Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [28]
“You weren’t looking before,” he soothed her. “Let us begin down here and work upwards.”
“Yer wastin’ yer time,” she retorted. “Yer should be out there.” She jerked her head toward some unknown beyond. “That’s where yer’ll find murderers an’ the like.” Still she led the way into the next room and he followed after her.
It was a well-proportioned house and furnished in extravagant taste, as if Cathcart had had an eye to curtains and ornaments he might use in photographs at some future date. However, the whole created a place of distinction and considerable beauty. An Egyptian cat of clean and elongated lines contrasted with an ornate red, black and gold painted Russian icon.
A minor pre-Raphaelite painting of a knight in vigil before an altar hung on the upstairs landing, curiously highlighting the simplicity of an arrangement of sword-shaped leaves. It was highly individual, and Pitt had a sharp sense of personality, of a man’s tastes, his dreams and ideals, perhaps something of the life which had shaped him. Oddly, the knowledge of loss was greater than when he had stared at the body in the boat as it knocked against Horseferry Stairs, or again in the morgue, when he had been thinking more of Mrs. Geddes and the question of identification.
She showed him through every room, and each was immaculate. Nothing was out of the place one would expect to find it, no chairs or tables were crooked, no cushions or curtains disturbed. Everything was clean. It was impossible to believe there had been a fancy dress party there which had indulged in the sort of excesses the green velvet dress suggested, and certainly no violence in which two men had fought and one been killed.
The last room they reached was up a flight of stairs from a second, smaller landing, and it extended the length of the top story, with windows and skylights giving the light an excellent clarity. It was immediately obvious that this was the studio where Cathcart took many of his photographs. One end was furnished as an elegant withdrawing room, one side overlooked the river, and a person seated would appear to have nothing but the sky behind. The nearest end was cluttered like a storeroom with what seemed at a glance to be scores of objects of wildly varied character.
“I don’t come up ’ere much,” Mrs. Geddes said quietly. “ ‘Just sweep the floor,’ ’e says. ‘Keep it clean. Don’t touch nuffink.’ ”
Pitt regarded the conglomeration with interest. Without moving anything he recognized a Viking horned helmet, half a dozen pieces from a suit of armor, uncountable pieces of velvet of an enormous variety of colors—rich reds and purples, golds, pastel cream and earth tones. There was an ostrich feather fan, two stuffed pheasants, a round Celtic shield with metal bosses, several swords, spears, pikes, and bits and pieces of military and naval uniforms. What lay hidden beneath them was beyond even guessing.
Mrs. Geddes answered his unspoken thoughts. “Like I said, some of ’em likes ter dress daft.”
A closer examination of the room discovered nothing in which Pitt could see any connection with Cathcart’s death. In a large wardrobe there were a number of other dresses of varying degrees of ornateness. But then since Cathcart frequently photographed women, that was to be expected. There were also men’s clothes from many historical periods, both real and fanciful.
There were four cameras carefully set up on tripods, with black cloths for obscuring the light. Pitt had never seen a camera so closely before, and he looked at them with interest, being careful not to disturb them. They were complicated boxes in both metal and wood with pleated leather sides, obviously to telescope back and forth to vary the proportions. In size they were roughly a cubic foot or a little less, and on