certainty. 'Do you think that has anything to do with it? A women's suffrage conspiracy?'
Put in those words it sounded absurd, yet Pitt could not forget the passion in Florence Ivory, the loss that time had hardened but not touched with even the smallest healing. She was a woman who would not be stopped by fear or convention, risks to herself, or other people's doubts or beliefs. Pitt
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was quite sure that she was capable of it, both emotionally and physically, with Africa Dowell's help.
And would Africa have helped? He thought so. She was a young woman full of idealism and burning emotions forcefully directed towards the bitter wrongs she felt had been done to Florence and her child. She had a dreamer's or a revolutionary's dedication to her vision of justice.
'Pitt?' Drummond's voice cut across his thoughts.
'No, not really,' he replied, weighing his words. 'Unless two people can be called a conspiracy. But it might be a series of circumstances. ...'
'What circumstances?' Drummond, too, was beginning to see the outline of a pattern, but there were too many unknowns. He had not met the people and so could not judge, and always at the back of his mind were the newspaper headlines, the grave and frightened faces of men in high office who now felt accountable and in turn passed on the responsibility and the blame to him. He was not frightened; he was not a man to run from challenge or duty, nor to blame others for his own helplessness. But neither did he evade the seriousness of the situation. 'For heaven's sake, Pitt, I want to know what you think!''
Pitt was honest. 'I fear it may be Florence Ivory, with Africa Dowell's help. I think she has the passion and the commitment to have done it. She certainly had the motive, and it is more than possible she mistook Hamilton for Etheridge. But why she then went on to kill Sheridan I don't know. That seems more cold-blooded than I judge her to be. It seems gratuitous. Of course, it could be someone else, perhaps an enemy of Sheridan's taking advantage of a hideous opportunity.'
'And you have some sympathy for Mrs. Ivory,' Drummond added, watching Pitt closely.
'Yes,' Pitt admitted. It was true, he had liked Florence Ivory and felt keenly for her pain, perhaps too keenly, thinking of his own children. But then he had liked other murder-
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ers. It was the petty sinners, the hypocrites, the self-righteous, those who fed on humiliation and pain that he could not bear. 'But I think it is also possible that we have come nowhere near the answer yet, that it is something we haven't guessed at.'
'Political conspiracy?'
'Perhaps.' But Pitt doubted it; it would have to be a monstrous one, touched with madness.
Drummond stood up and went to the fire, rubbing his hands as if he were cold, although the room was comfortable.
'We've got to solve it, Pitt,' he said without condescension, turning to face him; for a moment the difference in office between them ceased to exist. 'I have all the men I can spare raking through the files of every political malcontent we've ever heard of, every neorevolutionary, every radical socialist or activist for Irish Home Rule, or Welsh Home Rule, or any other reform that has ever had passionate supporters. You concentrate on the personal motives: greed, hatred, revenge, lust, blackmail; anything you can think of that makes one man kill another-or one woman, if you think that possible. There are enough women in the case with the money to employ someone to do what they could not or dared not do themselves.'
'I'll have a closer look at James Carfax,'' Pitt said slowly. 'And I'd better look in more detail at Etheridge's personal life. Although an outraged husband or lover doesn't seem likely-not for all three!'
'Frankly nothing seems likely, except a remarkably cunning lunatic with a hatred of M.P.s who live on the south side of the river,' Drummond said with a twisted smile. 'And we've doubled the police patrol of the area. All M.P.s know enough to guard themselves-I'd be very surprised if any of them choose to walk home across the bridge now.' He adjusted his necktie a little and pulled his jacket straighter on his shoulders, and his face lost even the shred of bleak humor it had shown. 'I'd better go and see the Home Sec-
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