Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [13]
Cayley remained staring at the plate.
“No, bit before, and it was more than a disagreement. It was a bloody row.” He looked up sharply. “No, not what you would call a row, I suppose. No shouting. He may not behave like a gentleman, but we’re both sufficiently wellbred not to brawl in front of women. I went outside for a walk to cool off.”
“Into the garden?”
Cayley looked down at the plate again.
“Yes. If you want to know if I saw anything—I didn’t. There were loads of people milling around. Dilbridges have some peculiar social tastes. But I suppose you’ve got a guest list? You’ll probably find it was some footman hired for the evening. Some people do hire carriages, you know, especially if they’re only up for the Season.” His face was suddenly very grave, and he looked at Pitt un-blinkingly. “I honestly haven’t an idea who could have murdered poor Fanny.” His face crumpled a little with a strange pain, subtler than simple pity. “I know most of the men on the Walk. I can’t say I care for all of them, but neither can I honestly believe any of them capable of sticking a knife into a woman, a child like Fanny.” He pushed his plate away with repugnance. “I suppose it could be the Frenchman, odd sort of fellow, and a knife sounds a French kind of thing. But it doesn’t really seem likely.”
“Murder often isn’t,” Pitt said softly. Then he thought of the filthy, teeming rookeries squatting just behind stately streets, where crime was the road to survival, infants learned to steal as soon as they could walk, and only the cunning or the strong made it to adulthood. But all that was irrelevant in Paragon Walk. Here it was shocking, alien, and naturally they sought to disown it.
Cayley was sitting quite still, eaten up with some inner moil of emotions.
Pitt waited. Outside, carriage wheels crunched on the gravel and passed.
At last Cayley looked up.
“Who on earth would want to do that to a harmless little creature like Fanny?” he said quietly. “It’s so bloody pointless!”
Pitt had no answer for him. He stood up.
“I don’t know, Mr. Cayley. Presumably she recognized the rapist, and he knew it. But why he assaulted her in the first place, only God knows.”
Cayley banged a hard, tight fist on the table, not loudly, but with tremendous power.
“Or the devil!” He put his head down and did not look up again, even when Pitt went out of the door and closed it behind him.
Outside the sun was warm and clear, birds chattered in the gardens across the Walk, and somewhere out of sight beyond the curve a horse’s hooves clattered past.
He had seen the first open grief for Fanny, and although it was painful, a reminder that the mystery was trivial, the tragedy real—that long after everyone knew who had killed her, and how, and why, she would still be dead—yet he felt cleaner for it.
He went to see Diggory Nash. It was the middle of the afternoon when he could no longer put off going back to Emily and George. He had learned nothing that would allow him to avoid asking the question. Diggory Nash had offered nothing positive either. He had been away from home, gambling, so he said, at a private party, and was reluctant to name the other players. Pitt was not prepared at this stage to insist.
Now he must see George. Not to do so would be as obvious and thereby as offensive as any questions he could ask.
Vespasia Cumming-Gould was taking tea with Emily and George when Pitt was announced. Emily took a deep breath and asked the parlormaid to have him shown in. Vespasia looked at her critically. Really, the girl was wearing her corset far too tightly for one in her stage of pregnancy. Vanity was all very well in its place, but child-bearing was not its place, as every woman should know! When the opportunity arose, she must tell her what apparently her own mother had neglected to. Or was the poor girl so fond of George, and so unsure of his affection, as to be trying still to capture his interest? If she had been a little better bred she would have been brought up to expect the weaknesses of men and take them in her stride. Then she could