Twenty-One Days (Daniel Pitt #1)(40)

Actually, given human nature, scandal and the fall of the mighty, or those who were perceived to be so, was always news. The suggestion that Graves had been framed in order to silence him would multiply his sales tenfold! A judicial hanging, connived at to silence him, would give his accusations the power of a dying declaration! They would be carved indelibly into the public mind. People would pay black-market prices for copies of his book.

Had he thought of all that? Even planned it?

Surely not, at the cost of his life! He had not struck Daniel as a crusader of anything that would come at such a price. He was an arrogant man, self-serving. Hanging was a terrible death.

But of course Graves had not planned that! He had not imagined it. He must have known that if those he intended to expose were as corrupt as he said, they would retaliate. But perhaps he had expected to escape them? Why no accusation at trial? It was the ideal place to have exposed them to the world. He would never again have such a stage on which to speak. It made no sense to forego it. Narraway and Vespasia were both dead, but Pitt was very much alive. Why not accuse him? Pitt would have done his best to defend two of the closest friends he’d ever had. Loyalty, friendship, his own passion would have compelled him.

The train jolted forward again. Daniel had not even realised that they had stopped at another suburban station. Where were they? He looked around and could see nothing he recognised. Then his alarm subsided. The stop he wanted was the terminus to the south of central London.

He was glad he was not there yet. He leaned back in his seat. He had a lot to sort out in his mind before he faced Marcus fford Croft. For a start, how much did fford Croft know? Why was he insistent on defending this man? It couldn’t surely be for any personal like of someone so basically unpleasant. Even his own household had seemed united in loyalty to Ebony, and dislike of Graves. Or perhaps it was, even more, care of Sarah and Arthur? And of course the desire to stay in their present positions in the house, together, being as much of a family as they knew. Death was always hard, and one with as much violence as this was doubly so. And with the scandal on top of it, it would be hard for them to find other situations. Even if they did, there was always the uncertainty of settling into a new household. For the younger ones, it was sending them from the only place they had ever known, apart from wherever they had grown up. Daniel could imagine the anxieties and the fears that crowded their minds.

None of which was likely ever to have troubled the thoughts of Marcus fford Croft. And now that it was so much more serious, and involved Daniel so intimately, he would have to ask fford Croft for his reasons. Daniel’s own job might be in peril if fford Croft’s motive for helping Graves in a case he could not have expected to win held dangerous secrets. How much did Marcus know? Would a man fighting for his life not tell him everything? That was a question to which Daniel genuinely did not know the answer.

He went back to the question he really did not want to face, but it lay at the bottom of all of it. Had Victor Narraway been as devious and corrupt as Graves believed? It was difficult even to quantify it. In order to do his job well as head of Special Branch, particularly in the years when Fenian bombers had been so active in London, he had to have as much information as he could about possible bombers and their targets. There was no room for delicacy. ‘I didn’t like to probe his personal affairs,’ was no answer. A single dead body justified any intrusion, let alone half a dozen, and more shattered, with limbs blown off, and any of the other dreadful damage that bombs could do. Daniel did not know very much about Special Branch; it had to be secret to survive, and to do its job. Some people who were the loudest to criticise them for interfering in personal privacy were also the loudest to accuse them if a bomb were undetected and eminent people were killed or maimed for the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was a matter of scale.

Graves had accused Pitt of colluding in murder to benefit his own position. That stung to the point that Daniel would see him hang with pleasure!

No, perhaps that was exaggeration. But he would certainly have beaten the daylights out of him with considerable satisfaction. Should he even be trying to find cause for an appeal, given the circumstances? Daniel was compromised. He would be excluded from defending Graves in court again.

Did Marcus know that too?

What in hell was he playing at?

Someone touched his elbow and he was startled. He stared at the man. It was a moment before he recognised it was the ticket collector.

‘Oh – what did you say?’ he asked.

‘Your ticket, sir,’ the man repeated. ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir.’

Daniel hunted in his pocket and could not remember whether he had bought a ticket or not. The man waited patiently. Daniel retrieved it and handed it to him. He clipped it and passed it back.

When he arrived at Lincoln’s Inn and went into the chambers of fford Croft and Gibson, he asked Impney, the chief clerk, if he could see Mr fford Croft immediately. He added that he had just returned from Mr Graves’ house. He waited impatiently, and Impney returned in less than five minutes to say that Mr fford Croft would see him straight away.

Marcus fford Croft looked perfectly composed, if a little earnest, when Daniel walked into his study.

‘Sit down, dear boy, and tell me what you have learned,’ he invited him. ‘Thank you, Impney. See that we are not disturbed.’

‘Certainly, sir,’ Impney replied, leaving the room and closing the door quietly behind him.