Dear Laura (22 page)

‘Yes, sir.’

Lintott regarded his hat as though the nob on top of it held a solution.

‘I’m going to put this matter very nicely,’ he said, after some
reflection, ‘so that nobody’s sensibilities will be hurt. But I want proper replies, truthful replies, mind! Mr Crozier took a great liking to you, I hear. More liking than to the other lads?’

Mott pondered, and said, ‘We were more of a kind, sir. The others,’ with an apologetic look at Mr Rice, who was occupying some sorry world of his own, ‘are pretty rough sort of fellows, sir. Not …’ he glanced at the inspector who was also ‘not’, and stopped.

‘Not gentlemen,’ said Lintott bluntly. ‘I see what you mean. So you and he, in a way, were lonely here. Here and elsewhere, likely.’

The boy flushed up, and closed his lips as if to forestall the truth.

‘There was more to it than the usual relationship, then?’ Lintott pursued.

The boy nodded and swallowed. Then stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and leaned back in his chair, legs outstretched, imitating ease.

‘It was a
real
friendship, in short?’ Lintott continued, banging each fact home like a dutiful nail. ‘You thought as much of him, perhaps, as you thought of your mama?’

Mott bent a highly intelligent pair of eyes on the inspector, and hazarded the truth.

‘I loved him,’ said Mott, quite simply.

Into the silence Mr Rice cried, ‘As a Father, Inspector, as a Father, of course.’

Neither the youth nor the policeman paid any attention to him.

‘That’s what I wanted to hear,’ said Lintott, satisfied. ‘Now give me a picture of him – your picture of him. Tell me what Mr Crozier was like.’

‘Very lonely. Very sad. Very sensitive.’

‘He was married, you know, to a lady of great qualities and beauty. He was the father of three fine children. What was so special about you?’

The boy was searching his inexperience for the unravelling of a mystery. He no longer eyed his questioner, nor tried to translate Mr Rice’s intentions. He was speaking as he must have
thought, night after night, of something most strange and precious to him.

‘When I first saw Mr Crozier I thought of him as the father I had lost. I knew what he wanted of me. I knew what this house was. But what choice had I between this and starvation?’

‘Using your hands, perhaps?’ Lintott suggested obstinately.

Mott’s dark eyes beneath the silver-gold lock were
unyouthfully
ironic.

‘I am a weak person, sir, in both mind and body, and not
particularly
disposed to hard labour.’ He lifted both long hands from his pockets and spread them for the inspector to see. ‘That does not serve as an excuse, sir, merely an explanation.’

‘Well, well. Go on, lad.’

‘It was not as though we were strangers at all, but as if we had met before and recognized each other, sir.’

The bright head held a little to one side, the bright mouth inquiring. The dark face suddenly amazed.

‘We needed each other, sir. I needed his strength of character, the sense of protection he offered. He needed’ – the boy shrugged, unable to describe himself – ‘whatever I am, whatever I have to give.’

‘He was going to find you a position in life, was he? A
clerkship
in his firm?’

‘Something fairly light, sir.’

‘And set you up in rooms, so that he could visit you? So that no one else could visit you?’

Lintott saw a dream flare and vanish in the boy’s eyes.

‘How long could such a friendship have lasted?’ Lintott asked heavily.

‘For as long as both of us lived,’ said Mott with utter conviction.

‘A nice thing, to lure him away from me,’ Mr Rice cried. ‘What sort of recompense was I going to get for the feeding and clothing and Improving of his Mind? And don’t lean back so on the legs of that chair, Billie!’ he added petulantly.

‘I beg your pardon, sir, I was not thinking.’

‘You keep quiet!’ Lintott growled at Rice, never taking his gaze from the boy, for he sought further truths. ‘Now did you
know that your philanthropic master here was blackmailing Mr Crozier?’

‘Yes, sir, but I was helpless, I am afraid. Dependent upon Mr Rice for my living.’

‘How did he get hold of your letters? Intercepted them? Stole them?’

‘Inspector! Billie!’ Rice beseeched, unheard.

‘Nothing can be private in this house, sir. They were not stolen so much as confiscated.’

‘Why should Mr Crozier write to you, if he was able to see you?’

Again the lad replied simply, ‘He loved me.’

‘It was a stupid thing to do,’ Lintott grumbled, professionally annoyed.

