by Anne Perry
Alaric stood up, very straight, shoulders beautifully square, a flicker of the old laughter in his eyes, seeing them all so clearly, as a foreigner sometimes does.
"You will find her unique," he said with a little bow. "And above all things, never, ever a bore."
"Such a rare quality," Charlotte murmured, blushing. "Never to be boring."
Caroline lost her temper in frustration and reached out to kick Charlotte underneath her skirts. She missed, but the second time she caught her sharply on the ankle. The corners of her mouth lifted with satisfaction. "Quite," she said. Then she looked at Alston, who had also risen to bid them goodbye. "If there is anything we can do, please do let me know." Curiously she did not mention Edward, except by implication. "We are so close by and would be happy in any help or comfort we could offer- perhaps in practical arrangements?"
"How very kind of you," Alston replied. "I should be most grateful."
Charlotte looked straight at Alaric and met his eyes. She took a deep breath.
"I'm sure if you felt my father could offer you any help with regard to your assistance at the funeral, he would be delighted to do so." She lifted her chin. "Perhaps he should call upon you and see what would be convenient? We have suffered bereave shy;ments ourselves, and he is a most sensitive person. I am quite convinced you would like him." She did not look away, al shy;though she could feel the heat creeping up her face.
At last she was rewarded by an answering flash of understand shy;ing in the depths of Alaric's eyes, and a slow color under his skin.
"Indeed." His voice was very quiet. "I respect your purpose, Mrs. Pitt. I shall consider it gravely."
She tried to smile, and failed. "Thank you."
They said their formal farewells and walked to the entrance where the parlormaid was waiting, Alston having rung for her. Both doors were opened so that they might pass through without being forced into single file. Charlotte turned as they stepped into the hall and found to her considerable embarrassment that Paul Alaric was still facing them, and his eyes, wide and black, were not on Caroline, or Emily, who had also looked back, but upon herself.
The last thing she wanted was to look at Caroline, yet she found herself doing precisely that. The gaze that met hers was of one woman to another, no more; they might never have met before. The only element there was the sudden and complete knowledge of rivalry.
7
Charlotte could hardly wait until Pitt returned. She made the easiest of meals, placed it in the oven to cook itself, and then flitted from one job to another, accomplishing nothing. It was quarter past six when at last she heard the front door open, and she instantly dropped the linen cloth in her hand and ran from the kitchen to meet him. Usually she forced herself to let him come to the warmth of the big cooking range, take off his coat, and sit down before speaking to him of the day, but this time she shouted as soon as his foot was in the passage.
"Thomas! Thomas, I saw Alston Spencer-Brown today, and I discovered something!" She ran down the corridor and grasped at both his hands. "I think I know something about Mina- perhaps why she was killed!"
He was wet and tired, and not in the best of moods. His superiors were still clinging to the belief that it must have been suicide while the balance of her mind was upset by some private distress. It could all be so much more decently disposed of, and without turning over a lot of people's lives to investigate affairs that were far preferably left alone. Uncovering causes for enmity was always an ugly and unpopular occupation, and seldom prof shy;ited the career of whoever undertook it-at least not if he was of a rank sufficiently advanced that there was no validity in the shield that he was merely following orders.
Pitt's superior, Dudley Athelstan, was a younger son who had married well and had an ambition that fed on its own success. He had spent the latter part of the day trying to persuade Pitt that there was no case to investigate. There were any number of ways an unbalanced woman might come by sufficient poison to take her own life if that was what she had determined to do. When Pitt had left him, Athelstan had been in growing ill-humor because he could not convince even himself, let alone Pitt and Sergeant Harris, that the matter had been answered beyond reasonable doubt, for no chemist or apothecary could be found who had sold such a substance, and certainly no doctor had prescribed it, no matter how diligently they had searched.
Now Pitt started to undo his coat. It was dripping in the hallway, and the day before he had received a very wounded and sober criticism from Gracie about the amount of labor it took to get the floor to its degree of polish, without inconsiderate people spilling water all over it.
