Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [9]
“Of course, we are!” Pitt smiled at him and Forbes looked glumly back. “You can see a little more of how the gentry live. Try all the staff at that party.”
“Lord and Lady Dilbridge?”
“Precisely. Now I’m going to find that surgeon.” He swung out of the office and went to the little eating house on the corner where the police surgeon in a dapper suit was sitting over a pot of tea. He looked up as Pitt came in.
“Tea?” he inquired.
Pitt sat down.
“Never mind the breakfast. What about Fanny Nash?”
“Ah.” The surgeon took a long gulp from his cup. “Funny thing, that. May mean nothing at all, but thought I should mention it. She has a scar on her buttock, left buttock, low down. Looks pretty recent.”
Pitt frowned.
“A scar? Healed. So what does that matter?”
“Probably not at all,” the surgeon shrugged. “But it’s sort of cross-shaped, long bar with shorter cross bar toward the lower end. Very regular, but the funny thing about it is that it’s not a cut.” He looked up, his eyes very brilliant. “It’s a burn.”
Pitt sat perfectly still.
“A burn?” he said incredulously. “What on earth could burn her like that?”
“I don’t know,” the surgeon replied. “So help me, I don’t even care to think.”
Pitt left the tea house puzzled, unsure if it meant anything at all. Perhaps it was no more than a perverse and rather ridiculous accident. Meanwhile he must continue the dreary task of establishing where everyone had been at the time the murder was committed. He had already seen Algernon Burnon, the young man engaged to marry Fanny, and found him pale but as composed as was proper in the circumstances. He claimed to have been in the company of someone else all that evening, but refused to say whom. He implied it was a matter of honor that Pitt would not understand, but was too delicate to phrase it quite so plainly. Pitt could get no more from him and for the present was content to leave it so. If the wretched man had been indulging in some other affair at the very time his fiancée was being ravished, he would hardly care to admit it now.
Lord and Lady Dilbridge had been with company since seven o’clock, and could be written off. The household of the Misses Horbury contained no men at all. Selena Montague’s only manservant had been either in the servants’ hall or in his own pantry in view of the kitchen all the relevant time. That left Pitt with three more houses to call on and then the distressing duty of going back to the Nashes’ to see Jessamyn’s husband, the half brother of the dead girl. Lastly there was the personally awkward necessity of asking George Ashworth to account for his time. Pitt hoped, above anything else in the case, that George could do so.
He wished he could have got that interview over with first, but he knew that George would not be available so early in the morning. More than that, there was a foolishness in him that hoped he might discover some strong clue before he came to the necessity, something so urgent and pointed he could avoid asking George at all.
He began at the second house in the Walk, immediately after the Dilbridges’. At least this unpleasant task could be put behind him. There were three Nash brothers, and this was the house of the eldest, Mr. Afton Nash and his wife, and the youngest, Mr. Fulbert Nash, as yet single.
The butler let him in with weary resignation, warning him that the family was still at breakfast, and he must oblige him to wait. Pitt thanked him and, when the door was closed, began slowly to walk around the room. It was traditional, expensive, and yet made him feel uncomfortable. There were numerous leather-bound volumes in the bookcase in such neat order as to look unused. He ran his finger along them to see if there was dust on them, but they were immaculate, more to the credit of the housekeeper, he guessed, than of any reader. The bureau held the usual clutter of family photographs. None of them smiled, but that was usual; one had to hold a pose for so long that smiling was impossible. A sweetness of expression was the best that could be