Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [25]
Drummond resumed his own seat behind his desk and waved Pitt to the most comfortable leather-upholstered chair opposite. It was an agreeable room, full of light and air from the large window. The walls were lined with bookshelves, except for the area around the fireplace, and the desk was polished oak, as beautiful as it was functional.
“Was it intended to have been the husband?” Drummond came straight to the point. “What do you know about him?”
Pitt tilted back in the chair and crossed his legs. “A doctor. An intelligent, articulate man, apparently open-minded and outspoken, but I haven’t found time to look into his medical reputation yet.”
“Your own feelings?” Drummond looked at him a little sideways.
Pitt smiled. “I liked the man, but then I’ve liked a few people who have committed murder, when desperate, frightened or injured enough. It would be so much easier if we could either like or dislike people and be decided about it; but I keep having to change my mind, and complicate my feelings by doing both at the same time in wildly differing proportions, as each new act and explanations for it emerge. It’s such hard work.” His smile broadened.
Drummond sighed and rolled his eyes upward in mock exasperation.
“A simple opinion, Pitt!”
“I should think he’s an excellent candidate for murder,” Pitt replied. “I can think of dozens of reasons why someone might want to silence a doctor, especially this one.”
“A medical secret?” Drummond raised his eyebrows high. “Surely doctors keep such confidences anyway? Are you thinking of something discovered inadvertently and not bound by such an ethical code? For example …?”
“There are many possibilities.” Pitt shrugged, choosing at random. “A contagious disease which he would be obliged to report—plague, yellow fever—”
“Rubbish,” Drummond interrupted. “Yellow fever in Highgate? And if that were so he would have reported it by now. Possibly a congenital disease such as syphilis, although that is unlikely. How about insanity? A man might well kill to keep that out of public knowledge, or even the knowledge of his immediate family, or prospective family, if he planned an advantageous marriage. Look into that, Pitt.”
“I will.”
Drummond warmed to the subject, leaning back a little in his chair and putting his elbows on the arms and his fingertips together in a steeple. “Maybe he knew of an illegitimate birth, or an abortion. For that matter maybe he performed one!”
“Why wait until now?” Pitt said reasonably. “If he’s just done it, it will be among the patients he’s visited in the last day or two; and anyway, why? If it was illegal he would be even less likely to speak of it, or make any record, than the woman. He has more to lose.”
“What about the husband or father?”
Pitt shook his head. “Unlikely. If he didn’t know about it beforehand, then he would probably be the one she was most anxious to keep it from. If he then discovered it, or learned it from her, the last way to keep it discreet would be to murder the doctor and cause all his affairs to be investigated by the police.”
“Come on, Pitt,” Drummond said dryly. “You know as well as I do that people in the grip of powerful emotions don’t think like that—or half our crimes of impulse would never be committed, probably three quarters. They don’t think; they feel—overwhelming rage, or fear, or simply contusion and a desire to lash out at someone and blame them for the pain they are suffering.”
“All right,” Pitt conceded, knowing he was right. “But I still think there are lots of other motives more probable. Shaw is a man of passionate convictions. I believe he would act on them, and devil take the consequences—”
“You do like him,” Drummond said again with a wry smile, and knowledge of some unspoken hurt in his own past.
No reply was called for.
“He may have knowledge of a crime,” Pitt said instead, following his own thoughts. “A death, perhaps