Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [6]
“There were warnings,” Matthew said suddenly. “I can see that now, although at the time I didn’t. I was up here in London when they happened, and he made light of it each time.”
“What were they?” Pitt asked.
Matthew screwed up his face. “Well, the first I cannot be sure about. As Father told it to me, he was traveling on the underground railway, at least he was intending to. He went down the steps to the platform and was waiting for the train—” He stopped abruptly and looked at Pitt. “Have you ever been on one of those things?”
“Yes, frequently.” Pitt pictured the cavernous passages, the long stations where the tunnel widened to allow a platform alongside the train, the dark curved roof, the glaring gaslights, the incredible noise as the engine rattled and roared out of the black hole into the light and came to a halt. Doors flew open and people poured out. Others waiting took their opportunity and pressed in before the doors should close and the wormlike contraption be on its way back into the darkness again.
“Then I don’t need to explain the noise and the crowds pushing and shoving each other,” Matthew continued. “Well, Father was fairly well towards the front and just as he heard the train coming, he felt a violent weight in the middle of his back and was propelled forward almost over the edge of the platform onto the lines, where of course he would have been killed.” Matthew’s voice hardened and there was a harsh edge to it. “He was grasped and hauled back just as the train appeared and came hurtling in. He said he turned to thank whomever it was, but there was no longer any person there he could distinguish as his helper—or his assailant. Everyone seemed to be about the business of boarding the train, and no one took the least notice of him.”
“But he was sure he was pushed?”
“Quite sure.” Matthew waited for Pitt to express some skepticism.
Pitt nodded barely perceptibly. With someone else, someone he knew less closely, he might have doubted; but unless he had changed beyond recognition, Arthur Desmond was the last man on earth to believe he was being persecuted. He viewed all men as basically good until he was forced to do otherwise, and then it came to him as a shock and a sadness, and he was still ready to find himself mistaken, and delighted to be so.
“And the second?” Pitt asked.
“That was something to do with a horse,” Matthew replied. “He never told me the details.” He sat forward again, his brow creasing. “I only knew about it at all because the groom told me when I was home. It seems Father was riding down in the village when some unexpected idiot came down the road at a full gallop, completely out of control of his animal. He was careering all over the place, one side of the road to the other, arms flying, whip in his hand, and he just about drove Father into the stone wall alongside the vicarage. Caught his horse a terrible blow about the head with his whip. Terrified the poor beast, and of course Father was thrown.” He let out his breath slowly, without moving his eyes from Pitt’s face. “It could conceivably have been an accident; the man was either drunken out of his senses or a complete imbecile, but Father didn’t think so, and I certainly don’t.”
“No,” Pitt said grimly. “Neither do I. He was a damn good horseman, and not the sort of man to imagine things of anyone.”
Suddenly Matthew smiled, a wide, generous smile that made him look years younger. “That’s the best thing I have heard anyone say in weeks. Dear God, I wish his friends could hear you. Everyone