Half Moon Street

by Anne Perry

  He did not reply, but continued beside her until he saw a hansom and hailed it. He asked her for the address and gave it to the cabbie, then settled down for the ride. He would have liked to question her further about Cathcart, but she sat with her hands clenched in her lap, her eyes fixed, every now and then giving a little sigh. She needed time to absorb what had happened and come to terms with it in her own way.

  The hansom rumbled across the Battersea Bridge and down the other side, turning left along George Street, and stopped outside an extremely handsome house whose long garden backed onto the water. Pitt alighted, helping Mrs. Geddes out. He paid the driver and gave him a message to take to the local police station requesting a constable to come.

  Mrs. Geddes sniffed hard, and with a little shake of her head, walked up the long driveway and, taking a key from her pocket, opened the front door. She did it without hesitation. It was obviously a regular thing for her.

  The moment he was inside Pitt stared around him. The entrance hall was long and light, with stairs down one side. It was excellently lit from a very large window extending the length of the stairwell. On one wall were several photographs of groups of people—half a dozen ragged urchins playing in the street; beside them society ladies at Ascot, lovely faces under a sea of hats.

  “I told you ’e were good,” Mrs. Geddes said sadly. “Pour soul. I dunno wot yer wanter see ’ere. There in’t nuffink missin’, nuffink stole, so far as I can see. ’E must ’a bin set on in the street. ’E didn’t never ’ave them sort o’ people ’ere!”

  “What sort of people did he have?” Pitt asked, following her through to the sitting room, which was surprisingly small for such a house. It was very elegant, with a Sheraton table and chairs in gleaming wood, and a Bokhara rug which would have cost Pitt at least a year’s wages.

  The windows looked onto a long lawn set with trees, sloping down to the water beyond. A willow made a cavern of green and reflected like lace on the barely moving current. A pergola was covered in roses, its latticed arches white through the leaves.

  Mrs. Geddes was watching him.

  “Used that a lot, ’e did.” She sighed. “Folks like ter ’ave their pictures took in beautiful places. ’Specially ladies. Makes ’em look good . . . kind o’ romantic. Gentlemen prefer summink grand. Like ter dress up in uniforms, they do.” Her tone of voice conveyed her opinion of people who wore clothes that made them look more important than they were. “ ’Ad one daft ’aporth as dressed ’isself up as Julius Caesar!” she sniffed vigorously. “I ask yer!”

  “But Mr. Cathcart had no objection?” Pitt tried to imagine it.

  “O’ course ’e didn’t. ’Elped ’im, an all. Then that’s ’is job, in’t it? Take pictures o’ people so they looks like they wanter see ’emselves. Daft, I call it. But that don’t matter. I dunno wot yer wanter see ’ere, but this is all there is.”

  Pitt looked around, uncertain himself what he wanted to ask. Had Cathcart been killed here? The answer to that might matter a great deal. This house was in an excellent place for a punt to float from down as far as Horseferry Stairs. But then so were scores of other houses that backed onto the river.

  “Did he entertain here?” he asked. “Have parties?”

  She stared at him with total incomprehension.

  “Did he?” he repeated. Although the neatness of the rooms in the house he had seen so far made a party in which clothes such as the green velvet dress might be worn seem unlikely, certainly not before Mrs. Geddes had very thoroughly cleaned and tidied up.

  “Not as I know of.” She shook her head, still puzzled.

  “You never had anything to clear up, a lot of dishes to wash?”

  “No, I never did, not as yer’d call a lot. Not more’n three or four people’d use. Why yer askin’, Mr. Pitt? Yer said as ’e were murdered. That don’t ’appen at parties. Wot yer on about?”

  He decided to tell her a half-truth. “He was dressed for a party . . . fancy dress. It seems unlikely he was out in the street in such clothes.”

  “ ’Is clients dressed daft,” she responded hotly. “ ’E never did! More sense, even if ’e catered ter some as ’adn’t.”

  There was probably a great deal Mrs. Geddes did not know about Mr. Cathcart, but Pitt forbore from saying so.

  “Does he have a boat, perhaps moored on the river at the bottom of the garden?” he asked instead.

  “I dunno.” A look of misery filled her face. “You said summink about a boat before. ’E were found in a boat, were ’e?”

