Highgate Rise tp-11

by Anne Perry

  As had been done for Clemency, this gathering was held in the Worlingham house also, from very mixed motives. It was impossible to do it, as would have been customary, in Lindsay’s own home, since it was a mere jumble of scarred beams resting at violent angles amid the heaps of burned and broken brick. His dearest friend, Shaw, was in no better a position. He could hardly offer to hold it in Mrs. Turner’s lodging house. It was not large enough and was occupied by several other people who could not be expected to have their house disrupted for such an event.

  The choice rested between the Worlinghams’ and the vicarage. As soon as they realized that, Celeste and Angeline offered the use of their home, and of their servants to make all the necessary provisions. It was a matter of duty. They had not cared for Amos Lindsay, and cared still less for his opinions, but they were the bishop’s daughters, and the leaders of Christian society in Highgate. Position must come before personal feelings, especially towards the dead.

  All this they made plain, in case anyone should mistakenly imagine they supported anything that Amos Lindsay had said or done.

  They received everyone at the double doorway into the dining room, where the huge mahogany table was spread with every kind of baked meat and cold delicacy. The centerpiece was formed of lilies with a heavy, languorous perfume which instantly reminded Charlotte of somnolence, and eventually decay. The blinds were partially drawn, because today at least the house was in mourning, and black crepe was trailed suitably over pictures and texts on the walls, and around the newel posts of the stairs and over the door lintels.

  The formal proceedings were very carefully laid out. It would have been impossible to seat everyone, and anyway since Shaw had invited extra people as the whim took him (including Pitt, to the deep indignation of the Worlingham sisters and the vicar), the servants did not know in advance how many there would be.

  Therefore the food was set out so that people might be served by the butler and maids who were standing waiting discreetly just beyond the door, and then stand and speak with each other, commiserate, gossip and generally praise the dead until it should be time for a few prepared words, first by the vicar, then by Shaw as the departed’s closest friend. And of course they could partake of a few of the very best bottles of Port wine, or something a little lighter for the women. Claret was served with the meal.

  “I don’t know how we are going to learn anything now,” Emily said with a frown of disappointment. “Everyone is doing precisely what one would expect. Clitheridge looks incompetent and harassed, his wife is trying to compensate for him all the time, while being aware of you and Dr. Shaw, and if looks had any effect your hair would have frizzled on your head and dropped out, and your dress would hang on your back in scorched rags.”

  “Can you blame her?” Charlotte whispered back. “The vicar doesn’t exactly make one’s pulse race, does he.”

  “Don’t be vulgar. No he doesn’t. I would rather have the good doctor any day-unless, of course, he murdered his wife.”

  Charlotte had no effective answer for that, knowing it could be true, however much it hurt, so she turned around sharply and poked Emily in the ribs, as if by accident.

  “Humph,” Emily said in total comprehension.

  Flora Lutterworth was on her father’s arm, her veil drawn back so she might eat, and there was color in her cheeks and a faintly smug smile on her pretty mouth. Charlotte was curious to know what had caused it.

  Across the room at the far side, Pitt saw it too, and had a very good idea it had something to do with Murdo. He considered it highly likely that Murdo would not find it so difficult to pursue Miss Lutterworth. In fact he might very well discover that it happened in spite of any ideas of his own, and it would all be much easier than he had feared.

  Pitt was dressed unusually smartly for him. His collar was neat, his tie perfectly straight-at least so far-and he had nothing in his jacket pockets except a clean handkerchief (Emily’s silk one was only for show), a short pencil and a piece of folded paper so he might make notes if he wished. That was quite redundant, because he never did; it was something he thought an efficient policeman ought to have.

