Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [51]
Here there were more pictures of the daughters, the three fair-haired girls in carefully decorous poses, features stylized to show large eyes and small, delicate mouths, the passion carefully ironed out—or perhaps it had never been there, but Pitt doubted that. Few young women were as childishly pure as this artist had drawn. These were pictures designed to portray them as the marriage market wished them to be seen.
A fourth girl, dark haired, looked much more natural. There was a streak of individuality in her face as if the artist had not felt the pressure to convey a message. Pitt looked down and saw she had a wedding ring on her slender hand. He smiled to himself, and moved on to the next room.
The remainder of the house was as he would have expected, well furnished in traditional style, unimaginative, comfortable, full of ornaments, paintings, tapestries and mementos of this and past generations, small signs of family life, pride in the only son, gifts from parents, old samplers stitched by the daughters as young girls, a variety of books.
By the time he had seen the kitchen as well, and the servants’ quarters that were on the ground floor, Pitt had a very clear idea of a close, busy, rather bourgeois family, undisturbed by scandal. The tragedies and triumphs were largely of a domestic sort: the dinner party that succeeds; the invitations extended and accepted; the suitor who calls, or does not call; the dress which is a disaster; the awaited letter which never arrives.
From the servants he picked up small remarks about callers when he asked about outsiders with entry to the house. He was told of dressmakers, milliners, women friends coming to tea or leaving cards. And of course the family entertained. There were parties of many sorts. Right now there were invitations to a ball in return to one they had only recently given.
Pitt left Addison Carswell’s house feeling really very little wiser with regard to the death of William Weems. He had a strong sense of an agreeable upper-middle-class family: affectionate, pleasantly domestic, no more obtuse than was normal in wishing their daughters to marry well both socially and financially. That much he had gathered quite easily. He smiled and thought how much more Charlotte would have read into it, the subtleties and refinements he could only guess at vaguely. But none of this led him any further towards knowing if Carswell was in heavy debt to Weems, or whether the issue might be one of blackmail, as it was with Byam. The household was not on the surface any more extravagant than he would have expected for a man in Carswell’s position. And it was always possible Mrs. Carswell had a little money of her own to contribute, which might account for the very excellent pictures.
He walked along Curzon Street in the sun, his hands in his pockets, his mind deep in thought, scarcely noticing the carriages with their liveried footmen passing him by. He could go to Cars well’s associates and ask them certain trivial questions, on some pretext or other, but even so, what would the answers tell him? That he played cards, perhaps? If he did, what of it? They would not admit if he had lost heavily lately. That was the sort of thing one gentleman did not reveal about another.
He turned the corner into South Audley Street then left along Great Stanhope Street into Park Lane.
Was Carswell worried or anxious lately? If he had confided in anyone, the confidant would not betray him by repeating the matter, least of all to a stranger he would recognize instantly as not one of their own, even if Pitt did not identify himself as a policeman. And worry indicated nothing. It could be about any number of things that had nothing whatever to do with William Weems. It could be a matter of health, or a Carswell daughter being courted by someone unsuitable, or, perhaps as bad, being courted by no one at all. It could be a complicated case he had been required to judge, a decision he was unhappy over, a friend in difficulties, or simply indigestion.