Betrayal at Lisson Grove (Treason at Lisson Grove)

She set her cup down. “The answer is uglier than that, my dear,” she said very quietly. “I think that what is planned is so wide and so final in its result that they wish you to be there to take the blame for Special Branch’s failure to prevent it. Then the branch can be recreated from the beginning with none of the experienced men who are there now, and be completely in the control of those who are behind this. Or alternatively, it might be disbanded altogether, as a force that has served its purpose in the past but is now manifestly no longer needed.”

The thought was so devastating that it took him several moments to grasp the full import of it. He was not promoted for merit, but as someone completely dispensable, a Judas goat to be sacrificed when Special Branch took the blame for failing to prevent some disaster. He should have been furiously angry, and he would be, eventually, when he absorbed the enormity of it and had time to think of himself. Now all he could deal with was the nature of the plot, and who was involved. How could they ever begin to fight against it?

He looked at Vespasia. He was startled to see the gentleness in her face, a deep and hurting compassion.

He forced himself to smile at her. In the same circumstances she would never have spent time pitying herself. He would not let her down by doing so.

“I’m trying to think what I would have been working on had I not gone to St. Malo,” he said aloud. “I don’t know if poor West was actually going to tell me anything that mattered, such as that Gower was a traitor, or if he was killed only to get me chasing Wrexham to France. I thought it was the former, but perhaps it wasn’t. Certainly that was the end of my involvement over here.”

“If you had been here you might have prevented Victor from having been removed from office,” she concluded. “On the other hand, you might have been implicated in the same thing, and removed also …” She stopped.

He shrugged. “Or killed.” He said what he knew she was thinking. “Sending me to France was better, much less obvious. Also, it seems they wanted me here now, to take the blame for this failure that is about to descend on us. I’ve been trying to think what cases we were most concerned with, what we may have learned had we had time.”

“We will consider it in my carriage on the way to our appointment,” she said, finishing her tea. “Minnie Maude will have your case packed any moment, and we should be on our way.”

He rose and went to say good night and—for the very immediate future—good-bye to his children. He gave Minnie Maude last instructions, and a little more money to ascertain that she had sufficient provisions. Then he collected his case and went outside to Vespasia’s carriage where it was waiting in the street. Within seconds they were moving briskly.

“I’ve already looked over everything that happened shortly before I left, and in Austwick’s notes since,” he began. “And in the reports from other people. I did it with Stoker. We saw something that I don’t yet understand, but it is very alarming.”

“What is it?” she asked quickly.

He told her about the violent men who had been seen in several different parts of England, and watched her face grow pale and very grave as he told her how old enemies had been seen together, as if they had a common cause.

“This is very serious,” she agreed. “There is something I also have heard whispers of while you have been away. I dismissed it at first as being the usual idealistic talk that has always been around among dreamers, always totally impractical. For example, certain social reformers seem to be creating plans as if they could get them through the House of Commons without difficulty. Some of the reforms were radical, and yet I admit there is a certain justice to them. I assumed they were simply naïve, but perhaps there is some major element that I have missed.”

They rode in silence for the length of Woburn Place toward Euston Road, then turned right with the stream of traffic and continued north until it became the Pentonville Road.

“I fear I know what element you have missed,” Pitt said at last.

“Violence?” she asked. “I cannot think of any one man, or even group of men, who would pass some of the legislation they are proposing. It would be pointless anyway. It would be sent back by the House of Lords, and then they would have to begin again. By that time the opposition would have collected its wits, and its arguments. They must know that.”

“Of course they do,” he agreed. “But if there were no House of Lords …”

The street lamps outside seemed harsh, the rattle of the carriage wheels unnaturally loud. “Another gunpowder plot?” she asked. “The country would be outraged. We hung, drew, and quartered Guy Fawkes and his conspirators. We might not be quite so barbaric this time, but I wouldn’t risk all I valued on it.” Her face was momentarily in the shadows as a higher, longer carriage passed between them and the nearest street lamps.