by Anne Perry
“Nasty,” Treves said sympathetically. “Domestic murder is one of the tragedies of our human condition. God knows what we do to each other in what is fondly imagined to be the sanctuary of our homes, and is too often a purgatory.” He opened the door onto the landing again. “The old lady is a selfish and autocratic old besom—don’t let her fool you she is in delicate health. There’s nothing the matter with her except old age.”
“Then why the digitalis?”
Treves shrugged. “She didn’t get it from me. She’s the sort who affects vapors and palpitations when her family thwarts her; it’s about the only hold she has over young Tassie. Without obedience dominion is empty, so she persuaded one of the other doctors in the area to prescribe it for her. She seldom misses an opportunity to tell me how he saved her life—implying I would have let her die.” He smiled grimly.
Pitt remembered other dowagers he had met who ruled their families with relentless threats of imminent collapse. Charlotte’s grandmother was a fearsome old lady who could cast a gloom on almost any family proceedings with a catalogue of the ingratitude she suffered at their hands.
“Perhaps I’d better see her next,” he remarked, offering his hand to the doctor. “Thank you.”
Treves shook it with a firm grip. “Good luck,” he said shortly, and his face conveyed his disbelief in it.
Pitt dispatched a note about digitalis to Stripe in the servants’ hall, and set about the next duty. He asked the footman to take him to Mrs. March.
She was still downstairs in the hot-pink boudoir, and in spite of the extremely pleasant early afternoon there was a fire burning strongly in the grate, making the room stuffy—quite unlike the rest of the house, where the windows were thrown open.
She was lying on the chaise longue, a tray of tea on a rosewood table beside her, also an ornate glass bottle of smelling salts. She clutched a handkerchief to her cheek as if she were about to burst into weeping.
The room was crowded with furniture and drapery, and Pitt found it almost robbed him of breath, closing in on him. But the old woman’s eyes over her fat hand, shining with rings, were as cold as chips of stone.
“I presume you are the policeman,” she said with distaste.
“Yes, ma’am.” She did not offer him a seat, and he did not invite rebuff by taking one unasked.
“I suppose you’ll be poking your nose into everybody’s affairs, and asking a lot of impertinent questions,” she went on, eyeing his wild hair and bulging pockets.
He disliked her immediately, and George’s white face was too recent a vision for his usual self-control.
“I hope also to ask some pertinent ones,” he answered. “I intend to discover who murdered George.” He used the word murder deliberately, turning its harshness on his tongue.
Her eyes narrowed. “Well, you’ll be a fool if you can’t do that! But then I daresay you are a fool.”
He stared back at her without a flicker. “I presume there has been no intruder in the house overnight, ma’am?”
She snorted. “Certainly not!” Her little mouth turned down at the corners in contempt. “But a burglar would hardly use poison, would he.”
“No, ma’am. The only possible conclusion is that it was someone in the house, and it’s extremely unlikely to be a servant. Which leaves the family, or your guests. Will you be kind enough to tell me something about those presently in the house?”
“You don’t need to go through them all.” She sniffed and pulled a face. The room was stifling, the cloudless sun hot on the windows, but she did not seem to notice. “There is only my immediate family: Lord Ashworth, he was a cousin; Lady Ashworth, whom I have heard tell is somehow connected with you.” She let this incredible piece of intelligence fall into the hot air and remained silent for several seconds. Then, as Pitt made no remark, she finished tartly, “And a Mr. Jack Radley, a person of some disappointment—to my son, anyway. Although I could have told him.”
Pitt took the bait. “Told him what, ma’am?”
Her eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
Pitt felt the sweat trickle down his skin, but it would not be acceptable to take off his jacket in her boudoir.