"Why did you go and see Alston Spencer-Brown?" he in shy;quired a little sourly. "He's surely nothing to do with you, or your mother?"
Charlotte could feel the irritation in him as if he had brought the cold in from the street, but she was too excited to take heed.
"The murder is to do with Mama," she said briskly, taking the coat and putting it on a hook to drip further, instead of carrying it through to the kitchen to dry. "We have to get the locket back. Anyway, Emily wanted to visit Mama, and I went with her!" If the flame of the gas lamp in the hallway had been brighter, he might have seen her blush at the half-truth. She turned and walked smartly back to the kitchen and the fire. "Mama went to call upon him to express her sympathy," she explained. "Anyway, that's not important!" She swung around and faced him. "I know at least one good reason why Mina Spencer-Brown might have been killed-maybe two!" She waited, glowing with excitement.
"I can think of a dozen," he said soberly. "But no proof for any of them. It never lacked possibilities, but they are not enough. Superintendent Athelstan wants the case closed. Suicide leaves them decently alone with their grief.''
"Not possibilities," she burst out with impatience. "I mean real reasons! Do you remember I told you Mama said she felt as if she were being followed, watched all the time?"
"No," he said honestly.
"I told you! Mama was aware of someone-most of the time! And Ambrosine Charrington said the same thing. Well, I believe it was Mina! She spied on people-she was what is called a Peeping Tom. Alston said so, in a roundabout sort of way- although of course he didn't realize what he was meaning. Don't you see, Thomas? If she followed someone with a secret, a real secret, she may have learned something that was worth killing over. And I know from Alston of at least two possibilities!"
He sat down and took off his wet boots. "What?"
"Don't you believe me?" She had expected him to receive the news eagerly, and now he looked as if he were listening only to humor her.
He was too tired to be polite.
"I think your mother's affaire is probably not as serious as you imagine. Plenty of people have a little flirtation, especially Society women who have little else to do. You should know that by now. I expect it's all dropped handkerchiefs and bunches of flowers-about as real as a piece of embroidery. And I daresay if anyone was watching her, it was only out of boredom. You are making too much of it, Charlotte. If she were not your mother, you would take no notice."
She restrained herself with great difficulty. For a moment she considered losing her temper, telling him that the outward show might be trivial but the feeling underneath was as real and as potentially violent as anything conducted in the back streets, or in less naturally restricted levels of Society. Then she realized how tired he was, how discouraged by Athelstan's desire to hide or ignore what did not suit his ambition. Anger would communi shy;cate nothing.
"Would you like a cup of tea?" she said instead, looking at his wet feet and the white skin of his hands where the cold had numbed the circulation. Without waiting for an answer, she topped up the kettle and moved it from the back of the stove onto the front.
After a few moments' silence while he put on dry socks, he looked up.
"What are these two possibilities?"
She heated the teapot and measured out the tea.
"Theodora von Schenck has an income, late
ly acquired, which nobody can account for. Her husband left her nothing, nor did anyone else, apparently. When she came to Rutland Place, she had nothing but the house. Now she has coats with sable collars, and Mina perhaps put forward some very interesting speculations as to where they might have come from."
"Like what?" he inquired.
She jiggled the teapot impatiently while the kettle blew faint halfhearted whiffs of steam, hot but not yet boiling.,
"A brothel," Charlotte answered. "Or a lover. Or blackmail? There are all sorts of things worth killing to hide, where money is concerned. Maybe Theodora was blackmailing people with Mina's information and they had a fight over the money."
He smiled sourly. "Indeed. Your Mina seems to have had a most uncharitable turn of imagination, and a tongue to go with it. Are you sure that is what she said, and not what you are thinking for her?"
