Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [118]
Now he was ready to go and probe and watch and listen to people, where his true art lay. He had days ago given up expecting things to tell him anything. Murdo’s heart sank, but there was no escaping duty. He followed Pitt and caught up with him, and together they walked along the damp, leaf-scattered footpath towards the Lutterworths’ house.
They were admitted by the maid and shown into the morning room, where there was a brisk fire burning and a bowl of tawny chrysanthemums on the heavy Tudor dresser. Neither of them sat, although it was nearly quarter of an hour before Lutterworth appeared, closely followed by Flora, dressed in a dark blue stuff gown and looking pale but composed. She glanced at Murdo only once, and her eyes flickered away immediately, a faint, self-conscious flush on her cheeks.
Murdo remained in a bitterly painful silence. He longed to help her; he wanted to hit out at someone—Shaw, Lutterworth for allowing all this to happen and not protecting her, and Pitt for forging blindly ahead with his duty, regardless of the chaos it caused.
For an instant he hated Pitt for not hurting as much as he did, as if he were oblivious of pain; then he looked sideways for just a moment at him, and realized his error. Pitt’s face was tense; there were shadows under his eyes and the fine lines in his skin were all weary and conscious of realms of suffering past and to come, and of his inability to heal it.
Murdo let out his breath in a sigh, and kept silent.
Lutterworth faced them across the expensive Turkish carpet. None of them sat.
“Well, what is it now?” he demanded. “I know nowt I ’aven’t told you. I’ve no idea why anyone killed poor old Lindsay, unless it was Shaw, because the old man saw through ’im and ’ad to be silenced. Or it were that daft Pascoe, because ’e thought as Lindsay were an anarchist.
“Take that Orse.” He pointed to a fine figurine on the mantel shelf. “Bought that wi’ me first big year’s profit, when the mill started to do well. Got a fine consignment o’ cloth and sold it ourselves—in the Cape. Turned a pretty penny, did that. Got the ’orse to remind me o’ me early days when me and Ellen, that’s Flora’s mother”—he took a deep breath and let it out slowly to give himself time to regain his composure—“when me and Ellen went courtin’. Didn’t ’ave no carriage. We used to ride an ’orse like that—’er up in front o’ me, an me be’ind wi’ me arms ’round ’er. Them was good days. Every time I look at that ’orse I think o’ them—like I could still see the sunlight through the trees on the dry earth and smell the ’orse’s warm body and the ’ay in the wind, an’ see the blossom in the ’edges like fallen snow, sweet as ’oney, and my Ellen’s ’air brighter’n a peeled chestnut—an’ ’ear’er laugh.”
He stood motionless, enveloped in the past. No one wanted to be the first to invade with the ugliness and immediacy of the present.
It was Pitt who broke the spell, and with words Murdo had not foreseen.
“What past do you think Mr. Lindsay recalled in his African artifacts, Mr. Lutterworth?”
“I don’t know.” Lutterworth smiled ruefully. “ ’Is wife, mebbe. That’s what most men remember.”
“His wife!” Pitt was startled. “I didn’t know Lindsay was married.”
“No—well, no reason why you should.” Lutterworth looked faintly sorry. “ ’E didn’t tell everyone. She died a long time ago—twenty years or more. Reckon as that’s why ’e came ’ome. Not that ’e said so, mind.”
“Were there any children?”
“Several, I think.”
“Where are they? They’ve not come forward. His will didn’t mention any.”
“It wouldn’t. They’re in Africa.”
“That wouldn’t stop them inheriting.”
“What—an ’ouse in ’Ighgate and a few books and mementos of Africa!” Lutterworth was smiling at some deep inner satisfaction.
“Why not?” Pitt demanded. “There were a great many books, some on anthropology must be worth a great deal.”
“Not to them.” Lutterworth’s lips smiled grimly.
“Why not? And there’s the house!”
“Not much use to a black man who lives in a jungle.” Lutterworth looked at Pitt with dour satisfaction, savoring the