The boy said nothing. The curve of his mouth was compassion itself.

‘Rice!’ Lintott shouted, and smiled a little as the man jumped. ‘What were your terms to Mr Crozier? Speak up and speak fast!’

‘I suggested that since the boy’s reputation was tarnished he should pay some recompense. Five hundred pounds,’ said Mr Rice in answer to the inspector’s eyebrows.

‘How much did a visit cost him?’

‘A guinea for any of the other boys. Two guineas for Billie.’

‘Vice comes high these days,’ Lintott observed. ‘And did you stop the visiting?’

‘Oh yes, Inspector. Of course. Certainly. Stopped absolutely.’

‘Until he paid up?’

No answer.

‘And you judged that he would pay up, mostly because there was no one else he wanted. You could have ruined him,
privately
in the eyes of his family, publicly in the eyes of society, finished his firm. But the real draw was this lad here, wasn’t it? He’d pay up. Pay up and come back again. Probably pay you to let the lad go. So why didn’t he, then? Why didn’t he pay up and then never write another line? Never get copped again the same way.’

He stared at his little audience, and Mott leaned forward, clasping young hands between his knees.

‘Theo was a good man, as I am not,’ said the boy. ‘He could never accept himself. I can, you know. Deuce take it!’
said Mott, lightly, sadly, ‘I know myself pretty well, sir. I was closer to him than anyone, but there were times when I was no comfort to him. There were times when he hated himself, and then I was best out of the way, because I reminded him of what he was. If he had been ill and fretting over this trouble, and saw no end to it, he could have found himself alone once too often.’

Rice was being pettish with the antimacassars.

‘Is there anything else I can tell you, sir?’ Mott asked.

‘Not about Mr Crozier, but about yourself in another minute or so. Rice!’ And again the man’s leap to attention elicited a wry grin. ‘Where are the rest of those letters? In your Bible cupboard? No? Well, fetch them for me. All of them, mind, and sharpish! Now, Billie,’ as Rice hurried out, ‘can’t you stir yourself to do something better than this, lad?’

Mott’s beauty shone in the stuffy room, but his eyes reminded Lintott of the monkey on the barrel-organ: adult-sad. Still the inspector continued to proffer charitable inducement.

‘There must be something you can do, lad.’

Mott smiled.

‘You are very kind, sir, but there is nothing. I have been trained for nothing except to make myself agreeable. I possess nothing except this locket, and in spite of your counsel I would not part with it if I were starving. The only two people I loved are dead. Don’t trouble yourself over me, sir. I shall live
somehow
until I die, like everybody else.’

Lintott contemplated the gold-framed pictures until the return of Mr Rice, at whom he loosed the lash of his tongue.

‘I hope I see you and the others like you soundly judged on the Day of Judgement. Ah! You confounded hypocrite! I’ll
remember
you. See if I don’t. But for the moment you and I must make a bargain. Are these all the letters, now? That’s right. I don’t want any of Mr Crozier’s family held to ransom over this affair. Now mum’s the word, or I’ll have my lads on this establishment faster than you can wink.’

The only audible words in Mr Rice’s incoherent prayer for mercy were ‘purely charitable concern’.

‘And so far as you can,’ said Lintott, ‘look out for this boy here.’

He was silent, aware of inadequacy in the face of life.

‘That’ll be all,’ he said.

But Mott followed him to the door and laid a hand on his sleeve.

‘The letters, sir, were written to me. Could I not keep even one of them?’

‘You know as well as I do,’ Lintott replied steadfastly, not looking at him, ‘that he’d have it off of you. No, lad.’

The boy stood watching him descend to the street: young hands in pockets, bright head held a little to one side.

T
ITUS
sat for a long time with the letters in his hand, and then roused himself to act the host.

‘You are weary, Inspector. Pray join me in a glass of brandy. We shall both feel the better for it.’

‘I don’t as a rule, but a rule may be relaxed now and again, sir. And we have more important matters with which to concern ourselves than the odd glass of brandy. Thankee, I will.’

The skill of Titus’s unpaid tailor was evident even in the braid of his smoking jacket. Lintott watched him lay the letters gently down, and reach for the decanter. Apart from an unusual pallor, Titus was taking his late brother’s iniquity with admirable composure.

