The Hyde Park Headsman - Anne Griffin Perry [96]
“No,” Pitt said honestly. “It would be impertinent of me to say I know how you must hurt. But I can imagine it must be unbearably deep. I offer you my condolences, which I know are worth nothing.”
“Not nothing, Superintendent. It is something to have at least one person understand you.”
“Did Mrs. Arledge know of your—your regard?”
Carvell looked appalled.
“Dear Heaven, no!”
“You are sure?”
He shook his head vehemently. “Aidan was sure. I have never actually met her except for a few moments at a concert, quite by accident. I did not wish … Can you understand?”
“I see.” Pitt could only guess at the emotions of jealousy, guilt and fear which might have stormed through his mind.
“Do you?” Carvell said with only a thread of bitterness.
He looked utterly wretched. Pitt was acutely aware of his isolation. There was no one to comfort him in his grief, no one even to be aware of it.
Carvell looked up. “Who did this terrible thing, Superintendent? Is there really some demented soul loose in London with a lust for—for blood? Why should he have killed Aidan? He harmed no one….”
“I don’t know Mr. Carvell,” Pitt confessed. “The more I learn of the facts, the less I feel I grasp the elements of it.” There was nothing more to add, no questions he could think of that would have any meaning, even if he received an honest answer. He had come looking for a mistress, a cause for jealousy, a link with Winthrop. He had found instead a gentle, articulate man devastated with a very private and personal grief.
He excused himself and went out into the spring evening under a calm sky where an early moon had risen even before the sun had set.
“You’ve found her!” Farnsworth said the following morning, sitting bolt upright in the chair in Pitt’s office. “What about the husband? What is he like? What did he say? Did he admit any connection with Winthrop? Never mind, you’ll find it. Have you arrested him yet? When shall we have something to tell the public?”
“His name is Jerome Carvell, and he’s a quiet, respectable businessman,” Pitt began.
“For Heaven’s sake, Pitt!” Farnsworth exploded, his cheeks suffusing with color. “I don’t care if he’s an archdeacon of the church! His wife was having an affair with Arledge, and he found out about it and took his revenge. You’ll find the proof if you look for it.”
“There is no Mrs. Carvell.”
Farnsworth’s face fell. “Then what on earth are you telling me for? I thought you said you found the place where these alternative keys fitted? If he wasn’t having an affair, what on earth did he have keys to the house for?”
“He was having an affair,” Pitt said slowly, hating having to try to explain this to Farnsworth.
“Make sense, Pitt,” Farnsworth said between his teeth. “Was he having an affair with Carvell’s wife, or sister or whatever she is, or was he not? You are trying my patience too far.”
“He was having an affair with Carvell himself,” Pitt replied quietly. “If affair is the right word. It seemed they have loved each other for over thirty years.”
Farnsworth was dumbfounded, then as the full meaning of what Pitt had said dawned on him, he was filled with anger and outrage.
“Good God, man, you’re talking about it as if—as if it were …”
Pitt said nothing, but stared at Farnsworth with cold eyes, his mind filled with the tortured face of Jerome Carvell.
Farnsworth stopped, the words dying on his lips without his knowing why.
“Well you’d better get on and arrest him!” he said, rising to his feet. “I don’t know what you’re doing sitting around here.”
“I can’t arrest him,” Pitt replied. “There’s no evidence that he killed Arledge, and none at all that he even knew Winthrop.”
“For God’s sake, man, he was having an illegal relationship with Arledge.” He leaned over the desk, glaring at Pitt. “What more do you want? They quarreled and this