by Anne Perry
Pitt’s cab stopped and the driver leaned out.
“Yer fare’s got out, sir,” he said quietly. “ ’E went inter the coffee’ouse on yer left.”
“Thank you.” Pitt climbed out and paid him. “Thank you very much.”
“Who is ’e?” the cabby asked. “Is ’E a murderer?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt said honestly.
The other cab had moved away so presumably Carswell intended remaining where he was for some time. “Thank you, that’s all,” Pitt said, dismissing the cabby, to his acute disappointment. He moved away reluctantly, still giving the occasional glance backwards over his shoulder to see what was happening.
Pitt smiled to himself and pulled his coat even further open and took his tie off altogether, then followed Carswell into the coffeehouse.
Inside was warm, stuffy and full of chatter, clinking glass and rustling skirts, and the smell of coffee beans, pastry and sugar. On the walls were colorful theater posters, and now and again someone roared with laughter.
In a corner over to the right Addison Carswell was being greeted by a slender, pretty girl with a mass of soft honey-brown hair which was piled on her head in the very latest fashion, the short ends curling onto her neck as only nature can and no art has learned to imitate. In spite of her youth her features were strong and her face full of vitality, her eyes wide and clear. Pitt judged her to be in her early twenties.
Carswell was looking at her with a smile he could not mask and an anticipation in his eyes as he gave her the hatbox and the parcel containing the parasol. She opened them with quick fingers, tearing at the paper, every few moments glancing up at him, then down again. When she finally took off the last pieces and let them flutter to the ground she held up the parasol with unfeigned delight, and then the hat.
Carswell put out his hand and touched her wrist, restraining her before she could swing the hat up and try it on. She smiled, blushing as if she suddenly remembered her foolishness, and put her hand down again.
Carswell’s face reflected an extraordinary tenderness, an emotion so transparently genuine it startled Pitt and made him uncomfortably aware of being not merely a detective, but at this moment a voyeur.
He watched them for another thirty minutes. They sat at the table, the hatbox and the parasol at the girl’s feet, leaning forward speaking to each other one minute earnestly, the next lightly and with laughter, but it was not loud, neither did the girl have any of the mannerisms of flirting. Rather it seemed an affection of two people who have known each other some time and shared many experiences which have given them a treasury of understanding from which to draw.
When Carswell arose and left after having bade the girl farewell, Pitt did not follow him, but turned his face away just in case Carswell should glance his way. But as it happened he looked neither to right nor left, but with a smile on his face and a spring in his step, he went out into Kennington Road. Pitt paid his bill and went out onto the pavement. He watched Carswell march away down towards Westminster Bridge where he might find a hansom, and presumably return home to Curzon Street and his wife. Perhaps before then he would have taken the jauntiness out of his stride and the dreaming from his face.
A few moments later when the girl left also, Pitt was waiting for her. She did not look for a cab, but walked along the pavement carrying the hatbox and the parasol, holding them close to her, also. Her step too was quick and light, almost as if she would have skipped, had it not been absurd and likely to draw attention to herself.
She crossed the road a hundred yards further along, passing the organ grinder and giving him a coin. He spoke to her cheerfully, touching his hat as if perhaps he knew her, and redoubled his efforts at the music. She turned off at St. Albans Street and a short way along, at number 16, stopped, fished from her reticule a latchkey, and went in.
Pitt stood on the pavement staring. It was a very ordinary house, small, narrow fronted, without a garden, but at least on the outside, eminently respectable, even if there was no servant to answer the door. It was the sort of house lived in by a petty clerk, a small trader or a teller in a bank, or perhaps the mistress of a man of means just sufficient to keep two establishments.
Then why did Carswell meet her in a coffeehouse, where they could do no more than talk and perhaps hold hands?
The obvious answer was that she did not live alone. Either she was married, although there had been no ring on her hand, or she shared her home with a parent or a brother or sister.
He turned away and retraced his steps to Kennington Road. It was not difficult to invent some trivial story, and learn from the shopkeeper on the corner that since poor Mrs. Hilliard became an invalid, number 16 was occupied by Miss Theophania Hilliard and her brother, Mr. James, and a very nice couple they were, always polite and paid all their bills on time. Never any trouble to anyone.
Pitt thanked him and left with an intense feeling of depression. He also walked down towards the bridge where he could find a cab which would take him home. But even when one passed him he felt an urge to continue on foot; he wanted to use the energy, as if the anger and disappointment inside him could be burned away in physical effort. There was everything here for tragedy: a middle-aged man of public respectability, a wife and daughters at home, who chose to buy expensive and highly feminine gifts and cross the river alone to give them to a young and pretty girl for whom he very obviously had intense feelings. In many ways it would have been less serious had it simply been a visit to a brothel; such things were more readily understood, and hardly worth blackmailing anyone over, certainly not worth committing murder to hide.
But Theophania Hilliard was not a casual appetite, and the hat and parasol did not seem to be bribes for favors past or future, rather gifts for someone towards whom he felt the most profound emotions. But had they been those of a nature he could acknowledge, why had he come furtively, going to such lengths to avoid being seen by anyone he knew? He had risked being killed, in careering across the road as he had, just to avoid being seen by an acquaintance. And why a coffee shop on the Kennington Road, if it were acceptable to her brother? Presumably he also objected to the liaison, or else he was entirely ignorant of it.
