Rutland Place - Anne Perry [66]
Pitt looked at her gravely, without speaking.
She poured the tea and passed him his cup.
“I know it sounds violent, and unlikely,” she went on. “But then I suppose murder always is unlikely—until it actually happens. And Mina was murdered, wasn’t she? You know now that she didn’t kill herself.”
“No.” He sipped the tea and burned his mouth; his hands were too numb for him to have realized its heat. “No, I think someone else put poison into the cordial wine we found in her stomach in the autopsy. We found the dregs in the empty bottle in her bedroom, and a glass. It was just chance she took it when she did; it could have been anytime she felt like it. It could have been anyone who put it there, anytime.”
“Not if they wanted to silence her,” Charlotte pointed out. “If you are afraid of someone, you want them dead before they speak, which means as soon as possible. Thomas, I really do believe she was a Peeping Tom. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. She peeped once too often and saw something that cost her her life.” She stared down into her tea, watching the vapor curl off it and rise gently. “I wonder if people who get murdered are usually unpleasant, if they have some flaw in them that invites murder? I mean people that aren’t killed for money, of course. Like Shakespearean tragic heroes—one fatal deformity of soul that mars all the rest that might have been good.” She stirred her tea, although there was no sugar in it. The steam curled thicker. “Curiosity killed the cat. If Mina had not wanted to know so much about everybody ... I wonder if she knew about Monsieur Alaric, and Mama’s locket?” Oddly enough, she was not afraid. Caroline was foolish, but there was neither the viciousness nor the fear in her to make her kill. And Paul Alaric had no reason to.
He looked up sharply, and too late she realized she had not mentioned Alaric’s name before. Of course Pitt could not have forgotten him from Paragon Walk. At one time they had suspected him of murder . . . or worse!
“Alaric?” he said slowly, searching her face.
She felt herself flush, and was furious. It was Caroline who was behaving foolishly; she, Charlotte, had done nothing indiscreet.
“Monsieur Alaric is the man whose picture Mama has in the locket,” she said defensively, looking straight back at him. And then because his eyes were too clear, too wise, she turned away and stirred her sugarless tea vigorously once again. She tried to sound casual. “Did I not mention that?”
“No.” She knew he was still watching her. “No—you didn’t.”
“Oh.” She kept her eyes on the swirling tea. “Well, he is.”
There were several moments of silence.
“Indeed?” he said at last. “Well, I’m afraid we didn’t find the locket—or any of the other stolen things, for that matter. And if Mina was a Peeping Tom, stealing for the sake of a sick need to know about other people, to possess something of them—” He saw her shudder, and he gave a sigh. “Isn’t that what you are saying? That she was abnormal, perverted?”
“I suppose so.”
He tried his tea again. “And of course there is the other possibility,” he added. “Maybe she knew who the thief was.”
“How tragic, and ridiculous!” she said with sudden anger. “Someone dying over a few silly things like a locket and a buttonhook!”
“Lots of people have died for less.” The rookeries came to his mind with their teeming misery and need. “Some for a shilling, some by accident for something they didn’t have, or in mistake for somebody else.”
She sipped her tea. “Are you going to investigate it?” she said at last.
“There’s no choice. I’ll see what I can find out about Ottilie Charrington. Poor soul! I hate digging through other people’s wretched tragedies. It must be bad enough to lose a daughter, without the police unburying every indiscretion, putting every love or hate under a magnifying glass. No one wants to be seen so clearly!”
But the following morning the necessity was just as plain. If Charlotte was right and Mina had been inquiring, peeping at other people, then it was more than probable that some knowledge gained that way