'Then we had best wait with some composure,'Victoria said at last. 'We will fight if necessary.'
'Before that we may have some chance to attempt escape-' Narraway began.
Victoria glared at him again. 'I am Queen of England and the British Empire, young man. In my reign we have stood our ground and won wars in every corner of the earth. Am I to run away from a group of hooligans in my own house? In Osborne?'
Narraway stood a little more uprightly.
Vespasia held her head high.
Charlotte found her own back ramrod straight.
'I should think so!' Victoria said, regarding them with a very slight approval. 'To quote one of my greatest soldiers, Sir Colin Campbell, who said at the Battle of Balaclava, "Here we stand, and here we die."' She smiled very slightly. 'But since it may be some time, you may sit, if you wish.'
Chapter Twelve.
Pitt returned to Lisson Grove knowing that he had no allies there except probably Stoker, and that the safety of the Queen, perhaps of the whole royal House, depended upon him. He was surprised, as he walked up the steps and in through the doorway, how intensely he felt about it. There was a fierce loyalty in him, but not towards an old woman sitting in lonely widowhood in a house on the Isle of Wight, nursing the memories of the husband she had adored. Millions of people were lonely; many had always been so. Most of them were also poor, often sick, and bore with it with both grace and fortitude.
It was the leadership he cared about, the embodiment of what Britain had been all his life. It was the whole idea of unity greater than all the differences in race, creed and circumstance that bound together a quarter of the earth. The worst of society was greedy, arrogant and selfserving, but the best of it was supremely brave, generous and, above all, loyal. What was anybody worth if they had no concept of a purpose greater than themselves?
This was very little to do with Victoria herself, and most certainly nothing to do with the Prince of Wales. The murder at Buckingham Palace was very recent in Pitt's mind. The selfishness of the Prince, his unthinking arrogance, and the look of hatred he had directed at Pitt, could not be forgotten. They should not. Soon the Prince would be King Edward VII, and Pitt's career as a servant of the Crown would rest at least to some degree in his hands. Pitt would have wished him a better man, but his own loyalty to the Throne was something apart from any personal disillusionment.
All his concentration now was bent on controlling Austwick. Whom dare he trust? He could not do this alone, and he must force himself not to think of Charlotte or Vespasia, or even of Narraway, except insofar as they were allies. Their danger he must force from all his conscious thoughts. One of the burdens at the core of leadership was that you must set aside personal loyalties and act in the good of all. He made himself think of how he would feel if others in command were to save their own families at the cost of his, if Charlotte were sacrificed because another leader put his wife's safety ahead of his duty. Only then could he dismiss all questions from his mind.
As he passed along the familiar corridors he had to remind himself again not to go to his old office, which was now occupied by someone else, but back to the one that used to be Narraway's, and would be again as soon as this crisis was past. As he closed the door and sat at the desk, he was profoundly glad that he had retrieved Narraway's belongings, and never for a moment behaved as if he believed this was permanent. The drawings of trees were back on the walls, and the tower by the sea, even the photograph of Narraway's mother, dark and slender as he was, but more delicate, the intelligence blazing out of her eyes.
Pitt smiled for a moment, then turned his attention to the new reports on his desk. There were very few of them, just pedestrian comments on things that for the most part he already knew. There was no information that changed the circumstances.
He stood up and went to find Stoker rather than sending for him, because that would draw everyone's attention to the fact that he was singling him out. It was necessary he trust someone or failure was certain. Even with Stoker's help, success would be desperately difficult.
'Yes, sir?' Stoker said as soon Pitt had closed the door and was in front of him. He stared at Pitt's face, as if trying to read in it what he was thinking.
Pitt hoped that he was a little less transparent than that. He remembered how he had tried to read Narraway, and failed, at least most of the time.
'We know what it is,' he said quietly. There was no point in concealing anything, and yet even now he felt as if he were standing on a cliff edge, about to plunge into the unknown.
