by Anne Perry
“So why aren’t yer doin’ summink about it, too?” Gracie was far from satisfied. “Yer look like summink the cat drug in. Wot’s the matter wif yer?”
He could see she was going to fight him all the way. It was infuriating, and yet so characteristic of her he felt tears sting his eyes. This was ridiculous! He should not allow her to do this to him!
“Mr. Pitt isn’t satisfied this is a safe place for you,” he said tartly. “Mr. Voisey knows where you are, and I’m to take you somewhere else straightaway. There’s probably no danger, but best be safe.” He saw the fear in Charlotte’s face and knew that for all Gracie’s bravado, they were just as aware as Pitt that the danger was real. He swallowed. “So if you’ll get the children up and dressed we’ll go tonight, while it’s dark. Doesn’t stay long, this time of year. We need to be well out of the area in three or four hours, because it’ll be daylight by then.”
Charlotte stood motionless. “Are you sure Thomas is all right?” Her voice was sharp, edged with doubt, her eyes wide.
If he told her, it would relieve Pitt from having to try to find a way when they finally got back to London. And perhaps it would ease her physical fear for him. Voisey would never damage him now, he was too precious alive, to watch him suffer.
“Samuel!” Gracie demanded sharply.
“Well, he is and he isn’t,” he replied. “Voisey’s made it look like it was Mr. Pitt’s fault that this man committed suicide, and he was a churchman, very well liked. Of course it wasn’t, and we’ll get to prove it . . .” That was a pretty wild piece of optimism. “But for now the newspapers are giving him a hard time. But will you please go and get the children up, and put your things into cases, or whatever you brought them in. We haven’t got time to stand here and argue it out!”
Charlotte moved to obey.
“I suppose I’d better pack up the kitchen,” Gracie said, darting Tellman a fierce look. “Well, don’t just stand there! Yer look as starved as an alley cat! Come ’ave a slice o’ bread an’ jam while I pack up wot we got. No sense leaving it ’ere! An’ yer can carry it out ter wotever kind o’ cart yer got out there. Wot ’ave yer got, anyway?”
“It’ll do,” he answered. “Make me a slice, and I’ll eat it on the way.”
She shivered, and he noticed that her hands were clenched, knuckles white.
“I’m sorry!” he said with a wave of feeling so intense his voice was husky. “There’s no need to be afraid, Gracie. I’ll look after you!” He reached out to touch her, a stab of physical memory bringing back the moment he had kissed her when they were following after Remus in the Whitechapel affair. “I will!”
She looked away from him and sniffed. “I know yer will, yer daft ’aporth,” she said savagely. “An’ all of us! One-man army, y’are. Now do summink useful an’ get these things inter a box an’ take ’em out to yer cart, or wotever it is. An’ wait! Put that light out ’afore yer open the door!”
He froze. “Is someone watching you?”
“I dunno! But they could be, couldn’t they?” She started to take things out of the cupboards and put them into a wicker laundry basket. In the dim candlelight he saw two loaves of bread, a large pot of butter, a leg of ham, biscuits, half a cake, two jars of jam, and other tins and boxes he couldn’t name.
When the basket was full enough he shaded the candle with his hand, opened the door, and then, blowing out the flame and picking up the basket, he stumbled his way to the cart, several times barely missing tripping over the uneven path.
Fifteen minutes later they were all sitting wedged in, Edward shivering, Daniel half asleep, Jemima sitting awkwardly between Gracie and Charlotte, her arms gripped tightly around herself. Tellman urged the horse forward and they began to move, but the feeling was extremely different from when he had driven in. Now the cart was heavily laden and the night was so black it was hard to know how even the horse could find its way. He also had very little idea where they were going. Paignton was the obvious place, the first that anyone Voisey employed would think to look. Perhaps the opposite direction was equally obvious? Maybe there was somewhere off to the side? Where else was there a station? By train they could go anywhere! How much money had he left? They had to pay for lodgings and food as well as tickets.
