Southampton Row - Anne Perry [117]
“Aunt Vespasia . . . ?”
She brought herself back to the present with a jolt. “Of course,” she agreed. “It will not be too difficult for me to learn from one friend or another what really happened to young Kingsley at Mfolozi, but I think it hardly matters, except to his father. No doubt what was used to blackmail him was the possibility of a coward’s death. It did not have to be the fact. It is not only the wicked who run where no man pursues, it is also the vulnerable, those who care more than they are able to govern, and who have raw wounds they cannot defend.”
Pitt thought of Kingsley’s bent shoulders and the haggard lines of his face. It took a particular kind of sadism to torture a man in such a way for one’s own profit. For a moment he hated Voisey with a passion that would have exploded in physical violence, had he been there to lash out at.
“Of course it may be that the incident of his death is so blurred that the truth cannot be known, or a lie dismissed,” Vespasia went on. “But I shall do all I can to find out, and if it is of any ease at all, I shall inform General Kingsley of it.”
“Thank you.”
“Which is not a great deal of use in tying the blackmail to Voisey,” she continued with a trace of anger. “What hope have you of discovering the identity of this third person? I assume you know it is a man? You refer to him as ‘he.’ ”
“Yes. It is a man of late middle years, fair or gray hair, average height and build. He seems to be well educated.”
“Your theologian,” she said unhappily. “If he went to a spirit medium with the intent of proving her a fraud and unmasking her in front of her clients, that would not please Voisey very much. I think we may assume he could retaliate, perhaps with extreme pressure.”
That was impossible to argue against. Pitt remembered the look in Voisey’s eyes as they had passed each other in the House of Commons. Voisey forgot nothing and forgave nothing. Again Pitt found himself sitting in the light of the sun, and cold inside.
Vespasia was frowning.
“What is it?” he asked.
Her silver-gray eyes were troubled, her body not merely straight-backed with the disciplined posture of decades of self-control, but her shoulders stiff with an inner tension.
“I have given it much thought, Thomas, and I still do not understand why you were dismissed a second time from command of Bow Street . . .”
“Voisey!” he said with a bitterness that startled him. He had thought himself in control of his anger, his burning sense of injustice on the subject, but now it came back in a drowning wave.
“No,” she said, half under her breath. “No matter how much he may hate you, Thomas, he will never act against his own interest. That is his greatest strength. His head always governs his heart.” She stared straight ahead of her. “And it is not in his interest to have you in Special Branch, which is where he must have known you would go if dismissed from Bow Street again. In the police, unless he commits a crime, you have no jurisdiction in his affairs. If you involve yourself with him he can charge you with harassment and have you disciplined. But in Special Branch your duties are far more fluid. Special Branch is secret, not answerable to the public.” She turned to look at him. “Always keep your enemies where you can see them. He is not fool enough to forget that.”
“Then why would he do it?” he asked, confused by her logic.
“Perhaps it was not Voisey?” she said very carefully.
“Then who?” he asked. “Who else but the Inner Circle would have the power to go behind the Queen’s back and undo what she had done?” The thought was dark and frightening. He knew of no one else he had offended, and certainly no other secret societies with such tentacles winding into the heart of government.
“Thomas, how hard have you thought about the effect on the Inner Circle