Pitt rose to his feet, muttered a few words of acknowledgment, and went outside, his mind whirling with unanswered questions, not about Kingsley or Charles Voisey, but about Narraway himself.
He returned home briefly, and on the footpath at the end of Keppel Street heard a voice addressing him.
“Afternoon, Mr. Pitt!”
He turned around, startled. It was the postman again, smiling, holding out a letter for him.
“Good afternoon,” he replied hastily, a sudden excitement inside him, hope surging that it was from Charlotte.
“From Mrs. Pitt, is it?” the postman asked cheerfully. “Somewhere nice, is she?”
Pitt looked down at the letter in his hand. The writing was so like Charlotte’s, and yet it was not, and the postmark was London. “No,” he said, unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
“She’s only been gone a day or two,” the postman comforted him. “Takes a while from farther off. You tell me where she’s gone, I’ll tell you ’ow long it’ll take for ’er letter ter get ’ome.”
Pitt drew in his breath to say “Dartmoor,” and then looked at the man’s smiling face, and sharp eyes, and felt the coldness well up inside him. He forced himself to remain calm, and it took such an effort that it was a moment before he could reply.
The postman waited.
“Thank you,” Pitt said then answered with the first place that came to his mind: “Whitby.”
“Yorkshire?” The man looked extraordinarily pleased with himself. “Oh, that shouldn’t be more than two days at the most this time of year, maybe only one. You’ll ’ear soon, sir. Maybe they’re ’aving too much fun ter get down ter writing. Good day, sir.”
“Good day.” Pitt swallowed, and found his hands shaking as he tore open the letter. It was from Emily, dated the previous afternoon.
Dear Thomas,
Rose Serracold is a friend of mine, and after visiting her yesterday I feel that I know certain things which may be of some meaning to you.
Please call upon me when you have the opportunity.
Emily
He folded it up and slipped it back into the envelope. It was the middle of the afternoon, a time when she would normally be out visiting, or receiving calls, but there would be no better opportunity, and perhaps what she had to say would help. He could not afford to decline any chance at all.
He turned around and walked back towards Tottenham Court Road again. Half an hour later he was in Emily’s sitting room and she was telling him, with awkward phrases and some self-consciousness, of her quarrel with Rose Serracold. She spoke of her growing conviction that Rose was so deeply afraid of something that she was impelled to visit Maude Lamont in spite of the danger of ridicule, and that she had, if not deceived him, at least omitted to tell Aubrey anything about it.
Emily’s warning had produced anger in her to the point of endangering their friendship.
When she finished she stared at him, her eyes filled with guilt.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
“Thomas . . .” she began.
“No,” he answered before she could ask any further. “I don’t know whether she killed her or not, but I cannot look the other way, no matter who gets hurt. All I can promise is that I will cause no more pain than I have to, and I hope you knew that already.”
“Yes.” She nodded, her body stiff, her face pale. “Of course I did.” She took a breath as if to say something more, then changed her mind and offered him tea, which he did not accept. He would have liked to accept—he was tired and thirsty, hungry also if he thought about it—but there was too much emotion between them, too much knowledge for it to be comfortable. He thanked her again and took his leave.
That evening Pitt telephoned Jack’s political offices to find out where he was going to speak, and on being informed of the place, he set out to join him, first to listen, feel the political temper of the crowd, then maybe to judge from it more accurately what Aubrey Serracold faced.
And he admitted he was also increasingly concerned for Jack himself. It was going to be a far closer election than last time. Many Liberals could lose their seats.
He arrived as some two or three hundred people were gathering, mostly men from the nearby factories, but also a good number of women, dressed in drab skirts and blouses grained with the sweat and dirt of hard work. Some were even as young as fourteen or fifteen, others with skins so tired and gaunt, bodies so shapeless, that it was hard to tell how old they were. They might have been the sixty that they looked, but Pitt knew very well it was more likely they were still under forty, just exhausted and poorly fed. Many of them would have borne too many children, and the best would have been given to them, and to the men.
There was a low murmur of impatience, a couple of catcalls. More people drifted in. Half a dozen left, grumbling loudly.
Pitt shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He tried to overhear conversations. What did these people think, what did they want? Did anything make any difference to the way they voted, except to a handful of them? Jack had been a good constituency member, but did they realize that? His majority was not large. On a wave of Liberal success he would have had no cause to worry, but this was an election even Gladstone did not wholly desire to win. He fought it from passion and instinct, and because he had always fought, but his reasoning mind was not in it.
There was a sudden flurry of attention and Pitt looked up. Jack had arrived and was walking through the crowd, clasping people by the hand, men and women alike, even one or two of the children. Then he climbed onto the tail of a cart which had been drawn up to form a makeshift platform for him, and began to speak.
Almost immediately he was heckled. A semibald man in a brown coat waved his arm and demanded to know how many hours a day he worked. There was a roar of laughter and more catcalls.
“Well, if I don’t get returned to the House, I’ll be out of work!” Jack called back at him. “And the answer will be none!”
Now the laughter was directed the other way—humor, not jeering. There followed immediately an argument about the working week. Voices grew harsher and the underlying anger had an ugly edge. Someone threw a stone, but it went yards wide and clattered off the warehouse wall and rolled away.
Looking at Jack’s face, handsome and easy-natured as it seemed to be, Pitt could see he was holding his temper with an effort. A few years ago he might not even have tried.
“Vote for the Tories,” Jack offered with an expansive gesture. “If you think they’ll give it to you.”
There were curses and hoots and whistles of derision.
“None of yer’s any good!” a scrawny woman yelled, her lips drawn back from broken teeth. “All yer do is bleed us fer taxes and tie us up in laws no one understands.”
And so it continued for another half hour. Slowly, Jack’s patience and occasional banter began to win over more of them, but Pitt could see in the growing tension in his face and the tiredness of his body the effort it cost him. An hour later, dusty, exhausted and hot from the press of the crowd and the stale, clinging air of the dockside, he climbed down from the cart and Pitt caught up with him as he walked towards the open street where he would be able to find a hansom. Like Voisey he had had the tactical sense not to bring his own carriage.
He turned to Pitt with surprise.
Pitt smiled at him. “An accomplished performance,” he said sincerely. He did not add any facile words about winning. As close to Jack as he was, he could see the exhaustion in his eyes and the grime in the fine lines of his skin. It was dusk and the street lamps were glowing. They must have passed the lamplighter without noticing him.
“Are you here for moral support?” Jack asked dubiously.
“No,” Pitt admitted. “I need to know more about Mrs. Serracold.”
Jack looked at him in surprise.
“Have you eaten?” Pitt asked.