Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [80]
“Precisely,” Pitt agreed. “A flourishing business, I should say. Before you disturb anything, look at everything very carefully and see if you can see any marks of blood, or evidence of violence. He may well have been killed here. I should think there are a couple of hundred motives hanging on these walls or stuffed in the drawers.”
“Oh!” The constable stood motionless, appalled by the thought.
“Get on with it,” Pitt urged. “We’ve a lot to do. When you’ve searched everything, start putting those photographs in order; see how many different faces we’ve got.”
“Oh, Mr. Pitt, sir! We’re never going to try and identify all them lot! It’ll take years! And who’s going to admit to it, anyway? Can you see any young girl saying ‘Yes, that’s me’? I ask you!”
“If it’s her face in the picture, she can’t very well argue, can she?” Pitt pointed to the far corner and jerked his head expressively. “Get on with it!”
“My wife’d have a fit if she knew I was doing this!”
“Then don’t tell her,” Pitt said sharply. “But I’ll have one if you don’t, and I’m much more of a force to be reckoned with than she is!”
The constable pulled a face and squinted at the photographs with one eye.
“Don’t you believe it, sir,” he said, but he obeyed and within a few minutes had discovered marks of blood on the floor and on an overturned stool. “This is where ’e was killed, I reckin,” he said decisively, pleased with himself. “See it plain, if you know where to look. Reckin ’e was likely ’it with this.” He touched the stool.
It was after the examination and the measuring that Pitt left the constable to begin the immense task of sorting the photographs to identify the girls. It was for Pitt to consider the other half of the trade—the clients. Naturally, Jones was more discreet than to write down names of those who might be sensitive, even violent, about their association, but Pitt thought he knew at least where he might begin: with the book of numbers and insects from Jones’s desk in his house. He had seen four of those elegant little hieroglyphics on pictures in Gadstone Park. Now he would go and question their owners,. Perhaps they held an explanation to at least one mystery: why anyone should pay so highly for the work of an artist that was at best of very moderate talent.
He began with Gwendoline Cantlay, and this time he came to the point after only the briefest of preliminaries.
“You paid a great deal of money for your portrait by Mr. Jones, Lady Cantlay.”
She was cautious, already sensing something beyond trivial enquiry. “I paid the usual price, Mr. Pitt, as I think you will discover if you look a little further.”
“The usual price for Mr. Jones, ma’am,” he agreed. “But not usual for an artist of his rather indifferent quality.”
Her eyebrows rose in disbelief. “Are you an art expert, Inspector?” she said heavily.
“No, but I have opportunity to counsel with experts, ma’am, and they seem to be agreed that Godolphin Jones was not worth anything like the prices he received here in the Park.”
She opened her mouth and began a question, then stopped. “Indeed. Perhaps art is only a matter of taste, after all.”
This was a scene he had played put so many times and always disliked. Secrets were almost always a matter of vulnerability, an attempt to hide or reject a hurt of some sort.
But he had no alternative. Plastering over truth was not his job, even though he would like it to have been.
“Are you sure, ma’am, that he was not selling something else with his painting—perhaps discretion?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” It was the standard response, and he could almost have said it for her. She was going to resist as long as possible, make him spell out his knowledge.
“Were you not at one time fonder of Mr. Jones than you would wish known, Lady Cantlay—especially, say, by your husband?”
Her face flushed scarlet, and it was several painful seconds before she could decide what to say to him, whether to continue to deny it, or if anger would help. In