Rutland Place (20 page)

Pitt looked at her gravely, without speaking.

She poured the tea and passed him his cup.

“I know it sounds violent, and unlikely,” she went on. “But then I suppose murder always is unlikely—until it actually happens. And Mina was murdered, wasn’t she? You know now that she didn’t kill herself.”

“No.” He sipped the tea and burned his mouth; his hands were too numb for him to have realized its heat. “No, I think someone else put poison into the cordial wine we found in her stomach in the autopsy. We found the dregs in the empty bottle in her bedroom, and a glass. It was just chance she took it when she did; it could have been anytime she felt like it. It could have been anyone who put it there, anytime.”

“Not if they wanted to silence her,” Charlotte pointed out. “If you are afraid of someone, you want them dead before they speak, which means as soon as possible. Thomas, I really do believe she was a Peeping Tom. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. She peeped once too often and saw something that cost her her life.” She stared down into her tea, watching the vapor curl off it and rise gently. “I wonder if people who get murdered are usually unpleasant, if they have some flaw in them that invites murder? I mean people that aren’t killed for money, of course. Like Shakespearean tragic heroes—one fatal deformity of soul that mars all the rest that might have been good.” She stirred her tea, although there was no sugar in it. The steam curled thicker. “Curiosity killed the cat. If Mina had not wanted to know so much about everybody ... I wonder if she knew about Monsieur Alaric, and Mama’s locket?” Oddly enough, she was not afraid. Caroline was foolish, but there was neither the viciousness nor the fear in her to make her kill. And Paul Alaric had no reason to.

He looked up sharply, and too late she realized she had not mentioned Alaric’s name before. Of course Pitt could not have forgotten him from Paragon Walk. At one time they had suspected him of murder . . . or worse!

“Alaric?” he said slowly, searching her face.

She felt herself flush, and was furious. It was Caroline who was behaving foolishly; she, Charlotte, had done nothing indiscreet.

“Monsieur Alaric is the man whose picture Mama has in the locket,” she said defensively, looking straight back at him. And then because his eyes were too clear, too wise, she turned away and stirred her sugarless tea vigorously once again. She tried to sound casual. “Did I not mention that?”

“No.” She knew he was still watching her. “No—you didn’t.”

“Oh.” She kept her eyes on the swirling tea. “Well, he is.”

There were several moments of silence.

“Indeed?” he said at last. “Well, I’m afraid we didn’t find the locket—or any of the other stolen things, for that matter. And if Mina was a Peeping Tom, stealing for the sake of a sick need to know about other people, to possess something of them—” He saw her shudder, and he gave a sigh. “Isn’t that what you are saying? That she was abnormal, perverted?”

“I suppose so.”

He tried his tea again. “And of course there is the other possibility,” he added. “Maybe she knew who the thief was.”

“How tragic, and ridiculous!” she said with sudden anger. “Someone dying over a few silly things like a locket and a buttonhook!”

“Lots of people have died for less.” The rookeries came to his mind with their teeming misery and need. “Some for a shilling, some by accident for something they didn’t have, or in mistake for somebody else.”

She sipped her tea. “Are you going to investigate it?” she said at last.

“There’s no choice. I’ll see what I can find out about Ottilie Charrington. Poor soul! I hate digging through other people’s wretched tragedies. It must be bad enough to lose a daughter, without the police unburying every indiscretion, putting every love or hate under a magnifying glass. No one wants to be seen so clearly!”

But the following morning the necessity was just as plain. If Charlotte was right and Mina had been inquiring, peeping at other people, then it was more than probable that some knowledge gained that way had been the cause of her death. He had heard before of people, outwardly normal people, often respectable, who were diseased with a compulsion to watch others, to pry into intimate things, to follow, to lift curtains aside, even to open letters and listen at doors. This compulsion always led to dislike and fear, often to imprisonment. It was inevitable that one day it would bring about murder also.

He could hardly start by going directly to the Charringtons. There was no excuse for him to question them about their daughter’s death so long after the event unless he were to tell them of his suspicions, and that was obviously impossible at this point. It might be slander, at best. And on so tenuous a thread they would have no obligation to answer him even so.

Instead he went back to Mulgrew. The doctor had attended most of the families of Rutland Place, and if he had not known Ottilie himself, he would almost certainly be able to tell Pitt who had.

