by Anne Perry
“Tactless,” Pitt agreed.
“His middle name.” The superintendent sighed. “But he saved the man’s life. And there’s Henshaw—he’s young and full of new ideas, and Shaw can’t be bothered with them either, says they are untried and too risky. The man’s as contrary as an army mule at times. Henshaw lost his temper, but I don’t think he really bears any resentment. That’s all I can give you.”
“No tact, no discretion with his colleagues, but how about impropriety with his patients?” Pitt was not yet ready to give up.
“Shaw?” The superintendent’s eyebrows rose. “Damn your realism, but I suppose you have to. Not that I know of, but he’s a charming and vigorous man. Not impossible some woman imagined more than there was.”
He was interrupted by a sharp tap on the door.
“Come in,” he said with a glance of apology at Pitt.
The same fair young man who had so disapproved of Pitt poked his head around the door with a look of equal distaste on his face.
“Mr. Marchant is here, sir.” He ignored Pitt very pointedly. “From the town hall,” he added for good measure.
“Tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes,” the superintendent replied without any haste.
“From the town hall,” the young man repeated. “It is important—sir.”
“So is this,” the superintendent said very distinctly, without shifting his position at all. “Man’s life might hang on it.” Then he smiled lugubriously at the double meaning. “And the longer you stand there, Spooner, the longer it will be before I am finished here and can come and see Marchant! Get out man, and deliver the message!”
Spooner withdrew with umbrage, closing the door as sharply as he dared.
The superintendent turned to Pitt again with a slight shake of his head.
“Shaw …” Pitt prompted.
“Not impossible some woman fell in love with him,” the superintendent resumed, shaking his head. “It happens. Odd relationship, doctor and patient, so personal, and yet so practical and in some ways remote. Wouldn’t be the first time it has got out of hand, or been misunderstood by a husband, or a father.” He pushed out his lip. “It’s no secret Alfred Lutterworth thinks his daughter sees a damned sight too much of Shaw, and insists on doing it alone, and won’t discuss what passes between them, or what her ailment might be. Handsome girl, and great expectations. Old Lutterworth made a fortune in cotton. Don’t know if anyone else has his eyes on her. Don’t live in Highgate myself.”
“Thank you, sir,” Pitt said sincerely. “You’ve given me a great deal of your time, and been some help at least in eliminating certain possibilities.”
“I don’t envy you your job,” the superintendent replied. “I thought mine was hard, but I fear yours will be harder. Good day to you.”
When Pitt left the hospital the autumn evening was dark and the gas lamps were already lit. It was now October, and a few early leaves crunched under his feet as he strode towards the intersection where he could get a cab. The air had a clarity and sharpness that promised frost in a week or two. The stars shone in pinpricks of light infinitely far away, flickering and sparkling in the cold. Out here in Highgate there was no fog from the river, no smoke in the air from factories or densely packed houses huddled back-to-back. He could smell the wind blowing off the fields and hear a dog barking in the distance. One day he must take Charlotte and the children for a week in the country. She had not been away from Bloomsbury for a long time. She would love it. He began to think of small economies he could make, ways he could save enough for it to be possible, and the expression on her face when he could tell her. He would keep it to himself until he was sure.
He strode out along the footpath and was so lost in thought that the first cab passed him by and was over the rise in the hill and disappearing before he realized it.
In the morning he returned to Highgate to see if Murdo had discovered anything of interest, but he was already out hot on the scent, and had left only the briefest notes to that effect. Pitt thanked the desk sergeant, who still grudged him his interference in a local matter which he believed they could well have handled themselves. Pitt left and went back to the hospital to speak to the Shaws’ butler.
The man was propped up in bed looking haggard, his eyes deep socketed with shock and pain, his face unshaved and his left arm bound in bandages. There were raw grazes on his face and one scab beginning to form. It was unnecessary for the doctor to tell Pitt that the man had been badly burned.
