Rutland Place (9 page)

“Duty?” Alston demanded, swinging round to face Mulgrew. “I have the duty in this house, sir. It is my wife who is dead!” He swallowed. “God rest her soul. It is no concern of yours! There is nothing you can do for her now. She must have had a heart attack, poor creature. My butler tells me she had passed away before you even arrived. I cannot think why you are still here. Except perhaps as a courtesy to inform me yourself, for which I thank you. You may feel yourself released from all obligation now, both as physician and as friend. I am obliged to you.”

No one moved.

“It was not her heart,” Mulgrew said slowly, then sneezed and fished for a handkerchief. “At least it was, but not of itself.” He blew his nose. “I’m afraid it was caused by poison.”

All the color drained from Alston’s face, and for a moment he swayed on his feet. Pitt believed no man could act such a total and paralyzing shock.

“Poison?” Alston spoke with difficulty. “What in heaven’s name do you mean?”

“I’m sorry.” Mulgrew raised his head slowly to stare at him. “I’m sorry. But she ate or drank something that poisoned her. I think either belladonna or something very like it, but I can’t be sure yet. I had to call the police. I had no choice.”

“That’s preposterous! Mina would never have—” He was lost for words; all reason seemed to have betrayed itself and he abandoned the attempt to understand.

“Come.” Mulgrew went toward him and eased him to the big, padded chair.

Pitt went to the door and called the footman for brandy. It came; Pitt poured it and gave it to Alston, who drank without taste or pleasure.

“I don’t understand,” he repeated. “It’s ridiculous. It cannot be true!”

Pitt hated the necessity that drove him to speak.

“I presume you know of no tragedy or fear that could have driven your wife to such a state of distress,” he began.

Alston stared at him.

“What are you suggesting, sir? That my wife committed suicide? How—how dare you!” His chin quivered with outrage.

Pitt lowered his voice. He could not look the man in the eyes.

“Can you imagine any circumstance in which your wife would take poison by accident, sir?” he asked.

Alston opened his mouth, then closed it again. The full implication of the question reached him. He let several moments tick by as he fought to see another answer.

“No,” he said at length. “I cannot. But then neither can I conceive of any reason whatsoever why she should take it knowingly. She was a perfectly happy woman, she had everything she desired. She was an excellent wife to me, and I was happy to give her everything she wanted—comfort, a place in Society, travel when she desired it, clothes, jewels, whatever she wished. And I am a most moderate man. I have neither ill temper nor any excesses of nature. Wilhelmina was well liked and respected, as indeed she deserved to be.”

“Then the answer must be in something we do not yet know.” Pitt put the reasoning as gently as he could. “I hope you will understand, sir, that we must persist until we discover what that is.”

“No—no, I don’t understand! Why can’t you let the poor woman rest in peace?” Alston sat more upright and set the brandy glass down on the table. “Nothing any of us can do can help her now. We can at least let her memory rest with dignity. In fact, I demand it!”

Pitt hated this part. He had expected it; it was natural. It was what most people would feel and do, but that did not make it any easier. It was familiar to him: he had said his part more times than he could count, but it was always the first time for the hearer.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Spencer-Brown, but your wife died in circumstances that have not yet been explained. It may have been an accident, although, on your own word, that seems unlikely. It may have been suicide, but no one knows of a reason why she should do such a thing. It may have been murder.” He looked at Alston and met his eyes. “I have to know—the law has to know.”

“That is ridiculous,” Alston said quietly, too appalled for anger. “Why on earth should anyone wish Mina harm?”

“I have no idea. But if anyone did, then the person must be found.”

Alston stared at the empty glass in front of him. All the answers were equally impossible to him, and yet his intelligence told him one of them must be the truth.

“Very well,” he said. “But I would be obliged if you would remember that we are a house in mourning, and observe whatever decencies you can. You may be accustomed to sudden death, and she was a stranger to you—but I am not, and she was my wife.”

Pitt had not warmed to him instinctively—he was a fussy, deliberate little man, where Pitt was extravagant and impulsive— but there was a dignity about him that commanded respect.