“Immoral,” the old lady said baldly. “No money, and too handsome by half. Mr. March thought he would be a suitable match for Anastasia. Nonsense! She doesn’t need to marry good blood, she’s got plenty of her own. Not that you’d know anything about that.” She stared up at him, cricking her neck to see him but determined not to let him sit down. He was an inferior, and he must be made to remember it; it was not for the likes of policemen to sit themselves on the good furniture in the front of the house. By such license had begun the whole erosion of every value that now afflicted the nation. If this man had to sit, let him do it in the servants’ hall. “Anyway,” she went on, “a man like Radley doesn’t pick a plain-Jane like Anastasia. All that orange-colored hair and skin full of speckles—doesn’t come from our side of the family! And thin as a washboard. Hardly a woman at all. A man like that is out to marry for money, for something fashionable to be seen with in public. Something handsome to bed. Ha! I shock you!”
Pitt remained totally straight-faced. “Not at all, ma’am. I’m sure you are right. There are many men like that, and many women who are much the same. Except, of course, they also like a title, where it is to be had.”
The old lady glared at him, wishing to snub his insolence, but he had made the point she desired, and at the moment that need was stronger.
“Hum-ha! Well—Mr. Radley and Emily Ashworth are an excellent pair. Came together like two magnets, and poor George was the victim. There—I’ve done your job for you. Now go away. I’m tired and I feel ill. I have had a severe shock today. If you had the slightest idea how to behave you would ...” She trailed off, not sure what he would do.
Pitt bowed. “You are bearing up magnificently, ma’am.”
She glared at him, sure there was sarcasm there but unable to pinpoint it exactly enough to retaliate. His face was almost offensively innocent. Wretched creature.
“Ha,” she said grudgingly. “You may go.”
For the first time he smiled. “Thank you, ma’am. Gracious of you.”
In the large hall he found a footman waiting for him.
“Lady Cumming-Gould is in the breakfast room, sir. She would like to see you,” the footman said anxiously. “This way, sir.”
With a slight nod, Pitt followed him to the door, knocked, and went in. The room was heavily furnished; bright sunlight picked out the massive sideboard and large breakfast table. The windows were open and a chatter of birds drifted in from the garden.
Vespasia was sitting at the foot of the table—Olivia’s place when she had been alive. She looked tired; there was a stoop to her shoulders that he had never seen before, even in the weariest days when she had been fighting to get the child poverty bill through Parliament. The relief in her eyes when she saw him was so intense, it gave him a lurch of pain that he could do nothing to make it easier for her. Indeed, he feared already that he was going to make it worse.
She straightened up with an effort. “Good afternoon, Thomas. I am pleased it was possible for you to take this—case—yourself.”
For once he could think of nothing to say. Grief was too strong for the few words he could find, and yet to speak purely as a policeman would be appalling.
“For heaven’s sake, sit down,” she ordered. “I am in no mood to break my neck looking up at you. I am sure you have already seen Eustace March, and his mother.”
“Yes.” He sat down obediently opposite her across the heavy polished table.
“What did they say?” she asked bluntly. There was no time for gentle skirting round the truth, simply because it was unpleasant.
“Mr. March tried to convince me it was suicide because George had fallen in love with another woman—”
“Rubbish!” Vespasia interrupted tartly. “He was infatuated with Sybilla. He behaved like a fool, but I think by
last night he had realized that. Emily handled it perfectly. She had every bit as much sense as I could have hoped.”
Pitt glanced down for a moment, then up again. “Mrs. March said that Emily was having an affair with the other guest, Jack Radley.”
“Spiteful old besom!” Vespasia said in exasperation. “Emily’s husband was behaving like an ass with another woman, and without the slightest discretion, an affliction which Lavinia has had to put up with herself, and failed to resolve. Of course Emily made it appear she was developing an interest in another man. What woman with spirit wouldn’t?”
Pitt did not comment on Lavinia March; the pain of the dilemma was known to both of them. A man could divorce his wife for adultery; a woman had no such privilege. She must learn to live with it the best she could. With this death the fears engendered by suspicion had begun to grow, to warp thought, to seize and enlarge every ugly trait.
“Who is Sybilla?” he asked, because he had to.
