Southampton Row - Anne Perry [118]
“I hope it shattered his leadership,” he said honestly. He tried to swallow down his anger and the gall of disappointment inside him. “It hurts that it hasn’t.”
“Few of them are idealists,” she replied ruefully. “But have you considered that it might have fractured the power within the Circle? A rival leader who has arisen may have taken with him sufficient of the old Circle to form a new one.”
Pitt had not thought of it, and as the idea ballooned in his mind he saw all sorts of possibilities, dangerous to England but also exquisitely dangerous to Voisey himself. Voisey would know who the rival leader was, but would he ever be certain whose loyalty was where?
Vespasia saw all these thoughts in Pitt’s face. “Don’t rejoice yet,” she warned. “If I am right, then the rival is powerful, too, and no more a friend of yours than Voisey. It is not always true that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Is it not possible that it was he who removed you again from Bow Street, either because he believes you will be more of a thorn in Voisey’s flesh in Special Branch, possibly in time even destroy Voisey for him? Or else it matters to him to have Superintendent Wetron in charge of Bow Street rather than you?”
“Wetron in the Inner Circle?”
“Why not?”
There was no reason why not. The deeper it sank into his mind the more it clarified into a picture he could not disbelieve. There was an exhilaration to it, a beating of the blood as at the knowledge of danger, but there was fear as well. An open battle between the two leaders of the Inner Circle might leave many other victims in its wake.
He was still considering the implications of this when the maid appeared at the door looking alarmed.
“Yes?” Vespasia asked.
“M’lady, there’s a Mr. Narraway to see Mr. Pitt. He said he would wait, but that I was to interrupt you.” She did not apologize in words, but it was there in her gestures and her voice.
“Indeed?” Vespasia sat very straight. “Then you had better ask him to come in.”
“Yes, m’lady.” She dropped the very slightest curtsy and withdrew to obey.
Pitt met Vespasia’s eyes. A hundred ideas flashed between them, all wordless, all touched with fear.
Narraway appeared a moment later. His face was bleak with misery and defeat. It dragged his shoulders in spite of the fact that he stood straight.
Pitt climbed to his feet very slowly, finding his legs shaking. His mind whirled with thoughts of horror; the most hideous and persistent, crowding all the rest, was that something had happened to Charlotte. His lips were dry, and when he tried to speak his voice caught in his throat.
“Good morning, Mr. Narraway,” Vespasia said coolly. “Please sit down and inform us what it is that brings you personally to speak to Thomas in my house.”
He remained standing. “I am sorry, Lady Vespasia,” he said very softly, merely glancing at her before turning to Pitt. “Francis Wray was found dead this morning.”
For a moment Pitt could not grasp it. He was light-headed, his senses swimming. It was nothing to do with Charlotte. She was safe. It was all right! The horror had not happened. He was almost afraid he was going to laugh out of sheer hysteria of relief. It cost him an intense effort to control himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said aloud. He meant it, at least in part. He had liked Wray. But considering the depth of grief that Wray had been in, perhaps death was not a hard thing but a reunion?
Nothing changed in Narraway’s face, except a tiny twitch of muscle near his mouth. “It appears to have been suicide,” he said harshly. “It seems he took poison some time yesterday evening. His maid found him this morning.”
“Suicide!” Pitt was appalled. He refused to believe it. He could not imagine Wray doing anything he would regard as so deeply against the will of the God in whom all his trust lay, the only pathway back to those he loved so intensely. “No . . . there has to be another answer!” he protested, his voice harsh and high.
Narraway looked impatient, as if a fearful anger lay only just under the