  He realized Shaw had invited him precisely to annoy Angeline and Celeste. It was a way of establishing that although the function was held in the Worlingham house, this was Amos Lindsay’s funerary dinner, and he, Shaw, was the host and would invite whom he chose. To that end he stood at the head of the table, very square on his feet, and behaved as if the servants offering the baked meats and claret were his own. He welcomed the guests, especially Pitt. He did not glance once at the grim faces of Angeline and Celeste, who were in black bombazine and jet beads, standing behind him and a trifle to one side. They smiled guardedly at those they approved of, such as Josiah and Prudence Hatch, Quinton Pascoe, and Aunt Vespasia; nodded civilly to those they tolerated, like the Lutterworths, or Emily and Jack; and totally ignored those whose presence they knew to be a calculated affront, such as Pitt and Charlotte-although since they came separately and did not speak to each other, the sisters did not immediately connect them.

  Pitt took his delicious cold game pie, jugged hare, and brown bread and butter and homemade pickle, liberally apportioned, and his glass of claret, finding them extraordinarily difficult to manage, and wandered around half overhearing conversations, and closely observing faces-those who were speaking, and more particularly those who were alone and unaware they were being observed.

  What had been the precise course of events on the day or two before Clemency Shaw’s death? Some time earlier she had discovered the source of the Worlingham money, and spread and given away her own inheritance, almost entirely to relieve the distress of those who were the victims of appalling misery, either directly to assist them, or indirectly to fight the laws which presently enabled owners to take their excess profits so discreetly that their names were never known nor their public reputations smeared with their true behavior.

  When had she shared this with Shaw? Or had he discovered it some way of his own, perhaps only when her money was gone, and they had had a furious quarrel? Or had he been wiser than that, and pretended to agree-No. If he had hidden his response, it must have been because he thought there was still a substantial majority of the money left-enough to be worth killing her to save.

  He looked across the heads of two women talking, to where Shaw still stood at the head of the table, smiling and nodding, talking to Maude Dalgetty. He looked very tense; his shoulders were tight under the fabric of his black jacket, as if he longed to break into action, punch the air, stride backward and forward, do anything to use that wild anger inside him. Pitt found it hard to believe he would have contained his temper so well that Clemency, who must have known his every expression, inflection of voice, gesture, would not have understood the power of his rage, and thus at least some shadow of her own danger.

  What must she have thought when Josiah Hatch announced that there was going to be a stained-glass window put in the church dedicated to the old bishop, and depicting him as one of the early Christian saints? What an intolerable irony. What self-control had enabled her to keep silent? And she had done so. It had been a public announcement, and if she had given even the slightest hint that she knew some hideous secret, as a member of the family she would have been listened to, even if not entirely believed.

  Was it conceivable that everyone had kept silent about it-a conspiracy?

  He looked around the room at the somber faces. All were suitably grim for the occasion: Clitheridge harassed and nervous; Lally smoothing things over, fussing around Shaw; Pascoe and Dalgetty studiously avoiding each other, but still padded out by bandages under their mourning clothes-Dalgetty’s cheek stitched and plastered. Matthew Oliphant was speaking quietly, a word of comfort, a gesture of warmth or reassurance; Josiah Hatch’s face was white except where the wind had whipped his cheeks; Prudence was more relaxed than earlier, her fear gone. Angeline and Celeste were quietly angry; the Lutterworths were still being social
ly patronized. No, he could not believe in a conspiracy among such disparate people. Too many of them had no interest in protecting the reputation of the Worlinghams. Dalgetty would have delighted in spreading such a richly ironic tale, the ultimate freedom to speak against the established order of things-even if only to infuriate Pascoe.

  And Amos Lindsay, with his Fabian socialist sympathies, would surely have laughed loud and long, and made no secret of it at all.

  No-assuredly nothing had been said when the window was announced. And all plans had gone ahead for it, money had been raised, the glass purchased and the artists and glaziers engaged. The Archbishop of York had been invited to dedicate it and all Highgate and half ecclesiastical north London would be there at the ceremony.

  Pitt sipped his claret. It was extremely good. The old bishop must have laid down a remarkable cellar, as well as everything else. Ten years after his death, Theophilus’s share gone, and there was still this quality to draw on for an affair which was not really more than a duty for Celeste and Angeline.

