Bethlehem Road (12 page)

Pitt was sorting through unanswered constituency letters, small matters of land boundaries, bad roads, quarrels with neighbors, all trivial compared with violent death. None of them were written with ill will; simple irritation, more than rage or despair, seemed the ruling emotion.

“Has Mr. Carfax been obliged to go into the City this morning?” he asked suddenly, hoping to surprise something from her.

“Yes. I mean—” She stared at him. “I—I am not sure. He told me, and I—forgot.”

“Is Mr. Carfax interested in politics?”

“No. He is in publishing. It is a family interest. He does not go in every day, only when there is a board meeting, or ...” She trailed off, changing her mind about discussing the subject.

Pitt came to the second drawer, which was full of various tradesmen’s bills. He looked at them closely, interested to see that apparently they were all addressed to Etheridge, none to James Carfax. Everything was accounted for here that he might have expected would be required for the running of the establishment: the purchase of food, soap, candles, polishes, linen, coal, coke and wood; the replacement of crockery and kitchenware, servants’ uniforms, footmen’s livery; the maintenance of the carriages and supplies for the horses, even the repair of harness. Whatever James Carfax contributed, it must be very little indeed.

The only thing absent was any account of expenditure for feminine clothing, shoes, dress fabrics or dressmakers’ bills, millinery or perfumes. It would seem Helen had either an allowance or money of her own; or perhaps these were the things which James provided.

He continued with the next drawer, and the next. He discovered nothing but old domestic accounts and some papers to do with the properties in the country. None of it bore the faintest resemblance to a threat.

“I did not imagine he would keep it,” Helen said again, when Pitt completed his search. “But it was ... it must have meant something.” She looked away towards the curtained windows. “I had to mention it.”

“Of course.” He had seen the compulsion that had driven her to speak, although he was less sure of its nature than his polite agreement led her to suppose. Some nameless anarchist, out there in the streets, come at night from the tangle of the slums, was frightening enough, but so infinitely better than that a passion to murder had been born here in the house, Irving here, bound here, forever a part of them and their lives, its shadow intruding across every hush in conversation, every silence in the night.

“Thank you, Mrs. Carfax,” he said, turning from the desk. “Is it possible this letter could be in some other room? The morning room perhaps, or the withdrawing room? Or might your father have taken it upstairs to prevent someone finding it by chance and being distressed?” He did not for a moment think it likely, but he would like to spend a little longer in the house and perhaps speak to the staff. Helen’s lady’s maid could probably tell him all he wanted to know, but of course she would not. Discretion was her chief qualification, more even than her skill at dressing hair and at fine needlework, and in the art of trimming and pressing a gown. Those who betrayed confidences never found work again. Society was very small.

It seemed Helen did not want to abandon the possibility either, no matter how slim.

“Yes—yes, he may have put it upstairs. I will show you his dressing room; that would be a private place to keep such a thing. There would be no chance of my finding it and being distressed.” And she led him out into the hall and up the lovely curved staircase and along the landing to the master bedroom and the dressing room beside it. Here the curtains were not fully drawn, and Pitt had time to notice the view across the mews to the loveliness of the gardens of Lambeth Palace.

He turned to find Helen standing beside a dresser, the top drawer of which had a brass-bound keyhole. Silently she unlocked it for him and pulled out the drawer. It contained Etheridge’s personal jewelry, two watches, several pair of cuff links set with semiprecious stones and three plain gold pair, engraved with a crest, as well as two finger rings, one a woman’s with a fine emerald.

“My mother’s,” Helen said softly at Pitt’s shoulder. “He kept it himself. He said I should have it after he was ... dead... .” For a moment her composure broke and she swung round to hide her face till she should regain it.

There was nothing Pitt could do; even to show that he had noticed would be inappropriate. They were strangers, of opposite sexes, and socially the gulf between them was unbridgeable. To share whatever pity he felt, whatever understanding, would be inexcusable.

Instead he searched the drawers as quickly as possible, seeing quite easily that there was nothing of a threatening nature: an old love letter from Etheridge’s wife, two bank notes, for ten pounds and twenty pounds, respectively, and some photographs of his family. Pitt slid the drawer shut and looked up to find that Helen had turned to face him again, the moment mastered.

