by Anne Perry
“Yes, sir. Just two weeks,” the postman replied. “Getting to know people, like. Met your missus a few days ago. Lovely lady.” His eyes widened. “’Aven’t seen her since, though. Not poorly, I ’ope? Colds can be wicked to get rid of this time o’ year, which don’t seem fair, bein’ so warm, an’ all.”
Pitt was about to reply that she was on holiday, but he realized with a sudden chill that the man could be anyone, or pass on gathered information anywhere!
“No, thank you,” he responded briskly. “She is quite well. Good day.”
“Good day, sir.” And whistling through his teeth, the postman moved on.
“I’ll get a cab,” Tellman offered, looking up and down Keppel Street and seeing none available.
“Why not walk?” Pitt asked, dismissing the postman from his mind and swinging into a long, easy stride eastward towards Russell Square. “It’s not more than half a mile or so. Harrison Street, just the other side of the Foundling Hospital.”
Tellman grunted and did a couple of double steps to catch up with him. Pitt smiled to himself. He knew Tellman was wondering exactly how he had discovered where Kingsley lived without the assistance of the police station, which he would know Pitt had not sought. He would be wondering if Special Branch already had an interest in Kingsley.
They walked in silence around Russell Square, across the traf-fic of Woburn Place, and along Berner Street towards Brunswick Square and the huge, old-fashioned mass of the hospital. They turned right, instinctively avoiding the children’s burial ground. Pitt was touched by sadness, as he always was, and glanced sideways to see the same lowered eyes and twist of the lips in Tellman. He realized with a jolt that for all the years they had worked together, he knew very little of Tellman’s past, except the anger at poverty which showed naked so often he almost took it for granted now, not even wondering what real pain lay behind it. Gracie probably knew more of the man within the rigid exterior than Pitt did. But then Gracie was a child of the same narrow alleys and the fight for survival. She would not need to be told anything. She might see it differently, but she understood.
Pitt had grown up the son of the gamekeeper on Sir Arthur Desmond’s country estate. His parents were servants; his father had been accused and found guilty of poaching and deported, wrongly, Pitt believed. The passion of that conviction had never changed. But he had not been hungry for more than a day, nor walked in danger of attack, except by the boys his own age. A few bruises were his worst affliction, and the odd very sore backside from the head gardener, richly deserved.
In silence they passed the infants’ burial place. There was too much to say, and nothing at all.
“He has a telephone,” he said at last as they turned into Harrison Street.
“What?” Tellman had been lost in his own thoughts.
“Kingsley has a telephone,” Pitt repeated.
“You called him?” Tellman was startled.
“No, I looked him up,” Pitt explained.
Tellman blushed hotly. He had never thought of a private person’s owning one, although he knew Pitt did. Perhaps one day he could afford it, and maybe even have to, but not yet. Promotion was still fresh and raw to him, uncomfortable as a new collar. It did not fit—most especially with Pitt dogging his footsteps every day, and taking his first case from him, it abraded the tender skin.
They continued side by side until they reached Kingsley’s house and were admitted. They were shown through a rather dark, oak-paneled hall hung with pictures of battles on three of the walls. There was no time to look at the brass plates beneath them to see which ones they were. At a glance, most of them looked roughly Napoleonic. One appeared to be a burial. It had more emotion than the others, and better interest of light and shadow, a sense of tragedy in the huddled outline of the bodies. Perhaps it was Moore after Corunna.
The morning room was rigidly masculine also, greens and browns, lots of leather and bookcases with heavy, uniform volumes. On the farther wall hung a variety of African weapons, assegais and spears. They were dented and scarred with use. There was a fine but rather stylized bronze of a hussar on the central table. The horse was beautifully wrought.
