Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [68]
“That’s something.” Matthew grasped onto it, but the anxiety did not leave his face. “But the accident? Was it deliberate? It was a warning, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know. No one else saw it, as far as Sturges knows, though both the smith and the wheelwright saw the horseman careering up the street at a breakneck gallop, apparently completely out of control. But even a bolting horse won’t usually charge into another it can clearly see, or go close enough for the rider to catch someone else with his whip. I think it was deliberate, but I don’t know any way of proving it. The man was a stranger. No one knows who he was.”
Matthew’s face tightened. “And I suppose the same will be true of the underground railway. We’ll never prove that either. From everything we can learn, no one he knew was with him.” He looked down. “Clever. They know how to do it so if you say anything, tell anyone, it sounds absurd, like the ramblings of someone who has been eating opium, or lives permanently in his cups.” He looked up suddenly, panic in his eyes. “It begins to make me feel helpless. I’m not consumed with hatred anymore. It has turned into something a lot more like fear, and a terrible weariness, as if it is all pointless. If it was anyone but Father, I might not even try.”
Pitt understood the fear. He had felt it himself in the past, and now its cause was real. He also understood the enveloping exhaustion, now that the first shock of grief was over. Anger is a very depleting emotion; it burns up all the strength of the mind and the body. Matthew was tired, but in a while he would be renewed, and the anger would return, the sense of outrage, the passionate desire to protect, to prove the lie and restore some semblance of justice. He hoped profoundly that Harriet Soames was wise enough and generous enough to be gentle with him, to wait with patience for him to work his way through the tiredness and the confusion of feelings, that she would not just at that moment seek anything from him for herself beyond trust and the knowledge that he was willing to share all he was able to.
“Don’t do anything alone,” Pitt said very seriously.
Matthew’s eyes widened a fraction, surprise and question in them, then after a moment, even a shadow of humor.
“Do you think I’m incompetent, Thomas? I’ve been fifteen years in the Foreign Office since we knew each other. I do know how to be diplomatic.”
It had been a clumsiness of words rather than thought, and a desire to protect him which still lingered from youth.
“I’m sorry,” Pitt apologized. “I meant that we could duplicate our efforts, and not only waste time but cause suspicion by it.”
Matthew’s face relaxed into a smile. “Sorry, Thomas. I am oversensitive. This has hit me harder than I could have foreseen.” He gave Pitt the papers at last. “Look at these in the room next door, then give them back to me when you have finished.”
Pitt rose and took them. “Thank you.”
The room provided him was high ceilinged and full of sun from the long window, also facing the park. He sat in one of the three chairs and began. He made no notes but committed to memory the essence of what he needed. It took him to the middle of the day to be certain he knew precisely where to look to trace the information he could be quite certain had reached the German Embassy. Then he rose and returned the papers to Matthew.
“Is that all you require?” Matthew asked, looking up from his desk.
“For the moment.”
Matthew smiled. “How about luncheon? There is an excellent public house just ’round the corner, and an even better one a couple of hundred yards along the street.”
“Let’s go to the even better one,” Pitt agreed with an attempt at enthusiasm.
Matthew followed