Read Treachery at Lancaster Gate for Free Online Page A

They saw it as a just cause on whose behalf to rebel.
    “No,” Isadora said simply. “A dear friend of his was convicted and hanged a couple of years ago. Alexander did everything he could to save his friend, certain that he was innocent. He failed, and Dylan Lezant went to the gallows. Alexander never really got over it. He believes that a large proportion of the police are deeply corrupt, and they are being shielded by other police for reasons of their own.”
    “Do you believe him?” he asked.
    She had not expected anything quite so direct. It was clear from the sudden widening of her eyes.
    “I believe it is what he thinks,” she answered slowly.
    Pitt remembered the Lezant case. He recalled with another chill that that, too, was to do with a drug arrest that had gone wrong. Lezant had been arrested after he shot a totally innocent man who merely happened to be passing.
    “I recall the case.” Pitt nodded. “Tragic. Lezant was also addicted, wasn’t he?”
    “Yes, but as I said, Alexander was still certain that he was innocent.”
    “So who shot the bystander?”
    She shook her head very slightly. “Alexander believed Lezant’s story that it was the police themselves.”
    Pitt was startled.
    “Why would they do that, for heaven’s sake?”
    “Carelessness…panic,” she said. “But then they had to blame someone else, because they shouldn’t have had guns with them anyway. I know what you think: He was a young man who was devoted to his friend, perhaps the one person who understood his addiction and did not blame him. He believed what he had to, to preserve his own emotional values and possibly even to justify the battle he put up to save Lezant from the rope—and failed. Who knows all the reasons why we do things?”
    He could not argue with her. “So you think Alexander could have placed the bomb that blew up the Lancaster Gate house, killing two policemen and critically injuring three more? Is that not…extreme?”
    “Yes, it is,” she agreed. “And I very much hope that I am totally mistaken. Believe me, I debated long and deeply whether I should even mention it to you. It seems disloyal to my friend. Maybe it is worse than that. I am not certain John would approve. I suppose that is obvious, since I have not told him.” Now her face was pinched with a painful memory. “But I know that people you have loved, that you have known all your life, can be quite different from what you have supposed. Why would you even entertain the idea that they are really strangers to you, full of passions that you did not dream of?”
    He knew now that she was speaking of her brother, who would have been willing to see her blamed for a crime she had not committed. She would never know if he would even have seen her hanged for it without speaking out to save her with the truth.
    The shadow of that time was there in the room. What did she recall of it now? It had been years ago and it had been Pitt who had saved her. It was also Pitt who had caused the downfall of her brother, and his death, in another case after that. So much old pain. And yet Isadora had come to him now with this, not choosing to look aside, not even choosing to confide in Cornwallis, the husband she loved so deeply, because he had once been assistant commissioner of the very police they were speaking of.
    Was that because she trusted Pitt to face the truth, whatever the cost?
    “I’ll speak to Mr. Duncannon tomorrow,” he promised. “Where can I find him?”
    She had wanted him to say just this; it was the reason she had come. And yet now she also looked stricken. The die was cast. It was too late to change her mind.
    With stiff fingers she opened her reticule and passed him a small piece of paper. On it was written the address of the flat in which Alexander Duncannon lived. He was of the social class and income that did not necessitate any occupation, except whatever he chose with which to pass his time.
    “When might I find him