Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [86]
Pitt let her continue because he was curious to see how easily and completely they both accepted that Shaw was guilty. Now he must impress on them that it was only one of several possibilities.
“There is no need to distress yourself yet, Miss Worlingham. Your brother’s death may well have been apoplexy, just as Dr. Shaw said, and we do not know that he is guilty of anything yet. It may have nothing to do with money. It may well be that he has treated some medical case which he realized involved a crime, or some disease that the sufferer would kill to keep secret.”
Angeline looked up sharply. “You mean insanity? Someone is mad, and Stephen knows about it? Then why doesn’t he say? They ought to be locked up in Bedlam, with other lunatics. He shouldn’t allow them to go around free—where they can burn people to death.”
Pitt opened his mouth to explain to her that perhaps the person only thought Shaw knew. Then he looked at the mounting hysteria in her, and at Celeste’s tense eyes, and decided it would be a waste of time.
“It is only a possibility,” he said levelly. “It may be someone’s death was not natural, and Dr. Shaw knew of it, or suspected it. There are many other motives, perhaps even some we have not yet thought of.”
“You are frightening me,” Angeline said in a small, shaky voice. “I am very confused. Did Stephen kill anyone, or not?”
“No one knows,” Celeste answered her. “It is the police’s job to find out.”
Pitt asked them several more questions, indirectly about Shaw or Theophilus, but learned nothing more. When they left, the sky had cleared and the wind was even colder. Pitt and Murdo walked side by side in silence till they reached Oliphant’s lodging house and at last found Shaw sitting in the front parlor by the fire writing up notes at a rolltop desk. He looked tired, his eyes ringed around with dark hollows and his skin pale, almost papery in quality. There was grief in the sag of his shoulders and the nervous energy in him was transmuted into tension, and jumpiness of his hands.
“There is no point in asking me who I treated or for what ailment,” he said tersely as soon as he saw Pitt. “Even if I knew of some disease that would prompt someone to kill me, there is certainly nothing that would cause anyone to harm poor Amos. But then I suppose he died because I was in his house.” His voice broke; he found the words so hard to say. “First Clemency—and now Amos. Yes, I suppose you are right; if I really knew who it was, I would do something about it—I don’t know what. Perhaps not tell you—but something.”
Pitt sat down in the chair nearest him without being asked, and Murdo stood discreetly by the door.
“Think, Dr. Shaw,” he said quietly, looking at the exhausted figure opposite him and hating the need to remind him of his role in the tragedy. “Please think of anything you and Amos Lindsay discussed while you were in his house. It is possible that you were aware of some fact that, had you understood it, would have told you who set the first fire.”
Shaw looked up, a spark of interest in his eyes for the first time since they had entered the room. “And you think perhaps Amos understood it—and the murderer knew?”
“It’s possible,” Pitt replied carefully. “You knew him well, didn’t you? Was he the sort of man who might have gone to them himself—perhaps seeking proof?”
Suddenly Shaw’s eyes brimmed with tears and he turned away, his voice thick with emotion. “Yes,” he said so quietly Pitt barely heard him. “Yes—he was. And God help me, I’ve no idea who he saw or where he went when I was there. I was so wrapped up in my own grief and anger I didn’t see and I didn’t ask.”
“Then please think now, Dr. Shaw.” Pitt rose to his feet, moved more by pity not to intrude on a very obvious distress than the sort of impersonal curiosity his profession dictated. “And if you remember anything at all, come and tell me—no one else.”
“I will.” Shaw seemed sunk within himself again, almost as if Pitt and Murdo had already left.
Outside in the late-afternoon sun,