Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [148]
“Possible,” Pitt conceded doubtfully. Lutterworth’s broad, powerful face came back to his mind, and the expression of rage in it when he mentioned Shaw’s name, and Flora’s. There was no question he loved his daughter profoundly, and had the depth of emotion and the determination of character to carry through such an act, if he thought there were justification. “Yes, he is possible. Or he was—I think he knows now that Flora’s connection with the doctor was purely a medical one.”
“Then why the sneaking in and out instead of going to the usual surgery?” Drummond persisted.
“Because of the nature of her complaint. It is personal, and she is highly sensitive about it, didn’t want anyone else to know. Not difficult to understand.”
Drummond, who had a wife and daughters himself, did not need to make further comment.
“Who does that leave?”
“Hatch—but he and Shaw have quarreled over one thing or another for years, and you don’t kill someone suddenly over a basic difference in temperament and philosophy. Or the elderly Worlingham sisters—if they really believed that he was responsible for Theophilus’s death—”
“And do they?” Drummond only half believed it, and it was obvious in his face. “Would they really feel so strongly about it? Seems more likely to me they might have killed him to keep him quiet over the real source of the Worlingham money. That I could believe.”
“Shaw says Clemency didn’t tell them,” Pitt replied, although it seemed far more likely to him also. “But perhaps he didn’t know she had. She might have done it the night before she died. I need to find what precipitated the first murder. Something happened that day—or the day immediately before—that frightened or angered someone beyond enduring. Something changed the situation so drastically that what had been at the worst difficult, but maybe not even that, suddenly became so threatening or so intolerably unjust to them, they exploded into murder—”
“What did happen that day?” Drummond was watching him closely.
“I don’t know,” Pitt confessed. “I’ve been concentrating on Shaw, and he won’t tell me anything. Of course, it is still possible he killed Clemency himself, set the fire before he left, and killed Amos Lindsay because somehow he had betrayed himself by a word, or an omission, and Lindsay knew what he’d done. They were friends—but I don’t believe Lindsay would have kept silent once he was sure Shaw was guilty.” It was a peculiarly repugnant thought, but honesty compelled that he allow it.
Drummond saw the reluctance in him.
“Not the first time you’ve liked a murderer, Pitt—nor I, for that matter. Life would be a great deal easier at times, if we could like all the heroes and dislike all the villains. Or personally I’d settle for simply not pitying the villains as much as I do the victims half the time.”
“I can’t always tell the difference.” Pitt smiled sadly. “I’ve known murderers I’ve felt were victims as much as anyone in the whole affair. And if it turns out to be Angeline and Celeste, I may well this time too. The old bishop filled their lives, dominated them from childhood, laid out for them exactly the kind of women he expected them to be, and made it virtually impossible for them to be anything else. I gather he drove away all suitors and kept Celeste to be his intellectual companion, and Angeline to be his housekeeper and hostess when necessary. By the time he died they were far too old to marry, and totally dependent on his views, his social status and his money. If Clemency, in her outrage, threatened to destroy everything on which their fives were built, and faced them not only with old age in total public disgrace but a negation of everything they believed in and which justified the past, it is not hard to understand