The Angel Court Affair (Thomas Pitt 30) (2 page)

And violence at home was not so very different from that now escalating across Europe. President Carnot of France had been assassinated four years ago in 1894. Last year it had been Prime Minister Cánovas del Castillo in Spain, where the violence had reached new abominations.

‘She is bringing half a dozen or so of her . . . acolytes,’ Sir Walter went on, as if he had not noticed Pitt’s absence of attention.

‘God only knows what sort of people they are, but we don’t want any of them killed on our soil. I’m sure you understand the embarrassment that would be to Her Majesty’s Government. Especially in light of our history with Spain. We don’t want to give them any excuses for war with us as well.’ He looked at Pitt carefully, as if possibly he had overestimated him and would be obliged to reconsider.

‘Yes, sir,’ Pitt replied. ‘Of course I understand. Is it even remotely likely that she would be attacked here?’ He asked the question not in a spirit of incredulity, but hoping for some assurance that it was not so. The recent past had destroyed a lot of certainties, not only in Europe but in America as well.

Sir Walter’s expression eased out a little, the deep lines about his mouth less severe. ‘Probably not,’ he replied with the ghost of a smile. ‘But apparently this woman’s English family do not approve of her at all. She left in the first place over some quarrel of principle, so I hear. Families can be the devil!’ There was some sympathy in his voice.

Pitt made a last effort to avoid the task. ‘Domestic violence is police work, sir, not Special Branch’s. We have a big case of industrial sabotage at the moment that looks as if it is foreign inspired. It’s getting worse and has to be stopped. That affects the safety of the nation.’

Sir Walter’s eyes were bright and sharp. ‘It is the effect on the nation that determines whose problem it is, Pitt, not the victim’s relationship to the attacker, and you know that as well as I do. If you didn’t, believe me, you would not be long in your position.’

Pitt cleared his throat, and spoke quietly.

‘Do we know the nature of this quarrel within the woman’s family, sir?’

Sir Walter gave a slight shrug. If he noticed the change in Pitt’s tone, he was sophisticated enough not to show it.

‘The usual sort of thing with wilful daughters, I believe,’ he replied, the slight smile back on his face. ‘She declined to marry the young man of excellent breeding and fortune, and tedious habits, whom they had selected for her.’

Pitt remembered that Sir Walter had three daughters.

‘And ran off to Spain and married some Spanish man of unknown character and probably unknown ancestry, at least to Sofia’s parents,’ Sir Walter added. ‘I imagine it was embarrassing to them.’

‘How long ago was this?’ Pitt asked, keeping his face as expressionless as he could. He too had a daughter fast approaching marriageable age.

‘Oh, it was some time,’ Sir Walter replied ruefully. ‘I think it is her religious views that have now compounded the problem. It wouldn’t matter so much if she kept them to herself, but unfortunately she doesn’t. She has formed something of a sect.’

‘Roman Catholic?’ Pitt imagined a cult to do with the Virgin Mary, perhaps, causing old persecutions to be remembered.

‘Apparently not.’ Sir Walter lifted one elegant shoulder. ‘It hardly matters. Just see that no one attacks her while she is in England. The sooner she leaves the better, but alive and well, if you please.’

Pitt straightened to attention. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sofia Delacruz?’ Charlotte said with a sudden sharpening of interest. She and Pitt were sitting by a low fire in the parlour, the curtains drawn across the french windows on to the garden. Almost all the light was gone from the cool spring sky and there was a definite chill in the air. Sixteen-year-old Jemima and thirteen-year-old Daniel were both upstairs in their rooms. Jemima would be daydreaming, or writing letters to her friends. Daniel would be deep in the adventures of the latest
Boy’s Own
Paper
.

Pitt leaned forward and put another log on the fire. It gave less heat than coal, but he liked the smell of the apple wood.

‘Have you heard of her?’ he asked with surprise.

Charlotte smiled slightly self-consciously. ‘Yes, a bit.’

He remembered Sir Walter’s reference to a scandal in the past, and knew how Charlotte loathed gossip, even when it was the lifeblood of investigation. She listened to it, but with guilt, and a thread of fear. She had seen too many of its victims.