How much was this relationship costing Carswell? Did he bring her gifts often, or was this an isolated time? She had not seemed particularly surprised, at least looking back on it Pitt thought not. Had he brought such things for Charlotte she would have shown more amazement, more—he visualized her face if he were able to spend money on such pretty luxuries. She would have cried out, tried them on immediately, paraded up and down in them and twirled around for him to admire, her eyes would have danced, her voice would have been high, lifted with excitement. He wished with a sharp, almost hurting intensity that he could do such a thing for her, something extravagant and totally unnecessary, just beautiful, feminine, endlessly flattering. There must be a way he could save enough, something he could do without, or put off paying for.
It was so painfully easy to understand Addison Carswell—especially the first time, and this was assuredly not the first. Theophania Hilliard was accustomed to receiving pretty things from him—but once begun how could he stop, whatever it cost?
Was that it? Was he borrowing to finance his desire to please her? He would not readily admit it.
Or was it far uglier than that? Had Weems been blackmailing him too? And had he been driven beyond the point of reluctant compliance and into violent escape from a pressure he could no longer bear? Was it Carswell’s innate sense of justice which had loaded some gun with gold coins and shot away half Weems’s head?
Had he been with Theophania Hilliard that night which he refused to account for—or had he been in Clerkenwell, in Cyrus Street?
The next morning Pitt went to the police court early, intending to speak to Carswell at the first break from duty. It was a confrontation he was dreading, but it was unavoidable. The man must be given the opportunity to reconsider his silence and explain where he was the nig
ht Weems was murdered, and his relationship with Theophania Hilliard. It was just conceivable there was an innocent answer to it—not innocent of all culpability, but innocent of murder.
The first case to be heard was a clerk who had embezzled a few shillings from his employers. He might, as the defense claimed, simply have been careless with figures, and have miscalculated the funds. It was just possible, although Pitt thought, looking at the man’s pale intelligent face, he was more probably struggling to pay a bill and had taken his first step into crime. Or as the prosecutor maintained, he might have been testing the water preparing for a career of theft. Carswell inclined towards the last view, and sentenced him to a short term of imprisonment. Having found him guilty there was little alternative open to him and Pitt thought it was probably an accurate judgment, and not overharsh.
The second case came to him as a surprise. The accused’s name was familiar even before his portly figure and angry face appeared in the dock. Horatio Osmar. Beside him, buxom, fair hair gleaming, but very scrubbed and demure, was Miss Beulah Giles, also accused.
The clerk of the court read out the charges, to wit that they had both been behaving in an unseemly manner likely to offend against public decency, and the time and place of the offense added to make the issue perfectly plain. Somehow such details made it sound even more down-to-earth, and indescribably small and grubby.
Horatio Osmar stood very stiff, balancing on the balls of his feet. His coat was immaculate, if a trifle lopsided at one shoulder, as if he had struggled with his escort and snatched himself away from a restraining grip. His face was overpink, his shapeless nose shone and his whiskers bristled, his eyes glared at everyone who chanced to catch his glance.
Miss Giles stood motionless with eyes downcast, and her dress, on this very different occasion from the one when Pitt had first seen her, was buttoned right up to her throat, and of a sober shade of blue-gray, with a touch of teal in it so at moments one was not sure whether it was entirely blue, or perhaps green. It could not have been gentler or more designed to make one think well of her.
The lawyer stood respectfully to plead for them, in both cases, not guilty.
Pitt leaned forward, startled even more. The man was a Queen’s Counsel, one of that highly select group of lawyers who had taken silk and now dealt only in the most prestigious cases. What on earth was a Q.C. doing in a magistrate’s court arguing a case of indecent behavior in a public park? It was natural Osmar should want to be found not guilty, but the facts were overwhelmingly against him, and to have such eminent counsel would only draw the press’s attention to an incident which might otherwise have gone unreported.
The prosecution began by calling a very self-conscious P.C. Crombie, who took the witness stand and swore to his name and occupation, and that together with P.C. Allardyce he had been on duty in the park at the relevant time and place.
“And what did you see, Constable Crombie?” the prosecution asked, raising bushy eyebrows in inquiry.
P.C. Crombie stood to attention.
“I saw the accused sitting on the bench together with their arms ’round each other, sir.”
“And what were they doing, Constable?”
Osmar snorted so fiercely it was audible in the body of the court.
P.C. Crombie swallowed. “ ’Ard to say exact, sir. They looked like they was struggling over something, not fighting, like, just rocking back and forth—” He stopped, the color rising up his face with embarrassment.
“And what did you do, Constable?” the prosecution persisted, his face lugubrious as if his interest were barely engaged.
“P.C. Allardyce and me went up to them, sir,” Crombie answered. “And as we got close the gentleman rose to ’is feet and started to rearrange ’is clothes—sir—”
Again Osmar grunted loudly and Carswell glared at him. There was a murmur around the room among the few spectators.
