Rutland Place - Anne Perry [46]
The butler received him with faint displeasure, as if he were a stray driven in by the inclement weather rather than a person who had any place there. Pitt considered the hair plastered over his forehead, the wet trousers flapping around his ankles, and the one bootlace broken, and decided that the butler’s look of disapproval was not unwarranted.
Pitt forced himself to smile. “Inspector Pitt, from the police,” he announced.
“Indeed!” The butler’s look of polite patience vanished like sun behind a cloud.
“I would like to see Mrs. Charrington, if you please,” Pitt continued. “It is with regard to the death of Mrs. Spencer-Brown.”
“I don’t believe—” the butler began, then looked more closely at Pitt’s face and realized protestations were only going to prolong the interview, not end it. “If you come into the morning room, I will see if Mrs. Charrington is at home.” It was a fiction Pitt was well used to. It would be discourteous to say, “I will ask her if she will see you,” although he had been told so bluntly often enough.
He had barely sat down when the butler returned to escort him to the withdrawing room, where there was a fine fire dancing in the grate and three bowls of flowers in jardinières by the wall.
Ambrosine sat bolt upright on the green brocade love seat and looked Pitt over from hair to boots with interest.
“Good morning, Inspector. Do be good enough to sit down and remove your coat. You seem more than a little wet.”
He obeyed with pleasure, handing the offending garment to the butler, then arranging himself in an armchair so as to absorb the full benefit of the fire.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said with feeling.
The butler retired, closing the door behind him, and Ambrosine raised her fine eyebrows.
“I am told you are inquiring into poor Mrs. Spencer-Brown’s death,” she said. “I am afraid I know nothing whatsoever of interest. In fact, how little I know is quite amazing in itself. I would have expected to hear something. One has to be remarkably clever to keep a secret in Society, you know. There are many things that are not spoken of which would be in unforgivable taste to mention, but you will usually find that people know, all the same. There is a certain smugness in the face!” She looked at him to see if he understood, and was evidently satisfied that he did. “It is infinitely pleasing to know secrets, especially when others are aware that you do—and they do not.”
She frowned. “But I have not observed this attitude lately in anyone but Mina herself! And I never really knew whether she had any great knowledge or merely wished us to think so!”
He was equally puzzled. “Do you not think that someone might be prepared to speak now that a death is involved,” he said, “to avoid misunderstandings, and perhaps even injustice?”
She gave a weary little smile. “What an optimist you are, Inspector. You make me feel very old—or at least as if you must be very young. Death is the very best excuse of all to hide things forever. Few people have the least objection to injustice—the world is run on it. And, after all, it is part of the creed: ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum.’ ”
He waited for her to explain, although he thought he knew what she meant.
“‘Speak no ill of the dead,’ ” she said bleakly. “Of course I mean Society’s creed, not the Church’s. A very charitable idea, at first glance, but it leaves all the weight of the blame upon the living—which, of course, is what it is designed to do. Whoever took any joy from hunting a dead fox?”
“The blame for what?” he asked her soberly, forcing himself not to be diverted from the issue of Mina.
“That depends upon whom we are discussing,” she replied. “In the case of Mina, I really do not know. It is a field in which I would have expected you to be far more knowledgeable than I. Why are you concerned in the matter at all? To die is not a crime. Of course I appreciate that to kill oneself is—but since it is obviously quite unprosecutable, I fail to see your involvement.”
“My only interest is to make certain