“Eustace’s daughter-in-law,” Vespasia answered wearily. “William March is Eustace’s only son—my grandson.” She said it as if the idea surprised her. “Olivia had ten daughters, seven of whom lived. They are all married except Tassie. Eustace wanted to marry her to Jack Radley. That’s why he is here—to be inspected, so to speak.”
“I assume he does not meet with your approval?”
Her finely arched eyebrows rose and there was a gleam of humor in her eyes, too slight to reach her mouth. “Not for Tassie. She doesn’t love him, nor he her. But he’s pleasing enough, as long as one is sensible and doesn’t expect too much. He has one redeeming feature: I cannot imagine he will ever be a bore, and that is more than one can say of most socially acceptable young men.”
“Who else is there in the house?” He dreaded the answer, because if there had been any other outsider he knew Mrs. March would already have told him. No matter how she disapproved of Emily, she would never choose her for a cause of suicide had there been any other answer available. It reflected too badly on the family.
“No one,” Vespasia said very quietly. “Lavinia, Eustace, and Tassie live here; William and Sybilla were visiting for the Season. George and Emily were to be here for a month, and Jack Radley and I are here for three weeks.”
He could think of nothing to say. George’s murderer had to be one of the eight. He could not believe it was Vespasia herself—and please God it was not Emily!
“I had better go and see them. How is Emily?”
For the first time Vespasia could not look at him; she bent her head and hid her face in her hands. He knew she was weeping and he longed to comfort her. They had shared many emotions in the past: anger, pity, hope, defeat. Now they shared grief. But he was still a policeman whose father had been a gamekeeper, and she was the daughter of an earl. He dared not touch her, and the more he cared for her the more deeply it would hurt him if he trespassed and she were to rebuff him.
He stood helpless and awkward, watching an old lady racked with grief and the beginning of terrible fears.
Anyway, what could he say? That he would somehow alter things, hide the truth if it were too ugly? She would not believe him, or want him to do that. She would not expect him to betray himself, nor would she have done so in his place.
Then instinct overrode reason and he reached forward his hand and touched her shoulder gently. She was extraordinarily thin, for all her height when she stood; her bones felt fragile. There was a faint smell of lavender in the air.
Then he turned and went out of the room.
In the hall there was a girl of perhaps twenty, her hair the brilliant color of marmalade, her face pale under its dapple of freckles. She had hardly a shred of the beauty with which Vespasia had dazzled a generation, but she was just as thin, and there was perhaps an echo of the high cheekbones, the hooded eyelids. She was staring at Pitt with a mixture of horror and curiosity.
“Miss March?” he inquired.
“Yes, I’m Tassie March—Anastasia. You must be Emily’s policeman.” It was a statement, and phrased like that it was surprisingly painful.
“May I speak with you, Miss March?”
She gave a little shiver; her revulsion was not for him—her eyes were too direct—but for the situation. There had been a murder in her home, and a policeman must question her.
“Of course.” She turned and led the way through the dining room to the withdrawing room, cool and silver-green, utterly different from the suffocating boudoir. If that was the old lady’s taste, this must have been Olivia’s, and for some reason Eustace had permitted it to remain.
Tassie offered him a seat and sat down herself on one of the green sofas, unconsciously placing her feet together and holding her hands as she had been taught.
“I suppose I should be honest,” she observed, looking at the pale muslin of her dress. “What do you want to know?”
Now that it came to the moment, there was very little to ask her, but if she was like most well-bred young ladies she was confined to the house a great deal of the time with little to do, and she might be extremely observant. He debated whether to treat her delicately, obliquely, or frankly. Then he looked at the steady, slate-blue eyes and thought she was probably more like her mother’s family than her father’s.
“Do you think George was in love with your sister-in-law?” he said without preamble.
Her eyebrows shot up, but she retained her composure with an aplomb worthy of an older woman.
