesture that he should come in.
“Good morning, Thomas. How pleasant to see you.” Her eyes searched his face. “I have been half expecting you ever since Emily called. Or perhaps ‘half hoping’ would be more accurate. Voisey is standing for Parliament.” She could not even say his name without the emotion thickening her voice. She had to be remembering Mario Corena, and the sacrifice which had cost Voisey so dearly.
“Yes, I know,” he said softly. He wished he could have spared her being aware of it, but she had never evaded anything in her life, and to protect her now would surely be the ultimate insult. “That is why I am here in London rather than with Charlotte in the country.”
“I am glad she is away.” Her face was bleak. “But what is it you believe you can do, Thomas? I don’t know much about Victor Narraway. I have asked, but either the people I spoke to know little themselves or they are not prepared to tell me.” She looked at him steadily. “Be very careful that you do not trust him more than is wise. Don’t assume that he has the concern for you, or the loyalty, that Captain Cornwallis had. He is not a straightforward man-”
“Do you know that?” Pitt said, cutting across her unintentionally.
She smiled very slightly, a gesture that barely moved her lips. “My dear Thomas, Special Branch is designed and created to catch anarchists, bombers, all kinds of men, and I suppose a few women, who plan in secret to overthrow our government. Some of them intend to replace it with another of their own choosing, others simply wish to destroy without the slightest idea what will follow. Some, of course, have loyalties to other countries. Can you imagine John Cornwallis organizing a force to prevent them before they succeed?”
“No,” Pitt admitted with a sigh. “He is brave and profoundly honest. He would expect to see the whites of their eyes before he would shoot.”
“He would invite them to surrender,” she amended. “Special Branch requires a devious man, subtle, full of imagination, a man seen only in the shadows, and never by the public. Do not forget that.”
Pitt was cold, even in the sun. “I think General Kingsley was being blackmailed by Maude Lamont, at least on the surface it was by her.”
“For money?” She was surprised.
“Possibly, but I think more likely to attack Aubrey Serracold in the newspapers, sensing his inexperience and the probability that he would react badly, damaging himself further.”
“Oh dear.” She shook her head very slightly.
“One of them killed her,” he continued. “Rose Serracold, General Kingsley, or the man denoted in her diary by a cartouche, a little drawing rather like a reversed small
“How curious. And have you any idea who he may be?”
“Superintendent Wetron believes he is an elderly professor of theology who lives in Teddington.”
Her eyes widened. “Why? That seems a very perverse thing for a religious man to do. Was he seeking to expose her as a fraud?”
“I don’t know. But I. .” He hesitated, not sure how to explain either his feelings or his actions. “I really don’t believe it was he, but I am not certain. He recently lost his wife and is deeply grieved. He has a passion against spirit mediums. He believes they are evil, and acting contrary to the commandments of God.”
“And you are afraid that this man, deranged by his grief, may have taken it into his head to finish her intervention permanently?” she concluded. “Oh, Thomas, my dear, you are too softhearted for your profession. Sometimes very good men can make the most terrible mistakes, and bring untold misery while convinced they are bent upon the work of God. Not all the inquisitors of Spain were cruel or narrow-minded men, you know. Some truly believed they were saving the souls of those in their charge. They would be astounded if they knew how we perceived them now.” She shook her head. “Sometimes we see the world so differently from each other you would swear we could not possibly be speaking of the same existence. Have you never asked half a dozen witnesses to an event in the street, even the description of a person, and received such conflicting answers, told in all sincerity, that they cancel each other out entirely?”
“Yes, I have. But I still do not think he is guilty of having killed Maude Lamont.”
“You do not want to think it. What can I do to help you, more than simply listen?”
“I must discover who killed Maude Lamont, even though that is really Tellman’s job, because the people she blackmailed are part of the effort to discredit Serracold. .”
Sadness and anger filled her eyes. “They have already succeeded, with the poor man’s own help. You will have to perform a miracle if you are to rescue him now.” Then she brightened. “Unless, of course, you can demonstrate that Voisey had a hand in it. If he obtained her murder. .” She stopped. “I think that would be good fortune beyond our reach. He would not be so foolish. Above all, he is clever. But he will be behind the blackmail; it just depends how far behind! Can you prove that?”
He leaned forward a little. “I may be able to.” He saw her eyes shine, and he knew she was thinking of Mario Corena again. She could not weep. She had already shed all her tears for him, first in Rome in ‘48, then here in London only a few weeks ago. But the loss was still raw. Perhaps it always would be. “I need to know why Kingsley was being blackmailed,” he went on. “I think it was to do with the death of his son.” Briefly, he told her what he had learned, first about Kingsley himself and his part in the Zulu Wars, and then the ambush at Mfolozi, so soon after the heroism of Rorke’s Drift.
“I see,” she said when he had finished. “It is very hard to follow in the steps of a father or brother who has succeeded in the eyes of the world, most especially in the world of military courage. Many young men have thrown away their lives rather than be thought to fail in what was expected of them.” There was a weight of sadness in her voice, and memory sharp and painful in her eyes. Perhaps she was thinking of the Crimea, of Balaclava, and the Alma, or of Rorke’s Drift, Isandlwana, or the Indian Mutiny and God knew how many other wars and losses. Her memory might even have stretched back as far as her girlhood, and Waterloo.
“Aunt Vespasia. .?”
She brought herself back to the present with a jolt. “Of course,” she agreed. “It will not be too difficult for me to learn from one friend or another what really happened to young Kingsley at Mfolozi, but I think it hardly matters, except to his father. No doubt what was used to blackmail him was the possibility of a coward’s death. It did not have to be the fact. It is not only the wicked who run where no man pursues, it is also the vulnerable, those who care more than they are able to govern, and who have raw wounds they cannot defend.”
Pitt thought of Kingsley’s bent shoulders and the haggard lines of his face. It took a particular kind of sadism to torture a man in such a way for one’s own profit. For a moment he hated Voisey with a passion that would have exploded in physical violence, had he been there to lash out at.
“Of course it may be that the incident of his death is so blurred that the truth cannot be known, or a lie dismissed,” Vespasia went on. “But I shall do all I can to find out, and if it is of any ease at all, I shall inform General Kingsley of it.”
“Thank you.”
“Which is not a great deal of use in tying the blackmail to Voisey,” she continued with a trace of anger. “What hope have you of discovering the identity of this third person? I assume you know it is a man? You refer to him as ‘he.’ ”
“Yes. It is a man of late middle years, fair or gray hair, average height and build. He seems to be well educated.”
“Your theologian,” she said unhappily. “If he went to a spirit medium with the intent of proving her a fraud and unmasking her in front of her clients, that would not please Voisey very much. I think we may assume he could retaliate, perhaps with extreme pressure.”
