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Parliament Murdered on Westminster Bridge,’ ” and from the second, “ ‘Shocking Murder—Corpse on the Lamppost.’ ” He looked up at Pitt. “Go home and get some sleep, man,” he ordered. “Come back this afternoon when we have had a chance to find a few witnesses. Then you can start on the business associates, and the political ones.” He glanced at the papers on the table. “They aren’t going to give us much time.”

2
    C HARLOTTE P ITT HAD NOT yet heard about the murder on Westminster Bridge, and at the moment her mind was totally absorbed in the meeting she was attending. It was the first time she had been part of such an assembly. Most of those gathered had little in common with each other, except an interest in the representation of women in Parliament. Most had no thought beyond the wild and previously undreamed of possibility that women might actually vote, but one or two extraordinary souls had conceived the idea of women as members of that august body. One woman had even offered herself for election. Of course, she had sunk with barely a trace, a joke in the worst taste.
    Now Charlotte sat in the back row of a crowded meeting hall and watched the first speaker, a stout young woman with a strong, blunt face and red hands, as she got to her feet and the muttering gradually fell to silence.
    “Sisters!” The word stuck oddly on such a mixed company. In front of Charlotte a well-dressed woman in green silk hunched her shoulders a little, withdrawing from the touch and the association of those she was forced to be so close to. “We’re all ’ere for the same reason!” the young woman on the platform continued, her voice rich, and hardened with a strong northern accent. “We all believe as ’ow we should ’ave some say in the way our lives is run, wot laws is made an’ oo makes ’em! All kinds o’ men get a chance to choose their members o’ Parliament, an’ if ’e wants to get elected, that Member ’as to answer to the people. ’Alf the people, sisters, just ’alf the people—the ’alf that’s men!”
    She went on speaking for another ten minutes, and Charlotte only half listened. She had heard the arguments before, and in her mind they were already irrefutable. What she had come for was to see what support there was, and the kind of women who were prepared to come from conviction rather than curiosity. Gazing round at them as discreetly as she could, she saw that a large number were soberly dressed in browns and muted tones, and the cut of their coats and skirts were serviceable but not smart, designed to last through many changes of fashion. Several wore shawls pulled round their shoulders for warmth, not decoration. They were ordinary women whose husbands were clerks or tradesmen, struggling to make ends meet, perhaps striving after a little gentility, perhaps not.
    Here and there were a few who were smarter; some young with a touch of elegance, others matronly, ample bosoms draped with furs and beads, hats sprouting feathers.
    But it was their faces that interested Charlotte most, the fleeting expressions chasing across them as they listened to the ideas that almost all society found revolutionary, unnatural, and either ridiculous or dangerous, depending on their perception of any real change awakening from them.
    In some she saw interest, even the glimmer of belief. In others there was confusion: the thought was too big to accept, required too great a break with the inbred teaching of mother and grandmother, a way of life not always comfortable but whose hardships were at least familiar. In some there was already derision and dislike, and the fear of change.
    One face held Charlotte’s attention particularly, round and yet delicately boned, intelligent, curious, very feminine, and with a strong, stubborn jaw. It was the expression which drew Charlotte, a mixture of wonder and doubt, as though new thoughts were entering the woman’s mind and enormous questions arose out of them