The books of May are here—fresh, fierce, and full of feels.
"An explosion targets police and Thomas Pitt must discover why."
Reviewed by Shellie Surles
Mystery Historical
TREACHERY AT LANCASTER GATE is a Thomas and Charlotte Pitt
mystery. The story starts with an explosion at an
abandoned
building kills two police officer and seriously injuring
three
more. Thomas Pitt, Commander of the Special Branches is
put in
charge of the investigation to ensure it is not
anarchists.
The more he looks into the explosion, the more he realizes
the
police were lured there in hopes of killing them all and
anarchist had nothing to do with it.
He investigates along with a police detective who is slow
to
believe that there could be any problems inside the police
force he loves and respects. Things become dangerous for
both
of them as the trail leads all the way to parliament and a
very valuable trade deal.
Anne Perry places the reader in a time of corruption and
Victorian society at the turn of the century, when things
were
beginning a period of great change. Add into the murder
and
mystery and you have a thrilling story with TREACHERY AT
LANCASTER GATE that keeps you reading page after page.
SUMMARY
Gripping and provocative, the latest Thomas and Charlotte
Pitt mystery by New York Times bestselling author
Anne Perry peers unflinchingly into the corrupt affairs of
Victorian society on the brink of the century’s turn. The
world is poised for social and political change, but England
holds tight to its traditions, classes, and prejudices.
When an explosion in London kills two policemen and
seriously injures three more, many believe that anarchists
are the culprits. But Thomas Pitt, commander of Special
Branch, knows the city’s radical groups well enough to
suspect otherwise: that someone with decidedly more personal
motives lit the deadly fuse. As he investigates the source
of the fatal blast, he’s stunned to discover the bombing was
a calculated strike against the ranks of law enforcement.
But still more shocking revelations await, as Pitt’s
inquiries lead him to a member of Parliament hoping for a
lucrative business deal, a high-ranking police officer with
secrets to keep, and an aristocratic opium addict seeking
murderous revenge. As he pursues each increasingly
threatening lead, Pitt finds himself impeded at every turn
by the barriers put in place to protect the rich and
powerful—barriers which, as they start to crumble, threaten
to bury him alive.
Excerpt TREACHERY AT LANCASTER EXCERPT
chapter 1
Pitt stood in the middle of the street looking at the
smoldering ruins of the house. The fire brigade had
thoroughly hosed the small bursts of flame here and there,
and the water had puddled on the floor and settled into the
craters left by the bomb that had detonated approximately
forty-five minutes ago. It was midday but the sky was still
clouded with smoke and the stench of it was everywhere.
Pitt moved out of the way as two ambulance men lifted a
wounded man onto a makeshift litter and carried him out to
the waiting ambulance. The horses were shifting their weight
impatiently. They knew the smell of burning in the early
winter air and each crash of collapsing timber startled
them, though they waited obediently.
“That’s it, sir,” the white-faced constable said to Pitt,
blinking rapidly. Perhaps it was the smoke that stung the
man’s eyes, but more probably it was emotion. All of the men
who had been caught in the explosion were police: five of
them altogether. “That’s the last of them out.”
“Thank you.” Pitt acknowledged the words. “How many dead?”
“Hobbs and Newman, sir. We didn’t move the bodies.” The
constable coughed and tried to clear his throat. “Ednam,
Bossiney, and Yarcombe are pretty badly injured, sir.”
“Thank you,” Pitt repeated. His mind was teeming with
thoughts, and yet he could not come up with anything to say
that would give any real comfort to the constable. Pitt was
head of Special Branch, that discreet part of Security that
dealt with threats to the nation—sabotage, assassinations,
bombings, any form of terrorism. He had seen destruction and
violent death more times than he cared to remember. In fact,
before Special Branch he had been in the regular police,
dealing primarily with cases of murder.
But this was a deliberate attack directed specifically at
the police: colleagues he had known and worked with over the
years. He could remember Newman getting married, Hobbs’s
first promotion. Now he had to search this wreckage for
their bodies.
He turned and started to move slowly, picking his way so as
not to disturb what was left of the situation—the evidence,
if it could be called such. They already knew it was a bomb
blast. Two people had been close enough to witness it. They
had heard the explosion and seen the rubble flying, and then
the flames as the wood caught fire. Now they were sitting in
the back of an ambulance as one of the drivers finished
binding up a gash in an arm caused by flying glass. There
were shards everywhere from exploded windows. Both of the
witnesses looked battered and shocked, but Pitt would have
to interview them.