  “Yes, he was. Did you do any tidying yesterday when you came?”

  “There weren’t nuffink ter do. Just cleaned as usual. Did a bit o’ laundry, like. Same as always . . . ’ceptin’ the bed weren’t slept in, which was unusual, but not like it never ’appened before.” She narrowed her lips a trifle.

  Pitt read the gesture as one of disapproval.

  “He occasionally spent the night elsewhere? He has a lover, perhaps?” Remembering the green dress, he was careful not to attribute a gender.

  “Well, I can’t see as she murdered ’im,” Mrs. Geddes said angrily. “That’s not ter say I approve o’ carryin’s on, ’cos I don’t! But she in’t a bad sort, that excepted. Not greedy, and not too flashy, if yer know what I mean.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “Well, I s’pose as she’ll ’ave ter be told an’ all. ’Er name’s Lily Monderell. Don’ ask me ’ow she spells it, as I got no idea.”

  “Where will I find Miss Monderell?” he asked.

  “Over the bridge, in Chelsea. I ’spec ’e’s got it writ down somewhere.”

  “I’d like you to come with me through the rest of the house to tell me if anything’s different from the way it usually is,” he requested.

  “I dunno wot you think yer gonna find,” she said, blinking hard. Suddenly the awareness of Cathcart’s death seemed to have overtaken her again, now that police were walking through his house as if he no longer possessed it. They were going to be looking through his belongings, in his absence and without asking him. “If there’s anyfink wrong I’d ’a seen it,” she added with a sniff.

  “You weren’t looking before,” he soothed her. “Let us begin down here and work upwards.”

  “Yer wastin’ yer time,” she retorted. “Yer should be out there.” She jerked her head toward some unknown beyond. “That’s where yer’ll find murderers an’ the like.” Still she led the way into the next room and he followed after her.

  It was a well-proportioned house and furnished in extravagant taste, as if Cathcart had had an eye to curtains and ornaments he might use in photographs at some future date. However, the whole created a place of distinction and considerable beauty. An Egyptian cat of clean and elongated lines contrasted with an ornate red, black and gold painted Russian icon.

  A minor pre-Raphaelite painting of a knight in vigil before an altar hung on the upstairs landing, curiously highlighting the simplicity of an arrangement of sword-shaped leaves. It was highly individual, and Pitt had a sharp sense of personality, of a man’s tastes, his dreams and ideals, perhaps something of the life which had shaped him. Oddly, the knowledge of loss was greater than when he had stared at the body in the boat as it knocked against Horseferry Stairs, or again in the morgue, when he had been thinking more of Mrs. Geddes and the question of identification.

  She showed him through every room, and each was immaculate. Nothing was out of the place one would expect to find it, no chairs or tables were crooked, no cushions or curtains disturbed. Everything was clean. It was impossible to believe there had been a fancy dress party there which had indulged in the sort of excesses the green velvet dress suggested, and certainly no violence in which two men had fought and one been killed.

  The last room they reached was up a flight of stairs from a second, smaller landing, and it extended the length of the top story, with windows and skylights giving the light an excellent clarity. It was immediately obvious that this was the studio wh
ere Cathcart took many of his photographs. One end was furnished as an elegant withdrawing room, one side overlooked the river, and a person seated would appear to have nothing but the sky behind. The nearest end was cluttered like a storeroom with what seemed at a glance to be scores of objects of wildly varied character.

  “I don’t come up ’ere much,” Mrs. Geddes said quietly. “ ‘Just sweep the floor,’ ’e says. ‘Keep it clean. Don’t touch nuffink.’ ”

  Pitt regarded the conglomeration with interest. Without moving anything he recognized a Viking horned helmet, half a dozen pieces from a suit of armor, uncountable pieces of velvet of an enormous variety of colors—rich reds and purples, golds, pastel cream and earth tones. There was an ostrich feather fan, two stuffed pheasants, a round Celtic shield with metal bosses, several swords, spears, pikes, and bits and pieces of military and naval uniforms. What lay hidden beneath them was beyond even guessing.

  Mrs. Geddes answered his unspoken thoughts. “Like I said, some of ’em likes ter dress daft.”

