Southampton Row - Anne Perry [144]
There was a moment of silence. Narraway was standing in front of Pitt, blocking his view through the crack between the door and the jamb. His eye was about level with the top of the hinge.
“She was blackmailing you!” Lena said with consuming disgust. “You were so afraid of what she knew about you that you’d rather remove her papers for good or ill than have people know about you.”
“I no longer care, Miss Forrest!” There was a wild note in him now, as if he would overbalance out of control any moment.
Pitt stiffened. Was she in possible danger? Had Cartouche murdered Maude Lamont over this blackmail, and if Lena pressed him too far, would he kill again, once he knew where the papers were? And of course she could not tell him because they did not exist.
“Then why are you here?” Lena asked. “You’ve come for something!”
“Only her notes that would tell who I am,” he replied. “She’s dead. She can’t say anything further now, and it’s my word against yours.” There was an element of confidence creeping in. “There’s no question which of us they would believe, so don’t be foolish enough to try blackmail of your own. Just give me the papers and I’ll not trouble you again.”
“You aren’t troubling me now,” she pointed out. “And I never blackmailed anyone in my life.”
“A sophistry!” he sneered. “You were helping her. I don’t know if there’s a legal difference, but morally there isn’t.”
There was real anger in her voice; it shook with something close to fury. “I believed her! I worked in this house for five years before I had any idea she was a fraud! I thought she was honest.” She choked on a sob and caught her breath painfully. Her voice sank so low Pitt leaned forward to hear her. “It was only after someone else made her blackmail certain people that I found her out in tricks . . . with the magnesium powder on the wires of the light bulbs . . . and that table. She never used them before . . . that I know of.”
Another moment’s silence. This time it was he who was urgent, choked with feeling. “Wasn’t it all . . . tricks?” It was a cry of the heart, desperate.
She must have heard it. She hesitated.
Pitt could hear Narraway’s breath and felt the tension in him when they stood almost touching each other.
“There are real powers,” Lena said very softly. “I discovered that myself.”
Silence again, as if he could not bear to put it to the test.
“How?” he said at last. “How would you know? You said she used tricks! You discovered it. Don’t lie to me! I saw it in your face. It shattered you!” That was almost an accusation, as if somehow it were her fault. “Why? Why do you care?”
Her voice was almost unrecognizable, except that it could be no one else. “Because my sister had a baby out of wedlock. He died. Because he was illegitimate they wouldn’t baptize him. . . .” She was gasping for breath, choking on her pain. “So they wouldn’t bury him in hallowed ground. She went to a spirit medium . . . to know what happened to him after . . . after death. That medium was a fake as well. It was more than she could bear. She killed herself.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “The child, at least, was innocent. It would have done no harm to . . .” He tailed off, knowing it was all too late, and a lie anyway. The church’s rules on illegitimacy and suicide were beyond his power to break, but there was pity in his voice, and contempt for those who built rules without compassion. He obviously saw no kind of God in it.
Narraway turned and stared at Pitt.
Pitt nodded.
There was a rustle inside the room.
Narraway swiveled back.
“You weren’t here the night she was killed,” the man said. “I saw you go myself.”
She snorted. “You saw the lantern and the coat!” she retorted. “You think I learned nothing the weeks I worked here after I knew she was a fraud? I watched. I listened.