Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [25]
Vespasia looked at Gracie with seriousness. Gracie went white, but she did not lower her eyes.
“It is an extremely difficult question,” Vespasia said quietly. “I shall do what I can to see that money is raised to help those who have been made homeless. I give you my word. But the reason I will not help Mr. Denoon is that I do not trust him to be moderate in his response. I fear he will react so strongly he will make the problem worse rather than better.”
Gracie blinked. “Would yer? I mean ’elp ’em? Really?”
The kettle boiled and no one took any notice.
“I have said so,” Vespasia answered gravely. “Your comments are very fair. We are too willing to indulge our anger at the destruction and think how we can punish those who have inflicted it, rather than make any effort to help those who have suffered.”
None of them had heard Pitt close the front door, nor his soft footsteps down the hall.
“Thank you, Aunt Vespasia,” he said gravely. She had given him permission some time ago to address her thus. He walked into the room, acknowledging her first, then Charlotte and Gracie. He sat on the third hard-backed chair.
“There is a backlash, Thomas,” Vespasia told him. “Edward Denoon intends to press for arming the police and increasing their powers to search people, and their homes.” She had no need to explain to him who Denoon was.
“I know,” he said somberly. “Do you think he will succeed?”
She looked at the anxiety in his face, and the need for hope. She had never lied to him, and she could not afford to begin with this. “I think he will be difficult to stop. Many good people are very angry, and very frightened,” she said.
He looked tired. “I know. Perhaps they are right to be. But arming the police with guns is not going to make it better. The last thing we need is pitched battles in the streets. And if we search people without real cause, or go into their homes, the one place they feel any sense of being master, we shall lose their willingness to help. And it has taken us thirty years to earn that.”
Gracie looked deeply confused. He had his back to her and did not see the consternation in her face.
Charlotte saw it. “We must fight them,” she responded. “What is it best we do? Have you any idea who they are, or at least what they want?”
“I know what they say they want,” he replied wearily.
Charlotte sensed another emotion in him, more painful than anything that had emerged before. “What?”
“An end to police corruption,” he replied.
Charlotte froze. “Corruption?”
Pitt pushed his hands through his hair. “I don’t know if it exists in the degree they say, but I shall have to find out. People need to believe in the law before we can expect them to honor it.”
Vespasia felt a chill take hold of her, and a sense of loss far broader than the death of one man, however violent or tragic. “Then perhaps we have a battle,” she answered him. “We must draw up our lines.”
3
IN THE MORNING, Pitt went back to try again to see if he could learn anything from the two anarchists in jail. He found Welling hollow-eyed and exhausted. He looked as if he had been up all night pacing the floor, and now he was too distraught to think coherently. He did not dare trust himself to speak to Pitt.
Carmody was different. He was an idealist burning to speak about the oppression of government, the exploitation of the poor, and the inherent evils of property and rules. The energy danced in him; he could barely keep still.
“We’re old!” he said, staring fiercely at Pitt and jabbing his thin fingers in the air. “Tired! We need a new start. Get rid of the mistakes of the past, sweep them all away.” He gestured wildly with both arms. “Begin again!”
“With new rules?” Pitt asked bitterly.
“There you go, doing it too!” Carmody accused him. “You can’t even think without rules. You pretend to be listening, but you’re not. You’re just like all the others, trying to impose your will on everyone else. That’s it: power, power, power all the time. You don’t hear a thing I’m saying. No rules! You’re suffocating people, killing