by Anne Perry
“Who else? It is rather important, sir.”
“Why? Why in hell should it matter now?”
“You seem to have forgotten, Mr. Southeron, that there is a murderer still in Callander Square. He has killed once, maybe more. He may kill again, if he feels threatened. Does that not frighten you at all? It could be the next friend you speak to as you walk to your own door, the next muffled figure to bid you good night, then stick a knife into you. Dr. Bolsover was stabbed in the front, by someone he knew and trusted, not twenty yards from his own house. Does that not disturb you? It would me.”
“All right!” Reggie’s voice rose sharply. “All right! I didn’t speak to anyone but Campbell. Carlton is as stuffy as hell, and Balantyne is hardly any better, there’s no man in the Doran house, and Housman, the old buzzard at the other end, never speaks to anybody. Campbell’s a pretty useful fellow, and not too self-righteous or scared of his own shadow to do anything. I told him. And he stopped it, too!”
“Indeed,” Pitt invested it with more meaning than Reggie understood. “Thank you, sir. That may be most helpful.”
“I’m damned if I can see how!”
“If it does turn out so, you will know eventually; and if not, it hardly matters,” Pitt replied. “Thank you sir. Good morning.”
“Morning,” Reggie answered with a frown. “Silly ass,” he muttered to himself. “Footman will show you out.”
Pitt still did not know what he was looking for, but at long last he thought he at least knew where to look.
He knocked at the Campbells’ door and asked permission to speak to Mr. Campbell. He was admitted and shown into the morning room where Mariah was writing letters.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said, hiding his surprise.
“Good morning, Mr. Pitt. My husband is engaged at the moment, but he should be able to see you in a short while, if you do not mind waiting.”
“Not at all, thank you.”
“Would you care for some refreshment?”
“No, thank you. Please do not let me disturb you.”
“Did you come to see my husband about the murder of Dr. Bolsover?”
“In part.”
Her face was very pale. Perhaps she was not well this morning, or was the strain of comforting Sophie beginning to tell on her?
“Why should my husband know anything about it?” she asked.
There was nothing to be gained by avoiding the truth. She might even inadvertently help him. Possibly she had learned something from Sophie, without knowing its meaning.
“He was the only person in whom Mr. Southeron confided that Dr. Bolsover was blackmailing him,” he replied.
“Reggie told Garson?” she said slowly. She looked very white. Pitt was afraid she might faint. Was she indeed ill, or did she know something of her husband that he had not even guessed at?
The answer came instantly.
Helena!
An older man, successful, sure of himself, with dignity, power, not free to marry her—was he the lover? His mind raced over a whole new spectrum of possibilities. But why murder? Was she about to betray him, charge him openly with being the father of her child? Had he panicked and killed her in that deserted garden?
Mariah was watching him. Her face was quite still, eyes clear. She looked like a woman facing execution; but a woman not afraid of death.
“Yes,” he replied to her question that seemed hours ago.
“I see,” she stood up and gathered her skirts. “Thank you for telling me, Mr. Pitt. I have something to do upstairs. Will you excuse me? My husband will be with you shortly.” And without waiting for his reply she walked slowly out of the room, back very straight, head high.
It was another ten minutes before Garson Campbell came in. Pitt had supposed him to be only in another room of the house, but he stamped his feet when he walked, as if he had been out in the cold. Yet he did not rub his hands.
“Well, what is it, Pitt?” he asked, looking him up and down with distaste. “I don’t know anything more about Freddie Bolsover that I did before.” He stood in front of the fire, feet spread wide apart, rocking a little backward and forward.
Something stirred at the back of Pitt’s mind, a man he had seen a long time ago and in some different place, a man who walked stamping his feet, even in the summer, a sick man. The picture of the little bodies in the gardens came back, the swollen head of the deeper one. He remembered Helena’s child.
In a shattering instant the answer was there in his brain, as clear and simple as a child’s picture.
“Dr. Bolsover knew you had syphilis, didn’t he?” he said simply. “When Reggie Southeron told you Freddie had blackmailed him, you realized it was only a matter of time before Freddie also realized the value of what he knew, and tried to blackmail you. You killed him before he could do that. Just as you killed Helena, before her child could be born deformed, like the ones in the square. Or else she discovered your disease, and you could not trust her to keep silent. Not that it matters which it was now.”
For an instant indecision wavered in Campbell’s eyes, then he saw the certainty of knowledge in Pitt, and his face distorted with rage.
“You bloody smiling hypocrite,” he said in a quiet, bitter voice. “I’ve been tainted, crippled in mind with this disease since I was thirty years old. Fifteen years I’ve been carrying the beginning of death in me. And there’s no quick end, I shall rot from the inside, slowly. The pains will get worse and worse till I’m paralyzed, a filthy vegetable being wheeled round in a chair, for people to whisper and snigger at! And you stand there moralizing, as if you would be any different!
