Long Spoon Lane Page 4

  Welling and Carmody were refusing to name anyone else, but they insisted the police had shot Magnus Landsborough. From the angle of the bullet and the way Landsborough was lying, the shot had to have come from the door to the back stairs. Presumably the man had escaped that way, Welling and Carmody assuming him to be police, and the police at the back mistaking him for one of the police with Special Branch from the front, in hot pursuit of an anarchist. They must have let him go right past them!

  The mechanics of it were beginning to make sense.

  Had the police at the back been careless and let at least one man through, perhaps more? Or corrupt, and intentionally allowed them to escape?

  Who was the man who had shot Landsborough from behind the door, and then raced downstairs pretending to be a policeman? Had he seized a chance suddenly presented to him by fate, or had he waited in the building in Long Spoon Lane, knowing that after the explosion the bombers would return here?

  Why? An internal rivalry, one group against another? A clash of ideals, a war for territory? Or a fight for leadership within one group?

  Or something else altogether?

  Pitt walked slowly across the room and out of the door to the back stairs, the way the killer must have gone. Outside in the street he found another constable, but he could tell him nothing more.

  2

  PITT CLOSED THE front door quietly, took off his boots and walked along the passage towards the lights and the sounds of laughter in the kitchen. It was nearly eight o’clock, and although it was a mild evening, he was shivering cold with exhaustion, not so much of body as of mind.

  He pushed the door open and was engulfed with the warm smells of hot pastry, vegetables, and the dry, delicate odor of clean linen on the airing rail above. The gaslight shone on the blue-ringed china on the dresser and the pale, scrubbed wood of the table.

  Charlotte swung around to smile at him. Her hair was still pinned up, but wisps of it were coming loose, and she had an apron on over the sweep of her skirt.

  “Thomas!” She moved quickly towards him, then looked at his face and frowned. “There was a bomb! What happened? Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m just tired,” he answered her. “No one was hurt in the blast. One policeman was shot in the siege, but it was just a flesh wound.”

  She kissed his cheek quickly and pulled away. “Have you had anything to eat?” she said with concern.

  “No,” he admitted, pulling out one of the hard-backed chairs and sitting down. “Not since a ham sandwich at about three o’clock. But I’m not really hungry.”

  “Bombs!” Gracie said with a snort of disgust. “I dunno wot the world’s coming ter! We should put the lot of ’em on the treadmills down the Coldbath Fields!” She turned around from the stove and regarded Pitt with proprietary disapproval. She was far more than a maid, and her loyalty was passionate.

  “Well, a bit o’ apple pie won’t do you no ’arm. An’ we’ve some cream, thick as butter, it is. Could stand yer spoon up in it, an’ all.” Without waiting for him to accept or decline, she swept into the pantry, swinging the door wide open.

  Charlotte smiled across at Pitt, and got him a clean spoon and fork out of the drawer. Just then, eleven-year-old Jemima came racing down the stairs and along the passage.

  “Papa!” She threw herself at Pitt and hugged him with enthusiasm. “What happened in the East End? Gracie says the anarchists should all be shot. Is that true?”

  He tightened his arms around her, then let her go as she remembered her dignity and pulled away.

  “I thought she said to send them to the treadmill?” he replied.

  “What’s a treadmill?” Jemima asked.

  “A machine that goes ’round and ’round pointlessly, but you have to keep walking in it or you lose your balance and it bruises you.”

  “What use is that?”

  “None at all. It’s a punishment.”

  “For anarchists?”

  Gracie returned with a large wedge of apple pie and a jug of cream and set it on the table.

  “Thank you,” Pitt accepted, helping himself. Perhaps he was hungry after all. Anyway, it would please all of them if he ate it. “For anyone put in prison,” he answered Jemima’s question.

  “Are anarchists wicked?” she asked, sitting at the other side of the table.

  “Yes,” Gracie answered as Pitt had his mouth full. “O’ course they are. They bomb people’s ’ouses and smash things up. They ’ate people who’ve worked ’ard and made things. They want ter spoil everything that in’t theirs.” She filled up the kettle and set it on the stove.