He spoke to the man first. He looked to be in his sixties,
white-haired, dressed in a formal coat. Likely he had been
on his way back home from church. There were cuts on the
right side of his face, and a burn across his cheek, as if a
piece of flaming wood had caught him. His right side was
smeared with dust and there were small burns in the fabric
of his clothes.
“On my way home from church, God help us,” the man said
shakily after Pitt had introduced himself and apologized for
disturbing him. “What kind of people would do this?” He was
frightened, and trying desperately not to show it in front
of the woman. His wife, Pitt assumed. He must have been
walking on the outside, as a man would, and she had been
closer to the blast and was more seriously hurt. It was her
arm the ambulance man was binding.
“Did you see anyone else in the street?” Pitt asked. “Anyone
at all? Any witnesses might help.”
“No . . . no, I didn’t. We were talking to each other,” the
man replied. “Who would do this? What do they want?”
“I don’t know, sir. But we’ll find out,” Pitt promised. The
ambulance man caught Pitt’s eye, his glance indicating that
Pitt should hurry. Blood was already beginning to seep
through the bandage on the woman’s arm as he added another
layer, and she looked pale.
Pitt handed his card to the man. He didn’t see any point in
delaying them further. “Thank you. That’s all for now. If
you remember anything, please let us know.” He wished them
well, and with a nod to the ambulance man he walked back
toward the house. It was time to go in and look at the
bodies, gather whatever evidence there was.
He skirted around a block of fallen masonry, picking his way
carefully. He could taste burning in the air, and yet it was
cold.
“Sir!” a fireman called out. “You can’t come in here! It’s .
. .”
Pitt kept on walking, his feet crunching on broken glass.
“Commander Pitt,” he introduced himself.
“Oh . . . well, watch where you put your feet, sir. And your
head.” He glanced upward at a broken beam that was hanging
at a crazy angle, swaying a little, as if it could become
detached and fall off any moment. “You still shouldn’t ought
to be here,” he added.
“The dead men?” Pitt requested.
“It’s dangerous in here,” the man pointed out. “They’ll not
be going nowhere, sir. Best you let us get them out. The
blast killed them, sir. No doubt about that.”
Pitt would have liked the excuse not to look at the bodies,
but there was none. He might learn nothing useful, but it
would be a beginning of facing the reality and coming to
terms with it.
He was standing in front of the fireman. The man was
pale-faced, apart from the black ash smudges on his cheeks.
His uniform was filthy, and wet. When he had time to think
about it, he would realize he was cold as well.
“The bodies?” Pitt nudged him as gently as he could.
“That way, sir,” the man said reluctantly. “But be careful.
You’d be best not to touch anything. Bring the whole lot
down on top o’ yourself.”
“I won’t,” Pitt responded, beginning the awkward journey,
trying to avoid tripping. If he fell he would almost
certainly bang into a jutting wall strut, a piece of smashed
furniture, or something dangling from where the ceiling used
to be.
The floorboards were half up, torn by the blast. It must
have been a large bomb and, to judge by the burning and the
angles of the broken wood, he was near the center of it.
What on earth had happened here in the quiet house on a
pleasant London street near Kensington Gardens? Anarchists?
London was full of them. Half the revolutionaries in Europe
had either lived here or passed through. In this year of
1898 there had been less terrorist activity than in the
recent past, but now, almost at the close of the year, it
seemed Special Branch’s sense of ease was misplaced. Was
this the dying blow, or the first outrider of another storm?
Nihilists in Europe had assassinated President Carnot of
France, Tsar Alexander II of Russia, the Spanish prime
minister, Cánovas del Castillo, and, earlier this year, the
empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary. Perhaps the violence
was now coming here to England as well?
In front of Pitt there was a body, or what was left of it.
Suddenly he could not swallow, and he thought for a moment
that he was going to be sick. One leg was entirely gone, one
side of the chest caved in under part of a beam from the
rafters. But the man’s face was oddly unmarked. Pitt could
recognize Newman.
He would have to go and see Newman’s widow, say all the
usual words of grief. It would not help, but its omission
would hurt.
He stared at the body. Did it tell him anything, other than
what the fireman had already said? There was no smoke on
Newman’s face. His left arm was mostly gone, but when Pitt
looked more closely he saw his right hand was clean. Did
that mean he was already inside here when the bomb went off?
He had not battled his way through smoke and rubble. Why had
he come here? Trouble reported? An alarm of some sort?
