Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [103]
“I just did. Now, if you’ll excuse me I would like to go to bed; it has been a very long and arduous night. And I would like to tell Tassie the good news. She will be very happy. I think she loves Mr. Hare very much. An excellent choice. I shall not see you at breakfast—I think I will have it in bed, if you will be so kind as to order it for me. But I’ll see you at luncheon, and dinner.”
He made a stifled sound that she took for assent.
“Good night, Mr. March.”
“Ah—aaah!” he groaned.
11
WHILE CHARLOTTE WAS enjoying breakfast in bed and telling Emily about the night’s events, Pitt was reexamining the address book found in Sybilla’s vanity case. By late morning he and Stripe had accounted for all entries but one. They were addresses he would expect to find any Society woman making note of: relatives, mostly elderly; a number of cousins; friends—some of whom had married and moved to other parts of the country, particularly in the winter, out of the Season, others who were merely social acquaintances with whom it was advantageous to keep up some relationship; and the usual tradesmen—two dressmakers, an herbalist, a milliner, a corsetiere, a florist, a perfumer, and others in similar occupations.
The one he could not place was a Clarabelle Mapes, at 3 Tortoise Lane. The only Tortoise Lane he knew of was a grubby little street in St. Giles, hardly an area where Sybilla March would have occasion to call. Possibly it was a charity of some sort to which she gave her support, an orphanage or workhouse. It was a matter of diligence, overly fussy and probably a waste of time—his superior was certainly of that opinion and said so witheringly—but Pitt decided to call at 3 Tortoise Lane. It was just possible Mrs. Clarabelle Mapes might know something which would add to the close but still indistinguishable picture he had of the Marches.
Much of St. Giles was too narrow to ride through and he left his cab some half mile from Tortoise Lane and walked. The buildings were mean and gray, jettied stories overhung the streets, and there was a fetor of hot air and old sewage. Spindly clerks with stovepipe hats and shiny trousers hurried by clutching papers. A screever, wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose, shuffled aside to allow Pitt to pass. The sun was beating down from a flat, windless sky, and there was smoke strong in the air.
A one-legged man on a crutch hawked matches, a youth held a tray of bootlaces, a girl offered tiny homemade childrens’ clothes. Pitt bought something from her. It was too small for his own children, but he could not bear the pain of passing her by, even though he knew dozens would—if not today, then tomorrow—and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
A coster pushed a barrow of vegetables down the middle of the street, the wheels jiggling noisily over the cobbles. The girl went to him immediately and spent all the few coins Pitt had given her, disappearing with the vegetables in her apron.
Had Eustace March really murdered George to keep secret his affair with his daughter-in-law, and then murdered her when she realized his guilt? He would like to have believed it. Almost everything about Eustace offended him; his complacence, his willing blindness to other people’s need or pain, his unctuous overbearing manner, his virility and dynastic pride. But perhaps he was not wildly untypical of many socially ambitious patriarchs possessed of vigor and money. He was self-absorbed, insensitive rather than deliberately malicious. Most of the time he was convinced he was totally in the right about everything that mattered, and a lot that did not. Pitt had no awareness of a violence or fear in him that would drive him to commit a double murder, least of all in his own house.
Then there was Charlotte’s lurid story of Tassie creeping up the stairs splattered with blood. And in spite of her protestations, he was still not absolutely sure she had not walked in a nightmare—the whole idea was so absurd. Perhaps in the faint gaslight of the night lamps, ordinary water