‘What did you hear?’ he said gravely. ‘She may be in danger. I need to know.’

Charlotte did not argue, which in itself was indicative of a different kind of interest. He detected concern in her eyes. She put down the sewing she had been doing.

‘And you are going to protect her?’ she asked curiously.

‘I’ve assigned Brundage to it,’ he replied.

‘Not Stoker?’ She was puzzled.

‘Stoker’s quite senior now,’ he pointed out. He did not want to be sharp and set a division between them. This quiet evening alone with her was the best part of his day. Its peace mattered intensely to him. ‘He has other responsibilities, and Brundage is a good man.’

‘I’ve heard her ideas are pretty radical.’ She was gazing at him steadily.

‘For example?’

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, pushing the sewing away and leaning forward a little. ‘Perhaps I’ll go and listen to what she has to say. She has to have more fire than our local minister.’ Charlotte went to church on most Sundays because she took the children. It was part of belonging to the community and of being accepted. It was also the best place for them to meet other people about whom Charlotte knew at least something substantial, if not profound. More often than not, Pitt discovered some pressing duty elsewhere.

Pitt nodded agreement, but he was far more conscious of a sharp memory stirring in his mind. His mother had taken him to the parish church on the edge of the estate every Sunday of his childhood. He could almost see the shafts of coloured light slanting downwards from the stained-glass windows; smell the stone and faint odour of dust. There were shuffles of movement, a creaking of stays, and the dry riffle of pages being turned. Very seldom had he actually listened. Some of the stories from the Old Testament were good, but they were isolated, forming no consistent history of God and man. It was more a series of errors and corrections, well-earned disasters, and then heroic rescues. A lot of the rest of it was lists of names, or wonderfully poetic prophecies of desolation to come.

Had he believed any of it? And even if he had, did it matter? It had to do with morality, with duty and honour, but if he were honest, the
Boy’s Own Magazine
stories he had borrowed had stirred his heart far more, with their tales of adventure, of heroes any boy would want to copy. He smiled now with quiet pleasure, and a sense of identity with Daniel when he saw him reading them. The magazine now had a new name, the stories had different settings, but the spirit was the same.

Pitt had grown up close to the land, expecting to become a gamekeeper on a country estate, like his father. Then his father had been accused of poaching, and was transported to Australia, one of the last to be so punished. Pitt had always believed him innocent, but had never been able to prove it, either at the time or since.

The owner of the estate, Sir Arthur Desmond, had taken pity on Pitt’s mother and allowed her to stay. He had even educated Pitt alongside his son, perhaps out of charity, but also to spur on his son’s lazy habits. It would scald his pride to be outdone by one of his own servants. Pitt had had enough sense not to do so, at least not often.

But he had grown up with a burning desire to see justice, which had taken him first to the police, rising to command in Bow Street. Then he had solved a case that had trodden very hard on powerful political toes. He had been first dismissed, and then moved to Special Branch to protect him from a degree of revenge, and also to provide him with a means to earn a living using the only skills he had, but at which he excelled.

A further dramatic case had placed him early at its head. The disgraced gamekeeper’s son was now something of a gentleman. The manners were in his nature, but the security of it was no deeper than a single layer of skin. Perhaps Sir Walter was acute enough to know that.

So what was it that still clung to him so sharply about those old memories of church? The companionship of his mother, the rare sense of peace within her as if she were at last safe, loved, and completely unafraid? He had thought at the time that her faith was simple and certain. While he was glad for her, because he knew it comforted some of her fears that he could not – even filled a certain loneliness – he had no desire to be the same. It was a subject they had never spoken about, from choice for both of them.

He wondered now if perhaps it had not been nearly as easy for her as he had supposed, but she had led him to think it was because it took a certain burden from him. It was one area in which he could be a child. She had allowed him that, as she had so many other things of which he had been unaware at the time. She had died without ever telling him she was ill. She had sent him away so he would not notice, not suffer with her. How could he have been so blind as to let her?

What did he believe? A hundred things about morality, about honour and kindness. But about God?