“No. But he thought he was,” she replied. “He would have got over it. I understand that sort of thing happens from time to time. One just has to put up with it, which Emily did superbly. I don’t think I should have been so composed—not if I loved someone. But Emily is terribly sensible, far more than most women, and infinitely more than most men. And George was—” She swallowed, and her eyes filled with tears. “George was very nice, really. I beg your pardon.” She sniffed.
Pitt fished in his breast pocket and brought out his only clean handkerchief. He passed it to her.
She took it and blew her nose fiercely. “Thank you.”
“I know he was,” he agreed, filling the silence before it became an obstacle between them. “What about Mr. Radley?”
She looked up with a watery smile. “I think he’s quite tolerable. In fact, as long as I don’t have to marry him, I daresay I should like him well enough. He makes me laugh—or he did.” Her face fell.
“But you don’t wish to marry him?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Does he wish to marry you?”
“I shouldn’t think so. He doesn’t love me, if that is what you mean. But I will have some money, and I don’t think he has any.”
“How very candid you are.” She was almost worse than Charlotte, and he found himself wishing he could protect her from all the anguish that was bound to come.
“One should not lie to the police in matters of importance,” she said quite sincerely. “I was really very fond of George, and I like Emily, too.”
“Someone in this house murdered him.”
“Yes. Martin told me so—he’s the butler. It seems impossible. I’ve known them all for years—except Mr. Radley, and why on earth should he kill George?”
“Might he have imagined Emily would marry him if George were dead?”
She stared at him. “Not unless he is a lunatic!” Then she turned it over in her mind, realizing the only other possibilities. “But I suppose he could be. You can see very little indeed of some people in their faces, watching them do all the usual things everyone does, eating theirdinner, making silly conversation, laughing a bit, playing games, writing letters. There is a way of doing all these things, and you are taught it as a child, like the steps of a dance. It doesn’t have to mean anything at all. You can be any kind of person underneath it. It’s sort of uniform.”
“How perceptive you are. You are like your grandmother.”
“Grandmother Vespasia?” she asked guardedly.
�
��Of course.”
“Thank you.” She breathed out in relief. “I am not in the least like the Marches. Have you solved anything?”
“Not so far.”
“Oh. Is that all? I should like to go and see how Emily is.”
“Please do. I shall find your brother, if I can.”
“He’ll be in the conservatory, at the far end. He has a studio there.” She stood up, and courtesy bade him stand also.
“Painting?”
“He’s an artist. He’s very good. He’s had several things in the Royal Academy.” There was pride in her voice.
“Thank you. I shall go and find him.” As soon as she had gone he turned to the row of French doors and the vines and lilies beyond. The conservatory felt humid and full of heavy growth and smelled of lush flowers and hot, perfumed air. The afternoon sun beat on the windows till it was like an equatorial jungle. In the winter a giant furnace maintained the temperature, and a pond the dampness.
William March was precisely where Tassie had said he would be, standing in front of his easel, brush in his hand, the sunlight making a fire of his hair. His thin face was tense, utterly absorbed in the image on his canvas; a country scene full of glancing sunlight and fragile, almost insubstantial trees, as though not only the spring but the garden itself might vanish. Pitt hardly needed his occasional work recovering stolen art to know that it was good.
William did not hear him till he was a yard away. “Good afternoon, Mr. March. Forgive me for interrupting you, but I must ask you certain questions about Lord Ashworth’s death.”
At first William was startled, simply because his concentration had precluded his awareness of anyone else; then he put down the brush and faced Pitt bleakly.
“Of course. What do you want to know?”
Thoughts were teeming in Pitt’s head, but looking at the clever, vulnerable face, the delicate mouth, the quicksilver dreamer’s eyes, he abandoned them as clumsy, even brutal. What was there left to say?
“I am sure you must realize that Lord Ashworth was murdered,” he began tentatively.
“I suppose so,” William agreed with obvious reluctance. “I have tried to think of a way in which it could conceivably be an accident. I failed.”