Rutland Place (13 page)

Caroline was so rigid Charlotte could feel her behind her shoulder like a column of ice.

“You are right,” Caroline said in a low voice. “But death seems a terrible price to pay for such a folly.”

“It is!” For the first time Charlotte looked fully at her; then she turned to Alaric and found his eyes dark and bright, and unreadable, but understanding her as clearly as if they could see inside her head.

“But then when we embark on such affaires,” Charlotte continued with a tightening of her throat, “we seldom see the price at the end until it is time to pay.” She swallowed and suddenly tried to sound light, as if it were all just speculation, and nothing to do with anything real. “At least so I have observed.” Surely he must also be remembering Paragon Walk and their first meeting? Did he still live there now?

His face relaxed fractionally and his lips moved in the smallest smile. “Let us hope we are wrong and there is some less desperate explanation. I would not care to think of anyone suffering so.”

She recalled herself. All that was long past. “Nor I. And I am sure you would not either, Mama.” She closed her hand over Caroline’s. “We had better be returning home, now that we have paid our duty calls. Papa will be expecting us for tea.”

Caroline opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again; but even so Charlotte had to pull her.

“Good day, Monsieur Alaric,” Charlotte said briskly. “I am delighted to have made your acquaintance.”

He bowed and raised his hat.

“And I yours, Mrs. Pitt. Good afternoon, Mrs. Ellison.”

“Good afternoon, Monsieur Alaric.”

They walked a few paces, Charlotte still pulling Caroline uncomfortably by the arm.

“Charlotte, I despair of you sometimes!” Caroline shut her eyes to block out the scene.

“Do you!” Charlotte said tartly without relaxing her pace. “Mama, there is no need for a great deal of words between us that will only hurt. We understand each other. And you do not need to tell me that Papa is not at home either. I know that.”

Caroline did not reply. The wind was sharper and she tucked her head down into her collar.

Charlotte knew she had been abrupt, even cruel, but she was very badly frightened. Paul Alaric was not some light affaire, a man full of pretty phrases and little gestures to please, a taste of romance to brighten the monotony of a thirty-year marriage. He was hard and real; there was power in him and emotion, a suggestion of things beyond reach, exciting and perhaps infinitely beautiful. Charlotte herself was still tingling from the meeting.

C
HARLOTTE DID NOT
tell Pitt of her feelings regarding Paul Alaric and Caroline, or indeed that he was someone she had known previously; in fact, she could not have put it into words had she desired to. The encounter had left her more confused than ever. She remembered the heat of emotion and the jealousies he had engendered in Paragon Walk, the disquiet he had awoken even in her. She could understand Caroline’s infatuation easily. Alaric was far more than merely charming, a handsome face upon which to build a dream; he had a power to surprise, to disturb, and to remain in the memory long after parting. It would be blind to dismiss him as a flirtation that would wear itself out.

She could not explain it to Pitt, and she did not wish to have to try.

But of course she had to tell him that Tormod and Eloise Lagarde planned to leave Rutland Place the following day, so that if he wished to speak to them about Mina’s death, he would have to do so immediately.

Since they had been the last people he knew of to see Mina alive, there was a great deal Pitt wished to ask them, although he had not yet formed in his mind any satisfactory way of wording his thoughts, which were still confused, conscious only of unexplained tragedy. But chance allowed him no time to juggle with polite sympathies and suggestions. At quarter past nine, the earliest time at which it would be remotely civil to call, he was on the icy doorstep facing a startled footman, whose tie sat askew and whose polished boots were marred with mud.

“Yes, sir?” the man said, his mouth hanging open.

“Inspector Pitt,” Pitt said. “May I speak with Mr. Lagarde, if you please? And then with Miss Lagarde when it is convenient?”

“It ain’t convenient.” In his consternation the footman forgot the grammar the butler had been at pains to instill in him. “They’re going down to the country today. They ain’t—they is not receiving no one. Miss Lagarde aren’t well.”

