Highgate Rise

by Anne Perry

  Murdo hunched his shoulders and his face tightened as the ugliness of the thought caught hold of his mind. He looked cold and miserable in spite of his burned face.

  “Do you think so, sir?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s possible. We can’t ignore it.”

  “It’s brutal.”

  “Burning people to death is brutal.” Pitt clenched his teeth against the wind stinging the flesh and creeping into every ill-covered corner of neck and wrist and ankle. “We’re not looking for a moderate or squeamish man—or woman.”

  Murdo looked away, refusing to meet Pitt’s eyes or even guess his thoughts when he spoke of women and these crimes. “There must be other motives,” he said doggedly. “Shaw’s a doctor. He could have treated all kinds of diseases, deaths that someone wants hidden—or at least the way of it. What if someone else murdered Theophilus Worlingham?”

  “Who?” Pitt asked.

  “Mrs. Shaw? She would inherit.”

  “And then burned herself to death—and Lindsay?” Pitt said sarcastically.

  Murdo restrained an angry answer with difficulty. Pitt was his superior and he dared not be openly rude, but the unhappiness inside him wanted to lash out. Every time Pitt mentioned motive Flora’s face came back to his mind, flushed with anger, lovely, full of fire to defend Shaw.

  Pitt’s voice broke through his thoughts.

  “But you are right; there is a whole area of motive we haven’t even begun to uncover. God knows what ugly or tragic secrets. We’ve got to get Shaw to tell us.”

  They were almost at the Worlinghams’ house and nothing more was said until they were in the morning room by the fire. Angeline was sitting upright in the large armchair and Celeste was standing behind her.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what we can tell you, Mr. Pitt,” Celeste said quietly. She looked older than the last time he had seen her; there were lines of strain around her eyes and mouth and her hair was pulled back more severely in an unflattering fashion. But it made the strength of her face more apparent. Angeline, on the other hand, looked pale and puffy, and the softer shape of her jaw, sagging a little, showed her irresolution. There were signs of weeping in the redness of her eyelids, and she looked tremulous enough to weep again now.

  “We were asleep,” Angeline added. “This is terrible! What is happening to us? Who would do these things?”

  “Perhaps if we learn why, we will also know who.” Pitt guided them towards the subject he wanted.

  “Why?” Angeline blinked. “We don’t know!”

  “You may, Miss Worlingham—without realizing it. There is money involved, inheritances …”

  “Our money?” Celeste said the word unconsciously.

  “Your brother Theophilus’s money, to be exact,” Pitt corrected her. “But yes, Worlingham money. I know it is intrusive, but it is necessary that we know; can you tell us all you remember of your brother’s death, Miss Worlingham?” He looked from one to the other of them, making sure they knew he included them both.

  “It was very sudden,” Celeste’s features hardened, her mouth forming a thin, judgmental line. “I am afraid I agree with Angeline: Stephen did not care for him as we would have wished. Theophilus was in the most excellent health.”

  “If you had known him,” Angeline added, “you would have been as shocked as we were. He was such a—” She searched her memory for the vision of him as he had been. “He was so vigorous.” She smiled tearfully. “He was so alive. He always knew what to do. He was so decisive, you know, a natural leader, like Papa. He believed in health in the mind and a lot of exercise and fresh air for the body—for men, of course. Not ladies. Theophilus always knew the right answer, and what one should believe. He was not Papa’s equal, of course, but still I never knew him when he was mistaken about anything that mattered.” She sniffed hard and reached for a wholly inadequate wisp of a handkerchief. “We always doubted the manner of his death, one may as well say so now. It was not natural, not for Theophilus.”

  “What was the cause, Miss Worlingham?”

  “Stephen said it was apoplexy,” Celeste answered coldly. “But of course we have only his word for that.”

  “Who found him?” Pitt pressed, although he already knew.

  “Clemency.” Celeste’s eyes opened wide. “Do you believe Stephen killed him, and then when he realized that Clemency knew what he had done, he killed her also? And then poor Mr. Lindsay. Dear heaven.” She shivered convulsively. “How evil—how monstrously evil. He shall not come into this house again—not set foot over the step!”

