Silence in Hanover Close - Anne Perry [106]
Charlotte smiled bleakly. She looked into Gracie’s plain, indignant little face, and felt reassured.
“Yes I will,” she said more firmly. “I’ll take these things to Mr. Pitt first, then I’ll go and see Mr. Ballarat at Bow Street.”
“You do that, ma’am,” Gracie agreed. “An’ I’ll take care o’ everythin’ ’ere.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Gracie,” and she turned away quickly and hurried downstairs before emotion could overtake her again. Best not to talk. Action was easier and infinitely more useful.
But when she reached the massive gray tower and gates of Her Majesty’s House of Correction and asked to go in, they would not allow her to see Pitt. A red-nosed jailer with a perpetual cold took her basket with the food and the linen, promising lugubriously to see that they reached the prisoner. But she could not come in, it was not visiting hours, and no, he could not make an exception, he would not take a note for her. He was sorry but rules was rules.
There was no argument against such bleak refusal, and when she saw the unreachable uninterest in his watery eyes she turned and left, walking back along the wet footpath, the wind in her face, trying to think of what she would say to Ballarat. Temper passed quickly, fury at the stupidity and the injustice, and she began to think how to be practical. What would be the best way to make Ballarat act immediately? Surely a reasoned and calm explanation of the facts. He could not know what had happened or he would have done something already. He would have contacted the police station which had made such a blunder, and Pitt’s release would have been assured as soon as the appropriate message was received.
She took the next public omnibus, which was crowded with women and children. She paid her fare to the “cad,” as conductors were known, and squeezed in between a fat woman in black bombazine with a bosom like a bolster and a small boy in a sailor suit. She tried to occupy her mind by staring round her at the other passengers—the old lady with the withered face and out-of-date lace cap, the girl in the striped skirt who kept smiling at the youth with the side whiskers—but sooner or later every thought came back to Pitt and her terrible sense of being shut off from him, the threatening wave of panic at her helplessness.
By the time she got off in the Strand and walked up Bow Street to the Police station Charlotte’s heart was knocking in her chest and her legs felt shaky and uncertain. She breathed in and out deeply, but that did not steady her. She went up the steps, tripping on the top one because her feet no longer seemed coordinated. She pushed the door open and went in, suddenly realizing she had never been here before. Pitt came here every day and spoke about it so often she had assumed it would look familiar, but it was much darker and colder than she had expected. She had not imagined the smell of linoleum and polish, the worn brass of the door handles, the shiny patches on the bench where countless people had rubbed against it, waiting.
The duty constable looked up from the ledger where he was writing in studious copperplate. “Yes, ma’am, what can I do for yer?” He sized up her respectability instantly. “Lorst summat, ’ave yer?”
“No.” She swallowed hard. “Thank you. I am Inspector Pitt’s wife. I should like to see Mr. Ballarat, if you please. It is most urgent.”
The man’s face colored and he avoided her eyes. “Er— yes, ma’am. If—if yer’ll wait a few moments I’ll go an’ see.” He closed the ledger, put it away under the shelf, and disappeared out of the glass-paned door into the passageway. She could hear his muffled voice speaking hurriedly to someone beyond.
She