Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [77]
Murdo gasped as if the word had struck him physically. He would rather have sustained a dozen blows from a thief or a drunkard than have such a term used of Flora. Were it any other man he would have knocked him to the ground—but he was helpless.
“—and I’ve nothing with which to call them liars!” Lutterworth was anguished with impotent fury himself, and anyone but Murdo would have pitied him. “Dear God—if your mother were alive she’d weep ’erself sick to see you. First time since she died I ’aven’t grieved she weren’t ’ere with me—the very first time …”
Flora stared at him and stood even straighter. She drew a breath to defend herself, her cheeks scarlet, her eyes burning. Then her face filled with misery and she remained silent.
“Nothing to say?” he demanded. “No excuses? No—what a fine man he is, if only I knew ’im like you do, eh?”
“You do me an injustice, Papa,” she said stiffly. “And yourself also. I am sorry you think so ill of me, but you must believe what you will.”
“Don’t you come high and mighty with me, girl.” Lutterworth’s face was torn between anger and pain. Had she been looking at him more closely she might have seen the pride as he gazed at her, and the shattered hope. But his words were unfortunate. “I’m your father, not some tomfool lad following after you. You’re not too big to send to your room, if I have to. An’ I’ll approve any man that sets ’is cap at you, or you’ll not so much as give ’im the time o’ day. Do you hear me, girl?”
She was trembling. “I’m sure everyone in the house hears you, Papa, including the tweeny in the attic—”
His face flushed purple with anger.
“—but if anyone does me the honor of courting me,” she went on before he had mustered the words, “I shall most certainly seek your approval. But if I love him, I’ll marry him whether you like him or not.” She turned to Murdo, and with a barely shaking voice thanked him for informing her that Dr. Shaw was alive and well. Then, still clutching his handkerchief, she swept out and they heard her footsteps go across the hall and up the stairs.
Lutterworth was too wretched and too embarrassed to apologize or seek polite excuses for such a scene.
“I can’t tell you anything you don’t know for yourselves,” he said brusquely when the silence returned. “I ’eard the alarm and went out to see, same as ’alf the street, but I didn’t see nor ’ear anything before that. Now I’ll be going back to my bed and you’d best get about your business. Good night to you.”
“Good night sir,” they replied quietly, and found their own way to the door.
It was not the only quarrel they witnessed that night.
Pascoe was too distressed to see them, and his servant refused on his behalf. They trudged in silence and little expectation of learning anything useful, first to the Hatches’ house: to question Lindsay’s maid, who was bundled up in blankets and shaking so violently she could not hold a cup steady in her hand. She could tell them nothing except that she had woken to the sound of fire bells and had been so terrified she did not know what to do. A fireman had come to the window and carried her out, across the roof of the house and down a long ladder to the garden, where she had been soaked with water from a hose, no doubt by accident.
At this point her teeth were chattering on the edge of the cup and Pitt recognized that she was unlikely to know anything useful, and was beyond being able to tell him anyway. Not even the prospect of a clue towards who had burned two houses to the ground, with their occupants inside, prompted him to press her any further.
When she had been escorted upstairs to bed, he turned to Josiah Hatch, who was gaunt faced, eyes fixed in horror at the vision within his mind.
Pitt watched him anxiously, he seemed so close to retreating into himself with shock. Perhaps to be forced to speak and think of and answer questions of fact would be less of a torture than one might suppose. It would draw him from the contemplation of the enormity of destruction, and from the