Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [43]
“All of it,” Voisey replied. “Until it is as dead as the men whose bones lie in all this marble and porphyry.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t,” Voisey answered. “But you will. I will send you a message if I have anything to tell you about what happens in Parliament. Otherwise, meet me here again in three days’ time. Now go. We are not together. We simply happen to be at the same place at the same time, by chance.”
Pitt swallowed. His mouth was dry. He wanted something cutting and final to say, but there was nothing in his mind except the knowledge of Voisey’s corroding and irreversible hatred. He turned and walked away, back towards the stairs and upward into the vast cathedral, and the rest of the world.
At home in the evening Pitt was grateful for the children’s pleasure in seeing him at the dinner table. He welcomed their incessant questions, deliberately not meeting Charlotte’s eyes when she turned to intervene and keep some sort of order.
“What are anarchists, Papa?” Daniel asked with his mouth full. “Mrs. Johnson says they are devils. Is that true?”
Charlotte started to admonish him to eat his vegetables, but Pitt interrupted.
“No. People are not devils,” he said. “But they can do bad things, for all kinds of reasons. Anarchists don’t believe in order. They think they would like no rules, no government.”
“Why?”
Charlotte rolled her eyes, hiding a smile. She was not going to help.
Pitt was tempted to make a flippant reply, but he looked at Daniel’s serious, rather worried expression and changed his mind. “They think it would be better if we all did whatever we liked.”
Daniel waited.
“Do you remember when we went to Piccadilly in a hansom?” Charlotte said gently. “Do you remember one person’s carriage wheel getting caught in someone else’s and coming off, and everybody went in different directions to get around it, and ended by making it all worse?”
Daniel nodded, satisfaction close to laughter lighting his face.
“Well, that was what it would be like,” Charlotte replied. “It was quite funny for a little while, but it wouldn’t be if you were in a hurry, or you were very tired or cold, or not feeling well. If there are rules then we all get where we are going…eventually.”
Daniel turned to his father. “Why would anybody want a mess? It’s stupid!”
“Some people are stupid,” Jemima ventured. “Dolly Jones is stupid. My cat has more sense.”
“Cats are very practical,” Charlotte agreed. “Finish your carrots and don’t call people stupid.”
“Cats don’t eat carrots,” Jemima tried her luck.
“No,” Charlotte conceded. “Would you prefer a mouse?”
Jemima let out a howl of disgust, and ate the rest of her carrots in two mouthfuls.
Pitt was not alone with Charlotte until nearly nine o’clock. Then he could no longer evade the issue, not because he felt compelled to broach it but because she did.
“I visited Emily today,” she said, ignoring her sewing folded up beside her on the small table next to her chair. Both children were upstairs, and Gracie had taken the rest of the evening off.
“How was she?” Pitt asked, both from courtesy and because he was genuinely fond of his sister-in-law, even if he was also exasperated by her at times.
“She is concerned,” Charlotte replied.
Pitt was happy to talk about Emily’s concern. Presumably it had something to do with her children, or some other domestic matter. It would save him from struggling with his guilt over not sharing his own feelings with Charlotte. He could not tell her that he was going to work with Voisey. Every time he was half an hour later home than she expected, she would be filled with fear, visions of violence and betrayal tearing through her mind. “What about?” he asked.
She looked at him very directly. “About the bill to arm the police,” she replied. “She is afraid that men like Wetron, whom we know is the head of the Inner Circle, will get members of Parliament, like Tanqueray, who’s a fool, to force the bill through. And then Wetron