Anne Perry - Long Spoon Lane: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel

LONG SPOON LANE

A CHARLOTTE AND THOMAS PITT NOVEL

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Praise for Long Spoon Lane

"One can always count on Anne Perry's elegant Victorian mysteries."

New York Times Book Review

"[Readers] will appreciate the cleverly orchestrated political machinations as much as the personal agendasboth of which come fully into play when it comes to solving the mys-

tery."

Booklist

"Carnage comes early in Perry's engrossing Victorian historical.... A convincing historical backdrop with echoes of modern-day fears." Publishers Weekly

"The plot of Long Spoon Lane is neatly put together and works out like a clever contrap-tion with no loose ends."

Los Angeles Times

"There is much to love in Long Spoon Lane. The characters are subtly many-layered. Fans of the series, with its amazingly well-drawn historical details, know the delight of time traveling back to Victorian England.... An altogether intriguing and enjoyable mystery." The Book Reporter

LONG SPOON LANE

BY ANNE PERRY

Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Featuring William Monk

The Face of a Stranger A Dangerous Mourning

Defend and Betray A Sudden, Fearful Death The Sins of the Wolf Cain His Brother Weighed in the Balance The Silent Cry

A Breach of Promise The Twisted Root Slaves of Obsession

Funeral in Blue Death of a Stranger The Shifting Tide Dark Assassin

Featuring Charlotte and Thomas Pitt

The Cater Street Hangman Callander Square

Paragon Walk Resurrection Row Bluegate Fields Rutland Place Death in the Devil's Acre

Cardington Crescent Silence in Hanover Close Bethlehem Road Highgate Rise Belgrave Square

Farriers' Lane The Hyde Park Headsman Traitors Gate Pentecost Alley Ashworth Hall Brunswick Gardens Bedford Square Half Moon Street The Whitechapel Conspiracy Southampton Row

Seven Dials Long Spoon Lane

The World War INovels No Graves As Yet Shoulder the Sky

Angels in the Gloom

The Christmas Novels A Christmas Journey A Christmas Visitor

A Christmas Guest

LONG SPOON LANE

A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel

ANNE PERRY

BALLANTINE BOOKS NEW YORK

Long Spoon Lane is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or per-sons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

2006 Ballantine Books Mass Market Edition

Copyright 2005 by Anne Perry

Excerpt from Dark Assassin by Anne Perry copyright 2005 by Anne Perry

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming hardcover edi-tion of Dark Assassin by Anne Perry. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forth-coming edition.

BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2005.

eISBN-13: 978-0-345-49086-5 eISBN-10: 0-345-49086-X

www.ballantinebooks.com

v1.0

In memory of my mother, H. Marion Perry, with gratitude,

January 30, 1912-January 19, 2004

LONG SPOON LANE

T he hansom cab lurched around the corner, throwing Pitt forward almost onto his knees. Victor Narraway, his companion, swore. Pitt regained his balance as they gathered speed towards Aldgate and Whitechapel High Street. The horse's hooves struck hard on the cobbles and ahead of them traffic was scattering out of the way. Thank heaven this early there was little enough of it: a few costermongers' carts with fruit and vegetables, a brewer's dray, goods wagons, and one horse-drawn omnibus.

"Right!" Narraway shouted at the driver. "Commercial Road! It's faster!"

The driver obeyed without answering. It was fifteen min-utes before six on a summer morning and there were already laborers, hawkers, tradesmen, and domestic servants about. Please heaven they would be in Myrdle Street before six o'clock!

Pitt felt as if his heart were beating in his throat. The call had come just over half an hour ago, but it felt like an eter-nity. The telephone had woken him and he had gone racing downstairs in his nightshirt. Narraway's voice had been crackly and breathless on the other end. "I've sent a cab for you. Meet me on Cornhill, north side, outside the Royal Exchange. Immediately. Anarchists are going to bomb a house on Myrdle Street." Then he had hung up without waiting for

2 Anne Perry

a reply, leaving Pitt to go back upstairs and tell Charlotte be-fore he scrambled into his clothes. She had run downstairs and fetched him a glass of milk and a slice of bread, but there had been no time for tea.

He had stood a cold, impatient five minutes on the pave-ment outside the Royal Exchange until Narraway's cab ar-rived and slithered to a halt. Then the driver's long whip snaked out and urged the horse forward again even before Pitt had fallen into the other seat.

Now they were charging towards Myrdle Street and he still had very little idea what it was about, except that the in-formation had come from Narraway's own sources on the fringes of the seething East End underworldthe province of cracksmen, macers, screevers, footpads, and the swarm-ing thieves of every kind that preyed on the river.

"Why Myrdle Street?" he shouted. "Who are they?"

"Could be anyone," Narraway replied without taking his eyes off the road. Special Branch had been created originally to deal with Irish Fenians in London, but now they dealt with all threats to the safety of the country. Just at the moment early summer 1893the danger at the front of most people's minds was anarchist bombers. There had been several inci-dents in Paris, and London had suffered half a dozen explo-sions of one degree or another.

Narraway had no idea whether this latest threat came from the Irish, who were still pursuing Home Rule, or revolution-aries simply desiring to overthrow the government, the throne, or law and order in general.

They swung left around the corner up into Myrdle Street, across the junction, and stopped. Just up ahead the police were busy waking people up, hurrying them out of their homes and into the road. There was no time to look for trea-sured possessions, not even to grasp onto more than a coat or a shawl against the cool air of the morning.

Pitt saw a constable of about twenty chivvying along an

LONG SPOON LANE 3

old woman. Her white hair hung in thin wisps over her shoul-ders, her arthritic feet bare on the cobbles. Suddenly he almost choked with fury against whoever was doing this.

A small boy wandered across the street, blinking in bewil-derment, dragging a mongrel puppy on a length of string.

Narraway was out of the cab and striding towards the near-est constable, Pitt on his heels. The constable swiveled around to tell him to go back, his face flushed with anxiety and annoyance. "Yer gotta get out o' the way, sir." He waved his arm. "Well back, sir. There's a bomb in one o'..."

"I know!" Narraway said smartly. "I'm Victor Narraway, head of Special Branch. This is my associate, Thomas Pitt. Do you know where the bomb is?"

The constable stood half to attention, still holding his right hand out to bar people from returning to their homes in the still, almost breathless morning air. "No sir," he replied. "Not to be exact. We reckon it's gotter be one o' them two over there." He inclined his head towards the opposite side of the street. Narrow, three-story houses huddled together, doors wide open, front steps whitened by proud, hardwork-ing women. A cat wandered out of one of them, and a child shouted to it eagerly and it ran towards her.