Rutland Place - Anne Perry [68]
“Didn’t you ask?”
“I suppose I must have. All I can really remember was the shock, and how nobody spoke of it, almost as if by not putting it into words they could undo it, stop it from being real. I didn’t press them. How could I?”
“But as far as you know she was perfectly well at the time she left Rutland Place?” Pitt inquired.
Mulgrew looked at him at last.
“One of the healthiest I know. Why? Obviously it matters to you or you wouldn’t be here asking so many questions. Do you imagine it has something to do with Mrs. Spencer-Brown?”
“I don’t know. It’s one of several possibilities.”
“What kind of possibility?” Mulgrew’s face creased in pain. “Ottilie was eccentric, even in bad taste to many, but there was nothing evil in her. She was one of the most truly generous people I ever knew. I mean generous with her time—she was never too busy to listen if she thought someone needed to talk. And generous with her praise—she didn’t grudge appreciation, or envy other people’s successes.”
So Mulgrew had loved her, in whatever manner. Pitt did not need to know more: the warmth in Mulgrew’s voice told of the loss still hurting him, twisting an emptiness inside.
It made Pitt’s own thoughts, prompted by Charlotte, the more painful. It was sharp enough for him to lie. He needed to think about it a little, come to it by degrees. He did not look at Mulgrew when he spoke.
“From evidence I’ve just heard”—he measured his words slowly—“it seems possible that Mina Spencer-Brown was inordinately curious about other people’s affairs, that she listened, and peeped. Does that seem likely to you?”
Mulgrew’s eyes widened and he stared at Pitt, but he did not answer for several minutes. The fire crackled, and on Pitt’s knees the cat woke and started kneading him gently with her claws. Absentmindedly he eased her up to rest on his jacket, where she could not reach her claws through to his flesh.
“Yes,” Mulgrew said at last. “Never occurred to me before, but she was a watcher, never missed a thing. Sometimes people do that. Knowledge gives them an illusion of power, I suppose. It becomes compulsive. Mina could have been one of them. Intelligent woman, but an empty life—one stupid, prattling party after another. Poor creature.” He leaned forward and put another piece of coal on the fire. “All day, every day, and not really necessary anywhere. What a bloody stupid thing to die for—some piece of information acquired through idiotic curiosity, no use to you at all.” He turned his face away from the firelight. “And you think it had something to do with Ottilie Charrington?”
“I don’t know. Apparently, Mina thought her death was a mystery, hinting that there was a great deal more to it than had been told and that she knew what it was.”
“Stupid, sad, cruel woman,” Mulgrew said quietly. “What on earth did she imagine it was?”
“I don’t know. The possibilities are legion.” He did not want to spell them out and hurt this man still more, but he had to mention at least one, if only to discount it. “A badly done abortion, for example?”
Mulgrew did not move.
“I believe not,” he said very levelly. “I cannot swear to it, but I believe not. Do you have to pursue it?”
“At least enough to satisfy myself it is wrong.”
“Then ask her brother Inigo Charrington. They were always close. Don’t ask Lovell. He’s a pompous idiot—can’t see further than the quality of print on a calling card! Ottilie drove him frantic. She used to sing songs from the music halls—God only knows where she learned them! Sang one on a Sunday once—drinking song, it was, something about beer—not even a decent claret! Ambrosine called me in. She thought Lovell was going to take a seizure. Purple to the hair, he was, poor fool.”
At any other time Pitt would have laughed. But the knowledge that Ottilie was dead, perhaps murdered, robbed the anecdote of any humor.
“Pity,” he said quietly. “We get so many of our priorities wrong and never know it until afterwards, when it doesn’t matter anymore. Thank you. I’ll speak to Inigo.” He stood up and put the little cat on the warm spot where