Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [58]
They turned into Kennington Road. It was full of people taking the evening air, open carriages, street peddlers with all manner of food: pies, eels, peppermint water, fruit sherbets, cordials, sandwiches. Girls offered bunches of flowers, matches, packets of lavender, little dolls. An organ grinder played hurdy-gurdy music and in the summer street it sounded unexpectedly pleasing, all its harshness and tawdriness sweetened by the open air, the clopping of horses’ feet and the hiss of wheels.
Pitt’s cab stopped and the driver leaned out.
“Yer fare’s got out, sir,” he said quietly. “ ’E went inter the coffee’ouse on yer left.”
“Thank you.” Pitt climbed out and paid him. “Thank you very much.”
“Who is ’e?” the cabby asked. “Is ’E a murderer?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt said honestly.
The other cab had moved away so presumably Carswell intended remaining where he was for some time. “Thank you, that’s all,” Pitt said, dismissing the cabby, to his acute disappointment. He moved away reluctantly, still giving the occasional glance backwards over his shoulder to see what was happening.
Pitt smiled to himself and pulled his coat even further open and took his tie off altogether, then followed Carswell into the coffeehouse.
Inside was warm, stuffy and full of chatter, clinking glass and rustling skirts, and the smell of coffee beans, pastry and sugar. On the walls were colorful theater posters, and now and again someone roared with laughter.
In a corner over to the right Addison Carswell was being greeted by a slender, pretty girl with a mass of soft honey-brown hair which was piled on her head in the very latest fashion, the short ends curling onto her neck as only nature can and no art has learned to imitate. In spite of her youth her features were strong and her face full of vitality, her eyes wide and clear. Pitt judged her to be in her early twenties.
Carswell was looking at her with a smile he could not mask and an anticipation in his eyes as he gave her the hatbox and the parcel containing the parasol. She opened them with quick fingers, tearing at the paper, every few moments glancing up at him, then down again. When she finally took off the last pieces and let them flutter to the ground she held up the parasol with unfeigned delight, and then the hat.
Carswell put out his hand and touched her wrist, restraining her before she could swing the hat up and try it on. She smiled, blushing as if she suddenly remembered her foolishness, and put her hand down again.
Carswell’s face reflected an extraordinary tenderness, an emotion so transparently genuine it startled Pitt and made him uncomfortably aware of being not merely a detective, but at this moment a voyeur.
He watched them for another thirty minutes. They sat at the table, the hatbox and the parasol at the girl’s feet, leaning forward speaking to each other one minute earnestly, the next lightly and with laughter, but it was not loud, neither did the girl have any of the mannerisms of flirting. Rather it seemed an affection of two people who have known each other some time and shared many experiences which have given them a treasury of understanding from which to draw.
When Carswell arose and left after having bade the girl farewell, Pitt did not follow him, but turned his face away just in case Carswell should glance his way. But as it happened he looked neither to right nor left, but with a smile on his face and a spring in his step, he went out into Kennington Road. Pitt paid his bill and went out onto the pavement. He watched Carswell march away down towards Westminster Bridge where he might find a hansom, and presumably return home to Curzon Street and his wife. Perhaps before then he would have taken the jauntiness out of his stride and the dreaming from his face.
A few moments later when the girl left also, Pitt was waiting for her. She