Callander Square - Anne Perry [4]
“Goodness!” she said with mock surprise. “Who are you?” She raked him up and down with an amused, blue glance. “You can’t be calling on one of the maids, at this hour! Have you come to see Father? Are you an old batman, or something?”
Only Charlotte had ever shaken Pitt’s composure, and that was because he loved her. He looked back at this girl steadily.
“No, ma’am, I am from the police. I have been speaking to some of your servants.”
“From the police!” her voice rose in delight. “How perfectly shocking. Whatever for?”
“Information.” He smiled very slightly. “That is always what the police speak to people for.”
“I have a suspicion you are laughing at me.” Her eyes were bright. “Mr.—?”
“Inspector Pitt.”
“Inspector Pitt,” she repeated. “I am Christina Balantyne; but I suppose you knew that. What are you asking questions about? Has there been a crime?”
Pitt was saved from having to compose an answer at once civil and uncommunicative by the breakfast room door opening and a man coming out whom Pitt assumed to be General Balantyne. He was tall, nearly as tall as Pitt himself, but tighter knit, of stiffer bearing. His face was smooth-boned, lean, and aquiline. It was a striking head; too arrogant to be handsome, too strong of jaw and teeth.
“Christina!” he said sharply.
She turned.
“Yes, Papa.”
“The policeman’s business with the servants can hardly be of interest to you. Have you no letters to write, or sewing to do?” The question was academic; it was a dismissal. She accepted it with a straight back and stiff lip.
Pitt hid a smile and bowed his head fractionally.
“Thank you, sir,” he said to the general after she had gone. “I was unsure how to answer her without distressing her with unpleasant facts.” It was something less than the truth, but it served well for the moment.
The general grunted.
“Have you finished?”
“Yes, sir. I was looking for the butler to say so.”
“Discover anything?” the general looked at him with quick, intelligent eyes.
“Not yet, but I have only just begun. Who lives next door?” He gestured toward the south side of the square.
“Reggie Southeron next to us,” the general replied. “Then young Bolsover at the end on this side. Garson Campbell on the other; Leatitia Doran opposite Southeron; opposite us on the far side is vacant at the moment. Has been for a couple of years. Sir Robert Carlton on the far side, and an elderly fellow called Housmann, a complete recluse. Has no women in the house, hates them; all male staff.”
“Thank you, sir, most helpful. I’ll try Mr. Southeron next.”
Balantyne took a sharp breath, then let it out. Pitt waited, but he did not add anything.
The Southeron house was busier—he heard the light laughter of children even before he had reached for the bell-pull. It was opened by one of the handsomest parlormaids he had ever seen.
“Yes, sir?” she said with perfect formality.
“Good morning, I am Inspector Pitt from the police; may I speak to either Mr. or Mrs. Southeron?”
She stepped back.
“If you would like to come in, sir, I’ll inquire if they will see you.”
He followed her into the hall, beautifully furnished, but less Spartan than the Balantynes’. There were baubles on the hangings, richly upholstered chairs, and even a doll sitting carelessly on a small side table. He watched the straight back of the parlormaid, and the becoming little twitch of her skirt as she walked. He smiled to himself; then hoped with a sudden acute stab of pity that she was not the one, that it was not the result of her seduction, her brief yielding to passion, buried out there under the trees.
She showed him into the morning room and left him. He heard a scampering of feet on the stairs—a tweeny maid, or a child of the house? There was probably little difference in age; some girls began their life in service at no more than eleven or twelve.
The door burst open and a thin, blue-eyed little face looked in. Her total composure proclaimed her