Pitt had said a town, somewhere with lots of people. That meant Paignton or Torquay. But back at the Ivybridge station they would be remembered all standing together waiting for the first train. The stationmaster would be able to tell anyone who asked exactly where they went.
As if reading his thoughts, even in the dark, Gracie spoke. “Where are we goin’, then?”
“Exeter,” he said without hesitation.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because it isn’t really a holiday place,” he replied. It seemed as good an answer as any other.
They drove in silence for a quarter of an hour. The darkness and the weight of the cart made them slow, but he could not urge the horse any more. If it slipped, or went lame, they were lost. They must be over a mile from Harford and the cottage by now. The road was not bad and the horse was finding its way with more ease. Tellman began to relax a little. None of the difficulties he had feared had come to pass.
The horse pulled up abruptly. Tellman nearly fell off the seat, and saved himself only by grabbing hold of it at the last moment.
Gracie stifled a shriek.
“What is it?” Charlotte said sharply.
There was someone on the road ahead of them. Peering forward, Tellman could just make out the dark shape in the gloom. Then a voice spoke quite clearly, only a yard or so away.
“Now, where are you going at this time o’ the night? Mistress Pitt, isn’t it? From Harford way? You shouldn’t be out at this hour. Get lost, you will. Or have an accident.” It was a man’s voice, deep and with a lift of sarcasm to it.
Tellman heard Gracie gasp with fear. The fact that the man had used Charlotte’s name meant that he knew them. Was it intended as a threat? Was he the watcher who had told Voisey where they were?
The horse shook its head as if someone were holding its bridle. The darkness prevented Tellman from seeing. He hoped it also prevented the man from seeing him. How did he know who they were? He must have been watching and ridden ahead, knowing they would come this way. If he had seen Tellman go to the cottage door and then carry the boxes out, then it meant he had been there all the time. He had to be Voisey’s man. He had come ahead of them here into this lonely stretch of road between Harford and Ivybridge to catch them where there was no one to see, or to help. And there was no one—except Tellman. Everything rested with him.
What could he use for a weapon? He remembered packing a bottle of vinegar. It was half empty, but there was enough in it still to give it weight. But he daren’t ask Gracie for it aloud. The man would hear him. And he did not know how she had stacked the basket!
He leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Vinegar!”
“Wha . . . oh.” She understood. She slid back a little and started feeling for the bottle. Tellman made some move himself to cover the sounds, climbing off the box and slithering down the side of the cart until his feet touched the ground. He felt his way around to the back, hand over hand on the rough wood, and was coming around on the other side when he made out in the gloom the figure of a man ahead of him. Then he felt a smooth weight against his forearm and Gracie’s breath on his cheek. He took the vinegar bottle from her hand. He could see the dark shape of Charlotte, with her arms around the children.
“It’s you again!” Gracie’s voice came clearly from just beside him, but she was speaking to the man at the horse’s head, drawing his attention. “Wot yer doin’ out ’ere in the middle o’ the night, then? We’re goin’ ’cos we got a family emergency. Yer got one, too, ‘ave yer?”
“That’s a shame,” the man replied, the expression in his voice impossible to read. “Going back to London, then?”
“We never said we come from London!” Gracie challenged him,
but Tellman could hear the fear in her, the slight quiver, the higher pitch. He was only a yard away from the man now. The vinegar bottle was heavy in his hand. He swung it back, and as if he had caught the movement in the corner of his eye, the man swiveled and shot out his fist, sending Tellman sprawling backwards onto the ground, the vinegar bottle flying out of his grasp and rolling away on the grass.
“Oh, no you don’t, mister!” the man said, his voice suddenly altered to a vicious anger, and the next moment Tellman felt a tremendous weight on top of him, knocking the air out of his lungs. He was no match for the man in strength and he knew it. But he had grown up in the streets and the instinct to survive was above almost everything else; the only thing greater was the passion to protect Gracie . . . and of course Charlotte and the children. He kneed the man in the groin and heard him gasp, then poked at his eyes with stiff fingers, or at any piece of flesh he could reach.
