Southampton Row - Anne Perry [106]
The parlor where Maude Lamont had died was undisturbed. Lena Forrest received them civilly enough, although she still looked tired and there was a greater air of strain about her. Perhaps the reality of Maude’s death had become apparent to her, and in a short while the necessity of finding another position. It cannot have been easy to live alone in the house where a woman whom you knew, saw every day in the most intimate circumstances, had been murdered only a week ago. It said a great deal for her fortitude that she had managed to remain in control of herself.
Except that no doubt she had seen death many times before, and the fact that she served Maude Lamont did not in itself mean that she had any personal affection for her. She might have been a hard mistress, demanding, critical or inconsiderate. Some women thought their maids should be on duty at any hour of the day or night that they might be sent for, whether it was really necessary or not.
“Good morning, Miss Forrest,” Pitt said courteously.
“Good morning, sir,” she replied. “Is there something further I can do for you?” She included Tellman in her glance. They were standing in the parlor now, uneasily, each of them aware of what had happened there, if not why. Pitt had been thinking profoundly about that, and had discussed it briefly on the way over.
“Please sit down,” he invited her, then he and Tellman did also.
“Miss Forrest,” Pitt began. Her attention was unwavering. “Since the front door was closed and locked, the French doors to the garden”—he glanced at them—“were closed but not locked, and the only way out from the garden is through the door into Cosmo Place, which was locked but unbarred, it is the inevitable conclusion that Miss Lamont was killed by one of the people in the house during the séance. The only alternative is that it was all three in some collusion, and that does not seem even remotely likely.”
She nodded silently in agreement. There was no surprise in her face. Presumably she had already realized as much herself. She had had a week in which to think of it, and it must have crowded almost everything else out of her mind.
“Have you had any further thought as to why anyone should wish Miss Lamont any harm?”
She hesitated, doubt in her face. It was clear some deep emotion worked within her.
“Please, Miss Forrest,” he urged. “She was a woman who had opportunity to discover some of the most profound and vulnerable secrets in people’s lives, things that they may well have been desperately ashamed of, past sins and tragedies too raw to forget.” He saw the instant compassion in her face, as if her imagination reached out to such people and saw the horror of their memories in all their terrible detail. Perhaps she had served other mistresses with griefs, children dead, unhappy marriages, love affairs that tormented them. People did not always realize just how much a lady’s maid was privy to, and sometimes how much she knew of a woman’s most intimate life. Some might like to think of her as a silent confidante, others might be appalled that anyone else saw their most private moments and understood too much. Just as no man was a hero to his valet, so no woman was a mystery to her maid.
“Yes,” Lena said very quietly. “There are not many secrets from a good medium, and she was very good.”
Pitt looked at her, trying to read in her face, her eyes, whether she knew more than the bare words she was offering. It would have been difficult for Maude Lamont to have hidden from her maid any regular accomplice, either to fake manifestations or to gain personal information about prospective clients. A lover would also have given himself away sooner or later, even if only in Maude’s demeanor. Was Lena Forrest keeping such secrets out of loyalty to a dead woman, or self-preservation because if she betrayed them then who would employ her in such a sensitive position in the future? And she had to think very carefully about that. Maude Lamont was not here to give her a good reference as to her character or skills.