Treason at Lisson Grove - Anne Perry [68]
Pitt smiled. “I like a double Gloucester, myself.”
“Yes, yes,” McIver agreed. “I forgot that. Well, we’ll grant the cheese equal status. But you can’t beat a good French wine!”
“You can’t even equal it.”
McIver poured them both some wine, then leaned back in his chair. “Do tell me, sir, what is the latest news on the cricket? Here I hardly ever get the scores, and even then they’re late. How is Somerset doing?”
PITT WALKED BACK ALONG the gently winding road as the sun dropped toward the horizon. The air glowed with that faint gold patina that lends unreality to old paintings. Farmhouses looked huge, comfortable, surrounded by barns and stables. It was too early for the trees to be in full leaf, but clouds of blossom mounded like late snow, taking the delicate colors of the coming sunset. There was no wind, and no sound across the fields but the occasional movement of the huge, patient cows.
In the east, the purple sky darkened.
He went over what they knew in his mind again, carefully, all he had seen or heard himself, and all that Gower had seen and reported.
A carter passed him on the road, the wheels sending up clouds of dust, and he smelled the pleasant odor of horses’ sweat and fresh-turned earth. The man grunted at Pitt in French, and Pitt returned it as well as he could.
The sun was sinking rapidly now, the sky filling with hot color. The soft breeze whispered in the grass and the new leaves on the willows, always the first to open. A flock of birds rose from the small copse of trees a hundred yards away, swirled up into the sky, and circled.
Between them Pitt and Gower had seen just enough to believe it was worth watching Frobisher’s house. If they arrested Wrexham now, it would unquestionably show everyone that Special Branch was aware of their plans, so they would automatically change them.
They should have arrested Wrexham in London a week ago. He would have told them nothing, but they had learned nothing anyway. All they had really done was waste seven days.
How had he allowed that to happen? West had arranged the meeting, promising extraordinary information. Pitt could see the letter in his mind, the scrawled, misspelled words, the smudged ink.
No one else knew of it, except himself and Gower. So how had Wrexham learned of it? Who had betrayed West? It had to be one of the men plotting whatever it was that poor West had been going to reveal.
But this person had not followed West. Pitt and Gower were on his heels from the minute he began to run. If there had been anyone else running they would have seen him. Whoever it was must have been waiting for West. How had they known he would run that way? It was pure chance. He could as easily have gone in any other direction. Pitt and Gower had cornered him there, Pitt along the main street, Gower circling to cut him off.
Had West run into Wrexham by the most hideous mischance?
Pitt retraced in his mind the exact route they had taken. He knew the streets well enough to picture every step, and see the map of it in his mind. He knew where they had first spotted West, where he had started to run, and which way he had gone. There had been no one else in the crowd running. West had darted across the street and disappeared for an instant. Gower had gone after him, jabbing his arm to indicate which way Pitt should go, the shorter way, so they could cut him off.
Then West had seen Gower and swerved. Pitt had lost them both for a few minutes, but he knew the streets well enough to know which way West would go, and had been there within seconds … and Gower had raced up from the right to come up beside Pitt.
But the right doglegged back to the street where Pitt had run the minute before, not the way Gower had gone. Unless he had passed Wrexham? Wrexham had come from the opposite way, not following West at all. So why had West run so frantically, as if he knew death was on his heels?
Pitt stumbled and came to a stop. Because