'Yes, sir . . .' Stoker froze, his face pale. On the desk, still holding the paper he had been reading, his hands were stiff.
Pitt took a breath. 'Mr Narraway is back from Ireland.' He saw the relief in Stoker's eyes, too sharp to hide, and went on more easily, a darkness sliding away from him also. 'It seems we are right in thinking that there is a very large and very violent plan already begun. There is reason to believe that the people we have seen together, such as Willie Portman, Fenner, Guzman and so on, intend to attack Her Majesty at Osborne House . . .'
'God Almighty!' Stoker gasped. 'Regicide?'
Pitt grimaced. 'Not intentionally. We think they mean to hold her to ransom in return for a bill to abolish the hereditary power of the House of Lords a bill that, of course, she will sign before, I imagine, her own abdication.'
Stoker was ashen. He looked at Pitt as if he had turned into some nightmare in front of his eyes. He swallowed, then swallowed again. 'And then what? Kill her?'
Pitt had not taken it that far in his mind, but perhaps it was the logical end, the only one they could realistically live with. In the eyes of Britain, and most of the world, as long as Victoria was alive she would be queen, regardless of what anyone else said, or did. He had thought things could not get worse, but in one leap they had.
'Yes, I imagine so,' he agreed. 'Narraway and Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould have gone to Osborne, to do what they can, until we can send reinforcements to deal with whatever we find.'
Stoker half rose in his seat.
'But not until we know whom we can trust,' Pitt added. 'The group must be small enough to be discreet. If we go in with half an army it will be far more likely to provoke the plotters into violence immediately. If they know they are cornered and cannot escape, they'll hold her to ransom their freedom for her life.' He felt his throat tighten as he said it. He was fighting an enemy of unknown size and shape. Moreover, elements of it were secret from him, and lay within his own men. For a moment he was overwhelmed. He had no idea even where to begin. Every possibility seemed to carry its own failure built into it.
'A few men, well-armed and taking them by surprise,' Stoker said quietly.
'That's our only hope, I think,' Pitt agreed. 'But before we do that, we need to know who is the traitor here in Lisson Grove, and who else is with him, otherwise they may sabotage any effort we make.'
Stoker's hand on the desk clenched into a fist. 'You mean you think there's more than one?'
'Don't you?'
'I don't know.' Stoker pushed his hand through his hair, scraping it back off his forehead. 'God help me, I don't know. And there's no time to find out. It could take us weeks.'
'It's going to have to take us a lot less than that,' Pitt replied, pulling out the hard-backed chair opposite the desk and sitting on it. 'In fact we must make a decision by the end of today.'
Stoker's jaw dropped. 'And if we're wrong?'
'We mustn't be,' Pitt told him. 'Unless you want a new republic born in murder, and living in fear. We'll start with who set up the fraud that got rid of Narraway and made it all connect up with Ireland, so he would be in an Irish prison when all this happened.'
Stoker took a deep breath. 'Yes, sir. Then we'd better get started. And I'm sorry to say this, but we'll have to consider whoever Gower worked with as well, because getting you out of the way has to be part of it.'
'Of course it has,' Pitt agreed. 'But Gower worked with me, and I reported to Narraway.'
'That's the way it looked to all of us,' Stoker agreed. 'But it can't be what it was. I'll get his records from the officer who keeps all the personal stuff. We'll have to know who he worked with before you. You don't happen to know, do you?'
'I know what he said,' Pitt replied with a twisted smile. 'I'd like to know rather more than that. I think we'd better take as close a look as we can at everyone.'
They spent the rest of the day reading through all the records they could find going back a year or more, having to be discreet as to why.
'What are you looking for, sir?' one man asked helpfully. 'Perhaps I can find it. I know the records pretty well.'
Pitt had his answer prepared. 'It's a pretty serious thing that we were caught out by Narraway,' he replied grimly. 'I want to be sure, beyond any doubt at all, that there's nothing else of that kind in fact, nothing at all that can catch us out again.'