Then, suddenly gripped by a greater force than good manners, he cried, ‘I never knew him. Is it not strange that we should be so close, and so apart? He was my brother, and he and I were nearer than any other living soul – or so I thought – and I did not know him.’

‘Yet, in spite of the closeness and the affection, you didn’t mind seducing his wife?’

Titus nursed his brandy, and brooded.

‘He did not care for her,’ he said at length. ‘I have a code of morality. Had he cared for her I should never have approached Laura. Besides, I have a fondness for her and she was always good to me,’

‘There’s right and wrong,’ Lintott pronounced.

‘Sometimes one can hardly tell the difference. They become strangely mixed to my mind.’

‘I can tell the difference,’ said Lintott.

‘Then you are a wiser man than I. I do not doubt that you are. And a cleverer. So tell me what we are to do, for I am at a loss. Is it necessary to produce these?’ And he touched the letters.

‘Let me think a bit,’ said Lintott. ‘I must think very carefully about this.’

They had dropped the usual small courtesies: at one with each other for the first time.

‘It is not only the question of social disgrace,’ Titus pursued. ‘We shall all be marked – Edmund and Lindsey most of all. Laura will have to leave London altogether, and change her name and theirs. They will live until they die under the
monstrous
shadow of this evidence. I am a bachelor and likely to remain so. This revelation of my brother’s private life gives me great sorrow – and arouses some pity, I must confess – but I can live with it. Laura and the children cannot, should not.’

‘Let me think,’ Lintott repeated. ‘I must think.’

They sat, warming their balloons of brandy, sipping.

‘Besides,’ Titus mused, ‘it is a terrible thing for a wife to hear, I am sure. Laura knows nothing of this blighted form of love, and cannot fail to be doubly horrified and distressed. She will feel soiled, will feel her children to be soiled, in consequence. You, with your inflexible knowledge of right and wrong, may look upon her as an erring wife, but Laura is pure in my eyes. I pray that your justice be tempered by some mercy.’

Lintott said candidly, ‘I am not inflexible. I don’t excuse the lady’s conduct, but you were the one to blame for it. And, yes, Mrs Crozier is pure – though that sounds a contradiction, don’t it?’

Somewhere along the line he had made his peace with her: bent a law, admitted an exception.

‘You no longer have any doubt that my late brother committed suicide?’

Lintott shifted and frowned.

‘I should think it the most likely explanation. A man of strict morality, divided against himself, deeply depressed, threatened with blackmail – aye, and with further blackmail as a threat. No future, in fact, except the need for secrecy, and with the lad Mott
to look out for as well. He would want to provide for him. Your late brother took all his responsibilities seriously.’

‘He trod, as he once said to me, a dark road.’

‘Ah, uncommon dark, and leading nowhere. So snuff out the candle, eh?’

‘He was a religious man. A God-fearing man. The taking of one’s own life is forbidden,’ Titus observed. ‘But even that
deterrent
may prove to be less strong than one supposes.’

‘Even that,’ said Lintott. ‘Why, bless you, we fetch them out of the river by the dozen. Girls mostly, in the family way. They’ll have been taught their catechism at one time or another. It made no difference when they jumped. And he must have felt cast out, in any case, mustn’t he? Set apart. He was set apart.’

‘If it is at all possible,’ Titus urged, and motioned at the letters lying beneath the lamp on the table.

‘It’s how to go about it that foxes me,’ said Lintott honestly. ‘I thought I’d found the answer in Molly Flynn, you know. Aye, Molly. I saw how he could have made a fool of himself over her. I wish he had.’

‘If my brother had felt as deeply about her, as he felt about this boy, would he not have been as desperate at the thought of losing her?’

‘It was the blackmail that set the cap on it, though. She wouldn’t wear that.’

‘Nor is there any disguising that these letters were written to a boy.’

‘No, that villain Rice kept the best to the last. But I’ve got two that could have been written to a woman,’ said Lintott, quietly pleased. And, as Titus stared at him, ‘Mrs Crozier found and read the letters that Molly brought. She burned four but kept the others. No specific names or descriptions.
My
forbidden
love
,
that sort of thing.’

‘Laura never confided that to
me
.’

‘Ah! Mrs Crozier tends to be secretive. She didn’t confide in
me
,
come to that. I drew it out of her. Where were we up to? And put it so that it doesn’t sound like conspiracy. I’m sensitive about conspiracy.’

