Callander Square - Anne Perry [2]
After a moment she pulled back, looking at him.
“What is it?” she asked with a lift of anxiety in her voice.
In the quick, enveloping warmth of meeting he had forgotten Callander Square. Now the memory returned. He would not tell her; heaven knew, after Cater Street there was little of horror that she could not cope with, but there was no need to distress her with this. She was quick to sympathy—the little bodies, whether crime or simple tragedy, would stir her imagination to all the pain, the isolation and fear, whatever lonely, terrible thoughts had possessed the mother.
“What is it?” she repeated.
He put his arm round her and turned her back to the drawing room, or perhaps parlor would have been a less pretentious name for it, in so small a house.
“A case,” he replied, “in Callander Square. It will probably prove to be very little, but tedious in the proof. What have we for dinner? I’ve been outside and I’m hungry.”
She did not press him again, and he spent a slow, sweet evening by the fire, watching her face as she bent in concentration over her sewing, a piece of linen worn beyond its strength. Over the years there would be much patching and making do, many meals without meat, and when the children came, hand-me-down clothes; but it all seemed only a comfortable labor now. He found himself smiling.
In the morning it was different. He left early when the October mist still clung round the damp leaves and there was no wind. He went to the police station first, to see if Doctor Stillwell had anything to tell him.
Stillwell’s dour face was even longer than usual. He looked at Pitt sourly, bringing with his presence an immediate reminder of death and human mutability.
Pitt felt the warmth slip away, the comfort he had woken with.
“Well?” he asked grimly.
“First one quite normal, as far as I can tell,” Stillwell said quietly. “Which isn’t very far. Been dead about six months I should judge, poor little thing. Can’t tell you whether it was born dead, or died within a day or two. Nothing in the stomach.” He sighed. “Can’t even tell you if it died naturally or was killed. Suffocation would be easy, leave no marks. It was a girl, by the way.”
Pitt took a deep breath.
“What about the other, the one lower down?”
“Been dead a lot longer, nearer two years, from what I can tell. Again, that’s pretty much of a guess. And again, I don’t know whether it was born dead, or died within a few days. But it was abnormal, I can tell you beyond doubt—”
“I could see that myself. What caused it?”
“Don’t know. Congenital, not an injury in birth.”
“Would there be something in the parents’ history—?”
“Not necessarily. We don’t know what causes these things. Children like that can be born to anyone, even in the best families; it’s just that they more often manage to keep it quiet.”
Pitt thought for a few moments. Could that be what it was, a matter of social embarrassment?
“What about the top one?” He looked up at Stillwell. “Was that one deformed as well, anything wrong with its brain?”
Stillwell shook his head.
”Not that I could see, but of course if it were going to become mentally defective, there would be no way of telling at that age. It was no more than a few days old at the most. It could even have been born dead,” he frowned. “Although I don’t think so. There wasn’t anything I could see to cause death. Heart, lungs, and intestines seemed quite normal. But of course it was to some extent decomposed. I really don’t know, Pitt. You’ll just have to make your own inquiries, and see what you can find out.”
“Thank you.” There was nothing else to say. Pitt collected Batey and in silence they set out in the misty morning, the tree-lined streets smelling of rotting leaves and damp stone.
Callander Square was deserted; the sightseers such a discovery might have provoked elsewhere were abashed to invade its elegant pavements. There was no sign of life in the great houses except the whisk of a broom on an area step and the