Pitt stood by the bedside and in spite of the fact that it was blood, carbolic, sweat and the faint odor of chloroform that he could smell in the air, the sharp stench of smoke and wet cinders came back to him as if he had stood by the ruined house only a few minutes since, and then seen the charred wreck of Clemency Shaw’s body lying on a stretcher in the morgue, barely recognizable as human. The anger inside him knotted his stomach and his chest till he found it hard to form the words in his mouth or force the breath to make speech.
“Mr. Burdin?”
The butler opened his eyes and looked at Pitt with no interest.
“Mr. Burdin, I am Inspector Pitt of the Metropolitan Police. I have come to Highgate to find out who set the fire that burned Dr. Shaw’s house—” He did not mention Clemency. Perhaps the man had not been told. This would be a cruel and unnecessary shock. He should be informed with gentleness, by someone prepared to stay with him, perhaps even to treat his grief if it worsened his condition.
“I don’t know,” Burdin said hoarsely, his lungs still seared by the smoke. “I saw nothing, heard nothing till Jenny started screaming out. Jenny’s the housemaid. Her bedroom’s nearest the main house.”
“We did not imagine you had seen the fires started.” Pitt tried to sound reassuring. “Or that you knew anything obvious. But there may have been something which, on reflection, could be of importance—perhaps when put together with other things. May I ask you some questions?” It was a polite fiction to seek permission, but the man was badly shocked, and in pain.
“Of course.” Burdin’s voice dropped to a croak. “But I’ve already been thinking, turning it over and over in my mind.” His face furrowed now with renewed effort. “But I don’t remember anything different at all—not a thing. Everything was just as—” The breath caught in his throat and he began to cough as the raw lining hurt anew.
Pitt was confused for a moment, panic growing inside him as the man’s face suffused with blood as he struggled for air, tears streaming down his cheeks. He stared around for help, and there was none. Then he saw water on the table in the corner and reached for it, tipping it into a cup clumsily in his haste. He clasped Burdin around the shoulders and eased him up and put the cup to his lips. At first he choked on it, spluttering it over himself, then at last enough trickled down his burning throat and cooled it. The pain was eased and he lay back, exhausted. It would be cruel and pointless to require him to speak again. But the questions must be asked.
“Don’t speak,” Pitt said firmly. “Turn your hand palm up if the answer is yes, and down if it is no.”
Burdin smiled weakly and turned his palm up.
“Good. Did anyone call on the doctor at his house that day, other than his surgery appointments?”
Palm up.
“Tradesmen or business?”
Palm down.
“Personal acquaintance?”
Palm on its side.
“Family?”
Palm up.
“The Worlingham sisters?”
Palm down, very definitely.
“Mr. or Mrs. Hatch?”
Palm up.
“Mrs. Hatch?”
Palm down.
“Mr. Hatch? Was there a quarrel, raised voices, unpleasantness?” Although Pitt could think of nothing that could aggravate a temperamental difference into murder.
Burdin shrugged fractionally and turned his hand on its side.
“Not more than usual?” Pitt guessed.
Bur
din smiled and there was a flicker of something like humor in his eyes, but again he shrugged. He did not know.
“Anyone else call?”
Palm up.
“Local person?”
Palm up and raised a little.
“Very local? Mr. Lindsay?”
Burdin’s face relaxed in a smile, the palm remained up.
“Anyone else that you know of?”
Palm down.
He thought of asking if there was any mail that might be unusual or of interest, but what would such a thing be? How could anyone recognize it?
“Did Dr. Shaw seem anxious or disturbed about anything that day?”
The palm was down, but indecisive, hovering above the bed cover.
Pitt took a guess, drawn from what he had observed of Shaw’s temperament. “Angry? Was he angry about something?”
The palm came up quickly.
“Thank you, Mr. Burdin. If you think of anything else, comments, a letter, unusual arrangements, please tell the hospital and write it down for me. I shall come immediately. I hope you recover quickly.”
