Read Online Treachery at Lancaster Gate by Anne Perry - Free Book Online

quietly. “I’ll carry her up.” He smiled at Christina, who put her head to one side and slowly smiled back at him. Suddenly he was choked with emotion. He reached forward and picked her up, holding her close, taking in the sweetness of her, soap, warm wool, smelling faintly milky.
    “C’mon, angel,” he said a little gruffly. “It’s your bedtime.”
    He carried her up the stairs and into her room, next to theirs and where, with the doors open, they could hear her if she cried. He took off the blanket around her and again marveled at the embroidery on her nightgown, little flowers worked in pink. He remembered Gracie stitching it, only a few months ago. How quickly babies grow. Every day was precious.
    He tucked her into the bed and kissed her. “Good night,” he whispered.
    “Night,” she answered, closing her eyes. She was probably asleep before he reached the door.
    Back downstairs again his mind returned to the question of corruption.
    For Tellman, who grew up poor, the scrawny, undersized son of a factory laborer, to be a policeman was an honorable job. It was a position that earned respectability and the regard of the community. People who had never noticed him as a child now looked to him for help. And he gave it, with pleasure.
    He had felt that purpose more deeply when he had started working with Thomas Pitt, years ago, in Bow Street. Pitt was a tall man, strong, someone who had come from an ordinary enough background. But Pitt knew what he wanted to be, and he believed in himself. He had shown Tellman what a good job it was, what courage and honor there was in it. They were men who spent their days, and sometimes their nights as well, seeking the truth, wherever it led them, fighting to see that justice was done and people were kept from injury, loss, fear of the people they could not fight alone.
    That was why he found Pitt’s attitude now so acutely painful. He could not tell him that. Of course he understood that Pitt’s job had changed and he could not afford a loyalty to the police rather than to Special Branch. But it still seemed like a denial of what he used to care about, the men he had worked beside in the past, not so long ago.
    Tellman was tired and his head ached. The hot tea had eased his sore throat a little, but his face ached across the bones of his cheeks. He was in for a really heavy cold.
    Gracie looked at him with a rueful smile.
    “Yer should take a day in bed,” she told him. “Just sleep as much as yer can. It won’t send it away, but it’ll ’elp.”
    “I can’t,” he answered firmly, mostly to convince himself. Nothing sounded better than bed just now. “I’ve got to find out all I can about this bombing.”
    “What can you find if it’s anarchists?” she asked reasonably. She sat down sideways on one of the hard-backed chairs at the kitchen table. The room reminded him a little of the Pitts’ kitchen. It had the same colored china, although it was a different pattern. It was still blue and white. And there was a copper saucepan hung on the wall by its handle. Gracie seldom used it, but she liked the beautiful, gleaming color of the metal. He had seen her polish it countless times. The fact that it was hers always made her smile.
    On the dresser, where most people would have had special plates, there was a little brown china donkey. He had bought it for her in a market one day, and she had loved it. She said it reminded her of a real one she had known, and she called it Charlie. He looked at it now and smiled. This was home, and he longed to be able to stay here until his cold was better. It would almost certainly be wet tomorrow, and the sting of the east wind could slice through even the best woolen coat and scarf.
    “If it’s anarchists then it isn’t crooked police,” he answered. “I’d give a week’s salary—a month’s—to be able to find that.”
    “Do you think it could be?” she asked. Gracie never ran away from a problem; at worst she