Rutland Place - Anne Perry [99]
“I know who killed Mina Spencer-Brown, Mr. Pitt. I did not tell you before because I could not betray a friend. She was dead, and there was nothing to do for her. Now it is different. Tormod is dead too.” Her face was white and empty, like an unpainted doll. “There is no reason now to lie. He was too noble. He protected her all her life, but I shan’t! Justice can be done. I shall not stand in its way.”
“I think you had better explain, Mrs. Denbigh.” He wanted to encourage her, yet there was something inexpressibly ugly in the room and he could feel it as surely as damp in the air. “What lies have there been? Who was Mr. Lagarde protecting?”
Her eyes flashed wider. “His sister of course!” Her voice shook. “Eloise.”
He was surprised, but he stopped before speaking, masked his feelings, and looked across at her calmly.
“Eloise killed Mrs. Spencer-Brown?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know that, Mrs. Denbigh?”
She was breathing in and out so deeply he could see the rise and fall of her bosom.
“I suspected it from the first because I knew how she felt,” she began. “She adored her brother, she possessed him—she built her whole life around him. Their parents died when they were both young, and he has always looked after her. To begin with, of course, that was all quite natural. But as time passed and they grew older, she did not let go of the childish dependence. She continued to cling onto him, to go everywhere with him, demand his entire attention. And when he sought any outside interests she would become jealous, pretend to be ill—anything to bring him back to her.”
She took a long breath. She was watching Pitt, watching his eyes, his face.
“Of course if Tormod showed any natural affection for any other woman, Eloise was beside herself,” she continued. “She never rested until she had driven the woman away, either with lies or by feigning sickness, or else worrying at poor Tormod until he found it hardly worth his while to try anymore. And he was so kindhearted he still protected her, in spite of the cost to himself.
“I’m sure you have found out in all your questions that Mina was very attracted to Tormod? In fact, she was in love with him. It is stupid now to try to cover it with genteel words. It cannot hurt her anymore.
“Naturally that drove Eloise into a frenzy of jealousy. The thought that Tormod would give any of his attention to another woman was more than she could bear. It must have turned the balance of her mind. She poisoned the cordial you have been so assiduously seeking. I have had it offered to me in their house. They bring it from the country with them when they come back from visiting Hertfordshire. I have drunk it on occasion myself.”
She was sitting very upright in the chair, her eyes still fixed on Pitt’s.
“Mina went to their house that day to visit Eloise, as you already know. Eloise gave her the cordial wine as a parting present. She drank it when she got home—and died—as Eloise had planned that she should.
“Tormod protected her—naturally. He had brought her up from a child. I daresay he felt responsible—although God knows why he should. In time he would have had to have her put away in a sanatorium or somewhere. I think in his heart he knew that. But he could not bear to do it yet.
“Ask anyone who knew them. They will tell you that Eloise hated me also—because Tormod cared for me.”
Pitt sat without moving. It all made sense. He remembered Eloise’s face, her dark eyes full of inward vision, absorbed in pain. She was the sort of woman who cried out for protection. She seemed as frail as a dream herself, as if she would vanish at a sudden start or a shout. He did not want to think she had receded into madness and murder. And yet he could think of no argument to refute it, nothing false in what Amaryllis had said.
“Thank you, Mrs. Denbigh,” he said coldly. “It is late now, but tomorrow I shall go to Rutland Place and investigate fully what you have said.” He could not resist adding, “A pity you were not as frank with me before.”
There were faint spots of color in her face.
“I couldn’t. And it would