Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [37]
Pitt glanced back towards the hallway and its relics. “You must have seen a good deal of violence at one time and another.” It was more an observation than a question. He thought of Great-Aunt Vespasia’s friend, Zenobia Gunne, who also had trekked into Africa, and sailed uncharted rivers and lived in strange villages, with people no European had seen before.
Lindsay was watching him curiously. “I have,” he conceded. “But it never became ordinary to me, nor did I cease to find violent death shocking. When you live in another land, Mr. Pitt, no matter how strange it may seem at first, it is a very short time until its people become your own, and their grief and their laughter touches you as deeply. All the differences on earth are a shadow, compared with the sameness. And to tell you the truth, I have felt more akin to a black man dancing naked but for his paint, under the moon, or a yellow woman holding her frightened child, than I ever have to Josiah Hatch and his kind pontificating about the place of women and how it is God’s will that they should suffer in childbirth.” He pulled a face and his remarkably mobile features made it the more grotesque. “And a Christian doctor doesn’t interfere with it! Punishment of Eve, and all that. All right, I know he is in the majority here.” He looked straight at Pitt with eyes blue as the sky, and almost hidden by the folds of his lids, as if he were still screwing them up against some tropical sun.
Pitt smiled. He thought quite possibly he would feel the same, had he ever been out of England.
“Did you ever meet a lady named Zenobia Gunne on your travels—” He got no further because Lindsay’s face was full of light and incredulity.
“Nobby Gunne! Of course I know her! Met her in a village in Ashanti once—way back in ’69. Wonderful woman! How on earth do you know her?” The happiness fled from his face and was replaced by alarm. “Dear God! She’s not been—”
“No! No,” Pitt said hastily. “I met her through a relative of my sister-in-law. At least a few months ago she was in excellent health, and spirits.”
“Thank heaven!” Lindsay waved at Pitt to sit down. “Now what can we do about Stephen Shaw, poor devil? This is a very ugly situation.” He poked at the fire vigorously, then replaced the fire iron set and sat down in the other chair. “He was extremely fond of Clemency, you know. Not a great passion—if it ever was, it had long passed—but he liked her, liked her deeply. And it is not given to many men to like their wives. She was a woman of rare intelligence, you know?” He raised his eyebrows and his small vivid eyes searched Pitt’s countenance.
Pitt thought of Charlotte. Immediately her face filled his mind, and he was overwhelmed with how much he also liked his wife. The friendship was in its own way as precious as the love, and perhaps a greater gift, something born of time and sharing, of small jokes well understood, of helping each other through anxiety or sorrow, seeing the weaknesses and the strengths and caring for both.
But if for Stephen Shaw the passion had gone, and he was a passionate man, then could it have been kindled elsewhere? Would friendship, however deep, survive that whirlwind of hunger? He wanted to believe so; instinctively he had liked Shaw.
But the woman, whoever she was—she would not feel such constraints. Indeed she might seethe with jealousy, and the fact that Shaw still liked and admired his wife might make that frail outer control snap—and result in murder.
Lindsay was staring at him, waiting for a reponse more tangible than the thoughtful expression on his face.
“Indeed,” Pitt said aloud, looking up again. “It would be natural if he found it hard at present to think of who might hold him in such enmity, or feel they had enough to gain from either his death or his wife’s. But since you know him well, you may be able to give more suggestions, unpleasant as it would be. At least we might exclude some