Callander Square - Anne Perry [116]
“Yes, sir! Is ’e the one ’wot done the ’orrible murders o’ them babies, sir?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but he killed Dr. Bolsover, and Miss Doran. Be careful of him.”
“Yes, sir, I will that.” He glanced down at Campbell with a mixture of awe and disgust.
Pitt went to the door and was across the hall and halfway up the stairs when the doctor arrived. He waited on the landing for five minutes more till he saw the party go out, Campbell still dizzy, stumbling between the constable and the cabbie. Then he continued on upward to find Mariah.
The second floor was tidy and silent. He could not even see a maid. They must all be in the kitchen, or at some outside task.
“Mrs. Campbell?” he said clearly.
There was no answer.
He raised his voice and called again.
Still no reply.
He knocked on the first door and tried it. The room was empty. He continued until he came to what was apparently a woman’s dressing room. Mariah Campbell was sitting in an easy chair, facing away from him. At first he thought she had fallen asleep, until he walked round and saw her face. It was bleached of all color, and there was a grayness to the eyelids and lips.
On the dressing table there was a small bottle labeled for laudanum, empty, and another clear glass vial that also held nothing now. Beside them was a piece of paper. He picked it up. It was addressed to him.
Inspector Pitt,
I imagine you know the truth by now. The sins of the fathers were visited upon the children, but they were my children too, and I could not let them live, rotted by disease, filthy as he was. Better to die while they were still innocent, and knew nothing of it, neither pain.
Please ask Adelina Southeron to look after my children that yet live. She is a good woman, and will have pity on them.
May God find mercy for me, and peace.
Mariah Livingstone Campbell
Pitt looked down at her and felt overwhelming pity, and gratitude that she had spared him from having to face her, to be the instrument to begin the long course of public justice against her.
Because he loved Charlotte so deeply, he felt some gentleness toward all women; and was unutterably glad that his own life was not scorched and marred by such tragedy. He thought of Charlotte’s face, full of hope for her new child, and prayed that it would be whole, perhaps even that it would be a girl, another stubborn, compassionate, willful creature like Charlotte herself.
He smiled at the thought, and yet in front of this dead woman he also felt like weeping. More than anything else, he desperately wanted to go home.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1980 by Anne Perry
cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4532-1907-2
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
Copyright