Rutland Place - Anne Perry [42]
Since they had been the last people he knew of to see Mina alive, there was a great deal Pitt wished to ask them, although he had not yet formed in his mind any satisfactory way of wording his thoughts, which were still confused, conscious only of unexplained tragedy. But chance allowed him no time to juggle with polite sympathies and suggestions. At quarter past nine, the earliest time at which it would be remotely civil to call, he was on the icy doorstep facing a startled footman, whose tie sat askew and whose polished boots were marred with mud.
“Yes, sir?” the man said, his mouth hanging open.
“Inspector Pitt,” Pitt said. “May I speak with Mr. Lagarde, if you please? And then with Miss Lagarde when it is convenient?”
“It ain’t convenient.” In his consternation the footman forgot the grammar the butler had been at pains to instill in him. “They’re going down to the country today. They ain’t—they is not receiving no one. Miss Lagarde aren’t well.”
“I’m very sorry Miss Lagarde is unwell,” Pitt said, refusing to be edged off the step. “But I am from the police, and I am obliged to make inquiries about the death of Mrs. Spencer-Brown, who I believe was known to Mr. and Miss Lagarde quite closely. I am sure they would wish to be of every assistance they could.”
“Oh! Well—” The footman had obviously not foreseen this situation, nor had the butler prepared him for anything of this sort.
“Perhaps it would be less conspicuous for me to wait somewhere other than on the doorstep,” Pitt said, glancing back into the street with the implicit suggestion that the rest of the Place knew his identity, and therefore his business.
“Oh!” The footman realized the impending catastrophe. “Of course, you’d best come into the morning room. There’s no fire there—” Then he recollected that Pitt was the police, and explanations, let alone fires, were unnecessary for such persons. “You just wait in there.” He opened the door and watched Pitt go in. “I’ll tell the master you’re here. Now don’t you go a-wandering around! I’ll come back and tell you what’s what!”
Pitt smiled to himself as the door closed. He bore no rancor. He knew the boy’s job depended on his proper observance of social niceties, and that an irritable butler, ill-served, could cost him very dear. There would be no recourse, no opportunity for explanations, and little tolerance of mistakes. To have the police in the house was most unfortunate, but to keep them at the front door arguing for all the world to see would be unpardonable. Pitt had seen a good deal of life belowstairs, beginning with his own parents’ experience when his father had been gamekeeper on a large country estate. As a boy, Pitt had run through the house with the master’s son, an only child glad of any playmate. Pitt had been quick to learn, to ape the manners and the speech, and to copy the school lessons. He knew the rules on both sides of the green baize door.
Tormod came quickly. Pitt had barely had time to look at the gentle landscape paintings on the walls and the old rosewood desk with its marquetry inlays before he heard the step on the polished floor outside the room.
Tormod was rather what he had expected: broad-shouldered, wearing a beautifully cut coat, his collar a little high. He had dark hair swept back from a broad white brow and a full mouth with a wide lower lip.
“Pitt?” he said formally. “Don’t know what I can tell you. I really haven’t the faintest idea what can have happened to poor Mina—Mrs. Spencer-Brown. If she had any anxiety or fear, unfortunately she did not confide it to either my sister or myself.”
It was a blank wall, and Pitt had no idea how he was going to make the slightest impression on it. Yet this was the only human clue he had.
“But she did call on you that last day, and left within an hour or so of her death?” he said quietly. His mind was racing, searching for something pertinent to ask, anything that might crack the smooth composure and reveal a hint of the passion that must have been there—unless it really had been only a chance and ridiculous