Rutland Place - Anne Perry [48]
Pitt left no wiser, and certainly no happier. If he could feel certain that there was some unresolved tragedy, as Tormod Lagarde had seemed convinced, then he would be satisfied to leave it decently alone. On the other hand, Ambrosine Charrington had been sure that such a thing was utterly out of character. If it had been some preposterous accident, should he persist until he had done all he could to discover precisely what? Did he owe it to Mina herself? To be buried in a suicide’s grave was a disgrace, a stigma not easy to bear for her survivors. And did he perhaps owe it to Alston Spencer-Brown to show him that his wife had not been so unhappy as to prefer death to life? Might not Spencer-Brown go on torturing himself with hurt and confusion in the belief that she had loved someone else and found life insupportable without him? And other people—would they believe something secret and perhaps obscure about Alston that had driven his wife to such an end?
Was it possible that no matter how ugly, or how expensive, the facts were better? The truth deals only one wound, but suspicions a thousand.
Because Theodora had mentioned that Amaryllis and she were sisters, Amaryllis Denbigh was a complete surprise to Pitt. Without giving it conscious thought, he had been expecting someone similar, and it was a faintly unpleasant readjustment to meet a woman younger, not only in years but jarringly so in fashion, manner, and deportment.
She met him with cool civility, but the spark of interest was in her eyes and in the suppressed tightness of her body. He never for a moment feared that she might decline to talk. There was something hungry in her, something seeking, and yet at the same time contemptuous of him. She had not forgotten that he was a policeman.
“Of course I understand your situation, Inspector—Pitt?” She sat down and arranged her skirts with white fingers that stroked the silk delicately; he could almost feel its rippling softness himself, as if it slid cool beneath his own skin.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He eased himself into the chair across the small table from her.
“You are obliged to satisfy yourself that there has been no wrong done,” she reasoned. “And naturally that requires you to discover the truth. I wish I could be of more assistance to you.” Her eyes did not leave his face, and he had the feeling she knew every line of it, every shade. “But I fear I know very little.” She smiled coolly. “I have only impressions, and it would be less than fair to represent them as facts.”
“I sympathize.” He found the words hard to say, for no reason that he could frame. He made an effort to concentrate his mind upon Mina, and his reason for being here. “Yet if anyone had known facts, surely they would have prevented the tragedy? It is precisely because there are only impressions and understandings that have come with the wisdom of hindsight that these things occur so startlingly, and we are left with mysteries and perhaps unjust beliefs.” He hoped he was not being sententious, but he was trying to follow her own line of reasoning and convince her to speak. He believed he could judge what to trust and what to discard as malicious or unrelated.
“I had not thought of it like that.” Her eyes were round and blue and very direct. She must have looked much like this in feature and expression when she was still in pigtails and dresses to her knees: the same frankness, the same slightly bold interest, the same softness of cheek