“I’m very sorry Miss Lagarde is unwell,” Pitt said, refusing to be edged off the step. “But I am from the police, and I am obliged to make inquiries about the death of Mrs. Spencer-Brown, who I believe was known to Mr. and Miss Lagarde quite closely. I am sure they would wish to be of every assistance they could.”

“Oh! Well—” The footman had obviously not foreseen this situation, nor had the butler prepared him for anything of this sort.

“Perhaps it would be less conspicuous for me to wait somewhere other than on the doorstep,” Pitt said, glancing back into the street with the implicit suggestion that the rest of the Place knew his identity, and therefore his business.

“Oh!” The footman realized the impending catastrophe. “Of course, you’d best come into the morning room. There’s no fire there—” Then he recollected that Pitt was the police, and explanations, let alone fires, were unnecessary for such persons. “You just wait in there.” He opened the door and watched Pitt go in. “I’ll tell the master you’re here. Now don’t you go a-wandering around! I’ll come back and tell you what’s what!”

Pitt smiled to himself as the door closed. He bore no rancor. He knew the boy’s job depended on his proper observance of social niceties, and that an irritable butler, ill-served, could cost him very dear. There would be no recourse, no opportunity for explanations, and little tolerance of mistakes. To have the police in the house was most unfortunate, but to keep them at the front door arguing for all the world to see would be unpardonable. Pitt had seen a good deal of life belowstairs, beginning with his own parents’ experience when his father had been gamekeeper on a large country estate. As a boy, Pitt had run through the house with the master’s son, an only child glad of any playmate. Pitt had been quick to learn, to ape the manners and the speech, and to copy the school lessons. He knew the rules on both sides of the green baize door.

Tormod came quickly. Pitt had barely had time to look at the gentle landscape paintings on the walls and the old rosewood desk with its marquetry inlays before he heard the step on the polished floor outside the room.

Tormod was rather what he had expected: broad-shouldered, wearing a beautifully cut coat, his collar a little high. He had dark hair swept back from a broad white brow and a full mouth with a wide lower lip.

“Pitt?” he said formally. “Don’t know what I can tell you. I really haven’t the faintest idea what can have happened to poor Mina—Mrs. Spencer-Brown. If she had any anxiety or fear, unfortunately she did not confide it to either my sister or myself.”

It was a blank wall, and Pitt had no idea how he was going to make the slightest impression on it. Yet this was the only human clue he had.

“But she did call on you that last day, and left within an hour or so of her death?” he said quietly. His mind was racing, searching for something pertinent to ask, anything that might crack the smooth composure and reveal a hint of the passion that must have been there—unless it really had been only a chance and ridiculous accident.

“Oh, yes,” Tormod said with a rueful little shrug. “But even with the wisdom of hindsight, I still cannot think of anything she said which would point to why she should take her own life. She seemed quite composed and in normally good spirits. I have been trying to think what we talked of, but only commonplaces come back to me.” He looked at Pitt with a half smile. “Fashion, menus for the dinner table, some silly Society jokes—all the most ordinary things one talks about when one is passing the time and has nothing real to say. Pleasant, but one only partially listens.”

Pitt knew the type of conversation perfectly well. Life was full of just such pointless exchanges. The fact that one spoke was what mattered; the words were immaterial. Could it really be that Mina had had no idea whatsoever that she had less than an hour left to live? Had accident occurred like lightning out of a still sky? No storm, no rumble of far thunder, no oppression mounting before? Murder was not like that. Even a lunatic had reasons for killing: insanity built its slow heat like spring thawing the long winter snows, till suddenly the one more gallon became too much and the dams burst with wild, destructive violence.

But Pitt had seen death caused by madmen, and they did not use poison—not on a woman alone in her own withdrawing room, neatly laid on the chaise longue.

If this was murder, it was perfectly sane—and there was sane reason behind it.

“I wonder,” he said aloud, reverting back to the subject. “Could Mrs. Spencer-Brown have had some trouble on her mind and desired to confide it to you but, when faced with the necessity of expressing it in words, have found herself unable to? Might she have spoken only of commonplaces for just that reason?”

Tormod appeared to consider the possibility, his eyes blank as he examined his memory.

