“Could be war,” Ted Kittridge said. “Could be a big war.”
“Abetting the assassination of a sovereign?” Bushell weighed the gravity of the charge. After a moment, he nodded. “You might be right.”
There hadn’t been a big war, a world-bestriding war of the kind Kittridge meant, since the eighteenth century, not long before the North American Union came into being. Since then, the British Empire had been too strong for any other power to challenge head-on. But an Empire cast into confusion by the murder of its chief and perhaps by an uprising of the Sons of Liberty might have been vulnerable to attack from a foreign foe. Bushell weighed the odds. “If there’s war now, we’ll win it.”
“Hell, yes,” Kittridge said. “Would have anyway. For sure now.”
“The Sons who really make me angry are the rich ones,” Stanley said, following his own thought. “Bragg was doing fine where he was - why does he think he needs his plantation back? Joseph Kilbride, Stanage, Morton Johnston: they’re all rich. They’ve got no business conspiring with foreign kings, wanting to tear down the Empire that let them do so much.”
“That’s right,” Bushell said vehemently. “I can understand why somebody like Michael O’Flynn might become a Son. You earn your little wage setting powder charges way underground, never sure whether the roof’s going to come down on your head or the mine will blow up ... you live like that, any change looks good. Maybe Eustace Venable had his reasons, too: a cabinetmaker’s not going to be able to retire rich at forty-five, no matter how good his work is. But some of the others we’ve hauled in -“ He shook his head.
“Rum old world,” Kittridge said. Bushell and Stanley both nodded. There wasn’t a police officer in the British Empire - there probably wasn’t a Franco-Spanish inquisitor or Okhrana man in Russia - who didn’t sing that song a dozen times a week.
“And the rich ones use the poor ones, and most of the time it’s the poor ones who get caught,” Stanley said. “Even now - what was the word Williams used for Bragg, Chief? He’s still smug? Is that it? I don’t care how smug he is. The Mint doesn’t stamp out enough sovereigns to hire the solicitor who could get him out of the prisoners’ dock now, because there’s no such man.”
“Good thing, too,” Bushell said. “He’ll get what he deserves, and he deserves -“ He didn’t go on. His own anger at Bragg was as much rooted in his betrayal of friendship as in his betrayal of country, but if a man could do the one, it was easier to see how he might also do the other.
“Sorry it worked out this way, Chief,” Sam said, guessing some of what was going through his mind.
“I’d sooner have put Sir David’s head up on the wall, and that’s a fact,” Bushell said. “You can’t always get everything you want, though, and we did pretty damn well here.” He hesitated, then made a grudging admission he’d never expected to hear from his own lips: “And Clarke isn’t - quite - the bastard I always thought he was.”
Samuel Stanley turned to Sergeant Kittridge. “Take this man back to his hotel, Ted. He’s spent so much time in hospital, he’s come down with softening of the brain.”
Bushell snorted but didn’t argue. Without a word, Kittridge led him off to the carpark alongside the hospital. The local RAM turned the key to ignite the burner; he’d killed the pilot when he pulled into the carpark. Bushell leaned back in his seat and waited for steam to come up in the boiler. Idly, he took out his pocket watch and glanced at it. Maybe he’d be back at the William and Mary in time to catch His Majesty’s speech on the wireless, or maybe he’d have a proper supper at the hotel restaurant and walk over to RAM headquarters afterward.
Kittridge had time enough to smoke one of his odorous little cigarillos down to the butt before steam pressure built to the point where they could get rolling. Bushell lit a cigar of his own in self-defense, but the smoke from Kittridge’s was pungent enough to overcome the milder tobacco he favored. He rolled his window all the way down when the steamer got moving. The breeze got rid of some of the cigarillo stink, but replaced it with the hot, muggy air of Victoria in high summer - a bargain, perhaps, but not the best one he’d ever made.
He was close to dozing, in spite of the rest he’d had back at the hospital. Like a gourmand looking for a snack to fill up a tiny empty space after some gargantuan repast, he worried at the question of why Horace Bragg remained smug after his plot had utterly failed. Was he proud of taking a brewer and a coal-mine powderman and a cabinetmaker down into ruin with him? That seemed a perverse sort of pride, indeed.
A street-corner trafficator ordered a halt. Kittridge obeyed it, then reached into his waistcoat pocket for the case where he kept the dock-scrapings he called cigarillos. Bushell eyed the move with what he hoped was well-concealed resignation.
Suddenly he jerked the door of the motorcar open, jumped out, and ran over to a red public telephone box near the corner. Kittridge shouted something at him. Ignoring his fellow RAM, he fed a shilling into the coin slot. When an operator came on, he said, “Ring me the All-Union Art Museum.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the operator said after a moment. “All lines are engaged at the moment - hardly surprising, what with His Majesty’s visit and the excitement of the day. Perhaps you’d do better to try another time.”
“The excitement of the day’s not done,” Bushell snarled. He slammed down the phone and dashed out of the box without getting his shilling back.
Ted Kittridge was still sitting at the corner, though the trafficator’s arms gave him the right - indeed, practically commanded him - to move. Klaxons blared behind him; irate, sweaty drivers leaned out their windows to discuss his ancestry. As far as he was concerned, they might as well not have existed. He glanced toward Bushell with mild curiosity on his face. “What’s up?”
“Where’s the All-Union Art Museum from here?” Bushell demanded. “The map inside my head’s all twisted around.”
“You want to go to the museum?” Kittridge asked. Bushell nodded vehemently. “Not the hotel?” the sergeant persisted, picking now of all times to be talky.
“No, I always say I want to go one place when I mean the other,” Bushell answered. “Don’t you?”
Kittridge considered that, grunted out an economical bit of laughter, and sent the steamer spurting across the intersection just as the trafficator arm swung up to bar his way. The drivers behind him who hadn’t got across shouted more curses. The drivers on the cross street, who had been about to roll through the intersection themselves, blew savage blasts of protest on their horns. As far as Kittridge’s demeanor showed, he might have had the boulevard to himself. After a couple of minutes he glanced over at Bushell and asked, “What’s wrong now?”
“Maybe nothing,” Bushell said. “I hope to God nothing, as a matter of fact. But if we’ve got a Son in gaol who’s a dab hand with blasting powder, and if the late, unlamented Eustace Venable was a master cabinetmaker, and if The Two Georges has that big, fat, fancy frame around it - “
“ - And if Bragg doesn’t give a damn that they’re going to hang him,” Kittridge said, thoughtful enough to expend a whole sentence to complete Bushell’s thought. On top of the first, he added a second: “We’d better hurry.”
“Yes,” Bushell said, and let it go at that. The ten minutes they’d spent waiting to get up steam pressure suddenly felt like a squandered eternity. If he was right, and if they got to the museum a couple of minutes too late to do anything about it - what would he do then? The only thing that occurred to him was, Crawl in a bottle and never come out.