Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [4]
“Are you saying someone set it intentionally—to kill—No!” He shook his head fiercely. “Rubbish! Absolute tommyrot! No one would murder Clemency Shaw. It must have been Dr. Shaw they were after. Where was he anyway? Why wasn’t he at home? I could understand it if—” He stopped speaking and sat staring at the floor miserably.
“Did you see anyone, Mr. Pascoe?” Pitt repeated, watching his hunched figure. “A person walking, a coach or carriage, a light, anything at all.”
“I—” He sighed. “I went for a walk in my garden before going upstairs. I had been working on a paper which had given me some trouble.” He cleared his throat sharply, hesitated a moment, then his emotion got the better of him and the words poured out. “In rebuttal of a quite preposterous claim of Dalgetty’s about Richard Coeur de Leon.” His voice caressed the romance of the name. “You don’t know John Dalgetty—why should you? He is an utterly irresponsible person, quite without self-control or a proper sense of the decencies.” His expression crumpled with revulsion at such a thing. “Book reviewers have a duty, you know.” His eyes fixed Pitt’s. “We mold opinion. It matters what we sell to the public, and what we praise or condemn. But Dalgetty would rather allow all the values of chivalry and honor to be mocked or ignored, in the name of liberty, but in truth he means license.” He jerked up and waved his hands expansively, wrists limp, to emphasize the very slackness he described. “He supported that fearful monograph of Amos Lindsay’s on this new political philosophy. Fabians, they call themselves, but what he is writing amounts to anarchy—sheer chaos. Taking property away from the people who rightfully own it is theft, plain and simple, and people won’t stand for it. There’ll be blood in the streets if it gains any number of followers.” His jaw tightened with the effort of controlling his anguish. “We’ll see Englishmen fighting Englishmen on our own soil. But Lindsay wrote as if he thought there were some kind of natural justice in it: taking away people’s private property and sharing it out with everyone, regardless of their diligence or honesty—or even of their ability to value it or preserve it.” He stared at Pitt intensely. “Just think of the destruction. Think of the waste. And the monstrous injustice. Everything we’ve worked for and cherished—” His voice was high from the constriction of his throat by his emotions. “Everything we’ve inherited down the generations, all the beauty, the treasures of the past, and of course that fool Shaw was all for it too.”
His hands had been clenched, his body tight, now suddenly he remembered that Pitt was a policeman who probably possessed nothing—and then he also remembered why Pitt was here. His shoulders slumped again. “I am sorry. I should not so criticize a man bereaved. It is shameful.”
“You went for a walk …” Pitt prompted.
“Oh yes. My eyes were tired, and I wished to refresh myself, restore my inner well-being, my sense of proportion in things. I walked in my garden.” He smiled benignly at the memory. “It was a most agreeable evening, a good moon, only shreds of cloud across it and a light wind from the south. Do you know I heard a nightingale sing? Quite splendid. Could reduce one to tears. Lovely. Lovely. I went to bed with a great peace within me.” He blinked. “How dreadful. Not twenty yards away such wickedness, and a woman struggling for her life against impossible odds, and I quite oblivious.”
Pitt looked at the imagination and the guilt in the man’s face.
“It is possible, Mr. Pascoe, that even had you been awake all night, you would not have seen or heard anything until it was too late. Fire catches very quickly when it is set with intent; and Mrs. Shaw may have been killed in her sleep by the smoke without ever waking.”
“Might she?” Pascoe’s eyes opened wide. “Indeed? I do hope so. Poor creature. She was a fine woman, you know. Far too good for Shaw. An insensitive man, without ideals of a higher sort. Not that he isn’t a good medical practitioner,