Anne Perry - The Angel Court Affair

All fell silent as Melville Smith climbed up the steps to the platform and stood facing them. He was of average height, a little pigeon-chested. It was when he spoke that he commanded the attention; his voice was beautiful. He introduced himself and welcomed the audience as if he were the host at some party in his home, and Sofia Delacruz the favored guest.

Finished, he stepped back and Sofia made her entrance. If she was afraid, there was no reflection of it in her bearing. She stood straight, her head high, a slight smile on her remarkable face.

Pitt would have liked to watch her and listen to how she told a crowd of strangers about the extraordinary beliefs she’d shared with him. But it was his duty to look for any threats, even if he felt sure none would arise. It was the regular police’s job to keep out any obvious troublemakers, and should unruly behavior begin, to quell it. But tackling any serious attempt on Sofia’s life was Pitt’s task. He did his best to tune out her words as he faced the audience, watching, trying to judge their reactions.

She spoke as she had warned him she would, gently to begin with: the comforting, familiar ideas of God as a father of all mankind.

In the second row, near the center, a young man yawned conspicuously. It was a discourteous gesture. Pitt glanced at Sofia and saw that she was aware of it. The man had chosen a very visible seat from which to be rude.

Sofia was moving on to the creation of the world, and man’s place in it. Her voice was lifting with enthusiasm, the vibrancy in it carrying to the back reaches of the hall.

The young man in the second row was now watching her intently. He was no longer pretending boredom, and his body was rigid, shoulders high.

Sofia continued, moving forward to the front of the platform, as she spoke of the earth and its creatures. The awe she felt toward the beauty she was describing was clear in her face.

“What about Darwin?” a man yelled out, his voice so shrill he sounded close to hysteria.

“Exactly my point,” Sofia replied without hesitation. “Things change and evolve all the time. It is possible that we may forever improve, becoming wiser, braver, kinder and more honest, learning into eternity.”

“But what about Darwin himself, who says we are little more than monkeys?” Now the man was standing, his fists clenched, his red beard bristling. His face suffused with anger.

Sofia smiled. “Even Darwin,” she replied. “There is no one for whom progress is impossible.”

Pitt knew she had intended to be funny, but she had misjudged at least part of her audience. Far to the left someone laughed, but the man with the beard was enraged.

“Don’t you dare mock us!” he yelled, his voice even louder. “Blasphemer! No man takes the name of God lightly, still less some…some woman! You come here from a godless place and make fun of us, try to make fools imagine they are the equal of God! You-”

The burly figure of Sergeant Drury was getting ready to move forward.

Sofia preempted him. “I mock no one, sir.” She said it levelly, but her voice had intense power. “Spain is not a godless country, and as an Englishwoman who has been made welcome there, I am ashamed to hear you speak so of your fellow man, simply because they do not worship God in exactly the same manner you do.”

Another man rose to his feet. He was bald-headed and wearing a stiff dark suit. “The insult to Spain is but of ignorance,” he said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. “But to suggest that man is the same as God is indeed blasphemy! I will not stand by and listen to it in silence, or I am guilty of it too.” Again he waved his hand. “As are all of us here!”

There was a flush on Sofia’s cheeks, but her voice remained calm, if a little shaky.

“I did not say that man was the same as God now, sir, only that he can follow the same path toward the light, and so become the same. Did Christ not command us to become perfect, even as He was?”

“That’s not what He meant!” the man said incredulously.

Another barrel-chested man let out a bellow of laughter. “And how the devil would you know what He meant?” he demanded. He jerked his thumb toward Sofia. “Personally I think she’s crazy as a box of frogs, but she makes as much sense as you do, and she looks a lot better.”

Now there was laughter all around the hall. Three middle-aged ladies stood up and went out, stiff-backed with outrage.

Somehow Sophia managed to regain control of the discussion and picked up the thread of her narrative about man as a creature capable of becoming all that was noble. She explained the high cost in faith and work: experiences of pain and the conquering of selfishness, ignorance, the instinctive leap to judge others.

There were other brief forays into unpleasantness among the audience, but they were controlled, dissipated with moderate good humor, and finally at a quarter to ten the meeting closed. Pitt was surprised at how tired he was. His head and his back ached, his muscles knotted from the constant expectation of violence. He watched Sofia Delacruz shake people’s hands, nod and smile as if she were utterly composed, and then, when the last person had moved toward the door, turn to Ramon and walk slowly in his direction, weariness momentarily acknowledged.

Pitt turned away and his eye was caught by the light glinting off a mane of fair hair as a tall man moved through the crowd. Many people made way for him, smiling, clearly recognizing him. He gave several of them a nod and a smile, then continued on out through the doors, apparently too deep in thought to stop and speak.

Pitt recognized him too. It was Dalton Teague, a gentleman about town, related to many of the great families of power, particularly that of Lord Salisbury, the prime minister. But the deference Pitt had seen here was to Teague the hero of the cricket field, who had outplayed almost every other sportsman of the age. The poise with which he moved was that of the athlete. The attention he commanded could never be bought, it could only be won.

Pitt had no time to wonder what Teague was doing here. He had to check with all the policemen, and see that Sofia Delacruz left safely. It was another half hour before he was able to speak briefly to Brundage, thank Drury and his men, then with a sigh of relief go outside into the April night.

The streetlamps were already lit, bright, comforting orbs like ornate jewels set in iron, stretching above the footpath. He was walking toward the main road to find a hansom to take him home when a man emerged from the shadow of the nearest building and fell into step beside him.

“Evening, Commander,” he said pleasantly. He had a rich voice, well spoken and threaded with a warm humor. “You did well to contain that so unobtrusively.”

“Thank you,” Pitt said drily. He did not wish to enter into conversation with a stranger, even if it was civil, but there was something in the man’s tone that told him this was the beginning of the exchange, not the end.

“My name is Frank Laurence.” The man kept pace with Pitt, in spite of being three inches shorter.

Pitt did not reply. Clearly Laurence knew who he was.

“I’m a journalist with The Times, ” Laurence continued. “I find it very interesting that the commander of Special Branch should be concerned with a visiting saint, as it were. Or do I overstate Sofia Delacruz’s holiness?”

Pitt smiled in the darkness, in spite of his irritation. “I have no idea, Mr. Laurence. I don’t know how you measure holiness. If that is what your newspaper wishes of you, you will need to acquire your help elsewhere.” He increased his pace slightly.

Laurence still kept up with him, without apparent effort.

“I like your sense of humor, Mr. Pitt, but I am afraid my editor will want something more from me than an estimate of holiness.” He sounded as if the whole idea amused him. “Something more violent, you know? Scandal, attack, the risk of murder.”