Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [126]
“The bill?” His voice was tight. “Will he change sides, and back it now?”
“If I were he,” she said slowly, “I would expose Simbister for the Scarborough Street bombing, and use that evidence of corruption to block the bill, at least for the time being.”
“And after that?” His eyes told her he knew the answer.
“Destroy Wetron too,” she answered. “And then take his place, unite the old Inner Circle again, and rule it as before. Knowing Voisey, he will exert a terrible revenge upon those who betrayed him.” She told him the truth. He did not deserve less, nor could they afford evasions now.
He sat quite still. “Yes.” He was thinking deeply, his face reflecting a desperate weariness.
She sat silent for some moments. “He will not forgive you, Thomas,” she said at last.
He looked up. “I know. I still have the evidence implicating his sister in the murder of Rae. Should I use it? If I do, then I have nothing else left to protect Charlotte. And he knows that.”
“Of course,” she answered. “That is the trouble with the ultimate weapon. What is there left after you have used it?”
He looked at her with a searing honesty, his fear naked. A very slight smile at his own vulnerability softening his tiredness. “I expect Charlotte wouldn’t use it either, even if I were dead in the river. She’d keep it to protect Daniel and Jemima. And he knows that. I wondered why he wasn’t afraid to have me killed. I should have thought of that.”
“There is no profit in what we should have done, my dear,” she answered. “Let us sleep on tonight’s events, and see what the morning brings. I shall call upon you at nine o’clock, when we see the newspapers. Now you must allow me to have my coachman take you home. Please don’t argue with me.”
He did not. He was grateful for it, and said so.
Pitt slept better than he had expected. He had gone home not intending to tell Charlotte the details of what had happened. He not only wanted not to frighten her more than need be, but also he was aware how foolish he had been to take anything Voisey said as true, no matter how likely, or how rushed he was by circumstance.
In the event, she guessed too much for him to conceal it without deliberately lying to her, and he found her far more understanding than he had feared. She was too relieved to criticize him. She even agreed that she would not have used the evidence against Mrs. Cavendish, precisely for the reasons he had supposed.
When he rose in the morning and went downstairs, he was consumed in domestic matters until the children had left for school. Then he, Charlotte, and Gracie opened the morning newspapers. They had read little more than the headlines when Vespasia arrived, closely followed by Tellman, and then Victor Narraway. They all looked deeply serious.
“Good morning, Thomas, Charlotte,” Vespasia said briefly. “I took the liberty of calling Mr. Narraway to join us. It seems Sergeant Tellman must have had the same thought.”
The Times was lying open on the kitchen table. All the other newspapers carried the same story. The only variations lay in which aspect of it they emphasized the most.
It had all happened yesterday evening, in time for today’s press. Of course, Pitt thought ruefully. Voisey would have prepared everything he needed exactly so that should be the case. He could not afford to give Narraway time to react, or assume that Pitt was dead, and therefore could do nothing.
It seemed Voisey had gone directly to the home secretary himself with the proof of Simbister’s corruption. He had chosen to expose not Piers Denoon’s murder of Magnus Landsborough, but the systematic extortion from small businesses such as publicans, shopkeepers, and manufacturers—ordinary people dealing in pennies and shillings,