“No?” She spoke as though she had known the conclusion.

“No,” he agreed. “But then, as you say, ma’am, it is the sort of thing one destroys.”

“Yes... .” She seemed to want to say something more, but could not find the form of it.

Pitt waited. He could not help her, although he was as aware of her anxiety as of the sunlight which filled the room. Finally he could bear it no longer.

“It may be in his office in the House of Commons,” he said quietly. “I have yet to go there.”

“Ah, yes, of course.”

“But if you think of anything else to tell me, Mrs. Carfax, please send a message to Bow Street, and I shall call on you at your first convenience.”

“Thank you—thank you, Inspector,” she replied, seeming a little relieved. She led him back onto the landing. As he was passing the top of the stairs he noticed two faded patches on the wallpaper, only slight, but it seemed a picture had been removed, and two others changed in position to return the balance.

“Your father sold one of his paintings recently,” he said. “Would you know to whom?”

She was startled, but she did not refuse to answer. “It was my painting, Mr. Pitt. It can have nothing to do with his death.”

“I see. Thank you.” So she had recently acquired an amount of money. He would have to investigate it discreetly and discover how much.

The front door opened and James Carfax came in on a gust of spring wind and sunlight. The footman came forward and took his hat, coat, and umbrella, and James strode across the hall, stopping as the movement at the top of the stairs caught his eye, his face darkening with irritation and then, as he recognized Pitt, anger.

“What in hell are you doing here?” he demanded. “For God’s sake, man, my wife’s just lost her father! Get out on the streets and look for whatever lunatic’s responsible. Don’t waste your time here harassing us!”

“James—” Helen started down the stairs, her hand white, on the bannister. Pitt waited well behind because he could hardly see her black skirts on the gaslit stair and feared lest he might tread on them. “James, he came back to see if he could find a threatening letter I told him Father had received.”

“We’ll look for it!” James was not to be so easily soothed. “If we find it we’ll inform you. Now good day to you, sir—the footman will show you out.”

Pitt ignored him and turned to Helen. “With your permission, ma’am, I would like to speak to the footmen and coachmen.”

“Whatever for? “ Clearly James still considered his presence a trespass.

“Since Mr. Etheridge was attacked in the street, sir, it is possible he was followed and watched some time beforehand,” Pitt replied levelly. “On recollection one of them may bring something helpful to mind.”

Anger stained James’s cheeks with color; he should have seen that point himself. In many ways he was younger than the thirty or so years Pitt judged him to be. His sophistication was a thin skin over his emotions, over the rawness of someone unproved in his own eyes. Perhaps his father-in-law’s complete control of the household had oppressed him more than he could admit to himself.

Helen put her hand on her husband’s arm, her fingers resting very lightly, as if she were half afraid he might brush her off and she wanted to be able to pretend not to have noticed.

“James, we have to help all we can. I know they may never catch this madman, or anarchist, whoever it is, but—”

“That hardly needs to be said, Helen!” He looked at Pitt; they were much of a height. “Question the outside staff, if you must—and then leave us alone. Let my wife mourn in private, and with some decency.” He did not put his hand over hers, as Pitt would have done in his place. Instead he moved away from her hand, and then put his arm round her shoulders, holding her by his side for a moment. Pitt saw Helen’s face relax and a soft pleasure relax her features. To Pitt it was a colder gesture than the touching of hands would have been, a masked thing, kept apart by layers of cloth. But one does not know what happens in the relationships of others. Sometimes what seems close hides voids of loneliness whose pain outsiders can never conceive: others who sound to be remote, pursuing their own paths without regard, actually understand each other and silences exist because there is no need for speech, as quarrels are the strange coverings of enfolding warmth and intense loyalties. Perhaps James and Helen Carfax’s love was not as one-sided as he had imagined, not so full of pain for her, nor so cramping and unwelcome to him.

He excused himself and went through the green baize door to the servants’ quarters, explaining to the butler who he was, and that he had Mr. Carfax’s permission to speak to them. He was met with cool suspicion.

