Southampton Row - Anne Perry [55]
“Surely you know that.” She raised her brows slightly.
“I know what her appointment book says,” he agreed. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Serracold.” He rose to his feet again.
“Mr. Pitt . . . Mr. Pitt, my husband is standing for Parliament. I . . .”
“I know that,” he said softly. “And I am aware of what capital the Tory press may make of your visits to Miss Lamont, if they become known.”
She blushed, but her face was defiant and she made no immediate answer.
“Was Mr. Serracold aware you were seeing Miss Lamont?” he asked.
Her look wavered. “No.” It was little more than a murmur. “I went in the evenings he spent at his club. They were regular. It was quite easy.”
“You took a very great risk,” he pointed out. “Did you go alone?”
“Of course! It is a . . . personal thing.” She spoke with great difficulty. It cost her a very visible effort to ask him. “Mr. Pitt, if you could . . .”
“I shall be discreet for as long as possible,” he promised. “But anything you remember may be of help.”
“Yes . . . of course. I wish I could think of something. Apart from the question of justice . . . I shall miss her. Good day, Mr. Pitt . . . Inspector.” She hesitated only an instant, forgetting Tellman’s name. But it was not of importance. She did not bother to wait for him to supply it, but sailed out of the room, leaving the maid to show them out.
Neither Pitt nor Tellman commented on leaving the Serracold house. Pitt could sense Tellman’s confusion and it matched his own. She was nothing that he could have foreseen in the wife of a man who was running for potentially one of the highest public offices in the country. She was eccentric, arrogant enough to be offensive, and yet there was an honesty about her he admired. Her views were naive, but they were idealistic, born of a desire for a tolerance she herself could not achieve.
Above all she was vulnerable, because there was something she had wanted from Maude Lamont so intensely that she had gone to her séances time after time, even though she was aware of the potential political cost if it became known. And her hair was long and pale silver-gold. He could not forget the hair on Maude’s sleeve, which might mean anything, or nothing.
“Find out more about how Maude Lamont acquires her clients,” he said to Tellman as they lengthened their pace down the footpath. “What does she charge? Is it the same for all clients? And does it account for her income?”
“Blackmail?” Tellman said with his disgust unconcealed. “It’s pathetic to be taken in by that . . . that nonsense. But plenty of people are! Is it worth paying to keep silent about?”
“That depends what she’s found out,” Pitt replied, stepping off the curb and dodging a pile of horse manure. “Most of us have something we’d prefer to keep private. It doesn’t have to be a crime, just an indiscretion, or a weakness we fear having exploited. No one likes to look a fool.”
Tellman stared straight ahead of him. “Anyone who goes to a woman who spits up egg white and says it’s a message from the spirit world, and believes it, is a fool,” he said with a viciousness that sprang from a pity he did not want to feel. “But I’ll find out everything about her that I can. Mostly I’d like to know how she did it!”
They stepped up onto the pavement at the far side of the street just as a four-wheeled growler passed by within a yard of them.
“Mixtures of mechanical trickery, sleight of hand, and power of suggestion, I should think,” Pitt answered, stopping at the curb to allow a coach and four to pass by. “I assume you know it was egg white from the autopsy?” he said a little caustically.
Tellman grunted. “And cheesecloth,” he elaborated. “She choked on it. It was in her throat and lungs, poor creature.”
“Anything else you didn’t mention?”
Tellman glanced at him with venom. “No! She was a healthy woman of about thirty-seven or eight. She died of asphyxia. You already saw the bruises. That’s all there is.” He grunted. “And I meant find out the things people don’t want known. Was she clever enough