“What fight?” Pitt pulled his coat off the hook by the door. “If they fought last night couldn’t it have waited till after breakfast?” He scowled. “What do you mean, fight? Did they hurt each other?” He found the idea absurd and faintly amusing. “Does it really matter? They are always quarreling-it seems to be part of their way of life. It seems to give them a kind of validity.”
“No sir.” Murdo looked even more miserable. “They’re planning to fight this morning-at dawn, sir.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Pitt snapped. “Who on earth is going to get out of a warm bed at dawn and plan to have a quarrel? Somebody’s having a very ill considered joke at your expense.” He turned to hang up his coat again.
“No sir,” Murdo said stolidly. “They already had the quarrel, yesterday. The fight is this morning at sunrise-in the field between Highgate Road and the cemetery-with swords.”
Pitt grasped for one more wild instant at the concept of a joke, saw in Murdo’s face that it was not, and lost his temper.
“Hell’s teeth!” he said furiously. “We’ve got two houses in ruins, charred bodies of two brave, kind people- others injured and terrified-and two bloody idiots want to fight a duel over some damnable piece of paper.” He snatched the coat back again and pushed Murdo off the step onto the pavement, slamming the door. The cab Murdo had come in was only a few yards away. “Come on!” Pitt yanked the door open and climbed in. “Highgate Road!” he shouted. “I’ll show these two prancing fools what a real fight is! I’ll arrest them for disturbing the Queen’s peace!”
Murdo scrambled in beside him, falling sideways as the cab jerked into motion and only just catching the door as it swung away. “I don’t suppose they’ll hurt each other,” he said lamely.
“Pity.” Pitt was totally without sympathy. “Serve them both right if they were skewered like puddings!” And he rode the rest of the way in furious silence, Murdo not daring to make any further suggestions.
Eventually the cab came to an abrupt halt and Pitt threw open the door and jumped out, leaving the fare to Murdo to pay, and set off across the path through the field, Highgate Road to his left and the wall of the magnificent cemetery to his right. Three hundred yards ahead of him, paced out on the grass, their figures squat in the distance, were five people.
The solid figure of Quinton Pascoe was standing, feet a little apart, a cape slung over one shoulder, the cold, early sun, clear as springwater, on his shock of white hair. In front of him the dew was heavy on the bent heads of the grass, giving the leaves a strange hint of turquoise as the light refracted.
No more than half a dozen yards away, John Dalgetty, dark-headed, his back to the sun, the shadow masking his face, stood with one arm thrown back and a long object raised as if he were about to charge. Pitt thought at first it was a walking stick. The whole thing was palpably ridiculous. He started to run towards them as fast as his long legs would carry him.
Standing well back were two gentlemen in black frock coats, a little apart from each other. Presumably they were acting as seconds. Another man, who had taken his coat off-for no apparent reason, it was a distinctly chilly morning-was standing in shirtsleeves and shouting first at Pascoe, then at Dalgetty. His voice came to Pitt across the distance, but not his words.
With a flourish Pascoe swung his cloak around his arm and threw it onto the ground in a heap, regardless of the damp. His second rushed to pick it up and held it in front of him, rather like a shield.
Dalgetty, who had no cloak, chose to keep his coat on. He flourished the stick, or whatever it was, again, and let out a cry of “Liberty!” and lunged forward at a run.
“Honor!” Pascoe shouted back, and brandishing something long and pale in his hand, ran forward as well. They met with a clash in the middle and Dalgetty slipped as his polished boots failed to take purchase on the wet grass.
Pascoe turned swiftly and only just missed spearing him through the chest. Instead he succeeded in tearing a long piece from Dalgetty’s jacket and thoroughly enraging him. Dalgetty wielded what Pitt could now see was a sword stick, and dealt Pascoe a nasty blow across the shoulders.
“Stop it!” Pitt bellowed as loudly as his lungs would bear. He was running towards them, but he was still a hundred and fifty yards away, and no one paid him the slightest attention. “Stop it at once!”