The fight was short, intense and absolute. It was only moments later that his hands reached the unbroken vinegar bottle and he finished the job, cracking the man over the head with it and laying him senseless.
He scrambled to his feet and staggered around to where the other horse was standing with a dogcart pulled across the track, and led it off onto the side. Then he ran back and with difficulty in the dark, took the bridle of their own horse and led it past, before climbing up onto the box again and urging it forward as fast as it was capable of going. The east was already fading a little ahead of them and dawn would not be far away.
“Thank you,” Charlotte said quietly, holding a shivering Jemima close to her and Daniel by the other hand. Edward was clinging on at the farther end. “I think he has been watching us almost since we got here.” Charlotte did not add anything further, or mention Voisey’s name, or the Inner Circle. It was in all their minds.
“Yes,” Gracie agreed, a quiet pride in her voice and in the stiff, square-shouldered way she sat. “Thank you, Samuel.”
Tellman was bruised, his blood was beating so hard he was dizzy, but above all he was astounded by the savagery which had driven him. He had behaved like something primitive and it was exhilarating, and frightening.
“You’re going to stay in Exeter until the election is over and we know whether Voisey has won or lost,” he answered.
“No, I think I shall return to London,” Charlotte contradicted. “If they are blaming Thomas for this man’s death then I should be there with him.”
“You’re to stay here,” Tellman said flatly. “That’s an order. I’ll send a telephone message to Mr. Pitt to say as you’re all right and safe.”
“Inspector Tellman, I . . .” she began.
“It’s an order,” he said again. “Sorry, but that’s the end of it.”
“Yes, Samuel,” Gracie murmured.
Charlotte tightened her arms around Jemima and said nothing more.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Isadora sat at the breakfast table across from the Bishop and watched him toy with his food, pushing bacon, eggs, sausage and kidney around his plate. He did not look well, but then he so often complained of some minor ailment, and she knew that if she asked him he would tell her. She would be required, in ordinary civility, to listen and to offer some condolence. Kindness dictated she do more than that, and she could not bring herself to feel such a thing. So she ate her own breakfast of toast and marmalade, and avoided his eyes.
The butler brought in the morning newspaper and the Bishop motioned him to lay it on the table at his end, where he could reach it in a moment or two when he was ready.
“Take my plate away,” he directed.
“Yes, my lord. Is there something else you would prefer?” the butler asked solicitously, doing as he was bidden. “I am sure Cook would oblige.”
“No, thank you,” the Bishop declined. “I’m not hungry. Just pour the tea, would you.”
“Yes, my lord.” Again he did as he was bidden, and then discreetly withdrew.
“Are you feeling unwell?” Isadora asked before checking herself. It was so much habit with her that it required a conscious effort not to do so.
“The news is depressing,” he answered, but without picking up the paper. “The Liberals will win and Gladstone will form a government again, but it won’t last. But then nothing does.”
She must make the effort. She had promised him, and she sensed the fear in him across the table as if it were an odor in the air. “Governments don’t last, but neither should they,” she said gently. “The good things do. You’ve preached that all your life. You know it’s true. And the things that are destroyed, but in righteousness, God can rebuild. Isn’t that what the resurrection is all about?”
“That is the idea, the hope,” he replied, but his voice was flat, and he did not look up at her.
“Is it not the truth?” She thought that by provoking him into arguing it, the sound of his own words would strengthen him. He would realize that he did believe it.
“Really . . . I have no idea,” he answered instead. “It is a habit of thought. I repeat it over and over every Sunday because it is my job. I can’t afford to stop. But I don’t know that I believe it any more than the members of my congregation who come because it is the thing to be seen to do. Kneel in your pew every Sunday, repeat all the prayers, sing all the hymns and look as if you are listening to the sermon, and you will seem to be a good man. Your mind can be anywhere . . . on your neighbor’s wife, or his goods, or relishing his sins, and who will know?”