Burdin smiled and closed his eyes. Even that small effort had tired him.
Pitt left, angry himself at so much physical pain, and helpless because he could do nothing for it, and he had learned little he felt of use. He imagined Shaw and Hatch probably quarreled fairly regularly, simply because their natures were utterly different. They would almost certainly perceive any issue with opposite views.
The Shaws’ cook was in a far less serious state of health, and he left the hospital and took a hansom for the short ride down Highgate Hill and through Holloway to the Seven Sisters Road and the house of her relatives, which Murdo had given him. It was small, neat and shabby, exactly what he expected, and he was permitted in only with reluctance and after considerable argument.
He found the cook sitting up in bed in the best bedroom, wrapped around more against the indecency of being visited by a strange man than to prevent any chill. She had been burned on one arm and had lost some of her hair, giving her a lopsided, plucked look which had it been less tragic would have been funny. As it was Pitt had difficulty in maintaining a perfectly sober expression.
The niece, bustling with offense, remained obtrusively present every moment of the time.
“Mrs. Babbage?” Pitt began. All cooks were given the courtesy title of “Mrs.” whether they were married or not.
She looked at him with alarm and her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a shriek.
“I mean you no harm, Mrs. Babbage—”
“Who are you? What do you want? I don’t know you.” She craned upwards as if his mere presence threatened her with some physical danger.
He sat down quickly on a small bedroom chair just behind him and tried to be disarming. She was obviously still in an extreme state of shock, emotional if not from her injuries which appeared to be relatively slight.
“I am Inspector Pitt,” he said, introducing himself, avoiding the word police. He knew how respectable servants hated even an association with crime as tenuous as the presence of the police. “It is my duty to do what I can to discover how the fire started.”
“Not in my kitchen!” she said so loudly it startled her niece, who drew her breath in in a loud gasp. “Don’t you go accusing me, or Doris! I know how to tend a stove. Never had so much as a coal fall out, I ’aven’t; never mind burnin’ down an ’ole ’ouse.”
“We know that, Mrs. Babbage,” he said soothingly. “It did not begin in the kitchen.”
She looked a trifle mollified, but still her eyes were wide and wary and she twisted a rag of a handkerchief around and around in her fingers till the flesh of them was red with the friction. She was afraid to believe him, suspecting a trap.
“It was begun deliberately, in the curtains of four different ground-floor rooms,” he elaborated.
“Nobody would do such a thing,” she whispered, winding the handkerchief even more tightly. “What do you come to me for?”
“Because you might have seen something odd that day, noticed someone unusual hanging around—” Even as he said it he knew it was hopeless. She was too shocked to recall anything, and he himself did not believe it had been a tramp or a casual vagrant. It was too careful; it spoke of a deep hatred, or insatiable greed, or fear of some intolerable loss. It came back to his mind again with renewed force: what did Stephen Shaw know—and about whom?
“I didn’t see nothin’.” She began to weep, dabbing at her eyes, her voice rising again. “I mind me own business. I don’t ask no questions an’ I don’t listen be’ind no doors. An’ I don’t give meself airs to think things about the master nor the mistress—”
“Oh?” Pitt said instantly. “That’s very commendable. I suppose some cooks do?”
“ ’Course they do.”
“Really? Like what, for example?” He endeavored to look puzzled. “If you were that sort, what may you have wondered?”
She drew herself up in virtue and glared at him over the top of her large hand, wrapped around with the sodden handkerchief.
“Well, if I were that sort—which I in’t—I might ’ave wondered why we let one of the maids go, when there weren’t nothin’ wrong wiv ’er, and why we ’aven’t ’ad salmon like we used to, nor a good leg o’ pork neither—an’ I might ’ave asked Burdin why we ’aven’t ’ad a decent case o’ claret come inter the ’ouse in six months.”