“Yes, sir,” Pitt said soberly. “I have seen death many times, but I hope I never find myself accepting it without shock, or a sense of grief for those who cared.”

“Thank you.” Alston stood up. “I presume you will wish to question the servants?”

“Yes, please.”

They were duly brought in one by one, but none of them could furnish anything beyond the simple facts that Mina had arrived home on foot a few minutes after two o’clock, the footman had let her in, she had gone upstairs to her dressing room to prepare herself for the afternoon, and a little after quarter past two the parlormaid had found her dead on the chaise longue in the withdrawing room where Pitt and Mulgrew had seen her. No one knew of any reason why she should be distressed in any way, and no one knew of anyone who wished her harm. Certainly no one knew of anything she had eaten or drunk since her breakfast, which had been at midmorning—far too early for her to have ingested the poison.

When they were gone, and Harris had been dispatched to find the box of Alston’s stomach medicine and to perform a routine inspection of the kitchen and other premises, Pitt turned to Mulgrew.

“Could she have taken something at whatever house she was visiting between luncheon and her return home?” he asked.

Mulgrew fished for another handkerchief.

“Depends on what it was. If I’m wrong and it wasn’t belladonna, then we start all over again. But if it was, then no, I don’t think so. Works pretty quickly. Can’t see her taking it in another house, walking all the way back here, going upstairs, tidying herself up, coming down here, and then being taken ill. Sorry. For the time being you’d better assume she took it here.”

“One of the servants?” Pitt did not believe it. “In that case it should not be hard to find which one brought her something—only why!”

“Glad it’s your job, not mine.” Mulgrew looked at his handkerchief with disgust, and Pitt gave him his own best one. “Thanks. What are you going to do?”

Pitt tightened his muffler and thrust his hands into his pockets.

“I’m going to pay a few calls,” he said. “Harris will make arrangements to have the body removed. The police surgeon will attend the autopsy, of course. I daresay you’ll need to help Mr. Spencer-Brown. He looks pretty shaken.”

“Yes.” Mulgrew held out his hand, and Pitt shook it.

Five minutes later he was outside on the street feeling cold and unhappy. There was only one realistic step to take now, and he could not reason himself out of it. If Charlotte was right, there was something very unpleasant going on in Rutland Place: petty theft, and perhaps some person peeping and staring with a malicious interest in the private lives of others. He could not overlook the likelihood that Mina’s death was a tragic result of some part of this.

He knocked on Caroline’s door with his hands shaking. There was no pleasant way of asking her the questions he had to. She would regard the questioning as intolerable prying, and the fact that it was he who was doing it would make it worse, not better.

The parlormaid did not know him.

“Yes, sir?” she said in some surprise. Gentlemen did not usually call at this hour, especially strangers, and this loose-boned, untidy creature on the step, with his wind-ruffled hair and coat done up at sixes and sevens, was certainly not expected.

“Will you please tell Mrs. Ellison that Mr. Pitt is here to see her?” He walked in past her before she had time to protest. “It is a matter of some urgency.”

The name was familiar to her, but she could not immediately place it. She hesitated, uncertain whether to allow him in any farther or to call one of the menservants for help.

“Well, sir, if you please to wait in the morning room,” she said dubiously.

“Certainly.” He was herded obediently out of the hallway into the silence of the back room, and within moments Caroline came in, her face flushed.

“Thomas! Is something wrong with Charlotte?” she demanded. “Is she ill?”

“No! No, she is very well.” He put out his hands as if to touch her in some form of reassurance, then remembered his place. “I’m afraid it is something quite different,” he finished.

All the anxiety slipped away from her. Then suddenly, as if hearing a cry, it returned, and without anything said, he knew she was afraid Charlotte had told him about the locket with its betraying picture. It would have been better police work if he had allowed her to go on thinking so, since she might have made some slip, but the words came to his tongue in spite of reasoning.

“I’m afraid Mrs. Spencer-Brown has died this afternoon, and the cause is not yet apparent.”

“Oh dear!” Caroline put her hand to her mouth in horror. “Oh, how dreadful! Does poor Alston—Mr. Spencer-Brown—know?”