“God will know,” she said, startled by the anger in her voice. “And quite apart from that, you will know yourself.”
“There are millions of us, Isadora! Do you suppose God has nothing better to do than listen to our witterings? ‘I want this’ and ‘Give me that,’ ‘Bless so and so, which will release me of the necessity of doing anything about him.’ Those are the sort of orders I give my servants, which is why we have them in the first place, so we don’t have to do everything ourselves.” His face twisted with disgust. “That isn’t worship, it’s a ritual performed for ourselves, and to impress each other. What kind of a God wants that, or has any use for it at all?” There was contempt in his eyes, and anger, as if he had been let down unfairly and was just realizing the fullness of it.
“Who decided that it was what God wanted?” she asked.
He was startled. “It is what the church has done for the best part of two thousand years!” he retorted. “In fact, always!”
“I thought it was only meant to be the instrument of our growth,” she replied to him. “Not an end in itself.”
His brow creased with irritation. “Sometimes you talk the most arrant nonsense, Isadora. I am a bishop, ordained of God. Don’t try to tell me what the church is for. You make yourself ridiculous.”
“If you are ordained of God, then you should not doubt Him,” she snapped. “But if you are ordained of man, then perhaps you should be looking for what God wishes instead. It may not be the same at all.”
His face froze. He sat motionless for a moment, then leaned over and picked up the newspaper, holding it high enough to hide behind.
“Francis Wray committed suicide,” he said after a few moments. “It seems that damned policeman Pitt was hounding him over the murder of the spirit medium, imagining he knew something about it. Stupid man!”
She was horrified. She remembered Pitt; he had been one of Cornwallis’s men, one he was particularly fond of. Her first thought was for how it would hurt Cornwallis, for the injustice if it were not true, and for the disillusion, if by some terrible chance it were.
“Why on earth would he think that?” she said aloud.
“Heaven knows.” He sounded final, as if that closed the matter.
“Well, what do they say?” she demanded. “You’ve got it in front of you.”
He was irritated. “That was yesterday’s paper. There’s very little about it today.”
“What did they say?” she insisted. “What are they blami
ng Pitt for? Why would he think Francis Wray, of all people, would know anything about a spirit medium?”
“It really doesn’t matter,” he replied without lowering the paper. “And Pitt was quite wrong anyway. Wray had nothing to do with it, that has been proved.” And he refused to say anything further.
She poured a second cup of tea and drank it in silence.
Then she heard his suddenly indrawn breath and a gasp. The paper slid from his hands and fell in loose sheets in his lap and over his plate. His face was ashen.
“What is it?” she said with alarm, afraid he was having some kind of attack. “What’s happened? Have you pain? Reginald? Shall—“ She stopped. He was struggling to his feet.
“I . . . I have to go out,” he mumbled. He thrashed at the newspaper, sending the sheets slithering to the floor, rattling together.
“But you have the Reverend Williams coming in half an hour!” she protested. “He’s come all the way from Brighton!”
“Tell him to wait.” He flapped a hand at her.
“Where are you going?” She was on her feet also. “Reginald! Where are you going?”
“Not far,” he said from the doorway. “Tell him to wait!”
There was no use asking anymore. He was not going to tell her. It had to be something in the newspaper which had created such a panic of emotion in him. She bent and picked it up, starting her search on the second page, roughly where she guessed he had been reading.
She saw it almost immediately. It was an announcement by the police on the Maude Lamont case. There had been three clients at her house on Southampton Row for the last séance she had given. Two of them were named in her diary of engagements, the third had been represented by a little drawing, a pictograph or cartouche. It was like a small f hastily written, under a half circle. Or to Isadora’s eye, a bishop’s crozier under a roughly drawn hill—Underhill.