Rutland Place - Anne Perry [30]
“I still don’t know what you mean,” she said quietly. “Perhaps Mina knew who it was who had been taking things. She did give certain hints from time to time that she was aware of rather more than she felt she ought to say. But surely no one would murder just to hide a few wretched little thefts? I mean, one would certainly dismiss a servant who had stolen, but one might not prosecute because of the embarrassment—not only to oneself but to one’s friends. No one wishes to have to make statements and answer questions. But where murder is concerned one has no choice—the person is hanged. The police see to it.”
“If we catch them—yes.” Pitt did not want to go into the morality of the penal system now. There was no possibility of their agreeing on it. They would not even be talking of the same things; their visions would be of worlds that did not meet at the fringes of the imagination. She had never seen a treadmill or a quarry, never smelled bodies crawling with lice, or sick with jail fever, or seen fingers worked to blood picking oakum—let alone the death cell and the rope.
She sank deeper into the sofa, shivering, thinking of past terrors and Sarah’s death.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, realizing where her memories were. “There is no reason yet to suppose it was murder. We must look first for reasons why she might have taken her own life. It is a delicate question to ask, but suicide is not a respecter of feelings. Do you have any idea if she had a romantic involvement of any nature that could have driven her to such despair?” At the back of his mind was beating Charlotte’s conviction of the depth of Caroline’s own affairs, and he felt it so loudly he almost expected Caroline to answer these thoughts instead of the rather prim words he actually spoke. He felt guilty, as if he had peeped in through someone’s dressing-room window.
If Caroline was surprised, she did not show it. Perhaps she had had sufficient warning to expect such a question.
“If she had,” she replied, “I certainly have heard no word of it. She must have been extraordinarily discreet! Unless—”
“What?”
“Unless it was Tormod,” she said thoughtfully. “Please, Thomas, you must realize I am giving voice to things that are merely the faintest of ideas, just possibilities—no more.”
“I understand that. Who is Tormod?”
“Tormod Lagarde. He lives at number three. She had known him for some years, and was certainly very fond of him.”
“Is he married?”
“Oh no. He lives with his younger sister. They are orphans.”
“What sort of a person is he?”
She considered for a moment before replying, weighing the kind of facts he would want to know.
“He is very handsome,” she said deliberately. “In a romantic way. There is something about him that seems to be unattainable—lonely. He is just the sort of man women do fall in love with, because one can never get close enough to him to spoil the illusion. He remains forever just beyond one’s reach. Amaryllis Denbigh is in love with him now, and there have been others in the past.”
“And does he—” Pitt did not know how to phrase acceptably what he wanted to say.
She smiled at him, making him feel suddenly clumsy and very young.
“Not so far as I know,” she answered. “And I believe if he did, I should have heard. Society is very small, you know, especially in Rutland Place.”
“I see.” He felt his face grow warm. “So Mrs. Spencer-Brown might