  “Why?” Jemima asked. “That’s stupid!”

  “Usually because nobody will listen to them otherwise,” Charlotte answered her daughter. “Where’s Daniel?”

  “Doing his homework,” Jemima replied. “I’ve done mine. Does smashing things up make people listen? I’d just get sent to bed without any supper.” She looked at the apple pie hopefully.

  Charlotte controlled her smile with an effort. Pitt saw it in her eyes, and looked away. The warmth of the kitchen was unknotting the pain inside him; violence was retreating from his thoughts to some dark place beyond the walls. The pie was crisp-crusted and still had some of its heat, the cream thick and smooth.

  “Yes, you would,” Charlotte agreed with Jemima. “But if you were certain something was unjust, you’d be terribly angry, and you might not stay silent or do as you were told.”

  Jemima looked at Pitt doubtfully. “Is that why they broke things, Papa? Is something unjust?”

  “I don’t know,” Pitt replied. “But bombing ordinary people’s houses isn’t the answer.”

  “ ’Course it in’t!” Gracie added forcibly, stretching up onto her toes to reach the tea caddy off the shelf. “If summink’s wrong, we ’ave police and laws ter put it right, which most times they do. Adding another wrong don’t ’elp, an’ it’s wicked.” She kept her small, square-shouldered back to the room. She opened the teapot lid with a snap. She had grown up in the back streets, begging and stealing to survive. Now that she was respectable, she was yielding to no one on the rule of law.

  Charlotte, who was well-born, schooled to be a lady—before she had been wild enough to fall in love with a policeman—could afford a more liberal outlook.

  “Gracie’s quite right,” she said gently to her daughter. “You can’t hurt innocent people to make your point. It is wicked, no matter how desperate you think you are. Now go upstairs and let your father have his supper in peace.”

  “But Mama…” Jemima began.

  “We’ll have no anarchy in this house,” Charlotte told her. “Upstairs!”

  Jemima made a face, slipped her arms around Pitt’s neck again, and kissed him. Then she went out the door and they heard her feet lightly along the corridor.

  Gracie warmed the teapot and made the tea.

  Pitt ate the last of his apple pie, and sat back, letting the brightness and the warmth anchor him for now.

  Pitt left early in the morning, and Charlotte sat at the breakfast table alone looking at the newspapers. They all reported the bombing in Myrdle Street, but with varying degrees of outrage. Some were full of pity for the families who had lost their homes, and showed pictures of frightened and bewildered people huddling together, faces hollow-eyed with shock.

  Others were angrier, calling for punishment for the criminals who would cause such devastation. The police were criticized; Special Branch even more so. Naturally there was much speculation as to who was responsible, what their aims might be, and if there would be further atrocities of the same kind.

  The siege in Long Spoon Lane was mentioned, and the capture of two of the anarchists. Bitter questions were asked as to why the others were still at large.

  Magnus Landsborough’s death was mourned in many ways. The Times was discreet, writing more about Lord Landsborough’s distinguished career as a Liberal member of the House of Lords, and extending sympathy to him and his fami
ly on the loss of his only son. Little question was raised as to what his son had been doing at Long Spoon Lane, but the possibility of his having been a hostage was not ruled out.

  Other papers were less charitable. They assumed that he had been one of the anarchists himself, simply unlucky enough to have been the only casualty in the gun battle that had ended the siege. The injured policeman was mentioned as well, with commendation for his courage.

  It was the last newspaper that troubled her. It was edited by the highly respected and influential Edward Denoon, and he had written the leading article himself. She read it with an increasing sense of unease.

  Yesterday morning while the residents of Myrdle Street were preparing for another day of labor, the police interrupted their meager breakfast to tell them that anarchist bombers were about to strike. Old men shuffled out into the street, women with frightened children at their skirts grasped the few belongings they could carry, and fled.