  “Of course not, dear.” Angeline sniffed noisily. “Mr. Pitt will arrest him, and he will be put in prison.”

  “Hanged,” Celeste corrected grimly.

  “Oh dear.” Angeline was horrified. “How dreadful—thank heaven Papa did not live to see it. Someone in our family hanged.” She began to weep, her shoulders bent, her body huddled in frightened misery.

  “Stephen Shaw is not in our family!” Celeste snapped. “He is not and never was a Worlingham. It is Clemency’s misfortune that she married him, but she became a Shaw—he is not one of us.”

  “It is still dreadful. We have never had such shame anywhere near us, even by marriage,” Angeline protested. “The name of Worlingham has been synonymous with honor and dignity of the highest order. Just imagine what poor Papa would have felt if the slightest spot of dishonor had touched his name. He never did anything in his entire life to merit an ugly word. And now his son has been murdered—and his granddaughter—and her husband will be hanged. He would have died of shame.”

  Pitt let her continue because he was curious to see how easily and completely they both accepted that Shaw was guilty. Now he must impress on them that it was only one of several possibilities.

  “There is no need to distress yourself yet, Miss Worlingham. Your brother’s death may well have been apoplexy, just as Dr. Shaw said, and we do not know that he is guilty of anything yet. It may have nothing to do with money. It may well be that he has treated some medical case which he realized involved a crime, or some disease that the sufferer would kill to keep secret.”

  Angeline looked up sharply. “You mean insanity? Someone is mad, and Stephen knows about it? Then why doesn’t he say? They ought to be locked up in Bedlam, with other lunatics. He shouldn’t allow them to go around free—where they can burn people to death.”

  Pitt opened his mouth to explain to her that perhaps the person only thought Shaw knew. Then he looked at the mounting hysteria in her, and at Celeste’s tense eyes, and decided it would be a waste of time.

  “It is only a possibility,” he said levelly. “It may be someone’s death was not natural, and Dr. Shaw knew of it, or suspected it. There are many other motives, perhaps even some we have not yet thought of.”

  “You are frightening me,” Angeline said in a small, shaky voice. “I am very confused. Did Stephen kill anyone, or not?”

  “No one knows,” Celeste answered her. “It is the police’s job to find out.”

  Pitt asked them several more questions, indirectly about Shaw or Theophilus, but learned nothing more. When they left, the sky had cleared and the wind was even colder. Pitt and Murdo walked side by side in silence till they reached Oliphant’s lodging house and at last found Shaw sitting in the front parlor by the fire writing up notes at a rolltop desk. He looked tired, his eyes ringed around with dark hollows and his skin pale, almost papery in quality. There was grief in the sag of his shoulders and the nervous energy in him was transmuted into tension, and jumpiness of his hands.

  “There is no point in asking me who I treated or for what ailment,” he said tersely as soon as he saw Pitt. “Even if I knew of some disease that would prompt someone to kill me, there is certainly nothing that would cause anyone to harm poor Amos. But then I suppose he died because I was in his house.” His voice broke; he found the words so hard to say. “First Clemency—and now Amos. Yes, I suppose you are right; if I really knew who it was, I
would do something about it—I don’t know what. Perhaps not tell you—but something.”

  Pitt sat down in the chair nearest him without being asked, and Murdo stood discreetly by the door.

  “Think, Dr. Shaw,” he said quietly, looking at the exhausted figure opposite him and hating the need to remind him of his role in the tragedy. “Please think of anything you and Amos Lindsay discussed while you were in his house. It is possible that you were aware of some fact that, had you understood it, would have told you who set the first fire.”

  Shaw looked up, a spark of interest in his eyes for the first time since they had entered the room. “And you think perhaps Amos understood it—and the murderer knew?”

  “It’s possible,” Pitt replied carefully. “You knew him well, didn’t you? Was he the sort of man who might have gone to them himself—perhaps seeking proof?”