"Alston remarked several times on how perceptive she was of other people's characters, especially the less pleasant aspects of them. But he also said that she never spoke of them to anyone but him." She reached for the kettle at last. "However, that is the less likely possibility of the two, I think. The other possibil shy;ity I remember Mina mentioning myself, and with a kind of relish, as if she knew something." She poured the water onto the tea and put on the lid, then brought the pot to the table and set it on the polished pewter stand. She let it brew while she went on: "It has to do with the death of Ottilie Charrington, which was sudden and unexplained. One week she was in perfect health, and the next the family returned from a holiday in the country and said she was dead. Just like that! No one ever said from what cause, no one was invited to any funeral, and she was never mentioned again. Mina apparently hinted that there was something very shameful about it-perhaps a badly done abortion?" She shivered and thought of Jemima asleep upstairs in her pink cot. "Or she was murdered by a lover, or in some unbearable place, like a brothel. Or possibly even she did some shy;thing so terrible that her own family murdered her to keep it silent!"
Pitt looked at her gravely, without speaking.
She poured the tea and passed him his cup.
"I know it sounds violent, and unlikely," she went on. "But then I suppose murder always is unlikely-until it actually happens. And.Mina was murdered, wasn't she? You know now that she didn't kill herself."
"No." He sipped the tea and burned his mouth; his hands were too numb for him to have realized its heat. "No, I think someone else put poison into the cordial wine we found in her stomach in the autopsy. We found the dregs in the empty bottle in her bedroom, and a glass. It was just chance she took it when she did; it could have been anytime she felt like it. It could have been anyone who put it there, anytime."
"Not if they wanted to silence her," Charlotte pointed out. "If you are afraid of someone, you want them dead before they speak, which means as soon as possible. Thomas, I really do believe she was a Peeping Tom. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. She peeped once too often and saw some shy;thing that cost her her life." She stared down into her tea, watching the vapor curl off it and rise gently. "I wonder if people who get murdered are usually unpleasant, if they have some flaw in them that invites murder? I mean people that aren't killed for money, of course. Like Shakespearean tragic heroes- one fatal deformity of soul that mars all the rest that might have been good." She stirred her tea, although there was no sugar in it. The steam curled thicker. "Curiosity killed the cat. If Mina had not wanted to know so much about everybody. . I wonder if she knew about Monsieur Alaric, and Mama's locket?" Oddly enough, she was not afraid. Caroline was foolish, but there was neither the viciousness nor the fear in her to make her kill. And Paul Alaric had no reason to.
He looked up sharply, and too late she realized she had not mentioned Alaric's name before. Of course Pitt could not have forgotten him from Paragon Walk. At one time they had sus shy;pected him of murder … or worse!
"Alaric?" he said slowly, searching her face.
She felt herself flush, and was furious. It was Caroline who was behaving foolishly; she, Charlotte, had done nothing indiscreet.
"Monsieur Alaric is the man whose picture Mama has in the locjket," she said defensively, looking straight back at him. And then because his eyes were too clear, too wise, she turned away and stirred her sugarless tea vigorously once again. She tried to sound casual. "Did I not mention that?"
"No." She knew he was still watching her, "No-you didn't."
"Oh." She kept her eyes on the swirling tea. "Well, he is."
There were several moments of silence.
"Indeed?" he said at last. "Well, I'm afraid we didn't find the locket-or any of the other stolen things, for that matter. And if Mina was a Peeping Tom, stealing for the sake of a sick need to know about other people, to possess something of them-" He saw her shudder, and he gave a sigh. "Isn't that what you are saying? That she was abnormal, perverted?"
"I suppose so."
He tried his tea again. "And of course there is the other possibility," he added. "Maybe she knew who the thief was."
"How tragic, and ridiculous!" she said with sudden anger. ' 'Someone dying over a few silly things like a locket and a buttonhook!"
"Lots of people have died for less." The rookeries came to his mind with their teeming misery and need. "Some for a shilling, some by accident for something they didn't have, or in mistake for somebody else.''
She sipped her tea. "Are you going to investigate it?" she said at last.
