Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [70]
“Door,” he mumbled, reaching for his clothes. There was no point in hoping it was simply a matter of information he could accept, then go back to the warm oblivion of sleep. Anyone banging so fiercely and repeatedly wanted his presence. He pulled on trousers and socks; his boots were in front of the kitchen stove. He attempted to tuck in his shirt-tails, and lost them. He padded downstairs, turned up the gas on the lamp in the hall, and unbolted the front door.
The chill of the damp night air made him shiver, but it was a small discomfort compared with the sight of Murdo’s ashen face and the bull’s-eye lantern high in his hand, which threw its yellow light on the paving stones and into the mist around him. It picked out the dark shape of a hansom cab waiting at the curb beyond, the horse’s flanks steaming, the cabby shrouded in his cloak.
Before he could ask, Murdo blurted it out, his voice cracking a little.
“There’s another fire!” He forgot the “sir.” He looked very young, the freckles standing out on his fair skin in its unnatural pallor. “Amos Lindsay’s house.”
“Bad?” Pitt asked, although he knew.
“Terrible.” Murdo kept his voice under control with difficulty. “I never saw anything like it—you can feel the heat a hundred yards up the road; fair hurts your eye to look at it. God—how can anyone do that?”
“Come in,” Pitt said quickly. The night air was cold.
Murdo hesitated.
“My boots are in the kitchen.” Pitt turned and left him to do as he pleased. He heard the latch close and Murdo tiptoeing heavily after him.
In the kitchen he put up the gas and sat on the hard-backed chair, reaching for his boots and then lacing them tightly. Murdo came in as far as the stove, relishing the warmth. His eyes went over the clean wood, the china gleaming on the dresser, and he caught the smell of laundry drying on the airing rail winched up towards the ceiling above them. Unconsciously the lines in his young face were already less desperate.
Charlotte appeared in the doorway in her nightgown, her bare feet having made no sound on the linoleum.
Pitt smiled at her bleakly.
“What is it?” she asked, glancing at Murdo and back at Pitt.
“Fire,” he said simply.
“Where?”
“Amos Lindsay’s. Go back to bed,” he said gently. “You’ll get cold.”
She stood white-faced. Her hair was dark over her shoulders, copper where the gaslight caught it.
“Who was in the house?” she asked Murdo.
“I dunno, ma’am. We aren’t sure. They was trying to get the servants out, but the heat was terrible, scorch the hair off—” He stopped, realizing he was speaking to a woman and probably should not be saying such things.
“What?” she demanded.
He looked miserable and guilty for his clumsiness. He stared at Pitt, who was now ready to go.
“Eyebrows, ma’am,” he answered miserably, and she knew he was too shocked to equivocate.
Pitt kissed Charlotte quickly on the cheek and pushed her back. “Go to bed,” he said again. “Standing here catching a chill won’t help anyone.”
“Can you tell me if—” Then she realized what she was asking. To dispatch someone with a message, simply to allay her fears, or confirm them, would be a ridiculous waste of manpower, when there were urgent things to be done, injured and perhaps bereaved people to help. “I’m sorry.”
He smiled, an instant of understanding, then turned and went out with Murdo and pulled the front door closed behind him.
“What about Shaw?” he asked as they climbed up into the cab and it started forward immediately. It was obviously quite unnecessary to tell the cabby where they were going. Within moments the horse had broken from a trot into a canter and its hooves rang on the stones as the cab swayed and turned, throwing them from one wall to the other, and against each other, with some violence.
“I don’t know, sir, impossible to tell. The place is an inferno. We ’aven’t seen ’im—it looks bad.”
“Lindsay?”
“Nor ’im neither.”
“Dear God, what a mess!” Pitt said under his breath as the cab lurched around a corner, the wheels lifting for an instant and landing hard on the cobbles again with a jar that shook his