“Mrs. Carfax told me her father had received a threatening letter,” he added. “She naturally wished me to pursue it, to discover anything I can.”

The watchfulness relaxed. The thought of James Carfax giving or withholding permission in the household was obviously so unfamiliar to them it had not registered. The mention of Helen, however, was different.

“If we knew anything we’d have told you,” the butler said grimly. “But if you want to ask anyone, then of course I’ll see that they’re brought, and that they answer you as best they can.”

“Thank you.” Pitt had thought of several questions, not that he expected helpful answers to any of them, but it gave him an opportunity to make a better judgment of the household. The cook offered him a cup of tea, for which he was grateful, and during the conversation he saw the extent of the establishment. Etheridge had kept ten maids altogether, including an upstairs maid, a downstairs maid, the tweeny, a lady’s maid for Helen, laundresses, a parlourmaid, a kitchenmaid, and scullery maids. And of course there was a housekeeper. There were two footmen, both six feet tall and nicely matched, a butler, a valet, a bootboy, and outside, two grooms and a coachman.

He watched them all relax and become easier as he told them one or two mildly humorous stories of his experience and shared tea and some of the cook’s best Dundee cake, which she kept for the servants’ hall. He observed the lady’s maid more closely than the rest of them. She accepted some good-natured teasing because her position in the servants ranking was higher, despite her being only twenty-five or twenty-six, but as soon as he turned the subject towards Helen and James there was a very slight alteration in the angle of her chin, a tightening of the muscles in her shoulders, a carefulness in her eyes. She knew the pain of a woman who loves more than she is loved, and she was not going to betray it to the rest of the servants, still less to this intrusive policeman.

It was all Pitt had wanted, and when he had eaten the last crumb of his cake, he thanked them, complimented them, and went outside to find the coachman, who was busy cleaning harness in the mews.

Pitt asked the coachman if he’d noticed anyone taking an unusual interest in Etheridge’s journeys, but he did not expect to learn anything. What he wanted to know was where James Carfax went, and how often.

When he left in the late afternoon he was in time to catch a hansom back across the river to St. James’s and the famous gentlemen’s club of Boodle’s, where the coachman had said James Carfax was a member. The man had been discreet, naming only the places where such a young man might be presumed to go: his club, very occasionally his place of business, the theaters, balls and dinners of the usual social round, and in the summer the races, regattas, and garden parties which all Society attended, if they had the rank to be invited and the money to accept.

It was growing dark when Pitt found the doorman at Boodle’s and with a mixture of flattery and pressure, elicited from him that Mr. James Carfax was indeed a regular visitor to the premises, that he had many friends among the members and they often sat far into the night playing cards, and yes, he supposed they drank a fair bit, as gentlemen will. No, he did not always leave in his own carriage, at times he dismissed it and left in the vehicle of one or another of his friends. Did he return home? Well it was not for him to say where a young gentleman went when he left.

Was Mr. Carfax overall a winner at cards, or a loser? He had no idea, but certainly he paid his debts, or he would not remain a member, now would he?

Pitt agreed that he would not and had to be content with that, although the thoughts that disturbed him were growing in his mind, and nothing he had learned dispelled them.

There was one more thing he could do before going home. He took another cab, from St. James’s down the Buckingham Palace Road and south to the Chelsea Embankment to Barclay Hamilton’s house close to the Albert Bridge. There was no use asking any professional or social acquaintance of James Carfax the sort of thing he wished to know. But Barclay Hamilton had recently lost his own father to the same grotesque death as Helen Carfax’s father had met with. He could reasonably be pressed with questions more direct and might be free to answer them without fear of the social condemnation others might feel, the sense of having betrayed those who implicitly trusted him.

He was received with some surprise, but civilly enough. Now that he had the opportunity to see Barclay Hamilton on his own, and not in the circumstances of the immediate impact of bereavement, Pitt found him a man of quiet charm. The brusqueness of his manner at their first meeting had completely vanished, and he invited Pitt into his sitting room with as much curiosity as it was courteous to show.