“Filthy day!” Mulgrew greeted him cheerfully. “Owe you a couple of handkerchiefs. Obliged to you. Act of a gentleman. How are you? Come in and dry yourself.” He waved his arms to conduct Pitt along the hallway. “Street’s like a river, or perhaps I should say a gutter! What’s wrong now? Not sick, are you? Can’t cure a cold, you know. Or backache. No one can! At least if someone can, I’ve not met him!” He led the way back to an overcrowded room full of photographs and mementos, bookcases on every wall, cascades of papers and folios sliding off tables and stools. A large Labrador lay asleep in front of the fire.

“No, I’m not sick.” Pitt followed him with a feeling of relief, even elation. Suddenly the ugly things became more bearable, the darkness he must probe less full of shapeless fear, but rather known things, things that could be endured.

“Sit down.” Mulgrew waved an arm widely. “Oh, tip the cat off. She always gets on there the moment my back is turned. Pity she has so much white in her—damn white hairs stick to my pants. Don’t mind, do you?”

Pitt eased the little animal off the chair and sat down smiling.

“Not at all. Thank you.”

Mulgrew sat opposite him.

“Well, if you’re not sick, what is it? Not Mina Spencer-Brown again? Thought we proved she died of belladonna?”

The little cat curled itself around Pitt’s legs, purring gently, then hopped up onto his knees and wound itself into a knot, face hidden, and fell asleep instantly.

Pitt touched it with pleasure. Charlotte had wanted a cat. He must get her one, one like this.

“Are you physician to the Charringtons as well?” he asked.

Mulgrew’s eyes opened wide in surprise.

“Throw her off if you want,” he said, pointing to the cat. “Yes, I am. Why? Nothing wrong with any of them, is there?”

“Not so far as I know. Except that their daughter died. Did you know her?”

“Ottilie? Yes, lovely girl.” His face retreated quite suddenly into lines of heavy sorrow. “One of the saddest things I know, her death. Miss her. Lovely girl.”

Pitt was aware of a genuine grief, not the professional sadness of a doctor who loses a patient, but a sense of personal bereavement, of some happiness that no longer existed. He was embarrassed to have to continue. He had not expected emotion; he had been prepared only for thought, academic investigation. The mystery of murder was ephemeral, even paltry; it was the emotions, the fire of pain, and the long wastelands afterward that were real.

His hands found the cat’s warm little body again, and he stroked it softly, comforting himself as much as pleasing the animal.

“What caused her death?” he asked.

Mulgrew looked up. “I don’t know. She didn’t die here. Somewhere in the country—Hertfordshire.”

“But you were the family physician. Didn’t they tell you what it was?”

“No. They said very little. Didn’t seem to want to talk about it. Natural, I suppose. Shock. Grief takes people differently.”

“It was very sudden, I understand?”

Mulgrew was looking into the fire, his eyes away from Pitt’s, seeing something he could not share.

“Yes. No warning at all.”

“And they didn’t tell you what it was?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you ask?”

“I suppose I must have. All I can really remember was the shock, and how nobody spoke of it, almost as if by not putting it into words they could undo it, stop it from being real. I didn’t press them. How could I?”

“But as far as you know she was perfectly well at the time she left Rutland Place?” Pitt inquired.

Mulgrew looked at him at last.

“One of the healthiest I know. Why? Obviously it matters to you or you wouldn’t be here asking so many questions. Do you imagine it has something to do with Mrs. Spencer-Brown?”

“I don’t know. It’s one of several possibilities.”

“What kind of possibility?” Mulgrew’s face creased in pain. “Ottilie was eccentric, even in bad taste to many, but there was nothing evil in her. She was one of the most truly generous people I ever knew. I mean generous with her time—she was never too busy to listen if she thought someone needed to talk. And generous with her praise—she didn’t grudge appreciation, or envy other people’s successes.”

So Mulgrew had loved her, in whatever manner. Pitt did not need to know more: the warmth in Mulgrew’s voice told of the loss still hurting him, twisting an emptiness inside.

It made Pitt’s own thoughts, prompted by Charlotte, the more painful. It was sharp enough for him to lie. He needed to think about it a little, come to it by degrees. He did not look at Mulgrew when he spoke.

