Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [171]
“They don’t often press their fortune far enough to endanger their own lives,” Pitt answered. Ridiculously he found his mouth dry. “This one was successful for quite a long time. He obtained his information from servants who had chanced to learn something personal about their employers, and chosen to try to take advantage of it.”
Anstiss’s face darkened with contempt.
“If you expect my pity, you will be disappointed, Inspector. Such people deserve to be hoist on their own petard.”
“No sir.” Pitt shook his head. “I find it hard to care who killed him myself. But it is my duty, and we cannot permit private persons to become executioners, no matter how hardly tempted. This judgment may be one we concur with, but what about the next?”
“I take your point, Inspector, you do not need to labor it. What has all this to do with me?”
“One of the servants in question once worked in your country house.” He watched closely to see if there was a flicker in Anstiss’s face, anything that would tell him he had caught a nerve.
There was nothing.
“Indeed? Are you sure? I am not being blackmailed, Inspector.” He made no protestations and there was humor in his face, not anxiety.
“I’m very glad.” Pitt smiled back. “It is someone who was a guest in your home some time ago.”
“Oh? Who is that?”
It was Anstiss’s first error, and not a serious one.
“I am sure, my lord, you will understand if I do not answer that,” Pitt said smoothly. “I must treat such information in confidence.”
“Of course.” Anstiss shrugged. “Foolish of me to have asked. I was not thinking. It was a sense of guilt. I feel responsible that a guest of mine should suffer such an offense.” He shifted his weight a little and relaxed, but he did not invite Pitt to sit. One did not entertain policemen as if they were social acquaintances. “How can I help? You said it was some time ago?”
“Yes. Several years. If I could speak to your butler he may have either records, or if not, then some memory of past servants. He may even know where they may be found now.”
“It’s possible,” Anstiss agreed. “But don’t hold much hope, Inspector Pitt. Some servants stay a long time, of course, indeed all their lives, but many others move position often, and this one sounds most unsatisfactory. The sort of person you are speaking of may well have passed from one place to another, always downward, and in quite a short space have ended up on the streets, or by this time dead. Still, by all means speak to Waterson if you like. I’ll call him.” And without waiting for any better instruction he moved to the bell rope and rang it.
Waterson proved a dignified man with a dry and individual humor in his face, and Pitt liked him immediately. On Anstiss’s instruction he conducted Pitt to his pantry, where he offered him a cup of tea with biscuits, an unusually civilized concern to a policeman. Then he recalled as well as he was able all the upstairs servants in the country house approximately twenty years previously.
He was tall and lean with a fine head of white hair. Were it not for his deferential and unobtrusive manner, one might have taken him for the aristocratic owner of the house. His features had a refinement Anstiss’s lacked, but neither the strength nor the blazing intelligence. Seeing them side by side one would never have failed to see that Anstiss was the leader designed by nature as well as by society.
“Probably a housemaid or a ladies’ maid,” Pitt prompted, sipping his tea. It was hot and delicately flavored and was served in porcelain cups.
“That would be about the time of Lady Anstiss’s death,” Waterson said slowly, his eyes on the ceiling as he leaned back in his chair. “Not a time easily forgotten. Let me see … we had young Daisy Cotterill then, she’s still with us—head laundress now. And Bessie Markham. She married a footman from somewhere or other.