“Rearrange?” the prosecutor asked. “You must be more specific, Constable.”
P.C. Crombie’s face was scarlet. He looked straight ahead of him at some point in the woodwork on the far wall.
“ ’Is trousers was undone, sir, and ’is shirt was ’anging out at the front. ’E tucked it in and did up ’is buttons, sir.”
“And the young lady, Constable?” The prosecutor was merciless, his beautifully modulated voice cutting the silence like a silver knife.
P.C. Crombie closed his eyes.
“She was doin’ up ’er blouse, sir, at the—” He raised his hands and held them roughly where his bosom would have been, had he one. He was a young man, and not married.
“Are you saying she was in a state of indecency, Constable?”
The Q.C. rose to his feet and there was a sharp rustle of interest around the room. Osmar smiled.
“My lord, the prosecution is leading the witness,” the Q.C. said with injured gentility. “He did not say Miss Giles was indecently dressed, merely that she was fastening her blouse.”
“I apologize to my learned friend,” the prosecution said with a touch of sarcasm. “Constable, how would you describe the state of dress of Miss Giles?”
“Well sir—” Crombie glanced at Carswell, uncertain now how to proceed in what he was permitted to say. His face was burning red.
Osmar shifted in the dock, his face shining with satisfaction.
The prosecution smiled drily.
“Constable, did her state of dress embarrass you?”
“Yes sir! That it did!”
Beulah Giles hid a smirk less than satisfactorily.
The Q.C. was on his feet again. “My lord, that is surely irrelevant?”
“No it is not,” the prosecution insisted, still smiling. “P.C. Crombie is part of the general public, and his reaction may be an acceptable indication of what other passersby might have felt when they saw this spectacle of a man and woman in such a degree of intimacy on a park bench for all to see.”
“My lord, that has yet to be proved!” The Q.C. simulated outrage. “It may be argued that P.C. Crombie’s susceptibilities are the sole issue here. It was he who arrested my client, and therefore he has something of an interest in the outcome of this case. He cannot be considered an unbiased witness. The prosecution’s argument is circular.”
Now the spectators in the room were agog, every face staring, bright with attention.
Carswell looked at the prosecution.
“Is this all you have, Mr. Clyde? If so, it seems very thin.”
“No sir, there is also P.C. Allardyce.”
“Then you had better call him.”
Accordingly P.C. Crombie was excused and P.C. Allardyce was called. He was an older man by some three or four years, and married. He was less easily embarrassed, and as soon as he spoke the Q.C. realized it. He did not challenge his evidence but let it remain. He made no counterclaim when Allardyce described the struggle Horatio Osmar had made upon his arrest, his less than gentlemanly language and his arrival purple faced and furious at the police station, nor Miss Giles’s similar state of dishabille.
He began his defense by calling Horatio Osmar himself to testify. He yanked his clothes straighter, stretched his neck as if to settle his collar, then faced Carswell directly for a moment before turning to the prosecution and waiting with polite inquiry for him to begin.
“Would you give us your account of this deplorable affair, please, Mr. Osmar,” the Q.C. asked courteously.
Pitt watched with interest to see how Osmar would dress it in some form of respectability. The whole thing had been a miserable and excruciatingly silly affair, but for his dignity Osmar could not admit it here. How much easier if he had simply pleaded guilty and accepted a fine. Carswell would surely not have given him more than a caution, and a sum to pay he would easily afford. Whoever had advised him to employ a Queen’s Counsel was either extremely foolish, or was secretly desiring his downfall.
Osmar put his shoulders back and stared defiantly at the spectators in the room, and they fell si
lent, not entirely out of respect, Pitt thought, but more largely so as not to miss anything.
Osmar’s whiskers bristled and he cleared his throat importantly and sniffed. Then he began. “Certainly sir, I shall do that. I was taking the air in the park when I encountered Miss Giles, a young lady of my acquaintance. I greeted her and asked after her health, which she informed me was excellent.”
The prosecution began to fidget and Carswell glared at him.
“Please continue, Mr. Osmar,” he directed with a tight smile.
“Thank you, sir. I shall.” He too glared at the prosecution, then straightened his tie ostentatiously.
There was a movement around the court and someone laughed.
Osmar began again. “I also asked after her family, as was only civil, and she began to tell me of their condition. I suggested that we might take a seat, which was nearby, rather than stand in the middle of the path. She accepted that it was a good idea so we adjourned to the bench upon which we were seated when the two constables saw us.”
“And were you struggling with Miss Giles, sir?”
“Certainly not!” Osmar sniffed and his expression registered his contempt for the idea. “I had asked after a nephew of hers, and she showed me a picture of the child which was in a locket around her neck. She had to fumble a moment to open the catch, it was very small and not easy to find.” He glanced around at the crowd. “I assisted her with it as it was quite naturally not in a position in which she could see it.”
Pitt’s opinion of Osmar’s invention went up, and of his veracity went down. He looked at Carswell to see how he took this vivid piece of fabrication, and was startled to see an expression of total sobriety on his face.
“An innocent enough pastime,” Carswell said with raised eyebrows and a look of irritation at the prosecution.