Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [2]
“Right, sir! Yes, I’ll do that. Might try some of the other houses, too. Like you say, never know what they’ve seen, till you try, like?”
When the footman returned, he conducted Pitt into the morning room and left him. It was five minutes before Jessamyn Nash appeared. Pitt knew her immediately; she was the woman from the portrait in the hall, with those wide, direct eyes, that mouth, that radiant hair, thick and soft as summer fields. She was dressed in black now, but it did nothing to dim her brilliance. She stood very straight, her chin high.
“Good morning, Mr. Pitt. What is it you wish to ask me?”
“Good morning, ma’am. I’m sorry to have to disturb you in such tragic circumstances—”
“I appreciate the necessity. You do not need to explain.” She walked across the room with exquisite grace. She did not sit, nor did she invite him to do so. “Naturally you must discover what happened to Fanny, poor child.” Her face froze for just an instant, stiff. “She was only a child, you know, very innocent, very—young.”
It was the same impression he had had, extreme youth.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“Thank you.” He had no idea from her voice whether she knew he meant it, or if she took it as a simple courtesy, the automatic thing to say. He would like to have assured her, but then she would not care about the feelings of a policeman.
“Tell me what happened.” He looked at her back as she stood at the window. She was slender, shoulders delicately soft under the silk. Her voice, when it came, was expressionless, as though she were repeating something rehearsed.
“I was at home yesterday evening. Fanny lived here with my husband and myself. She was my husband’s half sister, but I presume you know that. She was only seventeen. She was engaged to marry Algernon Burnon, but that was not to be for three years at least, when she became twenty.”
Pitt did not interrupt. He seldom interrupted; the slightest remarks that seemed irrelevant at the time could turn out to mean something, betraying a feeling if nothing else. And he wanted to know all he could about Fanny Nash. He wanted to know how other people had seen her, what she had meant to them.
“—that may seem a long engagement,” Jessamyn was saying, “but Fanny was very young. She grew up alone, you see. My father-in-law married a second time. Fanny is—was—twenty years younger than my husband. She seemed forever a child. Not that she was simple.” She hesitated, and he noticed that her long fingers were fiddling with a china figurine from the table, twisting it around and around. “Just—” She fumbled for the word. “—ingenuous—innocent.”
“And she was living here with you and your husband, until her marriage?”
“Yes.”
“Why was that?”
She looked round at him in surprize. Her blue eyes were very cool, and there were no tears in them.
“Her mother is dead. Naturally we offered her a home.” She gave a tiny, icy smile. “Young girls of good family do not live alone, Mr.—I’m sorry—I forget your name.”
“Pitt, ma’am,” he said with equal chill. He was ruffled, surprised that he was still capable of feeling slighted after all these years. He refused to show it. He smiled within himself. Charlotte would have been furious; her tongue would have spoken as quickly as the words came to her mind. “I thought she might have remained with her father.”
Something of his humor must have softened his face. She mistook it for a smirk. The color rose in her exquisite cheeks.
“She preferred to live with us,” she said tartly. “Naturally. A girl does not wish to enter the Season without a suitable lady, preferably of her own family, to advise and accompany her. I was happy to do so. Are you sure this is relevant, Mr.—Pitt? Are you not merely indulging your curiosity? I appreciate our way of life is probably quite unknown to you.”
An acid reply came to his mind, but anger was irrevocable, and he could