Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [92]
10
CHARLOTTE FOUND PITT in the butler’s pantry and threw the door open, interrupting Constable Stripe in midsentence, and barely hesitating to apologize.
“Thomas! I’ve discovered the answer, or at least one of the answers—excuse me, Constable—in Sybilla’s diary, something I never even thought of.” She stopped abruptly. Now that they were both staring at her she felt vulnerable for the secret she had discovered. Not for Eustace—she would happily have seen him humiliated. But for Sybilla she felt unexplainably naked.
“What have you found?” Pitt asked anxiously, his eyes wide, seeing the fear and the flush in her face more than hearing her words. There was no triumph in her.
She glanced at Stripe—only for a moment, but he saw it, and instantly she was sorry. She swung round to turn her back to him, unbuttoned her dress just enough to pull out the diary, and handed it to Pitt.
“Christmas Eve,” she said very quietly. “Read the entry for Christmas Eve, last year, and then the very last one.”
He took the book and opened it, riffling through the pages till he came to December, then turned them one by one. Finally he stopped altogether, and she watched his face as he read it, the mixture of anger and disgust slowly blurring and becoming inextricably confounded with pity. He read the end.
“And he killed George over her.” He looked up at Charlotte, and passed the book without explanation to Stripe. “I suppose poor Sybilla knew, or guessed.”
“I wonder why he didn’t look for the book when he killed her,” she said with quiet unhappiness.
“Maybe he heard something,” Pitt replied. “Someone else awake—even Emily coming. And he dared not wait.”
Charlotte shuddered. “Are you going to arrest him?”
He hesitated, weighing the question, looking at Stripe, whose face was red and unhappy.
“No,” he answered flatly. “Not yet. This isn’t proof. He could deny it all, say it was Sybilla’s imagination. Without any other evidence, it’s only her word against his. To make it known now would hurt William, perhaps even cause more violence and more tragedy.” His mouth moved in the faintest of smiles. “Let Eustace wait and worry for a while. Let’s see what he does.” He looked at Charlotte. “You said there was another book, with addresses?”
“Yes.”
“Then we had better get that as well. It may mean nothing, but we’ll check through them all, see who they are.”
Charlotte went obediently back to the door. Pitt hesitated, looking at Stripe with a half smile. “Sorry, Stripe, but I shall need you for this, and it may take some time.”
For a moment Stripe did not understand the reason for the apology; then his face fell and the pink crept up his cheeks.
“Yes, sir. Er ...” His head came up. “Would there be time, sir ... ?”
“Of course there would,” Pitt agreed. “But don’t waste words. Be back here in fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, sir!” Stripe waited only until Charlotte and Pitt were round the corner in the corridor before he shot out, stopped the first maid he saw, which chanced to be the parlormaid, and asked her where Miss Taylor was at that moment.
He looked so urgent and impressive in his uniform that she responded immediately, without her usual prevarication towards strangers in the house—especially of the lower orders, such as police, chimney sweeps, and the like.
“In the stillroom, sir.”
“Thank you!” He turned on his heel and made his way, past the other small rooms for numerous household duties, to the stillroom, which had originally been used for the making of cordials and perfumes but was now largely for tea, coffee, and the storing of sweetmeats.
Lettie was putting a large fruitcake into a tin and she turned at the rather heavy sound of his feet. She was even prettier than last time he saw her. He had not noticed before how her hair swept off her brow, or how delicate