His humour tickled, Titus said, ‘Then let us put it this way. If
my late brother had fallen in love with Mrs Flynn, and you produced two letters of his to show the jury, which sounded as though they were written to a woman – that would be a happier conclusion than the one you have discovered.’

Lintott pursed his lips and nodded.

‘It would alter nothing,’ Titus continued. ‘It would not change the fact that my brother died by his own hand. But it would look better, and in the eyes of the world appearances are
paramount
.’

Appearances
can
be
very
misleading
,
Lintott heard himself say to Dr Padgett.
That
’
s
the
difference
between
your
work
and
mine
.
Appearances
mean
nothing
to
me
,
sir
.
I
take
no
account
of them
.

‘Appearances,’ said Lintott, ‘can be very misleading. We have no
evidence
that Mr Crozier was being blackmailed. It would
appear
that some tremendous pressure was brought to bear, but we can’t prove it, only assume it, guess at it. I doubt the
credibility,
myself, of a man dying for love alone. So will the jury. But Molly Flynn won’t admit to blackmail, and we can’t make her, only everyone will smell it there. I’ll promise to make it my personal concern to keep an eye on Molly, in case she tries it again! Until then, they can only suspect her of it, so’s to speak. I’ll have to persuade her to play the mistress, though. I
could
persuade her.’

‘She has a husband, you say? A husband takes his wife’s
infidelity
very much to heart. He might have bullied her,
threatened
her.’

‘Ah! Found her out at it. Said he’d take her back if she
returned
the letters. Molly panics. Tries to see Mr Crozier and finish it all off. He’s mad about her and won’t listen. It sounds,’ said Lintott, ‘like a farthing novelette. Perhaps they’ll like that?’

‘So long as they feel they know more than can be proven, and that their suspicions are correct.’

‘Mrs Crozier won’t be too pleased to have Molly Flynn set up as your brother’s one great passion, you know. She’s a proud lady, and she isn’t stupid. We can temper it a bit for her,
privately
. But publicly she’ll have to sit through a fair bit of
humiliation
,
and she won’t like that! Well, we can’t have everything in this world.’

‘Better to have one’s pride hurt than one’s life ruined. Can Molly and Flynn stand up to questioning?’

‘It’s only a coroner’s case, you know,’ Lintott reminded him. ‘They aren’t being tried by Queen’s Counsel.’

‘And you believe that the inquiry could stop with Molly Flynn, an undertone of blackmail that cannot be proven, and a verdict of suicide while the balance of the mind was disturbed? A kind of
crime
passionel
in reverse?’

‘Yes, it’ll stop with Molly. Rice daren’t open his mouth. I’ll nab him for everything on the books if he steps out of line.
Blackmail
, homosexuality, running a house of ill-fame for she-shirts, concealing evidence. I daresay I could rummage up a few more if I looked about me.’

Titus smiled and rolled the last drops of brandy.

‘Does this not involve you in some risk?’ he asked ironically.

‘Not it,’ said Lintott sturdily, setting down his empty glass, swathing himself in his plaid Inverness. ‘I work on my own. Nobody knows what I do – except those that daren’t talk.’

‘I meant,’ said Titus, with a pleasurable touch of malice, ‘in some risk of being unable to discern right from wrong?’

Lintott stared in amusement.

‘I can discern it well enough,’ he replied. ‘As you remarked earlier, sir, I’m wiser and cleverer than you. So I’ll tell you this. The truth is something we like
other
people to be particular about. And it’s a good servant, but a bad master. This way, we’re telling the truth, since your brother killed himself over a love affair as you might say. What we keep back is only what could hurt innocent folk and help nobody.’

‘And what of these?’ Titus asked, one well-shaped hand on the letters.

‘Those, sir, being your late brother’s property and rightly
bequeathed
to you along with the rest of his effects, I leave to your discretion. You may consider them as purely private papers. Don’t burn ’em before I go out of the door!’ he warned, turning back. ‘I should be forced to prevent you, in my professional
capacity, owing to them being evidence. But if you choose to destroy them when I’m gone I
can
’
t
prevent you!’

‘I have never liked you before this evening, I must confess,’ Titus said truthfully, ‘but I have always respected you. I respect you even more, now, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’

‘I’d rather have the respect, sir,’ Lintott replied with equal frankness. ‘Any fool can make himself liked!’