Southampton Row - Anne Perry [56]
“I expect with a lot of listening at parties,” Pitt replied, “watching people, asking a few questions, exerting a little pressure now and then, she could piece together enough to make some very good guesses. And people’s own conclusions for what she gave them probably supplied the rest. Guilt runs from imaginary threats, as well as real ones. How many times have you seen people betray themselves because they thought we knew, when we didn’t?”
“Lots,” Tellman said, dodging around a costermonger’s cart of vegetables. “But what if she pushed too hard and somebody turned on her? That’d be the end of it all for her.”
“Seems as if it was.” Pitt shot him a sideways glance.
“Then what’s it to do with Special Branch?” Tellman demanded, anger quick in his voice. “Just because Serracold’s running for Parliament? Does Special Branch play party politics? Is that it?”
“No, that’s not it!” Pitt snapped, wounded and angry that Tellman should think it a possibility. “I don’t care that much”—he snapped his fingers—“who gets in. I care that the fight is fair. I think most of the ideas I’ve heard from Aubrey Serracold are totally daft. He hasn’t got the faintest idea of reality. But if he’s beaten I want it done by people who disagree with him, not people who think his wife committed a crime, if she didn’t.”
Tellman walked in silence. He did not apologize, although he opened his mouth and drew in his breath as if to speak a couple of times. When they came to the main thoroughfare he said good-bye and strode off in the opposite direction, back stiff, head high, while Pitt went to find a hansom to report to Victor Narraway.
“Well?” Narraway demanded, leaning back in his chair and staring up at Pitt unblinkingly.
Pitt sat down without being asked. “So far it seems to have been one of her three clients that evening,” he answered. “Major General Roland Kingsley, Mrs. Serracold, or a man whose identity none of them knew, except possibly Maude Lamont herself.”
“What do you mean ‘none’? You mean neither?”
“No I don’t. Apparently, the maid also didn’t know who he was. She says she never even saw him. He came in and left through the French doors and the door in the garden wall.”
“Why? Was the door in the wall left open? Then anyone could have come or gone.”
“The door in the garden wall to Cosmo Place was locked but not barred,” Pitt explained. “Other clients had keys. We don’t know who. There’s no record of it. The French doors were self-closing, so there’s no way of knowing if anyone left that way after she was dead. As to why, that’s obvious—he didn’t wish anyone at all to know he was there.”
“Why was he there?”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Serracold thinks he was a skeptic, trying to prove Maude Lamont a fraud.”
“Why? Academic interest, or personal? Find out, Pitt.”
“I intend to!” Pitt retorted. “But first I’d like to know who he is!”
Narraway frowned. “You said ‘Roland Kingsley’? Is he the same man who wrote that damning piece about Serracold?”
“Yes . . .”
“Yes, what?” Narraway’s clear, dark eyes bored into Pitt’s. “There’s something more.”
“He’s afraid,” Pitt said tentatively. “Some pain to do with his son’s death.”
“Find out about it!”
Pitt had been going to say that Kingsley’s personal opinions did not seem as virulent as those he had expressed in his letter to the newspapers, but he was not sure enough of it. He had nothing but an impression, and he did not trust Narraway, did not know him well enough to venture something so nebulous. He was uncomfortable working for a man of whom he knew so little. He had no sense of Narraway’s personal beliefs; his passions or needs, his weaknesses, even his background before their first meeting, were all shrouded in mystery to him.
“What about Mrs. Serracold?” Narraway went on. “I don’t like Serracold’s socialism, but anything is better than Voisey with his foot on the ladder. I need answers, Pitt.”