wot ’e ’ad comin’ ter ’im, then ’e’s safest out o’ their way, w’ere they can’t see ’im, like. I s’pose they’ll pay ’im, won’t they, in this Branch wotever?”
“Oh, yes. I don’t know how much.” That was something Charlotte had not even thought of. Trust Gracie to be practical. She had been poor too often to forget it. She had known the kind of cold that makes you feel sick, the hunger where you eat scraps that other people throw away, when one slice of bread is wealth and nobody even imagines tomorrow, let alone next week.
“It will be enough!” she said more forcefully. “No luxuries, maybe, but food. And the summer’s coming, so we won’t need anything like as much coal. Just no new dresses for a while, and no new toys or books.”
“An’ no mutton,” Gracie added. “ ’Errings is good. An’ oysters is cheap. An’ I know w’ere yer can get good bones fer soup an’ the like. We’ll be o’right.” She drew in a deep breath. “But it still in’t fair!”
It was difficult to explain to the children too. Jemima at ten and a half was already growing tall and slim and had lost a little of her roundness of face. It was possible to see in her a shadow of the woman she would become.
Daniel, at eight, was sturdier of build and very definitely a child. His features were developing strength, but his skin was soft and the hair curled at the back of his head exactly the way Pitt’s did.
Charlotte had tried to tell them that their father would not be home again for a long time in such a way that they understood it was not of his choosing, that he would miss them terribly.
“Why?” Jemima said immediately. “If he doesn’t want to go, why does he do it?” She was fighting against accepting, her whole face full of resentment.
“We all have to do things we don’t wish to sometimes,” Charlotte answered. She tried to keep her voice level, knowing that both children would pick up her emotions as much as her words. She must do all she could to disguise from them her own distress. “It is a matter of what is right, what has to be done.”
“But why does
Charlotte touched her gently. “Neither do I. But if we make a fuss it will only be harder for him. I told him we would look after each other, and would miss him, but we’d be all right until he comes back.”
Jemima thought a few moments about that, uncertain if she was going to accept it or not.
“Is he after bad men?” Daniel spoke for the first time.
“Yes,” Charlotte said quickly. “They must be stopped, and he is the best person to do it.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s very clever. Other people have been trying for a while, and they haven’t managed to do it, so they’ve sent for Papa.”
“I see. Then I suppose we’ll be all right.” He thought for a few minutes more. “Is it dangerous?”
“He’s not going to fight them,” she said with more assurance than she felt. “He’s just going to find out who they are.”
“Isn’t he going to stop them?” Daniel asked reasonably, his brow puckered up.
“Not by himself,” she explained. “He’ll tell other policemen, and they’ll all do it together.”
“Are you sure?” He knew she was worried, even though he was uncertain why.
She made herself smile. “Of course. Wouldn’t you?”
He nodded, satisfied. “But I’ll miss him.”
She forced the smile to remain. “So will I.”
Pitt went by train straight to the address to the north of Spitalfields that Cornwallis had given him. It proved to be a small house behind a shop. Victor Narraway was waiting for him. Pitt saw that he was a lean man with a shock of dark hair, threaded with gray, and a face in which the intelligence was dangerously obvious. He could not be inconspicuous once one met his eyes.
He surveyed Pitt with interest.
“Sit down,” he ordered, indicating the plain wooden chair opposite him. The room was very sparsely furnished, with no more than a chest with drawers, all of which were locked, a small table, and two chairs. Probably it had originally been a scullery.
Pitt obeyed. He was dressed in his oldest clothes, the ones he used when he wished to go into the poorer areas unnoticed. It was a long time since he had last found it necessary. These days he employed other people for such tasks. He felt uncomfortable, dirty, and at a complete disadvantage. It was as if his years of success had been swept away, nothing but a dream, or a wish.
“Can’t see that you’ll be a great deal of use to me,” Narraway said grimly. “But I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, I suppose. You’ve been foisted on me, so I’d better make the best of it. I thought you were noted for your handling of scandal among the gentry. Spitalfields doesn’t seem like your patch.”
“It isn’t,” Pitt said grudgingly. “Mine was Bow Street.”
“And where the hell did you learn to speak like that?” Narraway’s eyebrows rose. His own voice was good-he had the diction of birth and education-but it was not better than Pitt’s.
“I was taught in the schoolroom along with the son of the house,” Pitt replied, remembering it sharply even now, the sunlight through the windows, the tutor with his cane and his eyeglasses, the endless repetitions until he was satisfied. Pitt had resented it at first, then become fascinated. Now he was grateful.
“Fortunate for you,” Narraway said with a tight smile. “Well, if you’re going to be any use here, you’ll have to unlearn it, and rapidly. You look like a peddler or a vagrant, and you sound like a refugee from the Athenaeum!”
“I can sound like a peddler if I want to,” Pitt retorted. “Not a local one, but I’d be a fool to try that. They’ll know their own.”
Narraway’s expression eased for the first time, and a glint of acceptance shone for an instant in his eyes. It was a first step, no more. He nodded.
“Most of the rest of London has no idea how serious it is,” he said grimly. “They all know there is unrest. It’s more than that.” He was watching Pitt closely. “We are not talking of the odd lunatic with a stick of dynamite, although we’ve certainly got them too.” A brief flicker of irony crossed his face. “Only a month or two ago we had a man who tried to flush dynamite down the lavatory and blocked the drains up until his landlady complained. The workmen who took up the drains and found it had no idea what it was. Some poor fool thought it would be useful to mend cracks in something or other, and put it on the floor of his loft to dry out, and blew the whole place to smithereens. Took half the house away.”
It was farce, but bitter and deadly. One laughed at the absurdity of it, but the tragedy was left.
“If it’s not the odd nihilist achieving his ambition,” Pitt asked, “then what is it we are really looking for?”
Narraway smiled, relaxing a little. He settled in his chair, crossing his legs. “We’ve always had the Irish problem, and I don’t imagine it’ll go away, but for the moment it is not our main concern. There are still Fenians around, but we arrested quite a few last year, and they’re fairly quiet. There is strong anti-Catholic feeling in general.”
“Dangerous?”
He looked at Pitt’s expression of doubt. “Not in itself,” he said tartly. “You have a lot to learn. Start by being quiet and listening! Get something to do to explain your existence. Walk ’round the streets here. Keep your eyes open and your mouth closed. Listen to the idle talk, hear what is said and what isn’t. There’s an anger in the air that wasn’t here ten years ago, or perhaps fifteen. Remember Bloody Sunday in ‘88, and the murders in Whitechapel that autumn? It’s four years later now, and four years worse.”
Of course Pitt remembered the summer and autumn of ‘88. Everyone did. But he had not realized the situation was still so close to violence. He had imagined it one of those sporadic eruptions which happens from time to time and then dies down again. Part of him wondered if Narraway were over dramatizing it, perhaps to make his own role more important. There was much rivalry within the different branches of those who enforced the law, each guarding his own realm and trying to increase it at the cost of others.
