Betrayal at Lisson Grove (Treason at Lisson Grove)

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 them to violence immediately. If they know they are cornered and cannot escape, they’ll hold her for 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 going 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 as he. 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.