  A closer examination of the room discovered nothing in which Pitt could see any connection with Cathcart’s death. In a large wardrobe there were a number of other dresses of varying degrees of ornateness. But then since Cathcart frequently photographed women, that was to be expected. There were also men’s clothes from many historical periods, both real and fanciful.

  There were four cameras carefully set up on tripods, with black cloths for obscuring the light. Pitt had never seen a camera so closely before, and he looked at them with interest, being careful not to disturb them. They were complicated boxes in both metal and wood with pleated leather sides, obviously to telescope back and forth to vary the proportions. In size they were roughly a cubic foot or a little less, and on two of them brass fittings shone freshly polished.

  There were also a number of arc lights on the floor. There was no gas supply to them, but heavy cables.

  “Electric,” Mrs. Geddes said with pride. “Got ’is own machine wot drives ’em. Dynamo, it’s called. ’E says as yer can’t get proper light fer pictures ’ceptin’ in the summer, not inside the ’ouse, like.”

  Pitt regarded the lights with interest. It was increasingly apparent that Cathcart had taken great thought and trouble to make an art of his work. Neither time nor expense had been spared.

  “ ’E does ’em all ’isself, o’ course,” Mrs. Geddes said. “Special room ’e ’as fer it, in the basement, like. Full o’ chemicals. Smells ’orrible. But ’e never lets me in there, case I ’urts meself wif anyfink. Spill some o’ them things an’ yer’ll never be the same again.”

  “Did he keep any of the pictures here?” he asked, looking around curiously. “Recent or current ones?”

  “In them drawers.” She pointed to a large cabinet a little to his left.

  “Thank you.” He opened it and studied the prints inside, going through them one by one. The first was of a very striking woman dressed in a highly exotic gown with ropes of beads around her neck. By her feet was a beautifully wrought raffia basket, out of which trailed a very live-looking snake. It was an arresting image, not principally for its suggestions of classical Egypt, which was presumably what the subject had intended, but for the lighting of the face, showing its power and sensuality.

  In a second picture was a young man posed as whom Pitt took to be Saint George. He was complete with polished armor, sword, and shield. The helmet was balanced on a table beside him. The light caught the sheen on the points and curves of the metal breastplate and reflected in his pale eyes and through his fair hair, making an aureole of it. It was the portrait not of a knight at war but of a dreamer who fights battles of the soul.

  A third photograph caught the essential vanity of a face, a fourth the sweetness, a fifth the self-indulgence, although they were so disguised by the trappings of fantasy or wealth as to be hidden from the less-perceptive eye. Pitt had a far deeper respect for the photographer than he had begun with, and a realization that such skill in judging the human character and portraying it so tellingly might earn him enemies as well as friends.

  He closed the drawer and turned back to Mrs. Geddes. As he did so he heard the front doorbell ring.

  “S’pose I’d better go an’ answer that,” Mrs. Geddes said, looking at him as if for permission. “Do I tell ’oever it is as Mr. Cathcart’s dead, or not?”

  “No, please don’t do that yet,” he said quickly. “But I hope it is a constable from the local station. At least as a matter of courtesy I have to inform them what has happened, and if the murder actually happened here, then it is in their jurisdiction.” If he was fortunate, local police would insist on taking over the case. It now seemed quite certain the French Embassy was in no way involved, and there was no reason why Pitt should remain in charge.

  It was indeed the local constable, a plain-faced, agreeable man of middle years named Buckler. Pitt explained to him briefly what had occurred so far. Even the more lurid details were necessary, although he excused Mrs. Geddes before describing them. If Buckler were to assist in the further search, he must know what might be relevant.

  “Well I’m very surprised, sir, an’ that’s a fact,” he said when Pitt had finished. “Mr. Cathcart was an artist, an’ a bit eccentric, like, but we always found ’im a very decent gentleman. Not what you’d call the best standards, no churchman or the like, but good as most gentlemen, an’ better’n many. It’s a very ugly business, an’ that’s no mistake.”

  “Indeed,” Pitt agreed, not yet sure whether he believed Buckler as to Cathcart’s character. “Mrs. Geddes has shown me through the house and says there is nothing out of place and no signs of any other presence here, except Miss Lily Monderell, whom I believe is Cathcart’s mistress.”

