Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [48]
By five o’clock the sun was slanting low; there were already deep shadows under the walls, and the dark earth was smooth and full of freshly planted clumps. They were all tired, filthy, and extraordinarily satisfied with everything.
Daniel fell asleep over tea, and Jemima’s head sank lower and lower as Pitt read her a bedtime story afterwards. By half past six the house was quiet, the fire lit with Pitt dozing beside it, his feet propped up on the fender, and Charlotte was absentmindedly sewing buttons on a shirt. Monday morning seemed like another world.
But duty returned sharply enough with daylight, and nine o’clock found Pitt alighting from a hansom cab in Markham Square, Chelsea, with the intention of seeking the other witness Stafford had spoken to the day he had died, and whom Pitt had not yet met, Devlin O’Neil.
He had obtained the address from Stafford’s chambers, and now paid the cabby and climbed the steps to the front door of a very substantial terraced house with wide porticoes and a brass doorknob in the shape of a griffon’s head, and a fanlight above of stained glass. The house seemed to be at least three windows wide on either side of the door, and was four stories high. If Devlin O’Neil owned this establishment then he was indeed doing very well, and had no reason to have quarreled with his friend Kingsley Blaine over a few guineas’ wager.
The door was opened by a smart maid in a dark dress and very crisp lace-trimmed cap and apron. She was cheerful and full of confidence.
“Yes sir?”
“Good morning. My name is Thomas Pitt.” He handed her his card. “I apologize if I call inconveniently early, but I would very much like to see Mr. O’Neil before he leaves on the business of the day. The matter is connected with the death of an acquaintance of his, and is somewhat urgent.”
“Oh dear! I’m sure as I don’t know who’s dead. You’d better come in, and I’ll tell Mr. O’Neil as you’re here.” She opened the door wide for him, put the card on the silver card tray, and conducted him to the morning room. It was somber, fireless, but immaculately clean, and decorated in a highly conservative and traditional style. The furniture was large, mostly carved oak, and covered with every conceivable kind of picture and ornament, trophies of every visit, relative and family event for at least four decades. The chair backs were protected by embroidered antimacassars edged with very worn crochetwork. The high ceiling was coffered in deep squares, giving the room a classical appearance belied by the ornate brass light brackets. There were no flowers on the side table, but a stuffed weasel under a glass dome. It was a very common sort of domestic decoration, but looking into its bright, artificial eyes, Pitt found it both repulsive and sad. He had grown up on a large country estate, where his father had been gamekeeper, and he could so easily visualize the creature in the wild, savagely alive. This motionless and rather dusty relic of its being was horribly offensive.
The door opened while he was still looking at the weasel, and he turned around to see the maid’s polite face.
“If you would like to come this way, sir, Mr. O’Neil will see you.”
“Thank you.” Pitt followed her back across the hallway and into a high-ceilinged square room looking onto an extremely neat garden where autumn flowers grew in paradelike rows.
The furniture inside the room was large and heavy, one sideboard reaching above eight feet high and decked with all manner of dishes, tureens and gravy boats. The curtains were swathed and looped in a wealth of fabric in wines and golds. Family photographs in silver frames covered the tops of other tables and bureaus, and there were several framed samplers on the walls.
Devlin O’Neil stood by the window and turned to face Pitt as soon as he heard the door. He was slender, perhaps a fraction over average height, and casually but most expensively dressed in a check jacket of fine wool, and a fresh Egyptian cotton shirt. The price of his boots would have fed a poor