Charlotte was watching him, waiting. Was she aware of the thoughts inside him?

‘You want to go and listen to her?’ Pitt said, breaking the silence at last.

‘Yes,’ she said immediately. ‘I’ve heard she is outrageous, even blasphemous in her ideas. I’d love to know what they are!’

He realised how little they had ever spoken of what either of them believed in matters of religion. And yet he knew everything else about her. He knew what hurt her, made her angry, and made her laugh or cry, whom she liked and what she thought of them, even of herself. Often he would read her thoughts in her face. At other times it was in far smaller things: a sudden silence, an unexplained kindness, the letting slip an old grudge someone else could have held on to, and he knew she had understood a shadow, or a pain, because he had known it also.

‘Does it matter to you?’ he asked. ‘If she is blasphemous.’

She looked at him with surprise. At first he thought it was because he had asked. Then he realised that it was at herself.

‘Actually, I have no idea,’ she confessed. ‘Perhaps that is why I want to go. I’m not sure I even know what blasphemy is. Cursing, or desecration of a shrine, I understand. But what is an idea that is blasphemous?’

‘Darwin’s
On the Origin of Species
,’ he answered immediately. ‘The suggestion that we evolved from something lesser rather than descended from something greater. It threatens our entire concept of ourselves.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘To be descended infinitely from Adam through an irreparable sin is apparently much nobler than to be arisen from a woman, no matter how far above, or below, we might be now.’

She ignored his remark, as he had expected she would.

‘Well, if she has come up with that she is a little late to cause trouble with it,’ Charlotte said drily. ‘We’ve been fighting that one already for the last thirty years! It isn’t even interesting any more.’

‘So you’re not coming, then?’ He tried to keep his face straight, as if he were not deliberately teasing her.

‘Of course I’m coming!’ she said instantly, then realised what he was doing and smiled, twisting her mouth a little. ‘I’ve never seen a woman blasphemer. Do you suppose there will be a riot?’

He did not satisfy her by answering.

Sofia Delacruz’s meeting was to be held in a very large local hall facing on to a square. Pitt went early in the evening in order to speak to Brundage and hear his opinions of her, and, perhaps even more importantly, of her followers. He also wished to check whatever precautions they had taken against any protest becoming violent. Brundage would have formed at least an opinion of her himself, and learned precisely what family she still had in England that she wished to be reconciled with. In fact Pitt expected that Brundage would have at least some idea as to what the original quarrel had been about.

It was a typical April day, sunshine one moment and spatters of rain the next. The new leaves were glistening pale on the branches and there were swathes of yellow daffodils on the grass of the square.

Pitt walked past them with a moment of pleasure, and then up the wide steps and through the double doors to the hall where the meeting was to be held. He noted that there were already several local police around, although it was over an hour before the meeting was due to begin. He asked for Brundage, and was directed to one of the dressing rooms at the back, just beyond the stage. It was bare except for a couple of chairs, a mirror and a number of hooks on the wall.

Brundage was a large young man, almost Pitt’s own height, but more broadly built. His brown hair flopped forward over his brow and he brushed it back automatically as he straightened up from reaching across to a collection of printed papers advertising the event. He had unusual features, blunt and yet in no way coarse.

‘Sir,’ he responded politely on recognising Pitt.

‘Evening, Brundage,’ Pitt acknowledged, glancing around the room, noting the windows and the other door. ‘Tell me what you’ve found so far.’

Brundage rolled his eyes very slightly. ‘Wish I could say it was what I expected, sir. The hall is secure enough, and the local police are prepared for a big crowd. Probably more curious than looking for any trouble, but it only takes a few to make it turn nasty.’

‘What did you not expect?’ Pitt asked a little sceptically.

Brundage shrugged. ‘I suppose dignity, logic, someone I can’t dismiss as a harmless lunatic,’ he answered with a degree of self-deprecation. ‘I thought her followers would be the usual collection of idealists, dependants and hangers-on. And of course those who want to take her place. I’m not wrong about that. Although they are more intense than I expected.’

‘A threat to her?’ Pitt asked quickly.