  Suddenly Shaw’s eyes brimmed with tears and he turned away, his voice thick with emotion. “Yes,” he said so quietly Pitt barely heard him. “Yes—he was. And God help me, I’ve no idea who he saw or where he went when I was there. I was so wrapped up in my own grief and anger I didn’t see and I didn’t ask.”

  “Then please think now, Dr. Shaw.” Pitt rose to his feet, moved more by pity not to intrude on a very obvious distress than the sort of impersonal curiosity his profession dictated. “And if you remember anything at all, come and tell me—no one else.”

  “I will.” Shaw seemed sunk within himself again, almost as if Pitt and Murdo had already left.

  Outside in the late-afternoon sun, pale and already touched with the dying fire of autumn, Murdo looked at Pitt, his eyes narrowed against the cold.

  “Do you think that’s what happened, sir: Mr. Lindsay realized who did it—and went looking for proof?”

  “God knows,” Pitt replied. “What did he see that we haven’t?”

  Murdo shook his head and together, hands deep in pockets, they trudged back along the footpath towards the Highgate police station.

  7

  CHARLOTTE WAS deeply distressed that Lindsay had died in the second fire. Her relief that Shaw had escaped was like a healing on the surface of the first fear, but underneath that skin of sudden ease there ached the loss of a man she had seen and liked so very shortly since. She had noticed his kindness, especially to Shaw at his most abrasive. Perhaps he was the only one who understood his grief for Clemency, and the biting knowledge that she might have died in his place; that some enmity he had earned, incited, somehow induced, had sparked that inferno.

  And now Amos Lindsay was gone too, burned beyond recognition.

  How must Shaw be feeling this morning? Grieved—bewildered—guilty that yet another had suffered a death meant for him—frightened in case this was not the end? Would there go on being fires, more and more deaths until his own? Did he look at everyone and wonder? Was he even now searching his memory, his records, to guess whose secret was so devastating they would murder to keep it? Or did he already know—but feel bound by some professional ethic to guard it even at this price?

  She felt the need for more furious action while the questions raced through her thoughts. She stripped the beds and threw the sheets and pillowcases down the stairs, adding nightshirts for all the family, and towels; then followed them down, carrying armfuls into the scullery, off the kitchen, where she filled both tubs with water and added soap to one, screwed the mangle between them, and began the laundry. She was in one of her oldest dresses, sleeves rolled up and a pinafore around her waist, scrubbing fiercely, and she let her mind return to the problem again.

  For all the possible motives to murder Shaw, including money, love, hate and revenge (if indeed someone believed him guilty of medical neglect, Theophilus Worlingham or anyone else), her thoughts still returned to Clemency and her battle against slum profiteers.

  She was up to her elbows in suds, her pinafore soaked, and her hair falling out of its pins, when the front doorbell rang. Fishmonger’s boy, she thought. Gracie will get it.

  A moment later Gracie came flying back up the corridor, her feet clattering on the linoleum. She swung around the kitchen doorway, breathless, her eyes wide with amazement, awe and horror as she saw her mistress.

  “Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould!” she said squeakily. “She’s right ’ere be’ind me, ma’am! I couldn’t put ’er in the parlor, ma’am; she wouldn’t stay!”

  And indeed Great-Aunt Vespasia was on Gracie’s heels, elegant and very upright in a dark teal gown embroidered in silver on the lapels, and carrying a silver-topped cane. These days she was seldom without it. Her eyes took in the kitchen, scrubbed table, newly blacked range, rows of blue-and-white china on the dresser, earthenware polished brown and cream, steaming tubs in the scullery beyond, and Charlotte like a particularly harassed and untidy laundry maid.

  Charlotte froze. Gracie was already transfixed to the spot as Vespasia swept past her.

  Vespasia regarded the mangle with curiosity. “What in heaven’s name is that contraption?” she inquired with her eyebrows raised. “It looks like something that should have belonged to the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “A mangle,” Charlotte replied, brushing her hair back with her arm. “You push the clothes through it and it squeezes out the soap and water.”