  The Worlingham window must be costing a very considerable amount of money, and according to the family, part of the purpose of it was to show the great regard in which the whole of Highgate had held the bishop. Therefore it was to be funded with public money, collected from the parish, and any other people whose remembrance of him was so clear that they wished to contribute.

  Who had organized that? Celeste? Angeline? No-it had been Josiah Hatch. Of course, it would be a man. They would hardly leave such a public and financial matter to elderly ladies. And it would be more seemly if it did not come from one of the immediate family. That left the two grandsons-in-law-Hatch and Shaw. Hatch was a church sidesman, and had a reverence for the bishop that exceeded even that of his daughters. He was the old bishop’s true spiritual heir.

  Anyway, the idea of Stephen Shaw working on such a scheme was ludicrous. He had disliked the bishop strongly in his lifetime, and now on learning of the true source of his wealth, he whose daily work took him to the victims of such greed, despised him with a passion.

  Pitt wondered what Shaw had said to Hatch, when Hatch asked him for a contribution. That must have been a rich moment: Hatch holding out his hand for money for a memorial window depicting the bishop as a saint; and Shaw newly aware that the bishop’s fortune came from the wretchedness of thousands, even the exploitation and death of many-and his wife had just given away every penny she inherited to right at least a fraction of the wrongs.

  Had Shaw kept his temper-and a still tongue?

  Pitt looked again across the crowd at that passionate, dynamic face with its ruthless honesty.

  Surely not?

  Shaw was banging the table, his glass high in his other hand.

  Gradually the buzz of conversation died and everyone turned towards him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a clear, ringing voice. “We are met here today, at the kind invitation of Miss Celeste and Miss Angeline Worlingham, to honor our departed friend, Amos Lindsay. It is appropriate that we say a few words about him, to remember him as he was.”

  There was a faintly uncomfortable shifting of weight in the room, a creaking of whalebone stays, the faint rattle of taffeta, someone’s shoes squeaking, an exhalation of breath.

  “The vicar spoke of him in church,” Shaw went on, his voice a little louder. “He praised his virtues, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he praised a list of virtues which it is customary to attribute to the dead, and no one ever argues and says, ‘Well, no, actually, he wasn’t like that at all.’ ” He raised his glass a little higher. “But I am! I want us to drink in remembrance of the man as he really was, not some hygienic, dehumanized plaster replica of him, robbed of all his weaknesses, and so of all his triumphs.”

  “Really-” Clitheridge looked pale and dithered between stepping forward and interrupting physically-and the more restrained action of simply remonstrating, and hoping Shaw’s better taste would prevail. “I mean-don’t you think-?”

  “No I don’t,” Shaw said briskly. “I hate the pious whimperings about his being a pillar of the community, a Godfearing man and beloved of us all. Have you no honesty left in your souls? Can you stand here and say you all loved Amos Lindsay? Balderdash!”

  There was an audible gasp of indrawn breath this time, and Clitheridge turned around desperately as if he were hoping some miraculous rescue might be at hand.

  “Quinton Pascoe was afraid of him, and was horrified by his writings. He would have had him censored, had he been able.”

  There was a slight rustle and murmur as everyone swiveled to look at Pascoe, who turned bright pink. But before he could protest, Shaw went on.

  “And Aunt Celeste and Aunt Angeline abhorred everything he stood for. They were-and still are-convinced that his Fabian views are unchristian and, if allowed to proliferate though society, will bring about the end of everything that is civilized and beneficial to mankind-or at any rate to that class of it to which we belong, which is all that matters to them, because it is all they know. It is all their sainted father ever allowed them to know.”

  “You are drunk!” Celeste said in a furious whisper which carried right around the room.

  “On the contrary, I am extremely sober,” he replied, looking up at the glass in his hand. “Even Theophilus’s best burgundy has not affected me-because I have not drunk enough of it. And as for his superb Port-I have not even touched it yet. The very least I owe poor Amos is to have my thoughts collected when I speak of him-although God knows I have enough provocation to get drunk. My wife, my best friend and my house have all been taken from me in the last few weeks. And even the police, with all their diligence, don’t seem to have the faintest idea by whom.”

