Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [8]
The house was far smaller than the Lutterworths’, and as soon as they were inside they could not help being aware it was also of highly eccentric character. The owner was apparently at one time an explorer and anthropologist. Carvings of varied nature and origin decked the walls, crowded together on shelves and tables, and even stood in huddles on the floor. From Pitt’s very restricted knowledge he took them to be either African or central Asian. He saw nothing Egyptian, Oriental or from the Americas, nothing that had the subtle but familiar smoothness of the classicism that was the heritage of western European culture. There was something alien in it, a barbaric rawness at odds with the very conventional Victorian middle-class interior architecture.
They were conducted in by a manservant with an accent Pitt could not place and a skin no darker than many Englishmen’s, but of an unusual smoothness, and hair that might have been drawn on his head with India ink. His manners were impeccable.
Amos Lindsay himself was eminently English in appearance, short, stocky and white-haired, and yet totally unlike Pascoe. Where Pascoe was essentially an idealist harking back to an age of medieval chivalry in Europe, Lindsay was a man of insatiable and indiscriminate curiosity—and irreverence for establishment, as his furnishings showed. But his mind was voyaging outward to the mysteries of savagery and the unknown. His skin was deep furrowed both by the dominant nature of his features and by the severity of tropical sun. His eyes were small and shrewd, those of a realist, not a dreamer. His whole aspect acknowledged humor and the absurdities of life.
Now he was very grave and met Pitt and Murdo in his study, having no use for a morning room.
“Good evening,” he said civilly. “Dr. Shaw is in the withdrawing room. I hope you will not ask him a lot of idiotic questions that anyone else could answer.”
“No sir,” Pitt assured him. “Perhaps towards that end you might answer a few for us before we meet Dr. Shaw?”
“Of course. Although I cannot imagine what you think there is to learn from us. But since you are here, you must suppose, in spite of the unlikelihood of it, that it was in some way criminal.” He looked acutely at Pitt. “I went to bed at nine; I rise early. I neither saw nor heard anything, nor did my domestic staff. I have already asked them because quite naturally they were alarmed and distressed by the noise of the fire. I have no idea what manner of person might do such a thing with intent, nor any sane reason why. But then the mind of man is capable of almost any contortion or delusion whatever.”
“Do you know Dr. and Mrs. Shaw well?”
Lindsay was unsurprised. “I know him well. He is one of the few local men I find it easy to converse with. Open-minded, not pickled in tradition like most around here. A man of considerable intelligence and wit. Not common qualities—and not always appreciated.”
“And Mrs. Shaw?” Pitt continued.
“Not so well. One doesn’t, of course. Can’t discuss with a woman in the same way as with a man. But she was a fine woman; sensible, compassionate, modest without unctuousness, no humbug about her. All the best female qualities.”
“What did she look like?”
“What?” Lindsay was obviously surprised. Then his face creased into a comic mixture of humor and indecision. “Matter of opinion, I suppose. Dark, good features, bit heavy in the—” He colored and his hands waved vaguely in the air. Pitt judged they would have described the curve of hips, had not his sense of propriety stopped him. “Good eyes, intelligent and mild. Sounds like a horse—I apologize. Handsome woman, that’s my judgment. And she walked well. No doubt you’ll talk to the Worlingham sisters, her aunts; Clemency resembles Celeste a trifle, not Angeline.”
“Thank you. Perhaps we should meet Dr. Shaw now?”
“Of course.” And without further speech he led them back