When the butler had gone Tellman gazed around with interest, but no sense of comfort. The room belonged to a man of a social class and a discipline alien to him and representing all he had been brought up to resent. One experience in particular had forced him to see a retired army officer as human, vulnerable, even to be deeply admired, but he still regarded that as an exception. The man who owned this room and whose life was mirrored in the pictures and furnishings was eccentric to say the least, almost a contradiction in conceptions. How could anyone who had done that most hideously practical of things, leading men in war, have so lost his grasp on reality as to be consulting a woman who claimed she spoke to ghosts?
The door opened and a tall, rather gaunt man came in. His face had an ashen look, as if he were ill. His hair was clipped short and his mustache was little more than a dark smudge over his upper lip. He stood straight, but it was the habit of a lifetime which kept him so, not any inner vitality.
“Good morning, gentlemen. My butler tells me you are from the police. What may I do for you?” There was no surprise in his voice. Possibly he had read of Maude Lamont’s death in the newspapers.
Pitt had already decided not to mention his connection with Special Branch. If he said nothing of it, Kingsley would assume he was with Tellman.
“Good morning, General Kingsley,” he replied. “I am Superintendent Pitt, and this is my colleague Inspector Tellman. I am sorry to tell you that Miss Maude Lamont died two nights ago. She was found yesterday morning, in her home. Because of the circumstances, we are obliged to investigate the matter very thoroughly. I believe you were there at her last séance?”
Tellman stiffened at Pitt’s bluntness.
Kingsley took in a deep breath. He looked distinctly shaken. He invited Pitt and Tellman to be seated, and then sank into one of the large leather chairs himself. He offered nothing, waiting for them to begin.
“Will you tell us what happened, sir, from the time of your arrival at Southampton Row?” Pitt asked.
Kingsley cleared his throat. It seemed to cost him an effort. Pitt thought it odd that a military man who must surely be accustomed to violent death should be so disturbed by murder. Was not war murder on a grand scale? Surely men went into battle with the express intention of killing as many of the enemy as possible? It could hardly be that this time the dead person was a woman. Women were all too often the victims of the violence, looting and destruction that went with war.
“I arrived at a few minutes after half past nine,” Kingsley began. “We were due to begin at a quarter to ten.”
“Were the arrangements long-standing?” Pitt interrupted.
“They were made the previous week,” Kingsley answered. “It was my fourth visit.”
“With the same three people?” Pitt said quickly.
Kingsley hesitated only a moment. “No. It was only the third with exactly the same.”
“Who were they?”
This time there was no hesitation at all. “I don’t know.”
“But you were there together?”
“We were there at the same time,” Kingsley corrected. “In no sense were we together, except that . . . that it helps to have the force of several personalities present.” He added no explanation as to what he meant.
“Can you describe them?”
“If you know I was there, Superintendent, my name and where to find me, do you not also know the same of them?”
A flash of interest crossed Tellman’s face. Pitt saw it in the corner of his vision. Kingsley was at last behaving like the leader of men he was supposed to be. Pitt wondered what shattering thing had happened to him that he had ever thought of turning to a spiritualist. It was painful and repellent intruding into the wounds of people’s lives, but the motives of murder were too often hidden within terrible events in the past
, and to understand the core of it he had to read it all. “I know the name of the woman,” he replied to the question. “Not the third person. Miss Lamont designated him in her diary only by a little diagram, a cartouche.”
Kingsley frowned slightly. “I have no idea why. I can’t help you.”
“Can you describe him to me . . . or her?”
“Not with any accuracy,” Kingsley replied. “We did not go there as a social event. I had no desire to be more than civil to anyone else present. It was a man of average height, as far as I recall. He wore an outdoor coat in spite of the season, so I don’t know his build. His hair seemed light rather than dark, possibly gray. He remained in the shadows towards the back of the room, and the lamps were red, so the light distorted. I imagine I might know him if we were to meet again, but I am not certain.”
“Who was the first to arrive?” Tellman cut across.
“I was,” Kingsley replied. “Then the woman.”
“Can you describe the woman?” Pitt interrupted, thinking of the long, pale hair around Maude Lamont’s sleeve button.
“I thought you knew who she was?” Kingsley retorted.
