Southampton Row - Anne Perry [50]
“Education doesn’t stop loneliness or grief,” Pitt replied. There was still a certain innocence in Tellman, in spite of the harsh realism of so many of his views. It irritated Pitt, and yet perversely he liked Tellman the better for it. He was not unwilling to learn. “We all find our own way of easing those wounds,” he went on. “We do what we can.”
“If I lost someone and tried that way of comforting myself,” Tellman said thoughtfully, glancing down at the pavement, “and if I found someone had tricked me, I can’t say I wouldn’t lose my head and try to choke them. If . . . if someone thought that white stuff was part of a ghost, or whatever it’s supposed to be, and they pushed it back into her mouth, is that murder, or would it be accident?”
Pitt smiled in spite of himself. “If that had happened, there were three of them there and at least two of them would have called a doctor, or the police. If all three of them were party to it, then it would be a conspiracy, intended or not.”
Tellman grunted and kicked at a small stone in front of him, sending it into the gutter. “I suppose we’re going to see Mrs. Serracold now?”
“Yes, if she’s in. If not, we’ll wait for her.”
“I suppose you want to conduct that interview yourself, too?”
“No, but I will. Her husband is standing for Parliament.”
“Are the Irish bombers after him?” There was a touch of sarcasm in Tellman’s voice, but it was still a question.
“Not so far as I know,” Pitt said dryly. “I should doubt it; he’s for Home Rule.”
Tellman grunted again, and muttered something under his breath.
Pitt did not bother to ask him what it was.
They had to wait nearly an hour for Rose Serracold to come in. They were left in a deep red morning room with a crystal bowl of pink roses on the table in the center. Pitt smiled to himself as he saw Tellman wince. It was an unusual room, almost overpowering at first, with its lush, delicate paintings on the walls and its simple white fireplace. But as he was in the room over a space of time he found it increasingly pleasing. He looked at the scrapbooks set out on the low table. They were beautifully made, put there to while away the time of callers. The first was of botanical specimens, and beside each in neat, rather eccentric handwriting was a short history of the plant, its native habitat, when it was introduced into Britain and by whom, and the meaning of its name. Fond of his own garden, when he had the time, Pitt found it totally absorbing. His imagination was fired by the extraordinary courage of the men who had scaled mountains in India and Nepal, China and Tibet, in search of yet one more perfect bloom, and lovingly brought them back to England.
Tellman paced the floor. He dipped into the other scrapbook, of watercolors of various seaside towns in Britain; very pretty but less interesting to him. Perhaps if it had included the hamlet in Dartmoor where Gracie and Charlotte were staying it would have been a different matter. But Pitt had not told him the name of it anyway. He let his mind wander, trying to picture what they might be doing now, as he was standing here in this alien room. Would Gracie be having to work much, or would she be free to enjoy herself, walk over the hills in the sun? In his mind’s eye he saw her, small, very straight, her hair pulled back from her sharp, bright little face, gazing at everything with interest. She would never have seen such a place before, a hundred miles from the narrow city streets in which she had grown up, crowded, noisy, smelling of old cooking, drains, wood rot, smoke. He imagined the countryside around the hamlet would be wide open, almost like a nakedness of the land.
Come to think of it, he had never been in a place like that himself, except in dreams, and while looking at pictures like this.
Would she even think of him while she was there? Probably not . . . or not often. He was still not certain what she felt