Long Spoon Lane (5 page)

That sounded like Carmody, from the description. “Who else?” Pitt asked.

“Dark man, lots of hair,” Linwood said, screwing up his face in concentration. “He looked pretty shocked. Standing just about there.” He pointed to a place less than a yard from where Pitt was.

“Beside the body on the floor!” Pitt said in surprise.

Linwood’s eyes opened wide. “Yes, sir. He had a gun, but he couldn’t have shot him. The bullets had to have come from over there.” He indicated the door at the farther end of the room, going towards the stair to the back, down which the police had pursued the man who had shot Landsborough, and presumably escaped.

“What else?” Pitt asked.

“The dead man on the floor,” Linwood answered.

“You’re sure? How was he lying—exactly?”

“Just as you found him, sir. That shot killed him outright. Blew his brains out, poor devil.”

Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Poor?” he questioned.

Linwood’s mouth curled down. “I pity any man shot by his own, sir, whatever he believed in. Betrayal turns my stomach.”

“Mine too,” Pitt agreed. “Are you sure that’s what it was?”

“I don’t see what else it could have been, sir.” Linwood stared straight back at him. “I heard a shot when I was at the bottom of the stairs. Ask Patterson; he was straight behind me, and Gibbons behind him.”

“And Welling and Carmody were standing where you said?”

“Yes. So either one of them shot him, and the other is lying to protect him, or it was one of the ones who escaped,” Linwood replied. “Any way you look at it, it was one of his own.”

“Yes,” Pitt agreed grimly. “Welling says it was us.”

“He’s a liar.”

“Not someone in uniform.”

“We were all in uniform, sir,” Linwood said stiffly. “The only ones in plainclothes were you and your boss from Special Branch.”

“I don’t think Welling was lying,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “I think it was someone he didn’t know, or didn’t recognize.”

“Still one of his own,” Linwood’s face was hard, anger making his voice cutting. “He was shot in the back.”

“I know. Looks as if anarchy’s an even uglier business than we thought. Thank you, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir. Is that all?” Linwood stood to attention, or close to it. He did not consider Special Branch to be real police.

“For the moment,” Pitt replied.

Linwood left, but Pitt stood still in the room, picturing in his mind the sequence of events. He had come up the stairs behind Narraway and the three policemen. He had been one flight up when he had heard the shot from the room above, and the shouting.

When he had got there, seconds after the police, they had been standing still to this side of the gunman. The far door had been swinging. Someone else had just gone out of it. No one had mentioned seeing him, so he must already have disappeared when the first man came in at the front.

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

P
ITT 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 family 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.