Southampton Row - Anne Perry [128]
“And has Pitt got some reason to believe all this?” Wetron asked.
“Yes sir.” Tellman kept his voice perfectly level, not too assured. “There is some very definite connecting link. It all makes a lot of sense. We’re that far from it!” He held up his finger and thumb about an inch apart. “We just need to flush this man out, and then we can prove it. Murder’s a very nasty crime indeed, any way you want to look at it, and this one especially. Choked the woman. Looks like he put his knee in her chest and forced this stuff down her throat until she died.”
“Yes, you don’t need to be graphic, Inspector,” Wetron said tartly. “I’ll call the press and tell them. You get on with finding the proof you need.” He bent to the paper he had been reading before he was interrupted. It was dismissal.
“Yes sir.” Tellman stood to attention, then turned on his heel. He did not breathe a sigh of relief, or allow his body to let go of the tension and shiver until he was halfway down the stairs again.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Pitt returned immediately to Vespasia, this time writing a note which he handed to the maid, then he waited in the morning room. He believed Vespasia was one person who would refrain from judging his part in Wray’s death, but he could not bring himself to assume it before he had seen her. He waited, pacing the floor, his hands sweating, his breath ragged.
He spun around when the morning room door opened, expecting the maid to tell him either that Lady Vespasia would see him or that she would not. But it was Vespasia herself who was there. She came in and closed the door behind her, shutting out the servants and, from the look on her face, the rest of the world.
“Good morning, Thomas. I assume you have come because you have some plan of battle, and a part in it for me? You had better tell me what it is. Are we to fight alone, or do we have allies?”
Her use of the plural was the most heartening thing she could have said. He should never have doubted her, regardless of what the press wrote or what the odds against them might be. It was not modesty on his part, it was lack of faith.
“Yes, Captain Cornwallis and Inspector Tellman.”
“Good, and what are we to do?” She sat down in one of the large rose-pink morning room chairs and indicated another for him.
He told her the plan, such as it was, which they had formulated around his kitchen table. She listened in silence until he had finished.
“An autopsy,” she said at last. “That will not be easy. He was a man not only revered but actually loved. No one, apart from Voisey, will wish to see him named a suicide, even though that is already the assumption. I imagine the church will endeavor to leave the exact verdict open, and at least tacitly assume some kind of misadventure, in the belief that the less that is said the sooner it will be forgotten. And there is considerable discretion and kindness in that.” She looked at him very steadily. “Are you prepared for the discovery that he did, in fact, take his own life, Thomas?”
“No,” he said honestly. “But nothing I feel about it is going to alter the truth, and I think I need to know it. I really don’t believe he took his own life, but I admit it is possible. I think Voisey contrived his death, using his sister, almost certainly without her knowledge.”
“And you believe an autopsy will indicate that? You may be right. Anyway, as you will no doubt agree, we have little else.” She rose to her feet stiffly. “I do not have the influence to force such a thing myself, but I believe Somerset Carlisle does.” The faintest smile flickered over her face and lit her silver-gray eyes. “You no doubt remember him from that farcical tragedy in Resurrection Row among the thugs.” She did not go on to mention his bizarre part in it. It was something neither of them would forget. If any man on earth would be willing to risk his reputation for a cause in which he believed, it was Carlisle.
Pitt smiled back, for a moment