The man swallowed, his eyes wide. 'There won't be, sir.'
'That's what we thought before,' Pitt told him. 'I don't want to leave it to trust I want to know.'
'Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Can I help . . . or . . .' He bit his lip. 'I see, sir. Of course you can't trust any of us.'
Pitt gave him a bleak smile. 'I don't mind your help, Wilson. I need to trust all of you, and equally you need to trust me. It was Narraway who embezzled the money, after all, not one of the juniors here. But I have to know who helped him, if anyone, and who else might have had similar ideas.'
Wilson straightened up. 'Yes, sir. Is anyone else allowed to know?'
'Not at the moment.' Pitt was taking a chance, but time was growing short, and if he caught Wilson in a lie, it would at least tell him something. In fact perhaps fear would be a better ally than discretion, as long as that too was used secretly.
He loathed this. At least in the police he had always known that his colleagues were on the same side. He had not realized then how infinitely valuable that was. He had taken it for granted.
By the middle of the afternoon, they had found the connection between Gower and Austwick. They discovered it more by luck than deduction.
'Here,' Stoker held out a piece of paper with a note scrawled across the bottom.
Pitt read it. It was a memorandum of one man, written to himself, saying that he must see Austwick at a gentlemen's club, and report a fact to him.
'Does this matter?' he asked, puzzled. 'It's nothing to do with socialists or any kind of violence or change, it's just an observation of someone, which turned out to be irrelevant.'
'Yes, sir,' Stoker agreed. 'But it's this.' He handed Pitt another note with something written on the bottom in the same hand.
'Gave the message on Hibbert to Gower to pass on to Austwick at the Hyde Club. Matter settled.'
The place was a small, very select gentlemen's club in the West End of London. He looked up at Stoker. 'How the devil did Gower get to be a member of the Hyde Club?'
'I looked at that, sir. Austwick recommended him. And that means that he must know him pretty well.'
'Then we'll look a lot more closely at all the cases Gower's worked on, and Austwick as well,' Pitt replied.
'But we already know they're connected,' Stoker pointed out.
'And who else?' Pitt asked. 'There are more than two of them. But with this we've got a better place to start. Keep working. We can't afford even one oversight.'
Silently Stoker obeyed. He concentrated on Gower while Pitt looked at every record he could find of Austwick.
By nine o'clock in the evening they were both exhausted. Pitt's head thumped and his eyes felt hot and gritty. He knew Stoker must feel the same. There was little time left.
Pitt put down the piece of paper he had been reading until the writing on it blurred in front of his vision.
'Any conclusions?' he asked.
'Some of these letters, sir, make me think Sir Gerald Croxdale was just about onto him. He was pretty close to putting it together,' Stoker replied. 'I think that might be what made Austwick hurry it all up and act when he did. By getting rid of Narraway he shook everybody pretty badly. Took the attention away from himself.'
'And also put him in charge,' Pitt added. 'It wasn't for long, but maybe it was long enough.' The last paper he had read was a memorandum from Austwick to Croxdale, but it was a different thought that was in his mind.
Stoker was waiting.
'Do you think Austwick is the leader?' he asked. 'Is he actually a great deal cleverer than we thought? Or at any rate, than I thought?'
Stoker looked unhappy. 'I don't think so, sir. It seems to me like he's not making the decisions. I've read a lot of Mr Narraway's letters, and they're not like this. He doesn't suggest, he just tells you. And it isn't that he's any less of a gentleman, just that he knows he's in charge, and he expects you to know it too. Maybe that wasn't how he spoke to you, but it's how he did to the rest of us. No hesitation. You ask, you get your answer. I reckon that Austwick's asking someone else first.'
That was exactly the impression Pitt had had: a hesitation, as if checking with the man in control of master plan.
But if Croxdale was almost onto him, why was Narraway not?