Following someone? A meeting already arranged? An ambush?
He turned and moved away, dizzy for a moment. He took a deep
breath, steadied himself, and pressed on.
The second body was half-obscured by fallen plaster and
wood, but it was far less obviously damaged. There was
little smoke or dust on Hobbs’s face and his pattern of
freckles was easily recognizable. Pitt studied him as
dispassionately as he could, trying to learn something from
the way the debris lay around him. The police surgeon would
be able to tell him more, but it appeared that Hobbs had
been caught by surprise, and much further from the site of
the explosion than Newman.
Pitt was still staring at the surroundings when he heard
footsteps somewhere behind him. He turned and saw the
familiar figure of Samuel Tellman picking his way through
the plaster, water, and charred wood. Tellman had been
Pitt’s sergeant when they were both at Bow Street. It had
taken them a long time to be comfortable with each other.
Tellman had distrusted anyone with a background as humble as
Pitt’s but who spoke like a gentleman. To him it seemed that
Pitt’s accent was affected, as if Pitt thought himself
superior. Pitt felt no reason to explain that his speech was
the product of having been educated along with Sir Arthur
Desmond’s son at the country estate where his father had
been gamekeeper. When his father had been transported to
Australia for a crime he had not committed, Pitt’s mother
had remained as laundress, and Sir Arthur had seen the young
Pitt as a companion to his son and a spur to excel him in
class. The whole story was a wound that still ached on his
father’s behalf, and it wasn’t something he wished to
discuss with Tellman. But years of working together had
taught them a mutual respect, and loyalty.
“Good afternoon, sir.” Tellman stopped beside him.
“Good afternoon, Inspector,” Pitt replied.
Tellman stared down at the body. “I’m your liaison with the
police, sir.”
Pitt had expected someone to provide liaison, partly because
he was Special Branch and not in the regular police, but
mostly because the victims were the police’s own men. The
internal loyalty of the police force was not unlike that of
soldiers in an army at war. An officer facing danger had to
have an absolute trust in those who stood beside him, or at
his back.
Pitt nodded. It would be good to work with Tellman
again—but he wished it were on anything other than this.
“Looks like they were right here when it went off,” Pitt
observed. “Newman must have been closest to it.”
“Yes. I saw. What kind of a bloody lunatic would do this?”
Tellman’s voice was tight, as if he were controlling it with
difficulty. “I want freedom for all men, and food, and
houses, and the right to come and go as I please. But what
the hell good does something like this do? Which anarchists
did this, anyway? Spanish? Italian? French? Russian? Why in
God’s name do all the bloody lunatics in Europe come and
live in London?” He turned to face Pitt. “Why do we let
them?” His face was white, two spots of color in his lean
cheeks, anger in his eyes. “Don’t you know who they are?
Isn’t that what Special Branch is supposed to be for, to
prevent exactly this from happening?”
Pitt hunched his shoulders and drove his hands deeper into
his pockets. “I don’t make the policy, Tellman. And yes, I
know who a lot of them are. Mostly they just talk.”
The disgust and the pain in Tellman’s face were more
powerful than words. “I’ll find them and hang them—whatever
you want to do about it.” It was a challenge.
Pitt did not bother to answer. He understood the emotion
behind the words. Right at this moment he felt much the
same. He might feel differently when he learned who was
responsible. Some of the men branded as anarchists had done
no more than protest for decent pay, enough to feed their
families. A few of them had been imprisoned, tortured, and
even executed, simply for protesting against injustice.
Driven far enough, he might have done the same.
“Why were these men here?” he asked Tellman. “Five of them,
at this quiet house right on the park? It can’t have been an
inquiry. You don’t need five men for that. There’s no one
else dead or hurt, so the house must have been empty. What
were they doing?”
Tellman’s expression tightened. “I don’t know yet, but I
mean to find out. But if the investigation was to do with
anarchists, they would have told Special Branch what was
going on. So it must be something else.”
Pitt did not take that totally for granted as Tellman seemed
to, but it was not the time to argue. “Anything known about
this address?” he asked instead.
“Not yet.” Tellman looked around him. “What about the bomb?
Bombs are your business. What was it made of? Where was it
put? How did they let it off?”
Excerpted from Treachery at Lancaster Gate by Anne Perry
Copyright © 2016 by Anne Perry. Excerpted by permission
of Ballantine Books. All rights reserved. No part of this
excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in
writing from the publisher.
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