Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [88]
“Thank you. Just one more thing. The old man who kept on speaking to Magnus Landsborough, tell me as much about him as you know.”
Reluctantly, and with more emotion than he could mask, Carmody described Magnus’s meeting with the man who could only have been his father, and the heated exchanges they had had. The older man was begging for something, and being refused. Afterwards, Magnus was always quiet. He would not discuss it, it was quite clearly something that pained him. Twice Carmody had also seen a younger man some way in the distance, as if following the old man, but so discreetly that Carmody was not certain. It clearly distressed him to recall it, and when Pitt left he was quiet, drawn into the pain of his own memories.
Voisey had agreed that the next time that he and Pitt met it should be at the memorial to Turner, and as before, at noon. Surely, after last night’s bombing, Voisey would be there?
Pitt was five minutes late, and strode across the black-and-white marble floor. When he saw Voisey looking unnaturally around, fidgeting from one foot to the other, he was annoyed and also very slightly amused to feel such an intense relief.
Voisey was expecting him to arrive from the opposite direction, and spun around to face him only at the last moment. His eyes lit with relief. “Is it as bad as the newspapers say?” he demanded.
“Yes. In fact it will get worse.”
“Worse?” There was a bitter edge to Voisey’s tone. “What have you in mind?” he asked sarcastically. “Two streets destroyed? Three streets? Another great fire of London, perhaps? We were damned lucky that it only went as far as it did. At low tide and with only a little rain, we could have lost half of Goodman’s Fields last night.”
“Wait until Parliament meets this afternoon,” Pitt answered him. “We won’t need any more explosions to make them demand immediate passage of the bill, together with the provision to be able to question servants. Did you read Denoon’s editorial?”
Voisey turned away and started to walk as if he could not bear to stand still. “Yes, of course I did. This is his chance, isn’t it? They’ll use this to get the bill through!” It was really more of a statement than a question. He did not need Pitt’s answer. He knew before he came, he had been avoiding acknowledging the fact of defeat.
Pitt needed to walk swiftly to keep up with him, as if he had a purpose.
“If they burn down half of London again, do you suppose we can produce another genius to rebuild it like this?” Voisey said grimly. “They began this in 1675, you know.” He gestured at the vast cathedral around him. “Only nine years after the fire. Finished it in 1710.”
Pitt said nothing. He could not imagine London without St. Paul’s.
They had reached the plaque to Sir Christopher Wren. Voisey read from it. “‘Lector, si monumentum requires, circumspice,’” he said. “I don’t suppose you know what that means.” His voice was hushed, there was admiration and bitterness mixed in it. “‘Reader, if you seek a monument, look around you.’” There was pain and awe in his face; his eyes were bright.
Suddenly Pitt caught a different and startling glimpse of Voisey as a man aching to make a mark in history, to leave behind him something uniquely his. He had no children. He had inherited, but he would not bequeath. Was part of his hatred envy? When he died, it would be as if he had not existed. Pitt looked at his face as he stared upwards, and saw in it for a few moments a bone-deep and naked hunger.
It was an intrusion to see it, like catching a man in a private act, and he looked away.
His movement caught Voisey’s attention, and the mask was replaced instantly. “I don’t suppose you know anything about who placed the bomb?” he said.
“Possibly,” Pitt replied. He could feel Voisey’s hatred, it had a new depth to it, as if it were a palpable thing in the still air and the near silence. No one else was near them, and the slight murmur of