“I suppose so,” he said at last. “I don’t believe it myself. She did not seem other than her usual self. I mean, she was not agitated, as far as I can recall, or unconcerned with the conversation, as one might be if one were seeking an opportunity to speak of something else.”

“But you said yourself that you were only half listening,” Pitt pointed out.

Tormod smiled, pulling his face into a comic line.

“Well”—he stretched his hands out, palms up—“who listens to every word of women’s conversation? To tell the truth, I had intended to be out, but my plans had been canceled at the last moment, or I should not even have been at home. One has to be civil, but how interested can one be in what color Lady Whoever wore to the ball or what Mrs. So-and-So said at the soirée? It’s women’s concern. I just didn’t feel that it was anything different from usual. I heard no change of tone, caught nothing of anxiety—that’s what I mean.”

Pitt could only sympathize. It must have required hard discipline to remain courteous throughout. Only the rigid doctrine of good manners above all—from nanny’s knee, through tutors and public school—had instilled a pattern of self-control that would allow Tormod to do so with apparent grace. All the same, Pitt took the opportunity it gave him.

“Then perhaps your sister may have observed something, heard some nuance that only a woman would understand?” he asked quickly.

Tormod raised his eyebrows a little, whether at the suggestion or at Pitt’s use of words.

He hesitated. “I would rather you did not trouble her, Inspector,” he said slowly. “The death has been a severe shock to her. In fact, I am taking her away from Rutland Place for a little while, to recover. The associations are most unpleasant. My sister and I are orphans. Death has hit us hard in the past, and I’m afraid Eloise still finds it difficult to bear. I suppose it may be that Mina did confide something to her that day. I was not present all the time. It may be that Eloise feels she should have understood how desperate the poor woman was, and done something, and that grieves her additionally. Although, in truth, if someone is determined to take their own life, one cannot do anything to prevent them—only put off the time of the inevitable.”

Then he brightened. “I’ll tell you what—I shall ask Eloise. She will confide in me if there is anything—that I promise you—and I shall report it to you if it has any bearing whatsoever on Mina’s death. Will you accept that? I’m sure you would not wish to distress anyone more than is absolutely necessary.”

Pitt was torn. He remembered all the white, stricken faces he had ever seen of people who had encountered death, especially sudden and violent death. Those faces came back to him each time it occurred again: the surprise, the hurt, the slow acceptance that one cannot evade truth as the shock wears off and the reality remains, like growing cold, creeping deeper and deeper.

But he could not afford to let Tormod Lagarde make his judgments for him.

“No, I’m afraid that won’t do.”

He saw Tormod’s face change, the mouth set hard and the eyes chill.

“I’m quite happy that you should be present,” Pitt continued without changing his own expression or his voice. A smile remained fixed on his lips. “In fact, if you prefer to ask her yourself, I’m quite agreeable. I understand your concern that she should not be harassed or reminded of other tragedies. But since I know facts that you cannot know about Mrs. Spencer-Brown’s death, I must hear Miss Lagarde’s answers for myself, and not as you interpret them to me with the best intention in the world.”

Tormod met his eyes, stared at him for a few moments in surprise, then took a step backward and, with a swing of his arm, reached for the bell rope.

“Ask Miss Lagarde to come into the morning room, will you Bevan?” he said when the butler appeared.

“Thank you,” Pitt said, acknowledging the concession.

Tormod did not reply, turning instead to look out of the window at the gray drizzle that was beginning to thicken the air and dull the outlines of the houses across the Place. The laurel leaves outside hung glistening drops from their points.

When Eloise arrived, she was pale but perfectly composed. She kept her shawl close around her, and met Pitt’s gaze candidly.

As soon as the door opened, Tormod went to her, putting his arm around her shoulders.

“Eloise, darling. Inspector Pitt has to ask you some questions about poor Mina. I’m sure you understand that since we were the last people to see her, he feels we may know something of her state of mind just before she died.”

“Of course,” Eloise said calmly. She sat down on the sofa and regarded Pitt steadily, only the bare interest of courtesy in her face. The reality of death was seemingly greater than any curiosity.

“There’s no need to be afraid,” Tormod said to her gently.