Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [101]
“I am afraid you are right,” Vespasia said grimly. “The best we can think is that Mr. Wetron is extraordinarily favored by events.”
“The best?” Charlotte asked. “It seems bad to me!”
Vespasia looked at her steadily. “My dear, the worst is that he caused those events. That makes him very much to be feared. A man who would bomb an entire street full of people appears to know no moral boundaries at all. He will kill without thought—not only his enemies, but ordinary men and women who have no more connection with his ambition than that their extinction serves his purpose. Please heaven, Thomas is able to prove some connection between the boat and its dynamite, and ultimately Wetron himself.” There was heartfelt emotion in her voice. She sat very straight, as always, but there was a painful tension in her.
“I have not spoken with Thomas in the last day or two,” she went on gravely. “Is he closer to discovering who killed Magnus Landsborough?” She asked as if it were of peripheral concern, but her hands were clenched on the delicate fabric of her skirt.
Charlotte realized with a surge of pity, even guilt, that Vespasia cared about this intensely. She had almost forgotten that Magnus had been the only son of one of Vespasia’s friends, one who had been very close to her in her youth, and perhaps in later, less happy years.
“No,” she said gently. “Except that he believes from the evidence that it must have been someone he knew very well. I suppose that means one of the other anarchists. It seems a bitter thing to do to someone fighting essentially the same cause.”
Vespasia was silent.
Charlotte looked at her exquisite, high-boned face, and saw the fear in it. Would it be intrusive to ask, or callous not to? She would rather commit a sin of misjudgment than of cowardice.
“Are you concerned that it could have been one of his family?” she asked.
Vespasia turned to her, her skin bleached even paler. “Is that what Thomas thinks?”
This was a time for honesty, not false comfort. “He hasn’t said. But it must have been someone who knew they used the house in Long Spoon Lane, because he must have been waiting there. And whoever it was shot only Magnus, when they could easily have killed all three of them. And whoever escaped.”
Vespasia looked away. “That’s what I am afraid of: that it was personal, not political, and not a struggle for power within the anarchists.”
There was one glaringly obvious answer, and Charlotte could not honestly avoid it. “Could it have been his father who killed him?” she said in a little more than a whisper. They both understood the reasons why a man could do such a thing, the dishonor that would stain the whole family, the knowledge that the violence would only be worse the next time, and the time after that.
“I don’t know,” Vespasia admitted. “It is…a terrible thought. And yet if I were a man, and a son of mine contemplated blowing up houses with dynamite, and the people in them, I would consider it my responsibility to stop him. I don’t know what I should do. It is a long journey from knowledge to such fearful action. I don’t know what lies along its path.” A shadow crossed her face. “My children have certainly opposed me frequently, and I have disagreed with them, and disapproved of what they believed and again what they did, but I have never once feared they would embark upon a campaign of murder. If such a thing happened, and I knew it beyond doubt.”
“Who else could it be?” Charlotte knew that retreating from the subject now would not help. It must be faced.
Vespasia frowned. “I have seen a deeply troubled emotion in Enid, Sheridan’s sister, as if she were aware of something more tragic than Magnus’s death.”
“Enid?” Charlotte said with puzzlement. “But