Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [120]
Flora’s voice was a whisper, so strained it was barely heard.
“No.”
“O’ course she wasn’t!” He threw out the words in a mixture of anguish because they were true and a desperate kind of triumph that at least she had not lied. “I know that. I know she’d gone out because half Highgate knows it. But I’ll tell you this, my girl—I don’t care what Highgate says, or all London society either—they can call you anything they can lay their tongues to. I’ll not let you marry Shaw—and that’s final.”
“I don’t want to marry him!” The tears were running down her face now. Her hand flew to her mouth and she bit her teeth on her finger as if the physical pain relieved her distress. “He’s my doctor!”
“He’s my doctor too.” Lutterworth had not yet understood the change in her. “I don’t go creeping in at the back door after him. I go to him openly, like an honest man.”
“You don’t have the same complaint as I do.” Her voice was choked with tears and she refused to look at any of them, least of all Murdo. “He allowed me to go whenever I was in pain—and he—”
“Pain?” Lutterworth was horrified, all his anger drained away, leaving him pale and frightened. “What sort of pain? What’s wrong with you?” Already he moved towards her as if she were about to collapse. “Flora? Flora, what is it? We’ll get the best doctors in England. Why didn’t you tell me, girl?”
She turned away from him, hunching her shoulders. “It’s not an illness. It’s just—please let me be! Leave me a little decency. Do I have to detail my most private discomforts in front of policemen?”
Lutterworth had forgotten Pitt and Murdo. Now he swung around, ready to attack them for their crassness, then only just in time remembered that it was he who had demanded the explanation of her, not they.
“I have no property in London, Mr. Pitt, and if you want me to prove it to you I daresay I can.” His face set hard and he balanced squarely on his feet. “My finances are open to you whenever you care to look at them. My daughter has nothing to tell you about her relationship with her doctor. It is a perfectly correct matter, but it is private, and is privileged to remain so. It is only decent.” He met Pitt’s eyes defiantly. “I am sure you would not wish your wife’s medical condition to be the subject of other men’s conversation. I know nothing further with which I can help you. I wish you good day.” And he stepped over and rang the bell to have the maid show them out.
Pitt dispatched Murdo to question Shaw’s previous servants again. The butler was recovering slowly and so was able to speak more lucidly. He might recall some details which he had been too shocked and in too much pain to think of before. Also Lindsay’s manservant might be more forthcoming on a second or third attempt. Pitt most especially wanted to know what the man knew of Lindsay’s last two days before the fire. Something, a word or an act, must have precipitated it. All the pieces gathered from one place and another might point to an answer.
Pitt himself returned to the boardinghouse, where he intended to wait for Shaw as long as might be necessary, and question the man until he learned some answers, however long that took, and however brutal it required him to be.
The landlady was getting used to people coming to the door and asking for Dr. Shaw, and to several of them requesting to sit in the parlor and wait for him to return. She treated Pitt with sympathy, having forgotten who he was, and regarding him as one of the doctor’s patients, in need of a gentle word and a hot cup of tea.
He accepted both with a slight twinge of conscience, and warmed himself in front of the fire for twenty minutes until Shaw came in in a whirl of activity, setting his bag down on the chair by the desk, his stick up against the wall, having forgotten to put it in the hall stand, his hat on top