“From evidence I’ve just heard”—he measured his words slowly—“it seems possible that Mina Spencer-Brown was inordinately curious about other people’s affairs, that she listened, and peeped. Does that seem likely to you?”

Mulgrew’s eyes widened and he stared at Pitt, but he did not answer for several minutes. The fire crackled, and on Pitt’s knees the cat woke and started kneading him gently with her claws. Absentmindedly he eased her up to rest on his jacket, where she could not reach her claws through to his flesh.

“Yes,” Mulgrew said at last. “Never occurred to me before, but she was a watcher, never missed a thing. Sometimes people do that. Knowledge gives them an illusion of power, I suppose. It becomes compulsive. Mina could have been one of them. Intelligent woman, but an empty life—one stupid, prattling party after another. Poor creature.” He leaned forward and put another piece of coal on the fire. “All day, every day, and not really necessary anywhere. What a bloody stupid thing to die for—some piece of information acquired through idiotic curiosity, no use to you at all.” He turned his face away from the firelight. “And you think it had something to do with Ottilie Charrington?”

“I don’t know. Apparently, Mina thought her death was a mystery, hinting that there was a great deal more to it than had been told and that she knew what it was.”

“Stupid, sad, cruel woman,” Mulgrew said quietly. “What on earth did she imagine it was?”

“I don’t know. The possibilities are legion.” He did not want to spell them out and hurt this man still more, but he had to mention at least one, if only to discount it. “A badly done abortion, for example?”

Mulgrew did not move.

“I believe not,” he said very levelly. “I cannot swear to it, but I believe not. Do you have to pursue it?”

“At least enough to satisfy myself it is wrong.”

“Then ask her brother Inigo Charrington. They were always close. Don’t ask Lovell. He’s a pompous idiot—can’t see further than the quality of print on a calling card! Ottilie drove him frantic. She used to sing songs from the music halls—God only knows where she learned them! Sang one on a Sunday once—drinking song, it was, something about beer—not even a decent claret! Ambrosine called me in. She thought Lovell was going to take a seizure. Purple to the hair, he was, poor fool.”

At any other time Pitt would have laughed. But the knowledge that Ottilie was dead, perhaps murdered, robbed the anecdote of any humor.

“Pity,” he said quietly. “We get so many of our priorities wrong and never know it until afterwards, when it doesn’t matter anymore. Thank you. I’ll speak to Inigo.” He stood up and put the little cat on the warm spot where he had been sitting. She stretched and curled up again, totally content.

Mulgrew shot to his feet. “But that can’t be all! If Mina, wretched woman, was a Peeping Tom, she must have seen other things—God knows what! Affaires, at least! There’s more than one butler around here should lose his job, that I know of—and more than one parlormaid, if her mistress knew of it!”

Pitt pulled a face. “I daresay. I’ll have to look at them all. By the way, did you know there is a sneak thief in Rutland Place?”

“Oh God, that too! No, I didn’t know, but it doesn’t surprise me. It happens every now and then.”

“Not a servant. One of the residents.”

“Oh, my God!” Mulgrew’s face fell. “Are you sure?”

“Beyond reasonable doubt.”

“What a wretched business. I suppose it couldn’t have been Mina herself?”

“Yes, it could. Or it could have been her murderer.”

“I thought my job was foul at times. I’d a damned sight rather have it than yours.”

“I think I would too, at the moment,” Pitt said. “Unfortunately we can’t chop and change. I couldn’t do yours, even if you were willing to trade. Thanks for your help.”

“Come back if I can do anything.” Mulgrew put out his hand, and Pitt clasped it hard. A few minutes later he was outside again in the rain.

It took him two and a half hours to find Inigo Charrington, by which time it was past noon and Inigo was at the dining table in his club. Pitt was obliged to wait in the smoking room, under the disapproving eye of a dyspeptic steward who kept clearing his throat with irritating persistence, till Pitt found he was counting the seconds each time, waiting for him to do it again.

Finally, Inigo came in and was informed in hushed tones of Pitt’s presence. He came over to him, his face a mixture of amusement at the steward’s dilemma—and his own as other eyes were raised to stare at him—and apprehension about what Pitt might want.

“Inspector Pitt?” He dropped rather sharply into the chair opposite. “From the police?”