Southampton Row - Anne Perry [65]
“Yes . . . and no,” Emily said quietly. Suddenly it was not ridiculous at all. If Vespasia were afraid, too, then the cause of it was real. “Thomas and Charlotte were going on holiday to Dartmoor, but Thomas’s leave was canceled—”
“By whom?” Vespasia interrupted.
Emily swallowed. With a jolt of pain and embarrassment she realized Thomas had not told Vespasia of his dismissal from Bow Street the second time. But she would have to know. Silence was only delaying what was inevitable. “By Special Branch,” she said huskily, her voice choked with anger, and now fear as well. She saw the surprise, and then the hardening in Vespasia’s face. “He was dismissed from Bow Street again,” she went on. “Charlotte told me when she came to pick up Edward to take him with her to Dartmoor. Pitt had been sent back to Special Branch, and his leave rescinded.”
Vespasia nodded so fractionally it was barely visible. “Charles Voisey is standing for Parliament. He is head of the Inner Circle.” She did not bother to explain any further. She must have seen in Emily’s face that she understood the enormity of it.
“Oh God!” Emily said involuntarily. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, my dear, I am perfectly sure.”
“And . . . Thomas knows it!”
“Yes. That will be why Victor Narraway has canceled his leave and no doubt ordered him to do all he can to block Voisey’s path, although I doubt he will be able to. Only once has anyone ever beaten Voisey before.”
“Who was that?” Hope flowed up inside Emily, making her heart pound in her chest.
Vespasia smiled. “A friend of mine named Mario Corena, but it cost him his life. And he had a little assistance from Thomas and myself. Mario is beyond Voisey’s reach, but Voisey will not have forgiven Thomas, and perhaps not me, either. I think it would be wise, my dear, if you did not write to Charlotte while she is away.”
“Is the danger really so . . .” Emily found her mouth dry, her lips stiff.
“Not as long as he does not know where she is.”
“But she cannot stay in Dartmoor forever!”
“Of course not,” Vespasia agreed. “But by the time she returns the election will be over, and perhaps we will have found a way to tie Voisey’s hands.”
“He won’t win, will he? It’s a safe Liberal seat,” Emily protested. “Why is he fighting for that, and not for a Tory seat? It doesn’t make sense.”
“You are wrong,” Vespasia said very quietly. “It is simply sense that we have not yet understood. Everything Voisey does makes sense. I don’t know how he will defeat the Liberal candidate, but I believe he will.”
Emily was cold in spite of the sun pouring through the windows into the quiet room. “The Liberal candidate is a friend of mine. I came because of his wife. She was one of the last clients of Maude Lamont, the spirit medium who was murdered in Southampton Row. She was there that night. Thomas is investigating it, and I think I may know something.”
“Then you must tell him.” There was no hesitation in Vespasia’s voice, no doubt at all.
“But Rose is my friend, and I learned those things only because she trusted me. If I betray a friend, what have I left?”
This time Vespasia did not answer straightaway.
Emily waited.
“If you have to choose between friends,” Vespasia said at last, “and both Rose and Thomas are such, then you must choose neither, but follow your own conscience. You cannot place one set of obligations or loyalties before another with regard to people, their closeness to you, the depth of their hurt, their innocence or their vulnerability, or the degree of their trust in you. You must do what your own conscience dictates to be right. Serve your own truth.”
She had not said so, but Emily had no doubt in her mind that Vespasia meant that she should tell Thomas all she knew.
“Yes,” she said aloud. “Perhaps I knew that, it was just hard to acknowledge it, because then I have to do it.”
“Do you believe Rose may have killed this woman?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I do.”
They sat without speaking for several minutes, then finally discussed other things: Jack’s campaign, Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury, the extraordinary phenomenon