  “Well ’e was an artist o’ sorts,” Buckler conceded. “You expect that.” He glanced around. “D’you think ’e were killed ’ere, then? Although I can’t see anyone gettin’ around the streets dressed like you say. Not even at night! Most likely it was ’ere, an’ ’e were put in the boat an’ turned loose. Could easy fetch up any place between ’ere an’ the Pool.”

  Pitt led him back through the house towards the side door to the garden, passing Mrs. Geddes in the sitting room.

  “Watch out for that rug,” she called after him. “Edge is frayed an’ it’s easy ter catch yer boot in it. I keep tellin’ Mr. Cathcart as ’e should get it mended.”

  Pitt glanced at the floor. It was smoothly polished and quite bare.

  “Mrs. Geddes!”

  “Yes sir?”

  “There’s no rug here.”

  “Yes, there is, sir.” Her voice came quite clearly. “Smallish green one wi’ red in it. Edge is frayed, like I said.”

  “No there isn’t, Mrs. Geddes. There’s nothing on the floor at all.”

  He heard the sound of her footsteps and a moment later she appeared in the doorway. She stared at the polished floor.

  “Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs! There should be one there, sir. It’s gorn!”

  “When did you last see it?”

  “Now . . . let me see.” She looked bewildered. “Yes, the day before Mr. Cathcart . . . got . . . well, the day before. It were there then, because I sort o’ nagged ’im about gettin’ it mended. I gave ’im the name o’ someone as does that kind o’ thing. Cobbler ’e is, actually, but stitch anything up pretty good.”

  “Could Mr. Cathcart have taken it to him?”

  “No sir,” she said firmly. “ ’Cos ’e don’t do that kind o’ thing ’isself. ’E’d ’a give it ter me ter take. I reckon it’s bin stole. But why anyone’d wanna take summink like that I’m blessed if I know.” She was staring as she spoke, her brow puckered, but not at the floor, rather at the blue-and-white vase which sat on the jardiniere by the wall.

  “What it is, Mrs. Geddes?” Pitt asked her.

  “An’ that’s not the right jar for there, neither. Wrong color. Mr. Cathcart’d never ’a put a blue-and-white jar there, ’cos o’ the curt
ains along at the end bein’ red, like. Big red-and-gold jar, ’e ’ad. Twice the size o’ that one.” She shook her head. “I dunno, Mr. Pitt. ’Oo’d take a great big jar like that, an’ then go an’ stick the wrong one in its place?”

  “Someone who wished to conceal the fact that anything was gone,” Pitt replied softly. “Someone who did not realize how good your memory is, Mrs. Geddes.”

  She smiled with satisfaction. “Thank yer—” She stopped abruptly, her face paling, her eyes wide. “Yer mean as ’e were killed ’ere? Oh my . . .” She swallowed convulsively. “Oh . . .”

  “A possibility, no more,” Pitt said apologetically. “Maybe you should go and put the kettle on . . . make that tea you didn’t have before.” He knelt down on the wooden floor and ran his fingers gently along the edge by the skirting board. It was not long before he felt a sharp prick and picked up a tiny sliver of porcelain. He examined it carefully. One smooth side was dark red.

  “That it?” Buckler asked, leaning over a little to look also.

  “Yes . . .”

  “You reckon ’e was killed ’ere, sir?”

  “Probably.”

  “There’s no blood,” Buckler pointed out. “Did they wash it all out? Not leave even a mark?”

  “No, it was probably on the rug that’s missing.”

  Buckler looked around. “What did ’e do with it? ’Ave yer looked in the garden? In the rubbish? I suppose ’e more likely took it away with ’im. Though I can’t think why. What difference’d it make? Doesn’t tell us ’oo ’e is.”

  “No, I haven’t looked in the garden yet,” Pitt replied, climbing to his feet. “If I find something there, I would rather have a local man with me when I do.”

  Buckler straightened his tunic coat and breathed out gently. “Right, sir. Then we’d better be about it, ’adn’t we?”

  Pitt opened the side door and stepped out. The autumn trees were still in full leaf, but the chestnuts were beginning to turn gold. The asters and Michaelmas daisies were a blaze of varying purples, blues and magentas, and the last marigolds were still spilling brightly over the edges of the borders. A few roses glowed amber and pink, fading quickly but with a luminous tone richer than that of summer.