  Minutes later the shabby row of houses erupted in flames. Bricks and slates flew like missiles, crashing into the windows and through the roofs of neighbors streets away. Black smoke gushed into the morning air and terror and destruction struck scores of ordinary people, ruining homes, lives, and the peace that citizens of England have a right to expect.

  The men responsible were pursued and hunted down and cornered in a tenement in Long Spoon Lane. Police laid siege to them and there was a gun battle in which twenty-two-year-old Constable Field, of Mile End, was shot down, but owing to the courage of his comrades was rescued from death.

  Magnus Landsborough, the only son of Lord Sheridan Landsborough, was less fortunate. His dead body was found in an upper room. It is not known at present what he was doing there, whether taken as hostage, or with the anarchists of his own will.

  Then we must ask ourselves what manner of barbarian commits such atrocities? Who are they, and what conceivable purpose do they imagine it may serve? Surely it can only be intended to terrorize us into submission to some dreadful rule, which we would not submit to otherwise? Does this act of violence stem from foreign soil, the first wave of conquest from another country?

  This newspaper does not believe so. We are at peace with our neighbors near and far. There is no intelligence, however discreet, to implicate any other nation. Rather, we fear it is a political ideal of such a twisted nature that men would impose their ideal of society by destroying all that we have worked for through centuries of growth and labor, through the civilizing arts and sciences and the inventions that improve the comfort and welfare of mankind. Then on the ashes of our lives they hope to build their own order, as they think it should be. They may call themselves socialists, or anarchists, or whatever they will. They are savages, by any name, criminals who must be hunted down, arrested, tried, and hanged. That is the law, and it is there to protect us all, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor alike.

  But these madmen who would destroy our lives are powerful, and all too obviously they are well-armed. Our police, who are the soldiers of this civil army, to defend us, must be well-armed also. It is they who risk their lives, and sometimes lose them, to form the shield between us and the chaos of violence and anarchy. We cannot afford to send them into battle without weapons, and it would be morally indefensible for us to try.

  Not only must we provide them with adequate guns in their hands, but also we must legislate to give them the weapons of law they need in order to find among us the wicked and the mad who wish our destruction. The law requires proof of crime, as it should. That is the defense of the innocent. But a policeman who is prevented from searching the person or the property of someone he suspects of criminal intent can only wait helplessly until the act is committed, and then avenge the victim. We need more than that. We deserve, we must have, a prevention of the crime before it occurs.

  She put the paper down and stared across the kitchen in disquiet.

  Gracie came in from the back step and looked at her. “Wot’s ’appened?” she said anxiously. “Summink bad?” When she had first come to Charlotte, she could neither read nor write. Now, with Charlotte’s help, she was quite good at both. She made it a habit to read at least two articles in the newspaper every day. Now she looked at Denoon’s paper skeptically, and at the cold tea in Charlotte’s cup. “There’s never bin another bombing?” she said with disbelief.

  “No,” Charlotte answered quickly. “It’s the editor calling for more guns for the police, and more rights to search people’s houses.”

  Gracie set down the vegetables on the draining board of the sink. “Well, if people ’ave got bombs an’ guns, police can’t fight ’em wi’ sticks,” she said reasonably. Then she frowned. “Mind, I wouldn’t like ter think o’ Mr. Pitt wi’ a gun. Can’t ’ave it in the ’ouse—they in’t safe!” The downward tone of her voice reflected her distaste for the entire idea. “Why ’ave some people always got ter be making trouble?”

  “It’s usually only trouble that makes us change things,” Charlotte replied. That was true, but it did not answer what Gracie was asking. “If somebody tips rubbish out in your street,” she went on, “or makes a noise late at night, if you don’t complain, they’ll go on doing it.” She smiled as she saw the temper flare in Gracie’s eyes. She had chosen the subject of rubbish deliberately.

  Gracie realized it and grinned; then the laughter vanished and profound gravity took its place. “But if I went an’ shot the stupid little article wot’s leaving it out there, I’d be put in jail, an’ right thing too. I give ’er a piece o’ me mind, but I never touched ’er.” The grin of triumph returned. “She won’t go do it again, mind!”

