Betrayal at Lisson Grove - Anne Perry [147]
Wilson straightened up. ‘Yes, sir. Is anyone else allowed to know?’
‘Not at the moment.’ Pitt was taking a chance, but time was growing short, and if he caught Wilson in a lie, it would at least tell him something. In fact perhaps fear would be a better ally than discretion, as long as that too was used secretly.
He loathed this. At least in the police he had always known that his colleagues were on the same side. He had not realized then how infinitely valuable that was. He had taken it for granted.
By the middle of the afternoon, they had found the connection between Gower and Austwick. They discovered it more by luck than deduction.
‘Here,’ Stoker held out a piece of paper with a note scrawled across the bottom.
Pitt read it. It was a memorandum of one man, written to himself, saying that he must see Austwick at a gentlemen’s club, and report a fact to him.
‘Does this matter?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘It’s nothing to do with socialists or any kind of violence or change, it’s just an observation of someone, which turned out to be irrelevant.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Stoker agreed. ‘But it’s this.’ He handed Pitt another note with something written on the bottom in the same hand.
‘Gave the message on Hibbert to Gower to pass on to Austwick at the Hyde Club. Matter settled.’
The place was a small, very select gentlemen’s club in the West End of London. He looked up at Stoker. ‘How the devil did Gower get to be a member of the Hyde Club?’
‘I looked at that, sir. Austwick recommended him. And that means that he must know him pretty well.’
‘Then we’ll look a lot more closely at all the cases Gower’s worked on, and Austwick as well,’ Pitt replied.
‘But we already know they’re connected,’ Stoker pointed out.
‘And who else?’ Pitt asked. ‘There are more than two of them. But with this we’ve got a better place to start. Keep working. We can’t afford even one oversight.’
Silently Stoker obeyed. He concentrated on Gower while Pitt looked at every record he could find of Austwick.
By nine o’clock in the evening they were both exhausted. Pitt’s head thumped and his eyes felt hot and gritty. He knew Stoker must feel the same. There was little time left.
Pitt put down the piece of paper he had been reading until the writing on it blurred in front of his vision.
‘Any conclusions?’ he asked.
‘Some of these letters, sir, make me think Sir Gerald Croxdale was just about onto him. He was pretty close to putting it together,’ Stoker replied. ‘I think that might be what made Austwick hurry it all up and act when he did. By getting rid of Narraway he shook everybody pretty badly. Took the attention away from himself.’
‘And also put him in charge,’ Pitt added. ‘It wasn’t for long, but maybe it was long enough.’ The last paper he had read was a memorandum from Austwick to Croxdale, but it was a different thought that was in his mind.
Stoker was waiting.
‘Do you think Austwick is the leader?’ he asked. ‘Is he actually a great deal cleverer than we thought? Or at any rate, than I thought?’
Stoker looked unhappy. ‘I don’t think so, sir. It seems to me like he’s not making the decisions. I’ve read a lot of Mr Narraway’s letters, and they’re not like this. He doesn’t suggest, he just tells you. And it isn’t that he’s any less of a gentleman, just that he knows he’s in charge, and he expects you to know it too. Maybe that wasn’t how he spoke to you, but it’s how he did to the rest of us. No hesitation. You ask, you get your answer. I reckon that Austwick’s asking someone else first.’
That was exactly the impression Pitt had had: a hesitation, as if checking with the man in control of master plan.
But if Croxdale was almost onto him, why was Narraway not?
‘Who can we trust?’ he asked aloud. ‘We have to take a small force, no more than a couple of dozen men at the very most. Any more than that and we’ll alert them. They’ll have people watching for exactly that.’
Stoker wrote