“Yes. Are you all right?” Her face was very pale, but she seemed perfectly composed. “Would you like me to call the maid for you?”

“No, thank you.” Caroline sat on the sofa. “It was very civil of you to come to tell me, Thomas. Please sit down. I dislike having to stare up at you like that—you make me feel uncomfortable.” She took a breath and smoothed her skirts thoughtfully. “I presume from the fact that you are here it was not an entirely natural death? Was it an accident? Involving some kind of negligence, perhaps?”

He sat down opposite her.

“We don’t know yet. But it was not a carriage accident or a fall, if that is what you mean. It appears to have been poison.”

She was startled; her eyes widened in disbelief.

“Poison! That’s horrible—and ridiculous! It must have been a heart attack, or a stroke or something. It’s just a hysterical maid with too many penny novels in her bedroom—” She stopped, her hands clenched on her knees. “Are you trying to say it was murder, Thomas?”

“I don’t know what it was. It could have been—or an accident—or suicide.” He was obliged to go on. The longer he evaded it the more artificial it would seem, the more pointed. “Charlotte told me there have been a number of small thefts in the neighborhood, and that you have had the unpleasant sensation of being watched.”

“Did she?” Caroline’s body stiffened, and she sat upright. “I would prefer she had kept my confidence, but I suppose that is academic now. Yes, several people have missed small articles, and if you want to chastise me about not having called the police—”

“Not at all,” he said, more sharply than he intended. He resented the criticism of Charlotte. “But now that there is death involved, I would like to ask your opinion as to whether you believe it possible Mrs. Spencer-Brown could have been the thief?”

“Mina?” Caroline opened her eyes in surprise at the thought.

“It might be a reason why she should have killed herself,” he reasoned. “If she realized it was a compulsion she could not control.”

Caroline frowned.

“I don’t know what you mean—‘could not control’? Stealing is never right. I can understand people who steal because they are in desperate poverty, but Mina had everything she needed. And anyway none of the things that are missing are of any great value, just little things, silly things like a handkerchief, a buttonhook, a snuffbox—why on earth should Mina take those?”

“People sometimes take things because they cannot help it.” He knew even as he said it that explanation was useless. Her values had been learned in the nursery where good and evil are absolute, and although life had taught her complexity in human relationships, the right to property was one of the cornerstones of Society and order, the framework for all morality, and its precepts had never been questioned. Compulsions belonged to fear and hunger, were even accepted, if deplored, where certain appetites of the flesh were concerned, at least in men—not in women, of course. But compulsions of loneliness or inadequacy, frustration, or other gray pains without names were beyond consideration, outside the arc of thought.

“I still don’t know what you mean,” she said quietly. “Perhaps Mina knew who it was who had been taking things. She did give certain hints from time to time that she was aware of rather more than she felt she ought to say. But surely no one would murder just to hide a few wretched little thefts? I mean, one would certainly dismiss a servant who had stolen, but one might not prosecute because of the embarrassment—not only to oneself but to one’s friends. No one wishes to have to make statements and answer questions. But where murder is concerned one has no choice—the person is hanged. The police see to it.”

“If we catch them—yes.” Pitt did not want to go into the morality of the penal system now. There was no possibility of their agreeing on it. They would not even be talking of the same things; their visions would be of worlds that did not meet at the fringes of the imagination. She had never seen a treadmill or a quarry, never smelled bodies crawling with lice, or sick with jail fever, or seen fingers worked to blood picking oakum—let alone the death cell and the rope.

She sank deeper into the sofa, shivering, thinking of past terrors and Sarah’s death.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, realizing where her memories were. “There is no reason yet to suppose it was murder. We must look first for reasons why she might have taken her own life. It is a delicate question to ask, but suicide is not a respecter of feelings. Do you have any idea if she had a romantic involvement of any nature that could have driven her to such despair?” At the back of his mind was beating Charlotte’s conviction of the depth of Caroline’s own affairs, and he felt it so loudly he almost expected Caroline to answer these thoughts instead of the rather prim words he actually spoke. He felt guilty, as if he had peeped in through someone’s dressing-room window.