Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [78]
“Two women?”
“Florence Ivory is the mother who lost her child; Africa Dowell is Nobby’s niece, with whom Mrs. Ivory shares a house.”
He stood up and went to the door, requested tea and sandwiches, and returned to sit down opposite Vespasia again, having to remove Hamish from his chair first.
“Naturally, when I first heard of the murders it crossed my mind to wonder whether it was anarchists, a lunatic, or someone with a personal motive, although I admit, I thought the third far less likely after Etheridge was killed as well.”
“Didn’t they have anything in common?”
“If they did I don’t know what it was, beyond the things that are equally common to a couple of hundred other people!”
“Then we may have to assume that one was killed in mistake for the other,” she concluded. “Is that imaginable?”
He thought for a moment. “Yes. They both lived on the south side of the river not far from Westminster Bridge, a pleasant walk home on a spring night. They were both of medium build, with the conspicuous feature being silver hair, and both were pale, with rather longish faces. I have never mistaken one for the other, but it would be possible for someone who had only a slight acquaintance, and in the dark. That would mean that Etheridge was the intended victim, and Hamilton a mistake; one would hardly make the mistake second.”
“Tell me all you know about Etheridge.” Vespasia sat back and folded her hands in her lap, her eyes on his face.
For several seconds he sat in silence, ordering his thoughts, during which time the tea and sandwiches arrived.
“His career has been solid but unspectacular,” he began at last. “He has property in two or three counties, as well as in London, and is very well provided for indeed, but it is old money, not new. He did not make much of it himself.”
“Politics?” she interrupted.
His mouth turned down at the corners. “That is what is difficult to understand. He didn’t do anything controversial, tended to go with the party line on everything I know of. He is for reform, but only at the speed his peers approve. He’s hardly a radical or an innovator, nor, on the other hand, a die-hard.”
“You are saying he went whichever way the prevailing wind blew,” Vespasia said with some contempt.
“I don’t know that I would put it as cruelly as that. But he was very much in the mainstream. If he had any convictions, they were the same as most of his colleagues. He was against Irish Home Rule, but only on a vote; he never spoke about it in the House, so he was hardly a target for the Fenians.”
“What about office?” she said hopefully. “He must have trodden on somebody’s toes on the way up.”
“My dear Vespasia, he didn’t go far enough up to do anyone out of anything of importance—certainly nothing he’d get his throat cut for!”
“Well did he ravish someone’s daughter, or seduce someone’s wife? For heaven’s sake, Somerset, somebody killed him!”
“Yes I know.” He looked down at his hands, then up again into her eyes. “Don’t you think it may be either a lunatic simply run amok, or else your friend’s niece, as you fear?”
“I think it is probable, but not certain. And as long as there is any doubt one way or the other, I shall continue to pursue it. Perhaps the man had a lover, of either sex? Or he may have gambled; maybe someone owed him more than they could afford to pay, or perhaps it was Etheridge himself who was owing. He may have gained some knowledge, quite by chance, and he was murdered to silence him.”
Carlisle frowned. “Knowledge of what?”
“I don’t know! For heaven’s sake, man, you have been in the world long enough! Scandal, corruption, treason—there are more than enough possibilities.”
“You know it always amazes me how a woman of your immaculate breeding and impeccable life could have such an encyclopedic knowledge of the sins and perversions of mankind. You look as if you’ve never seen a kitchen, much less a bawdy house.”
“That is how I intend to look,