Rutland Place - Anne Perry [29]
“Will you please tell Mrs. Ellison that Mr. Pitt is here to see her?” He walked in past her before she had time to protest. “It is a matter of some urgency.”
The name was familiar to her, but she could not immediately place it. She hesitated, uncertain whether to allow him in any farther or to call one of the menservants for help.
“Well, sir, if you please to wait in the morning room,” she said dubiously.
“Certainly.” He was herded obediently out of the hallway into the silence of the back room, and within moments Caroline came in, her face flushed.
“Thomas! Is something wrong with Charlotte?” she demanded. “Is she ill?”
“No! No, she is very well.” He put out his hands as if to touch her in some form of reassurance, then remembered his place. “I’m afraid it is something quite different,” he finished.
All the anxiety slipped away from her. Then suddenly, as if hearing a cry, it returned, and without anything said, he knew she was afraid Charlotte had told him about the locket with its betraying picture. It would have been better police work if he had allowed her to go on thinking so, since she might have made some slip, but the words came to his tongue in spite of reasoning.
“I’m afraid Mrs. Spencer-Brown has died this afternoon, and the cause is not yet apparent.”
“Oh dear!” Caroline put her hand to her mouth in horror. “Oh, how dreadful! Does poor Alston—Mr. Spencer-Brown—know?”
“Yes. Are you all right?” Her face was very pale, but she seemed perfectly composed. “Would you like me to call the maid for you?”
“No, thank you.” Caroline sat on the sofa. “It was very civil of you to come to tell me, Thomas. Please sit down. I dislike having to stare up at you like that—you make me feel uncomfortable.” She took a breath and smoothed her skirts thoughtfully. “I presume from the fact that you are here it was not an entirely natural death? Was it an accident? Involving some kind of negligence, perhaps?”
He sat down opposite her.
“We don’t know yet. But it was not a carriage accident or a fall, if that is what you mean. It appears to have been poison.”
She was startled; her eyes widened in disbelief.
“Poison! That’s horrible—and ridiculous! It must have been a heart attack, or a stroke or something. It’s just a hysterical maid with too many penny novels in her bedroom—” She stopped, her hands clenched on her knees. “Are you trying to say it was murder, Thomas?”
“I don’t know what it was. It could have been—or an accident—or suicide.” He was obliged to go on. The longer he evaded it the more artificial it would seem, the more pointed. “Charlotte told me there have been a number of small thefts in the neighborhood, and that you have had the unpleasant sensation of being watched.”
“Did she?” Caroline’s body stiffened, and she sat upright. “I would prefer she had kept my confidence, but I suppose that is academic now. Yes, several people have missed small articles, and if you want to chastise me about not having called the police—”
“Not at all,” he said, more sharply than he intended. He resented the criticism of Charlotte. “But now that there is death involved, I would like to ask your opinion as to whether you believe it possible Mrs. Spencer-Brown could have been the thief?”
“Mina?” Caroline opened her eyes in surprise at the thought.
“It might be a reason why she should have killed herself,” he reasoned. “If she realized it was a compulsion she could not control.”
Caroline frowned.
“I don’t know what you mean—‘could not control’? Stealing is never right. I can understand people who steal because they are in desperate poverty, but Mina had everything she needed. And anyway none of the things that are missing are of any great value, just little things, silly things like a handkerchief, a buttonhook, a snuffbox—why on earth should Mina take those?”
“People sometimes take