  “This is most undignified,” Prudence said very quietly, but still her voice carried so at least a dozen people heard her.

  “You wanted to speak of Mr. Lindsay,” Oliphant prompted Shaw.

  Shaw’s face changed. He lowered the glass and put it on the table.

  “Yes, thank you for reminding me. This is not the time or the occasion for my losses. We are here to remember Amos-truly and vividly as the living man really was. We do him a hideous disservice to paint him in pastel colors and gloss over the failures, and the victories.”

  “We should not speak ill of the dead, Stephen,” Angeline said after clearing her throat. “It is most unchristian, and quite unnecessary. I am sure we were all very fond of Mr. Lindsay and thought only the best of him.”

  “No you didn’t,” he contradicted her. “Did you know he married an African woman? Black as the ace of spades-and beautiful as the summer night. And he had children-but they are all still in Africa.”

  “Really, Stephen-this is quite irresponsible!” Celeste stepped forward and took him firmly by the elbow. “The man is not here to defend himself-”

  Shaw shook her loose, bumping her abruptly.

  “God darnmit, he doesn’t need a defense!” he shouted. “Marrying an African is not a sin! He did have sins-plenty of them-” He flung his arms expressively. “When he was young he was violent, he drank too much, he took advantage of fools, especially rich ones, and he took women that most certainly weren’t his.” His face screwed up with intensity and his voice dropped. “But he also had compassion, after he’d learned pain himself: he was never a liar, nor a bigot.” He looked around at them all. “He never spread gossip and he could keep a secret to the grave. He had no pretensions and he knew a hypocrite when he saw one-and loathed all forms of cant.”

  “I really think-” Clitheridge began, flapping his hands as if he would attract everyone’s attention away from Shaw. “Really-I-”

  “You can pontificate all you like over everyone else.” Shaw’s voice was very loud now. “But Amos was my friend, and I shall speak of him as he really was. I’m sick of hearing platitudes and lies, sick and weary to my heart of it! You couldn’t even speak of poor Clem honestly. You mouthed a lot of pious phrases that meant nothing at
all, said nothing of what she was really like. You made her sound as if she were a quiet, submissive, ignorant little woman who wore her life away being obedient, looking after me and doing useless good works among the parish poor. You made her seem colorless, cowardly of spirit and dull of mind. She wasn’t!” He was so furious now, and so torn by grief, that his face was suffused with color, his eyes were bright and his whole body trembled. Even Celeste dared not interfere.

  “That was nothing like Clem. She had more courage than all the rest of you put together-and more honesty!”

  With difficulty Pitt tore his attention from Shaw and looked around at the other faces. Was there any one of them reflecting fear of what Shaw was going to say next? There was anxiety in Angeline’s face, and distaste in Celeste’s, but he could not see the dread that would have been there had they known of Clemency’s discovery.

  There was nothing in Prudence’s profile either, and nothing in the half outline of Josiah except rigid contempt.

  “God knows how she was born a Worlingham,” Shaw went on, his fist clenched tight, his body hunched as if waiting to explode into motion. “Old Theophilus was a pretentious, greedy old hypocrite-and a coward to the last-”

  “How dare you!” Celeste was too angry to consider any vestige of propriety left. “Theophilus was a fine, upright man who lived honestly and charitably all his life. It is you who are greedy and a coward! If you had treated him properly, as you should have, both as his son-in-law and as his doctor, then he would probably be alive today!”

  “Indeed he would,” Angeline added, her face quivering. “He was a noble man, and always did his duty.”

  “He died groveling on the floor with fistfuls of money spread all around him, tens of thousands of pounds!” Shaw exploded at last. “If anybody killed him, it was probably whoever was blackmailing him!”

  There was a stunned and appalled silence. For deafening seconds no one even drew breath. Then there was a shriek from Angeline, a stifled sob from Prudence.