remembered her slender frame and the passion in her face, and the protective arm of the younger, bigger woman. 'She was taken in by a Miss Africa Dowell, who knew the child as well, and seems to sympathize with the Ivory woman intensely.''
'Not unnatural.' Drummond's face was grave and sad. He had children of his own, who were grown now, and his wife was dead. He missed family life. 'What about Hamilton? A mistake?'
'Almost certainly, if it was she. I don't know how many times she actually met Etheridge, if at all.'
'You said this Africa Dowell-you did say Africa?'
Pitt gave the ghost of a smile. 'Yes, that's what Mrs. Ivory called her: Africa Dowell.'
' 'Well if this Africa Dowell took her in, that suggests Mrs. Ivory has little means, so she could not have paid anyone
135
else to kill Etheridge. It seems a very ... a very efficiently violent method for a woman. What is she like, what background? Was she a farm girl or something that she might be so skilled in cutting throats?'
'I don't know,' Pitt admitted. It was another thing he had forgotten to inquire. 'But she is a woman of great passion and certainly intelligence, and I think courage. I imagine she would be equal to it, if she set her mind to it. But I gathered from the home, which was very attractive and in a good area, that Miss Dowell has money. They could have paid someone.'
Drummond pulled a small face.' 'Well, either way it could account for Hamilton's having been the first victim through a mistake of identity. You'd better go to Lincolnshire and see what you can find out. Bring everything back with you.' He looked up, his eyes meeting Pitt's, and for several seconds it seemed he was about to add something. Then at last he changed his mind and shrugged slightly. ' 'Report to me when you get back,' was all he said.
'Yes, sir.' Pitt left and went downstairs to await the constable's return with his things. He knew what Drummond had wanted to say: the case must be solved, and soon. As they had feared, the public outcry was shrill, in some of the newspapers almost to the point of hysteria. The very fact that the victims had been the representatives of the people, that the crimes had struck at the foundation of everything that was freedom, stability, and order, made the violence in the heart of the city a threat to everyone. The murders seemed to reflect the soul of revolution itself, dark and savage, an unreasoning thing that might run amok and destroy anyone- everyone. Some even spoke of the guillotine of the Reign of Terror in Paris, and gutters running with blood.
And yet neither Drummond nor Pitt wanted to think that one woman had been driven to take insane revenge for the loss of her child.
Pitt arrived at the Broad Street Station of the Great Northern Railway just in time to catch his train to Lincolnshire.
136
He slammed the carriage door as the engine started to belch forth steam and the fireman stoked the furnace, and with a roar and a clash of iron they moved out of the vast, grimy dome into the sunlight and began the long journey past the factories and houses and through the suburbs of the largest, wealthiest, and most populous city in the world. Within its bounds lived more Scots than in Edinburgh, more Irish than in Dublin, and more Roman Catholics than in Rome.
Pitt felt a sense of awe at the city's sheer teeming enormity as he sat in his carriage watching the rows and rows of houses rush past him, grimed with the flying steam and smuts of innumberable trains just like his. Nearly four million people lived here, from those ashen-faced waifs who perished of cold and hunger, to the richest, most talented and beautiful people in all a civilized nation. It was the heart of an empire which spanned the world-the fount of art, theater, opera and music hall, laughter, law, and abuse and monumental greed.
He ate his sandwiches of cold meat and pickle and was glad to get out and stretch his cramped legs at last when he arrived at Grantham in midafternoon. It took him another hour and a half to travel by a branch line and then a hired pony and trap to the country home of the late Vyvyan Etheridge. The door was opened by a caretaking manservant, whom Pitt had some difficulty in persuading of his errand, and that it was legitimate.
It was after four o'clock when he finally stood in the waning light in Etheridge's study, another sumptuous and elegant room lined with books, and began to search through the papers. He was reading by lamplight and hunched up with cold an hour later when he finally found what he had come for.