Pascoe was startled, not by Pitt but by the blow, which must have hurt considerably. He stepped back a pace, shouted, “In the name of chivalry!” and swiped sideways with his ancient and very blunt sword, possibly an ill- cared-for relic of Waterloo, or some such battle.
Dalgetty, with a modern sword stick, sharp as a needle, parried the blow so fiercely the neglected metal broke off halfway up and flew in an arc, catching him across the cheek and opening up a scarlet weal which spurted blood down his coat front.
“You antiquated old fool!” he spluttered, startled and extremely angry. “You fossilized bigot! No man stands in the path of progress! A medieval mind like you won’t stop one single good idea whose time has come! Think you can imprison the imagination of man in your old-fashioned ideas! Rubbish!” He swung his broken sword high in the air so wildly the singing sound of it was audible to Pitt even above the rasping of his own breath and the thud of his feet. It missed Pascoe by an inch, and clipped a tuft off the top of his silver head and sent it flying like thistledown.
Pitt tore off his coat and threw it over Dalgetty.
“Stop it!” he roared, and caught him across the chest with his shoulder, sending them both to the ground. The broken sword stick went flying bright in the sun to fall, end down, quivering in the ground a dozen yards away.
Pitt picked himself up and disregarded Dalgetty totally. He did not bother to straighten his clothes and dust off the earth and grass. He faced a shaken, weaponless and very startled Pascoe.
By this time Murdo had dealt with the cab driver and run across the field to join them. He stood aghast at the spectacle, helpless to know what do to.
Pitt glared at Pascoe.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” he demanded at the top of his voice. “Two people are dead already, God knows who did it, or why-and you are out here trying to murder each other over some idiotic monograph that nobody will read anyway! I should charge you both with assault with a deadly weapon!”
Pascoe was deeply affronted. Blood was seeping through the tear across the shoulder of his shirt and he was clearly in some pain.
“You cannot possibly do that!” his voice was high and loud.”It was a gentieman’s difference of opinion!” He jerked his hand up wildly. “Dalgetty is a desecrator of values, a man without judgment or discretion. He propagates the vulgar and destructive and what he imagines to be the cause of freedom, but which is actually license, indiscipline and the victory of the ugly and the dangerous.” He waved both arms, nearly decapitating Murdo, who had moved closer. “But I do not lay any charge against him. He attacked me with my full permission-so you cannot arrest him.” He stopped with some triumph and stared at Pitt out of bright round eyes.
Dalgetty climbed awkwardly to his feet, fighting his way out of Pitt’s coat, his cheek streaming blood.
“Neither do I lay charge against Mr. Pascoe,” he said, reaching for a handkerchief. “He is a misguided and ignorant old fool who wants to ban any idea that didn’t begin in the Middle Ages. He will stop any freedom of ideas, any flight of the imagination, any discovery of anything new whatsoever. He would keep us believing the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it. But I do not charge him with attacking me-we attacked each other. You are merely a bystander who chose to interfere in something which is none of your affair. You owe us an apology, sir!”
Pitt was livid. But he knew that without a complaint he could not make an arrest that would be prosecuted.
“On the contrary,” he said with sudden freezing contempt. “You owe me a considerable gratitude that I prevented you from injuring each other seriously, even fatally. If you can scramble your wits together long enough, think what that would have done to your cause-not to mention your lives from now on.”
The possibility, which clearly had not occurred to either of them, stopped the next outburst before it began, and when one of the seconds stepped forward nervously, Pitt opened his mouth to round on him for his utter irresponsibility.
But before he could continue on his tirade the other second shouted out and swung around, pointing where across the field from the Highgate direction were rapidly advancing five figures, strung out a dozen yards from each other. The first was obviously, even at that distance, the vigorous, arm-swinging Stephen Shaw, black bag in his hand, coattails flying. Behind him loped the ungainly but surprisingly rapid figure of Hector Clitheridge, and running