“I have a name,” Pitt explained. “I would like your impression of her appearance also.”
Kingsley resigned himself. “She was tall, taller than most women, very elegant, with pale blond hair dressed in a sort of . . .” He gave up.
Pitt felt a knot tighten almost to suffocation inside himself. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Please continue.”
“The other man was the last to come,” Kingsley resumed obediently. “As far as I can recall, he was last on the other occasions as well. He came in through the garden doors, and left before we did.”
“Who left last?” Pitt asked him.
“The woman,” Kingsley said. “She was still there when I went.” He looked unhappy, as if the answer gave him no satisfaction or sense of escape.
“The other man went out of the garden doors?” Tellman asked for confirmation.
“Yes.”
“Did Miss Lamont go with him and lock the gate to Cosmo Place after him?”
“No, she remained with us.”
“The maid?”
“She left shortly after we arrived. Went out of the kitchen door, I suppose. Saw her walk across the garden just about dusk. She was carrying a lantern, which she left outside the front door.”
Pitt visualized the garden path from the back of the house on Southampton Row. It led only to the door in the wall and Cosmo Place. “She went out of the side door?” he said aloud.
“Yes,” Kingsley agreed. “Probably why she took the lantern. Left it on the front step. Heard her footsteps on the gravel, and saw the light.”
Tellman finished the meaning for him. “So either the woman killed Miss Lamont, or you or the other man came back through the side gate and killed her. Or someone we know nothing about came for a later meeting of some sort and Miss Lamont herself let them in through the front door. But that was unlikely, and according to the maid, Miss Lamont was usually tired after a séance and retired to her bed when her guests left. There was no one else in the diary. No one else has been seen or heard. What time did you leave, General Kingsley?”
“About quarter to midnight.”
“Late to have a further client,” Pitt remarked.
Kingsley rubbed his hand over his brow as if his head pained him. He looked weary and beaten. “I really have no idea what happened after I left,” he said gently. “She seemed perfectly well then, and not in any state of anxiety or distress, certainly not as if she were afraid of anyone, or indeed expected anyone. She was tired, very tired. Calling upon the spirits of those gone before was always a very exhausting experience. It usually left her with barely the strength to wish us good-night and to see us to the door.” He stopped, staring miserably into emptiness stretching ahead of him.
Tellman glanced at Pitt and away again. The depth of emotion in Kingsley, and the bizarre subject of the discussion, embarrassed him. It was plain in the rigidity of his body and the way his hands fidgeted on his lap.
“Can you describe the evening for us, please, General Kingsley?” Pitt prompted. “What happened after you arrived and were all assembled? Was there a conversation?”
“No. We . . . we were all there for our own reasons. I had no desire to share mine with others, and I believe they felt the same.” Kingsley did not look at him as he said this, as if the matter were still private. “We sat around the table and waited while Miss Lamont concentrated upon . . . summoning the spirits.” He spoke hesitantly. He must have been aware at least of Tellman’s disbelief and a hovering between pity and contempt. He seemed almost to breathe it in the air.
Pitt was uncertain what he felt, not contempt so much as unease, a kind of oppression. He could not have said why, but he believed it was not right to be attempting to reach the spirits of the dead, whether it was possible or not.
“Where did you sit?” he said aloud.
“Miss Lamont at the head of the table in the tall-backed chair,” he replied. “The woman opposite her, the man to her left with his back to the windows, I to her right. We held hands, naturally.”
Tellman fidgeted slightly in his seat.
“Is that usual?” Pitt asked.
“Yes, to prevent suspicion of fraud. Some mediums will even sit inside a cabinet to be doubly restrained, and I believe Miss Lamont did that on occasion, but I have not seen her do it.”
“Why not?” Tellman asked abruptly.
“There was no need,” Kingsley replied with a swift, angry glance at him. “We were all believers. We would not have insulted her with such a . . . a piece of physical nonsense. We were seeking knowledge, a greater truth, not cheap sensations.”