  “Of course,” Charlotte conceded. “Anarchy is wrong, and it’s ridiculous. But I’m not at all sure that giving the police guns is the solution. And I’m quite sure that giving them more power to go into people’s houses looking for evidence, unless they have a good reason to believe it’s there, is only going to make everyone angry, and even less likely to help.”

  “Is that what Mr. Pitt says?” Gracie asked, doubt flickering in her eyes.

  “Actually he was too tired to say anything,” Charlotte admitted. “And he hasn’t seen this yet. But I think it’s what he will say.”

  Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould sat at her breakfast table looking at the same newspaper, also with feelings of distress, but hers were caused by different aspects of the tragedy. The name of Lord Landsborough had caught her eye immediately, and sharp, sweet memory flooded in from the past. They had first met over forty years ago, at a reception at Buckingham Palace. Both had been married ten or twelve years and were restless and a trifle bored with the same social round, the same gossip, and the same opinions.

  Landsborough then had been an idealist, a believer in the innate decency of people, and filled with optimism that great good could be accomplished if more government were given into their hands, more freedom to decide their own destiny. He had been elegant, effortlessly well-dressed, and possessed an easy charm that concealed a greater sensitivity than he allowed most people to know.

  His wife, Cordelia, was darkly beautiful, ambitious, and, in Vespasia’s view, colder than a winter night. They had taken an instant and well-founded dislike to each other, and concealed it with icy good wishes and the most meticulous courtesy. Neither ever made a social mistake, or was caught less than perfectly dressed, jewels blazing, every hair exquisitely in place.

  Vespasia herself had found her marriage not uncomfortable, but neither was her husband the love of her life. That had been Mario Corena, the Italian patriot and hero of the ’48 revolution in Rome. Happiness between them had been impossible for reasons neither could overcome, but the memory of his idealism, courage, and sacrifice—and of one dazzling season of hope—had never faded.

  Then last year they had met again, briefly, when Mario had deliberately given his life to foil Charles Voisey’s plot to overthrow the throne of England. It had been a beautiful and terrible decision. Vespasia had had her revenge upon Voisey, but
at a cost she would never forget.

  But all those years ago when she had met Sheridan Landsborough, his gentle humor and his wry radicalism had appealed to her. He had shown a moderation, a tolerance, and an almost innocent trust in decency. And her wit, her regal and lonely beauty had awoken something in him. Cordelia had been striking, but Vespasia had turned heads and stirred hearts in every court in Europe. She had had the passion, the intelligence, and the courage to dare anything.

  Now she sat alone in the early-morning sunshine in her breakfast room and read that Sheridan had lost his only son, and she felt an intense sadness for him. The years since their last meeting vanished, and even Cordelia’s dislike seemed irrelevant. She must write and convey her sympathy. In fact, merely sending a letter through the post was inadequate. She would take it personally.

  She rose and walked to the fireplace beside which hung the bell rope to summon the maid. She pulled it and remained standing until it was answered.

  “Gwyneth, please put out black for me,” she requested, then changed her mind. “No, that is too severe: dark gray. And tell Charles I shall require the carriage at ten o’clock. I shall be calling upon Lord and Lady Landsborough to offer my condolences.”

  “I’m sorry, my lady,” Gwyneth replied. She had not heard the news and had no idea to what Vespasia was referring. “Will the dark gray silk be right? And the hat with the black ostrich feather?”

  “Excellent. Thank you. I shall write a letter, then I shall be up.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Gwyneth withdrew, and Vespasia walked across the hall to the morning room where her escritoire held pen, ink, and paper.

  It was always difficult to know what to say in such circumstances. For Cordelia the most formal of expressions would be correct, but for Sheridan, whom she had known so well, it would sound stilted and absurd, in a way worse than nothing at all.

  She sat at the escritoire in the cool, green light of the room. The sun beyond the curtains was filtered by leaves.