Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [32]
Tellman sat in the other chair, frowning. “Then where’s Bonnard? Why did he take off to Dover and then disappear? Do you suppose he’s the one who killed what’s his name . . . Cathcart?”
“There’s no reason to think they are connected,” Pitt said with a wry smile. He knew Tellman’s opinion of foreigners. “We’ll go and see Lily Monderell this evening.”
“His mistress?” Tellman invested the word with considerable scorn. There was a deep-rooted anger inside him against all sorts of things—privilege, injustice, greed, being patronized or ignored—but although he would have denied it hotly, he was a very moral man, and his beliefs on marriage were conservative, as were his ideas about women.
“We have to begin somewhere,” Pitt answered. “There were no signs of anyone having broken into the house, so we must presume that whoever killed him was someone he knew and let in himself. He knew of no reason to fear them. Mrs. Geddes says she has no idea who it could be. Perhaps Miss Monderell will know more.”
“Other servants?” Tellman asked. “Does this Mrs. Geddes do everything?”
“Apparently. He very often ate out, and didn’t care to have a manservant. Someone came in to do the scrubbing two days a week, and there was a gardener, but no one who knew him any better than Mrs. Geddes.”
“Then I suppose we’d best go and see this mistress,” Tellman conceded grudgingly. “Is there time for a proper dinner first?”
“Good idea,” Pitt said willingly. He would far rather find a warm, noisy public house and eat with Tellman than go home to the silence of Keppel Street and eat something alone at the kitchen table. The sight of the familiar room with its polished copper and the smell of linen and clean wood only made him more aware of Charlotte’s absence.
Tellman had formed a picture of Lily Monderell in his mind. She would be the sort of woman a man took to bed but did not marry. There would be something essentially vulgar about her, and of course greedy. She would have to be handsome or she would not succeed in her purpose, especially with someone who was an artist of sorts. Without any reason, he had seen her as fair-haired and rather buxom, and that she would be dressed flamboyantly.
When he and Pitt were shown into her sitting room in Chelsea, he was disconcerted, and yet he could not have said why. Apart from the fact that she was dark, she answered his imagined description very well. She was extremely handsome, with bold eyes, a wide, sensuous mouth, and masses of shining, dark brown hair. Her figure was very rich, and the gown she wore displayed it to fine advantage. It was a trifle ostentatious, but that might have been because she had so much to show. On a thinner woman it would have been more modest.
What upset his composure was that he did not find her unattractive. Her face was full of laughter, as if she knew some joke she was waiting to share. From the moment they stepped into the warm room with its rose-shaded lamps, she flirted with Pitt.
“I’m very sorry,” Pitt said after he had told her the news of Cathcart’s death, sparing her the details.
She sat on the sofa, her rose-red skirts billowing around her. She leaned back a little, more from habit than thought, showing off her generous body.
“Well, poor Delbert,” she said with feeling. She shook her head. “I can’t think who would want to do something so . . . vicious.” She sighed. “He made enemies, of course. That’s natural when you’re really good at what you do, and he was brilliant. In some ways there was no one to touch him.”
“What sort of enemies, Miss Monderell?” Pitt asked. “Professional rivals?”
“Not who’d kill him, love,” she said with a wry smile.
Tellman noticed a slight northern accent. He was not sure where to place it, but he thought Lancashire. He did not know much about the cities outside London.
Pitt kept his gaze steady