Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [103]
“Then we must change the law,” Vespasia said when he had finished. “We will continue where Clemency Shaw was cut off by her murderers.”
“It may be dangerous,” Somerset Carlisle warned. “We will be disturbing powerful people. The little I have learned so far indicates there are members of great families who come by at least part of their income that way, some industrialists with vast fortunes reinvested. It has not failed to touch others of ambition and greed, men who can be tempted and who have favors to sell—members of the House, judges of court. It will be a very hard struggle—and with no easy victories.”
“That is a pity,” Vespasia said without even consulting the others by so much as a glance. “But it is irrelevant.”
“We need more people in power.” Carlisle glanced at Jack. “More men in Parliament prepared to risk a comfortable seat by fighting against the vested interests.”
Jack did not reply, but he spoke little the rest of the evening, and all the way home he was deep in thought.
8
PITT AND MURDO were working from early in the morning until long after dark pursuing every scrap of material evidence until there was nothing else to learn. The Highgate police themselves were still searching for the arsonist they were convinced was guilty, but as yet they had not found him, although they felt that every day’s inquiry brought them closer. There had been other fires started in similar manner: an empty house in Kentish Town, a stable in Hampstead, a small villa to the north in Crouch End. They questioned every source of fuel oil within a three-mile radius of Highgate, but discovered no purchases other than those which were accounted for by normal household needs. They asked every medical practitioner if they had treated burns not explained to their certain knowledge. They counseled with neighboring police and fire forces on the name, present whereabouts, past history and methods of every other person known to have committed arson in the last ten years, and learned nothing of use.
Pitt and Murdo also delved into the value, insurance and ownership of all the houses that had been burned, and found nothing in common. Then they asked into the dispositions in wills and testaments of Clemency Shaw and Amos Lindsay. Clemency bequeathed everything of which she died possessed to her husband, Stephen Robert Shaw, with the solitary exception of a few personal items to friends; and Amos Lindsay left his works of art, his books and the mementos of his travels also to Stephen Shaw, and the house itself most surprisingly to Matthew Oliphant, a startling and unexplained gift of which Pitt entirely approved. It was just one more evidence of a kind and most unconventional man.
He knew that Charlotte was busy, but since she was traveling in Great-Aunt Vespasia’s carriage, and with her footman in attendance, he was satisfied there was no danger involved. He thought there was also little profit, since she had told him she was pursuing Clemency Shaw’s last known journeys, and he was quite sure, since Lindsay’s death, that Clemency had been killed by chance and the true intended victim was Stephen Shaw.
So the morning after the dinner at Vespasia’s house in which they had learned the extent and nature of the law, Charlotte dressed herself in tidy but unremarkable clothes. This was not in the least difficult, since that description encompassed the greater part of her wardrobe. She then waited for Emily and Jack to arrive.
They came surprisingly early. She had not honesüy thought Emily rose at an hour to make this possible, but Emily was at the door before nine, looking