Southampton Row - Anne Perry [85]
“May I wait in the garden?” he asked, glancing back at the flowers.
Her face flooded with relief. “Yes sir. ’Course yer can. ’E keeps it a real treat, don’t ’e?” She blinked suddenly as tears came to her eyes. Pitt gathered that Wray had thrown himself into its care since his bereavement. Perhaps it was a physical labor that eased some of the emotion inside. Flowers were a kind of company that absorbed all your ministrations, yet gave back only beauty, asking no questions and intruding nowhere.
He had not long to stand in the sun watching the tortoiseshell cat before Wray himself came out of the front door and along the short path. He was of average height, at least four inches shorter than Pitt, although in his youth he might have been less so. Now his shoulders sank, his back was a little bent, but it was his face that carried the indelible marks of inner pain. There were shadows around his eyes, deep lines from nose to mouth and more than one razor nick on his papery skin.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he said quietly in a voice of remarkable beauty. “Mary Ann tells me you wish to see me. I am Francis Wray. What may I do for you?”
For a moment Pitt even thought of lying. What he was about to do could only be painful and grossly intrusive. The thought vanished again. This man could be “Cartouche,” and if nothing more, he could supply another recollection not only of the evening, but of the other occasions on which he had been at Maude Lamont’s with Rose Serracold and General Kingsley. With a lifetime spent in the church, surely he was a profound observer of human nature?
“Good afternoon, Mr. Wray,” he replied. “My name is Thomas Pitt.” He hated approaching the subject of Maude Lamont’s death, but he had no other reason for taking Wray’s time or intruding into his home. But not all the truth was necessary yet. “I am endeavoring to be of some assistance in a recent tragedy which has occurred in the city, a death in most unpleasant circumstances.”
Wray’s face tightened momentarily, but the sympathy in his eyes was unfeigned. “Then you had better come in, Mr. Pitt. If you have come from London, perhaps you have not had luncheon yet? I’m sure Mary Ann could find enough for both of us, if simple fare would suffice for you?”
Pitt had no choice but to accept. He needed to speak with Wray. To have gone in but refused the hospitality would have been churlish and hurt the man’s feelings for no reason but to ease his own conscience, and quite artificially. Putting distance between them would not make his act any less intrusive or his suspicions less ugly. “Thank you,” he accepted, following Wray back up the path and in through the front door, hoping he would not be placing more pressure on young Mary Ann.
He glanced at the hall as he passed through it towards the study, waiting a moment while Wray spoke to Mary Ann. Other than the horse brasses there was an elaborate brass stick and umbrella stand, a carved wooden settle that looked at a glance to be Tudor, and several very lovely drawings of bare trees.
Mary Ann scurried off to the kitchen and Wray returned, seeing the direction Pitt was looking.
“You like them?” he said gently, his voice charged with emotion.
“Yes, very much,” Pitt answered. “The beauty of a bare trunk is quite as great as that of a tree in full leaf.”
“You can see that?” For an instant Wray’s face lit with a smile, like a shaft of sunlight on a spring day. Then it vanished again. “My late wife did them. She had a gift for seeing a thing as it really is.”
“And a gift to translate that beauty for others,” Pitt responded, then wished he had not. He was here to find out if this man had gone to a spirit medium in a bid to recapture something of those he had loved, but in contradiction