  “I am greatly relieved to hear it.” Vespasia sat down at the table, unconsciously arranging her skirts with one hand. She looked at the mangle again. “Very commendable. But what are you going to do about this second fire in Highgate? I presume you are going to do something? Whatever the reasons for it, it does not alter the fact that Clemency Shaw is dead, and deserves a better epitaph than that she was murdered in error for her husband.”

  Charlotte wiped her hands and came to the table, ignoring the sheets still soaking in the tub. “I am not sure that she was. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “I would. What makes you believe that? Why should anyone murder poor Amos Lindsay, if not in an attempt to get rid of Shaw more successfully than last time?”

  Charlotte glanced at Gracie, who at last moved from the doorway and reached for the kettle.

  “Maybe they were afraid Shaw had realized who they were, or that he might realize?” she suggested, sitting down opposite Vespasia. “He may well have all the information, if he knew how to add it up and see the pattern. After all, he knew what Clemency was doing; she may have left papers which he had seen. In fact, that may be why they chose fire. To destroy not only Clemency but all the evidence she had collected.”

  Vespasia straightened a little. “Indeed, that is something I had not considered. It is foolish, because it makes no difference to her, poor creature, but I should prefer not to believe she did not even die in her own right. If Shaw knows already who it is, why does he not say so? Surely he has not yet worked it out, and certainly has no proof. You do not suggest he is in any kind of collusion with them?”

  “No—”

  Behind Charlotte, Gracie was rather nervously heating the teapot and spooning in tea from the caddie. She had never prepared anything for someone of Great-Aunt Vespasia’s importance before. She wished to make it exactly right, and she did not know what exactly right might be. Also she was listening to everything that was said. She was horrified by and very proud of Pitt’s occupation, and of Charlotte’s occasional involvement.

  “I assume Thomas has already thought of everything that we have,” Vespasia continued. “Therefore for us to pursue that line would be fruitless—”

  Gracie brought the tea, set it on the table, the cup rattling and slopping in her shaking hands. She made a half curtsey to Vespasia.

  “Thank you.” Vespasia acknowledged it graciously. She was not in the habit of thanking servants, but this was obviously different. The child was in a state of nervous awe.

  Gracie blushed and withdrew to take up the laundry where Charlotte had left off. Vespasia wiped out her saucer with the napkin Charlotte handed her.

  Charlotte made her decision.

  “I shall le
arn what I can about Clemency’s work, who she met, what course she followed from the time she began to care so much, and somewhere I shall cross the path of whoever caused these fires.”

  Vespasia sipped her tea. “And how do you intend to do it so you survive to share your discoveries with the rest of us?”

  “By saying nothing whatever about reform,” Charlotte replied, her plan very imperfectly formed. “I shall begin with the local parish—” Her mind went back to her youth, when she and her sisters had trailed dutifully behind Caroline doing “good works,” visiting the sick or elderly, offering soup and preserves and kind words. It was part of a gentlewoman’s life. In all probability Clemency had done the same, and then seen a deeper pain and not turned away from it with complacency or resignation, but questioned and began the fight.

  Vespasia was looking at her critically. “Do you imagine that will be sufficient to safeguard you?”

  “If he murders every woman who is involved in visiting or inquiring after the parish poor, he will need a bigger conflagration than the great fire of London,” Charlotte replied with decision. “Anyway,” she added rather more practically, “I shall be a long way from the kind of person who owns the properties. I shall simply start where Clemency started. Long before I discover whatever someone murdered to keep, I shall draw other people in, you and Emily—and of course Thomas.” Then suddenly she thought she might be being presumptuous. Vespasia had not said she wished to be involved in such a way. Charlotte looked at her anxiously.

  Vespasia sipped her tea again and her eyes were bright over the rim of her cup.

  “Emily and I already have plans,” she said, setting the cup down in its saucer and looking over Charlotte’s shoulder at Gracie, who was self-consciously scrubbing at the washboard, her shoulders hunched. “If you think it advisable not to go alone, leave the children with your mother for a few days and take your maid with you.”

  Grade stopped in mid-motion, laundry dripping in the sink, her back bent, her hands in the air. She let out a long sigh of exquisite anticipation. She was going to detect—with the mistress! It would be the biggest adventure of her entire life!