“But of course you didn’t,” Pitt said judiciously, hiding the shadow of a smile. “Dr. Shaw is very fortunate to have such a discreet cook in his household.”
“Oh, I don’t know as I can cook for ’im anymore!” She started sniffing again violently. “Jenny’s given ’er notice an’ as soon as she’s fit she’ll go back ’ome ter Somerset where she comes from. An’ Doris in’t no more’n a chit of a thing—thirteen mebbe. An’ poor Mr. Burdin’s so bad who can say if ’e’ll ever be the same again? No, I got ter be in a respectable ’ouse, for me nerves.”
There was no purpose in arguing with her, and for the time being Shaw had no need of servants—there was no house for them to live in or to wait upon. And apart from that, Pitt’s mind was racing with the very interesting fact that the Shaws had apparently reduced their standard of living recently, to the degree that the cook had noticed it and it had set her mind wondering.
He stood up, wished her well, thanked the niece, and took his departure. Next he went in search of Jenny and Doris, neither of whom were burned more than superficially and more suffering from shock and fright and some considerable pain, but not in danger of relapse, as might be the case with Burdin.
He found them in the parsonage, in the care of Lally Clitheridge, who needed no explanation of his call.
But even after careful questioning they could tell him nothing of use. They had seen no one unusual in the neighborhood; the house had been exactly as it was at any other time. It had been a very ordinary day until they were roused, Jenny by the smell of smoke as she lay awake, thinking of some matter she blushed to recall and would not name, and Doris by Jenny’s screams.
He thanked them and went out as dusk was falling and walked briskly southwards to Woodsome Road and the home of the woman who came in daily to do the heavy work, a Mrs. Colter. It was a small house but the windows were clean and the step scrubbed so immaculately he avoided putting his boots on it out of respect.
The door was opened by a big, comfortable woman with a broad-cheeked face, an ample bosom, and an apron tied tightly around her waist, the pocket stuffed full of odds and ends and her hair trailing out of a hasty knot on the back of her neck.
“Who are you?” she said in surprise, but there was no ill nature in it. “I dunno you, do I?”
“Mrs. Colter?” Pitt removed his rather worn hat, now a little crooked in the crown.
“That’s me. It don’t tell me who you are!”
“Thomas Pitt, from the Metropolitan Police—”
“Oh—” Her eyes widened. “You’ll be about
poor Dr. Shaw’s fire, then. What a terrible thing. She was a good woman, was Mrs. Shaw. I’m real grieved about that. Come in. I daresay you’re cold—an’ ’ungry, mebbe?”
Pitt stepped in, wiping his feet carefully on the mat before going onto the polished linoleum floor. He almost bent and took his boots off, as he would have done at home. A smell of rich stew assailed him, delicate with onions and the sweetness of fresh carrots and turnips.
“Yes,” he said with feeling. “Yes I am.”
“Well I don’t know as I can ’elp you.” She led the way back and he followed after. To sit in a room with that aroma, and not eat, would be very hard. Her generous figure strode ahead of him and into the small, scrubbed kitchen, a huge pot simmering on the back of the stove filling the air with steam and warmth. “But I’ll try,” she added.
“Thank you.” Pitt sat down on one of the chairs and wished she meant the stew, not information.
“They say it were deliberate,” she said, taking the lid off the pot and giving its contents a brisk stir with a wooden ladle. “Although ’ow anybody could bring theirselves to do such a thing I’m sure I don’t know.”
“You said ‘how,’ Mrs. Colter, not ‘why,’ ” Pitt observed, inhaling deeply and letting it out in a sigh. “You can think of reasons why?”
“In’t much meat in it,” she said dubiously. “Just a bit o’ skirt o’ mutton.”
“You have no ideas why, Mrs. Colter?”
“ ’Cos I in’t got the money for more, o’ course,” she said, looking at him as if he were simple, but still not unkindly.
Pitt blushed. He was well used enough to poverty not to have made such an idiotic remark, or one so condescending.