Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [89]
What should he learn about Urban? His reputation among his fellows? His home, his life, the money he spent? His professional integrity? He was lying about something, even if only by omission. Could he possibly know why Addison Carswell had dismissed the case against Osmar? Carswell’s name was on Weems’s list as well—but what had Osmar to do with it? And if it was blackmail, why was Byam’s name not there?
He got off the omnibus and walked the last distance along the narrow pavement in the heat, passing women with children, old men gossiping, a tradesman sweeping his shop’s front step, a rag and bone man shouting in a singsong voice, and a housemaid in a crisp cap arguing with a butcher’s boy standing in the areaway wiping his hands on his blue-and-white apron. It was not far from where he lived himself, and not unlike his street. He pushed the thought of Charlotte out of his mind; that was another hurt, for another time.
Urban’s house was quite small and ordinary from the outside, exactly like its neighbors. The front step was scrubbed clean, the door recently painted, the garden was small and neat with a few roses around and a pocket handkerchief lawn. He had already debated with himself what he was going to say. There was little point in duplicity. It would be too easily discovered, and then would create an ill feeling that would be hard, if not impossible, to repair. And if Urban was innocent, that would be an impediment to future work.
The door was opened by a small woman in a gray stuff dress and a plain white apron. Her thick reddish hair was tied back in a knot and there was a white cap balanced precariously, and crookedly, on top of her head. She reminded him of the woman who came to do the heavy scrubbing for Charlotte, and whom Gracie bossed around mercilessly, now that she considered herself a senior servant.
“Yes?” the woman said impatiently. Obviously he had interrupted her in her work and she did not appreciate it.
“Good morning,” he said quickly. “I am conducting a police investigation and I need to examine some papers of Inspector Urban’s. My name is Pitt. May I come in?”
She looked doubtful. “ ’Ow do I know you’re tellin’ me the truth? You could be anyone.”
“I could,” he agreed, and produced his police identification.
She looked at the card carefully. Her eyes did not move along the line, and Pitt guessed she could not read. She looked up at him again, studying his face, and he waited for her to make her judgment.
“All right,” she said at last. “If it’s police yer’d better come in. But ’E in’t done nuffink wrong.”
“It’s information I need,” he said, somewhat begging the question, and followed her into the narrow hallway where she opened one of the doors into the front parlor. “That’s where ’E keeps ’is papers,” she said stiffly. “Anyfink yer wantin’ll be in there. If it in’t, then it in’t ’ere at all.” It was a definite statement he was not going to be allowed anywhere else.
“Thank you,” he accepted. She remained standing rooted to the spot, her eyes hard and bright. Obviously she was not going to leave him alone, policeman or not. He smiled to himself, then began to look around. It was not a large room, and the space was further crowded by at least a dozen paintings on the walls. They were not at all what he would have expected, family portraits, sentimental pastoral scenes or sporting prints. Rather they were very modern impressions of sunlit landscapes: bars of light, blurs of water lilies all blues and greens with flashes of pink; a dazzle of shades and points of vivid color which conjured peasant women lying under the trees by the side of a cornfield. They were highly individual experiments in art, the selection of a man who had very definite opinions and was prepared to spend a good deal of money investing in what he believed to be good.