Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [87]
But surely only a madwoman would murder those who were unwilling to change? That would be almost everyone except a mere handful! It made no sense—but should he be looking for sense in these deaths?
At last he went to bed, warmer, sleepy, but no more certain in his mind.
In the morning he left early, saying little to Charlotte except a few bleak works about finding Sheridan, the horror, the rising sense of hysteria in the crowd.
“Surely it could not have been Florence Ivory?” she said when he finished. “Not this too?”
He wanted to say of course not; this changes everything. But it did not. Such a burning sense of injustice does not know the bounds of sense, not even of self-preservation. Reason was no yardstick with which to measure.
“Thomas?”
“Yes.” He stood up and reached for his coat.” I am sorry, but it could still be her.”
Micah Drummond was in his office already, and Pitt went straight up. The daily newspapers were in a pile on his desk, and the top one had black banner headlines: THIRD MURDERON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, and under it, ANOTHER M.P. BUTCHERED HALF A MILE FROM HOUSE OF COMMONS.
“The rest are much the same, or worse,” Drummond said bleakly. “Royce is right; people are beginning to panic. The Home Secretary has sent for me—heaven only knows what I can tell him. What have we got? Anything?”
“Sheridan’s widow knew Mrs. Ivory and Africa Dowell,” Pitt replied miserably. “She is a member of her local women’s suffrage organization, and her husband was fiercely against it.”
Drummond sat without moving for some time. “Ah,” he said at last, no conviction in his voice, no certainty. “Do you think that has anything to do with it? A women’s suffrage conspiracy?”
Put in those words it sounded absurd, yet Pitt could not forget the passion in Florence Ivory, the loss that time had hardened but not touched with even the smallest healing. She was a woman who would not be stopped by fear or convention, risks to herself, or other people’s doubts or beliefs. Pitt was quite sure that she was capable of it, both emotionally and physically, with Africa Dowell’s help.
And would Africa have helped? He thought so. She was a young woman full of idealism and burning emotions forcefully directed towards the bitter wrongs she felt had been done to Florence and her child. She had a dreamer’s or a revolutionary’s dedication to her vision of justice.
“Pitt?” Drummond’s voice cut across his thoughts.
“No, not really,” he replied, weighing his words. “Unless two people can be called a conspiracy. But it might be a series of circumstances... .”
“What circumstances?” Drummond, too, was beginning to see the outline of a pattern, but there were too many unknowns. He had not met the people and so could not judge, and always at the back of his mind were the newspaper headlines, the grave and frightened faces of men in high office who now felt accountable and in turn passed on the responsibility and the blame to him. He was not frightened; he was not a man to run from challenge or duty, nor to blame others for his own helplessness. But neither did he evade the seriousness of the situation. “For heaven’s sake, Pitt, I want to know what you think!”
Pitt was honest. “I fear it may be Florence Ivory, with Africa Dowell’s help. I think she has the passion and the commitment to have done it. She certainly had the motive, and it is more than possible she mistook Hamilton for Etheridge. But why she then went on to kill Sheridan I don’t know. That seems more cold-blooded than I judge her to be. It seems gratuitous. Of course, it could be someone else, perhaps an enemy of Sheridan’s taking advantage of a hideous opportunity.”
“And you have some sympathy for Mrs. Ivory,” Drummond added, watching Pitt closely.
“Yes,” Pitt admitted. It was true, he