Callander Square - Anne Perry [10]
“Not yet, ma’am. My wife is expecting our first.” He said it with a ridiculous sense of pride and waited for her approval.
“I hope everything goes well with her.” There was no light in her face. “Is there anything else I can tell you?”
He was at a loss, deflated.
“No, thank you. I shall almost certainly have to return; it may take us a long time to solve it, if we ever do. But that is all for today.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Pitt. Jenkins will show you to the door.”
“Good afternoon, ma’am.” He bowed very slightly and went out to the waiting butler and the front door into the leafy square.
The Doran house was utterly different from the other houses in the square. It was unbelievably cluttered with photographs, embroidery, flowers dried, cased in glass, pressed, growing in pots, and even some fresh and arranged in painted vases. There were also at least three birds in cages, all hung with fringes and bells.
The door was opened by a middle-aged parlormaid. This one was an exception to the generality: by no twist of the imagination could she have been chosen for her looks; except that when she opened her mouth her teeth were perfect, and her voice was as rich and smooth as Devon cream.
“We’ve been expecting you,” she said calmly, with a faint southwestern distortion of the vowels. “Miss Laetitia and Miss Georgiana are taking tea. No doubt you will be wanting to speak to them first, as a matter of course.” She did not seem to require an answer to that, and turned away, leaving him to close the door and follow her into the inner recesses.
Laetitia and Georgiana were indeed taking tea. Georgiana was displayed fragilely on a chaise longue, bony as a halfpenny rabbit, and dressed in delicious mauves and grays. Tea was balanced on a three-toed, piecrust table at her elbow. She looked at Pitt without displeasure.
“So you are the policeman? What an odd-looking creature you are, to be sure. Pray do not be vulgar with me. I am extremely delicate. I suffer.”
“I am sorry to hear it.” Pitt controlled his face with an effort. “I hope to disturb you very little.”
“You have already disturbed me, but I shall put up with it in good grace, in the name of necessity. I am Georgiana Duff. This,” she pointed to a slightly younger, better-upholstered version of herself in the other chair, “is my sister, Laetitia Doran. She is the one to have the misfortune, or the ill-judgment, to own a house in such a disastrous place; so you had better address your remarks to her.”
Pitt turned to Laetitia.
“Indeed, Mrs. Doran, my apologies again; but owing to the tragic discovery in the gardens, I am sure you understand it is necessary for us to question the servants, especially the younger, female servants, in all the houses that face onto the square.”
Laetitia blinked.
“Of course,” Georgiana said sharply. “Is that all you’ve come to say?”
“To ask your permission to speak to your servants,” Pitt replied. Georgiana snorted. “You’ll do it anyway!”
“I would prefer to do it with your permission, ma’am.”
“Don’t keep calling me ‘ma’am.’ I don’t like it. And don’t stand there towering over me. You make me feel quite giddy. Sit down, or I shall faint!”
Pitt sat down, stifling a smile.
“Thank you. Have I your permission to interview your servants?” he looked at Laetitia.
“Yes, yes I suppose so,” she said uncomfortably. “Please endeavor not to upset them. It is so hard to replace a servant satisfactorily these days. And poor Georgiana must be properly looked after.”
Pitt privately thought that “poor Georgiana” would see to it herself that, come hell or high water, she would be properly looked after.
“Of course,” he stood up again and moved to the door before Georgiana had time to feel affected by his presence. “Have you had any servants dismissed in the last half year, young women who have left the house?”
“None,” Laetitia said quickly. “We have been exactly as we are for years! Years and years!”
“You have no children, ma’am? Daughters who have married and taken a lady’s maid with them?”
“None at all!”
“Thank you. I shan’t need to disturb