Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [26]
“A merciful killing?” Drummond’s expression quickened. “Possible. And occurring to me as someone who likes him less and perhaps has a clearer view, he may have assisted in a killing for less unselfish reasons, and the principle mover has grown nervous lest his accomplice becomes careless, or more likely from your description of Shaw as a man with nerve and passion, blackmail him. That would be an excellent cause for murder.”
Pitt would like to have denied such a thought, but it was eminently logical, and to dismiss it would be ridiculous.
Drummond was watching him, his eyes curious.
“Perhaps,” Pitt agreed aloud, and saw a small smile curl Drummond’s lips. “But knowledge gained simply because of his professional skill is in my opinion more likely.”
“What about a purely personal motive?” Drummond asked. “Jealousy, greed, revenge? Could there be another woman, or another man in love with his wife? Didn’t you say he was expecting to be at home, and she not?”
“Yes.” Pitt’s mind was filled with all sorts of ugly possibilities, dark among them the Worlingham money, and the pretty face of Flora Lutterworth, whose father resented her frequent, private visits to Dr. Shaw.
“You need to have a great deal more.” Drummond stood up and walked over towards the window, his hands in his pockets. He turned to face Pitt. “The possibilities are numerous—either for the murder of the wife, which happened, or for the murder of Shaw, which may have been attempted. It could be a very long, sad job. Heaven knows what other sins and tragedies you’ll find—or what they will do to hide them. That’s what I hate about investigation—all the other lives we overturn on the way.” He poked his hands deeper into his pockets. “Where are you going to begin?”
“At the Highgate police station,” Pitt replied, standing up also. “He was the local police surgeon—”
“You omitted to mention that.”
Pitt smiled broadly. “Makes the knowledge without complicity look a trifle more likely, doesn’t it?”
“Granted,” Drummond said graciously. “Don’t get carried away with it. What then?”
“Go to the local hospital and see what they think of him there, and his colleagues.”
“You won’t get much.” Drummond shrugged. “They usually speak well of each other regardless. Imply that any one of them could have made an error, and they all close ranks like soldiers facing the enemy.”
“There’ll be something to read between the lines.” Pitt knew what Drummond meant, but there was always the turn of a phrase, the overcompensation, the excessive fairness that betrayed layers of meaning and emotion beneath, conflicts of judgment or old desires. “Then I’ll see his servants. They may have direct evidence, although that would be a lot to hope for. But they may also have seen or heard something that will lead to a lie, an inconsistency, an act concealed, someone where they should not have been.” As he said it he thought of all the past frailties he had unearthed, foolishness and petty spites that had little or nothing to do with the crime, yet had broken old relationships, forged new ones, hurt and contused and changed. There were occasions when he hated the sheer intrusion of investigation. But the alternative was worse.
“Keep me advised, Pitt.” Drummond was watching him, perhaps guessing his thoughts. “I want to know.”
“Yes sir, I will.”
Drummond smiled at the unusual formality, then nodded a dismissal, and Pitt left, going downstairs and out of the front doors to the pavement of Bow Street, where he caught a hansom north to Highgate. It was an extravagance, but the force would pay. He sat back inside the cab and stretched out his legs as far as possible. It was an agreeable feeling bowling along, not thinking of the cost.
The cab took him through the tangle of streets up from the river, across High Holborn to the Grey’s Inn Road, north through Bloomsbury and Kentish Town into Highgate.
At the police station he found Murdo waiting for him impatiently, having already sifted through all the police reports of the last two years and separating