Rutland Place - Anne Perry [96]
Charlotte’s arms tightened. There was not anything else to say. Time would ease it away, but words could not.
In the distance there was the sound of hooves, someone else making an early visit.
Caroline straightened up and sniffed hard. For a moment her hand lingered on Charlotte’s; then she withdrew it and fished in her reticule for a handkerchief.
“I don’t think I shall make any more calls this afternoon,” she said calmly. “Perhaps you would like to come home for tea?”
“Thank you,” Charlotte said. They began to walk again, slowly. “You know, Mina was quite wrong about Theodora. Her money doesn’t come from a brothel at all, or blackmail—she has a business for selling bathroom furniture!”
Caroline was stunned. Her eyebrows shot up.
“You mean—”
“Yes, water closets!”
“Oh, Charlotte!”
Chapter Ten
TWO DAYS LATER PITT was still as confused as ever about who had killed Mina Spencer-Brown. He had a wealth of facts, but no conclusions that were subject to proof—and, worse than that, none that satisfied his own mind.
He stood still on the pavement of Rutland Place in the sun. It was warm there, sheltered from the east wind by the high houses, and he stopped to collect his thoughts before going on to Alston for yet more questioning.
He had been talking to Ambrosine Charrington, and the interview had left him less sure than he had been before he went. It was always possible that Mina had observed Ambrosine in the act of stealing and Ambrosine had been unable to deny it. If that had been so, Mina might have threatened her with exposure.
But would Ambrosine have minded? From what Charlotte had told him, that was far from the case! She might even have been perversely pleased by the disgrace. Ottilie had said it was her motive for doing it in the first place, a desire to shock and distress her husband, to break out of the mold into which he had cast her. Of course she might well not see it so lucidly herself. But he found it impossible to believe she would commit murder to protect a secret she half wanted known.
Did she hate Lovell enough to have allowed Mina to blackmail him? In theory it was possible. It had an irony that would appeal to Ambrosine.
And yet he felt that he would have had some sense of the anger and the tension in Lovell, and of the bitter taste of satisfaction in Ambrosine herself. And he had not. To him she seemed just as elegantly imprisoned as before, and Lovell just as undisturbed in his massive, impregnable security.
Mention of Ottilie had shaken Lovell’s composure most markedly, and he had become white-lipped, sweat-browed. He had tried intensely to hide the whole affair. Yet Ambrosine left Pitt entirely comfortable!
Perhaps it was Alston Spencer-Brown after all? Maybe Mina’s long-standing involvement with Tormod Lagarde had finally proved too much for him, and when Alston had learned that she was still enamored, he had procured more belladonna from some other doctor, in the city, poured it into the cordial, and left it to do its work.
All Pitt’s investigations had pointed to the conclusion that Mina’s infatuation with Tormod had been discreet but very real. Many a husband had killed for less, and Alston’s ordinary exterior could hide a violent possessiveness, a sense of outrage where murder might seem to him no more than justice.
Pitt was driven back to the facts. The cordial wine was homemade, a mixture of elderberry and currants. People in Rutland Place did not make their own wines! Of course, it was impossible to tell who might have been given some, and if they had used it to mask poison, they would hardly own to its possession now.
The belladonna could have been distilled by anyone, or even crushed from the deadly nightshade plant itself, which, while less common than the brightly flowered woody nightshade, was far more lethal. It did not need the fruit that ripened in the autumn; even the leaves were sufficient. And they might be found in hedgerows or woodlands in any wild area in the southeast of the country.
It was perhaps a little early for a biennial plant, but in a