Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [123]
The door in Devonshire Street was opened by the same highly agreeable butler as before, but this time he looked very grave, although it did not mar the pleasantness of his features.
“Good morning, Mr. Pitt, sir,” he said, opening the door wide to allow Pitt in. “The weather is delightful, is it not? I think October is my favorite month. I imagine it is Mr. FitzJames you wish to see? He is in the library, sir, if you will come this way?” And without waiting for a reply he led the way across the parquet floor and past a magnificent painting of a Dutch harbor scene of the city of Delft, and then into a smaller hallway off which was the library. He knocked at the door and entered immediately.
“Mr. Pitt, sir,” he announced, then stood aside for Pitt to enter.
Augustus was standing in front of the fireplace, although there was no fire lit. Pitt had never seen him on his feet before. He had always conducted their conversations without rising. He looked round-shouldered and was beginning to run a little to paunch. His suit was extremely well cut, his collar high and stiff, and his long face with its dominant nose wore a belligerent expression.
“Come in,” he ordered. “I assumed you’d be ’round here, so I waited for you. Now you are going to tell me you hanged the wrong man. Or are you going to protest that last night’s crime was committed by someone else, a second lunatic in our midst?”
“I am not going to claim anything, Mr. FitzJames.” Pitt held his temper with great difficulty. Seldom had he wanted to lash back at anyone so much. It was only the absolute knowledge that it would rebound on him which held him from it.
“I’m surprised you gave so much to the newspapers,” Augustus said tartly, his eyes wide, a curious mocking in them. “I would have thought that for your own protection you would have told them as little as possible. You’re more of a fool than I took you for.”
Pitt heard the fear threaded through his voice. It was the first time it had been audible, and he wondered if Augustus knew it himself. Perhaps that was why he was so angry.
“I have not spoken to the press at all,” Pitt replied. “I don’t know who has, and if it was one of the women who live in the house in Myrdle Street, there is nothing anyone can do about it. We would be better employed in discovering the truth, and proving it, than in regretting the public knowledge of this second crime and its likeness to the first.”
Augustus stared at him, startled as much by his abruptness as by the bitter truth of what he said. It jarred him from the present confrontation back to facing his own jeopardy and the reality of it. There was no time to waste in recrimination, especially against the one person who could most hurt or help him. The effort it cost him to cover his feelings was obvious in his stubborn features.
“I assume it was like the first?” he said slowly, his eyes searching Pitt’s. “I did not hear all those details in the reports of the McKinley woman’s death.”
“They were not published,” Pitt replied.
“I see.” He straightened his shoulders. “Who else would know of them?”
“Apart from whoever killed her”—Pitt allowed a shadow of irony to pass over his face—“myself, Inspector Ewart, the constable who was first on the scene, and the police surgeon who examined her.”
“Other women in the house?”
“Not so far as we know. They would have no occasion to go into her room.”
“Are you sure?” Augustus demanded, a lift in his voice, as if it could have been hope. “They were there. Perhaps they saw her, and told … I don’t know …” He twitched his shoulder irritably. “Whatever men they associate with! Perhaps this was deliberately copied?”
“Why? Costigan couldn’t be blamed for it,” Pitt pointed out. “Out of all the people involved in the entire story, he is the only one who is unquestionably innocent of Nora Gough’s death.”
“Sit down, man!” Augustus waved his hand in a sharp gesture, like hitting something. However, he remained standing, his back to the empty fireplace, his hands behind him. “I don’t know the reason. Maybe it