"There's no choice. I'll see what I can find out about Ottilie Charrington. Poor soul! I hate digging through other people's wretched tragedies. It must be bad enough to lose a daughter, without the police unburying every indiscretion, putting every love or hate under a magnifying glass. No one wants to be seen so clearly!"
But the following morning the necessity was just as plain. If Charlotte was right and Mina had been inquiring, peeping at other people, then it was more than probable that some knowl shy;edge gained that way had been the cause of her death. He had heard before of people, outwardly normal people, often respectable, who were diseased with a compulsion to watch others, to pry into intimate things, to follow, to lift curtains aside, even to open letters and listen at doors. This compulsion always led to dislike and fear, often to imprisonment. It was inevitable that one day it would bring about murder also.
He could hardly start by going directly to the Charringtons. There was no excuse for him to question them about their daughter's death so long after the event unless he were to tell them of his suspicions, and that was obviously impossible at this point. It might be slander, at best. And on so tenuous a thread they would have no obligation to answer him even so.
Instead he went back to Mulgrew. The doctor had attended most of the families of Rutland Place, and if he had not known Ottilie himself, he would almost certainly be able to tell Pitt who had.
"Filthy day!" Mulgrew greeted him cheerfully. "Owe you a couple of handkerchiefs. Obliged to you. Act of a gentleman. How are you? Come in and dry yourself." He waved his arms to conduct Pitt along the hallway. "Street's like a river, or perhaps I should say a gutter! What's wrong now? Not sick, are you? Can't cure a cold, you know. Or backache. No one can! At least if someone can, I've not met him!" He led the way back to an overcrowded room full of photographs and mementos, bookcases on every wall, cascades of papers and folios sliding off tables and stools. A large Labrador lay asleep in front of the fire.
"No, I'm not sick." Pitt followed him with a feeling of relief, even elation. Suddenly the ugly things became more bearable, the darkness he must probe less full of shapeless fear, but rather known things, things that could be endured.
"Sit down." Mulgrew waved an arm widely. "Oh, tip the cat off. She always gets on there the moment my back is turned. Pity she has so much white in her-damn white hairs stick to my pants. Don't mind, do you?"
Pitt eased the little animal off the chair and sat down smiling.
"Not at all. Thank you."
Mulgr
ew sat opposite him.
"Well, if you're not sick, what is it? Not Mina Spencer-Brown again? Thought we proved she died of belladonna?"
The little cat curled itself around Pitt's legs, purring gently, then hopped up onto his knees and wound itself into a knot, face hidden, and fell asleep instantly.
Pitt touched it with pleasure. Charlotte had wanted a cat. He must get her one, one like this.
"Are you physician to the Charringtons as well?" he asked.
Mulgrew's eyes opened wide in surprise.
"Throw her off if you want," he said, pointing to the cat. "Yes, I am. Why? Nothing wrong with any of them, is there?"
"Not so far as I know. Except that their daughter died. Did you know her?"
"Ottilie? Yes, lovely girl." His face retreated quite suddenly into lines of heavy sorrow. "One of the saddest things I know, her death. Miss her. Lovely girl."
Pitt was aware of a genuine grief, not the professional sadness of a doctor who loses a patient, but a sense of personal bereavement, of some happiness that no longer existed. He was embarrassed to have to continue. He had not expected emotion; he had been prepared only for thought, academic investigation. The mystery of murder was ephemeral, even paltry; it was the emotions, the fire of pain, and the long wastelands afterward that were real.
His hands found the cat's warm little body again, and he stroked it softly, comforting himself as much as pleasing the animal.
"What caused her death?" he asked.
Mulgrew looked up. "I don't know. She didn't die here. Somewhere in the country-Hertfordshire."
"But you were the family physician. Didn't they tell you what it was?"
"No. They said very little. Didn't seem to want to talk about it. Natural, I suppose. Shock. Grief takes people differently."
"It was very sudden, I understand?"
Mulgrew was looking into the fire, his eyes away from Pitt's, seeing something he could not share.
"Yes. No warning at all."