“Yes, you’re right! Are you satisfied? Even my own wife looks at me as if I were a leper. She hasn’t touched me in over a year. Helena was a whore. When she found out about the disease she became hysterical, and I killed her.
“Freddie was a sniveling little blackmailer. Of course I killed him; it was only a matter of time till he came to me.” His hand was behind him, and before Pitt realized what he was doing, he swung round with the paper knife from the desk where Mariah had been writing, the blade swinging in an arc and missing Pitt’s chest only when he himself lunged forward, slipped on the edge of the carpet, and fell heavily, hitting Campbell and sending them both crashing into the fireplace.
Pitt scrambled to his feet, ready to strike again—but Campbell lay motionless. At first Pitt suspected a trick, until he saw Campbell’s head against the fender, and the small patch of blood.
He went to the door and shouted for the footman, his voice sounding loud and stupidly hysterical.
“Go out and get a police constable,” he said as soon as the man appeared. “And a doctor, quickly!”
The man gaped at him without moving.
“Get on with it!” Pitt yelled at him.
The man shot out of the door without even bothering with a coat.
Pitt went back into the morning room and yanked the bell cord out of its socket. He knew there would be a fearful jangling downstairs, but he did not care. With the length of cord he bound Campbell’s wrists as tightly as he could, then left him lying on his back, still apparently unconscious, but breathing heavily.
He considered finding Mariah, but decided it would be kinder to have Campbell removed first, especially should he choose to make a scene. It would be distressing enough for her without her being obliged to witness his actual arrest.
He sat down, out of reach of Campbell’s legs, in case he recovered and decided to fight again, and waited.
It was some ten minutes before the constable arrived, panting, wet from the fine rain, red in the face. He stared at Pitt, then at Campbell, still on the floor, but regaining consciousness now.
“Doctor’s coming, sir,” he said with some bewilderment. “What’s ’appened?”
“Mr. Campbell is under arrest,” Pitt replied. He looked across at the footman who was still standing beyond the constable, in the open doorway. “Call a hansom, and tell the valet to
pack some things for Mr. Campbell. When the doctor comes, show him in here.” He turned back to the constable. “Mr. Campbell is charged with murder, and he’s dangerous. If you have handcuffs, put them on him before you remove my cords! When the doctor has seen him, put him in the cab and take him to the station.” He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his identification, showing it to him. “I’ll be along as soon as I’ve seen Mrs. Campbell. Do you understand?”
The constable jerked to attention.
“Yes, sir! Is ’e the one ’wot done the ’orrible murders o’ them babies, sir?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but he killed Dr. Bolsover, and Miss Doran. Be careful of him.”
“Yes, sir, I will that.” He glanced down at Campbell with a mixture of awe and disgust.
Pitt went to the door and was across the hall and halfway up the stairs when the doctor arrived. He waited on the landing for five minutes more till he saw the party go out, Campbell still dizzy, stumbling between the constable and the cabbie. Then he continued on upward to find Mariah.
The second floor was tidy and silent. He could not even see a maid. They must all be in the kitchen, or at some outside task.
“Mrs. Campbell?” he said clearly.
There was no answer.
He raised his voice and called again.
Still no reply.
He knocked on the first door and tried it. The room was empty. He continued until he came to what was apparently a woman’s dressing room. Mariah Campbell was sitting in an easy chair, facing away from him. At first he thought she had fallen asleep, until he walked round and saw her face. It was bleached of all color, and there was a grayness to the eyelids and lips.
On the dressing table there was a small bottle labeled for laudanum, empty, and another clear glass vial that also held nothing now. Beside them was a piece of paper. He picked it up. It was addressed to him.
Inspector Pitt,
I imagine you know the truth by now. The sins of the fathers were visited upon the children, but they were my children too, and I could not let them live, rotted by disease, filthy as he was. Better to die while they were still innocent, and knew nothing of it, neither pain.
Please ask Adelina Southeron to look after my children that yet live. She is a good woman, and will have pity on them.
May God find mercy for me, and peace.
Mariah Livingstone Campbell
Pitt looked down at her and felt overwhelming pity, and gratitude that she had spared him from having to face her, to be the instrument to begin the long course of public justice against her.
Because he loved Charlotte so deeply, he felt some gentleness toward all women; and was unutterably glad that his own life was not scorched and marred by such tragedy. He thought of Charlotte’s face, full of hope for her new child, and prayed that it would be whole, perhaps even that it would be a girl, another stubborn, compassionate, willful creature like Charlotte herself.
He smiled at the thought, and yet in front of this dead woman he also felt like weeping. More than anything else, he desperately wanted to go home.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1980 by Anne Perry
cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4532-1907-2
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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