“I see,” Pitt said quietly, without looking at Tellman. “Then what happened?”
“As far as I can recall, Miss Lamont went into a trance,” Kingsley replied. “She seemed to rise in the air several inches above her chair, and after some moments she spoke in a totally different voice. I . . .” He looked down at the floor. “I believe it was her spirit guide speaking to us through her.” The words were so quiet Pitt had to strain to hear them. “He wished to know what we had come to find out. He was a young Russian boy who had died in terrible cold . . . in the far north, up near the Arctic Circle.”
This time Tellman made no movement at all.
“And what did any of you reply?” Pitt asked. He needed to know what Rose Serracold had attended for, but he was afraid that if Kingsley gave that answer first, and saw or sensed Tellman’s response, he would then conceal his own reasons. And perhaps they, too, were relevant. After all, he had written the virulent political attack on Aubrey Serracold, albeit without knowing he was the husband of the woman who sat beside him at Maude Lamont’s table. Or had he?
Kingsley was silent for a moment.
“General Kingsley?” Pitt pressed. “What did you wish to learn through Miss Lamont?”
With great difficulty Kingsley answered, still staring at the floor. “My son Robert served in Africa, in the Zulu Wars. He was killed in action there. I . . .” His voice cracked. “I wanted to assure myself that his death was . . . that his spirit was at rest. There have been . . . different accounts of the action. I needed to know.” He did not look up at Pitt, as if he did not want to see what was in his face, or reveal the raw need inside him.
Pitt felt some acknowledgment at least was required. “I see,” he said softly. “And were you able to obtain such a thing?” He knew even as he asked that Kingsley had not. The fear in him was tangible in the room, and now too the grief was explained. In Maude Lamont’s death he had lost his contact with the only world he believed could give him an answer. Surely he would not willingly have destroyed it?
“Not . . . yet,” Kingsley replied, his words so swallowed in his throat Pitt was not sure for a moment if he had heard them at all. He was aware of Tellman beside him and his acute discomfort. Ordinary grief he was accus
tomed to, but this confounded and disturbed him. He was unsure of his own responses. He ought to feel ridicule and impatience, that was what all his experience of life had taught him. Looking for a moment at Tellman’s face, it was compassion that Pitt saw.
“What did the woman want?” Pitt asked.
Kingsley was jerked out of his own thoughts. He glanced up, his eyes puzzled. “I’m not sure. She was very eager to contact her mother, but I was not certain why. It must have been a very private matter, because all her questions were too oblique for me to understand.”
“And the answers?” Pitt found himself tense, afraid of what Kingsley might tell him. Why was Rose Serracold risking the expense and possible ridicule at this extraordinarily sensitive time? Had she no perception at all of what it meant? Or was her search so important to her that all other things were subject to it? What could that possibly be?
“Her mother?” Pitt said aloud.
“Yes.”
“And did Miss Lamont contact her?”
“Apparently.”
“What did she ask to know?”
“Nothing specific.” Kingsley looked puzzled as he recalled it. “Just general family information, other relatives who had . . . gone over. Her grandmother, her father. Were they well.”
“When was that?” Pitt pressed. “The night of Miss Lamont’s death? Before that? If you can remember exactly what was said it would be most helpful.”
Kingsley frowned. “I find it very difficult to imagine that she would have hurt Miss Lamont,” he said earnestly. “She seemed an eccentric woman, highly individual, but I saw no anger in her, no unkindness or ill feeling, rather . . .” He stopped.
Tellman leaned forward.
“Yes?” Pitt prompted.
“Fear,” Kingsley said quietly, as if it were an emotion with which he had long intimacy. “But there is no point in your asking me of what, because I have no idea. She seemed concerned if her father were happy, if he were restored to health. It was an odd question, I thought, as if disability could be carried beyond the grave. But perhaps when one has loved somebody such concerns are understandable. Love does not always go by the rules of reason.” Still he kept his eyes averted, as if it were his only privacy.