'Who can we trust?' he asked aloud. 'We have to take a small force, no more than a couple of dozen men at the very most. Any more than that and we'll alert them. They'll have people watching for exactly that.'
Stoker wrote a list on a piece of paper and passed it across. 'These I'm sure of,' he said quietly.
Pitt read it, crossed out three and put in two more. 'Now we must tell Croxdale, and have Austwick arrested.'
He stood up and felt his muscles momentarily lock. He had forgotten how long he had been sitting, shoulders bent, reading paper after paper.
'Yes, sir. I suppose we have to?'
'We need an armed force, Stoker. We can't go and storm the Queen's residence, whatever the reason, without the Minister's approval. Don't worry, we've got a good enough case here.' He picked up a small leather satchel and put into it the pages vital to the conclusions they had reached. 'Come on.'
At Osborne, Charlotte, Vespasia and Narraway were kept in the same comfortable sitting room as the Queen. One terrified lady's maid was permitted to come and go in order to attend to Queen's wishes. They were given food by one of the men who kept them prisoner, and watched as they availed themselves of the necessary facilities for personal relief.
The conversation was stilted. In front of the Queen no one felt able to speak naturally. Charlotte looked at the old lady. This close to her, with no distance of formality possible, she was not unlike Charlotte's own grandmother, someone she had loved and hated, feared and pitied over the years. As a child Charlotte had never dared to say anything that might be construed as impertinent. Later, exasperation had overcome both fear and respect, and she had spoken her own mind with forthrightness. More recently she had learned terrible secrets about that woman, and loathing had melted into compassion.
Now she looked at the short, dumpy old lady whose skin showed the weariness of age, whose hair was thin and almost invisible under her lace cap. Victoria was in her late seventies, and had been on the throne for nearly half a century. However, it was not the responsibility of that that wore her down, it was the bitter loneliness of widowhood. To the world she was Queen, Empress, Defender of the Faith, and her numerous children had married into half the Royal Houses of Europe.
Here at Osborne, standing looking out of the upstairs window across the fields and trees in the waning afternoon light, she was a tired old woman who had servants and subjects, but no equals. She would probably never know if any of them would have cared a jot for her if she were a commoner. The loneliness of it was unimaginable.
Would they kill her, those men in the hallway with guns and violent dreams of justice for people who would never want it, purchased this way? If they did, would Victoria mind so very much? A clean shot through the heart, and she would join her beloved Albert at last.
Would they kill the rest of them too: Narraway and Vespasia, and Charlotte herself? What about all the servants? Or did the hostage-takers consider the servants to be ordinary people like themselves? Charlotte was sure the servants didn't think anything of the sort.
Charlotte had been sitting quietly on a chair at the far side of the room. On a sudden impulse she stood up and walked over towards the window. She stopped several feet short of the Queen. It would be disrespectful to stand beside her. Perhaps it was disrespectful to stand here at all, but she did so anyway.
The view was magnificent. She could even see a bright glint of sunlight on the sea in the distance.
The hard light picked out every line on Victoria's face: the marks of tiredness, sorrow, ill temper, and perhaps also the inner pain of emotional isolation. Was she afraid?
'It is very beautiful, ma'am,' Charlotte said quietly.
'Where do you live?' Victoria asked.
'In London, in Keppel Street, ma'am.'
'Do you like it?'
'I have always lived in London, but I think I might like it less if I had the choice of living where I could see something like this, and just hear the wind in the trees, instead of the traffic.'
'Can you not be a nurse in the country?' Victoria asked, still staring straight ahead of her.
Charlotte hesitated. Surely this was a time for the truth? It was only conversation. The Queen did not care in the slightest where she lived. Any answer would do. If they were all to be shot, what sort of an answer mattered? An honest one? No, a kind one.
She turned and looked quickly at Vespasia.
Vespasia nodded.
Charlotte moved half a step closer to the Queen. 'No, ma'am. I'm afraid I'm not a nurse at all. I told the man at the door that I was in order for them to allow me in.'