Paragon Walk (2 page)

An acid reply came to his mind, but anger was irrevocable, and he could not yet afford to commit himself to her enmity.

He pulled a face. “Perhaps it has nothing to do with it. Please continue with your account of yesterday evening.”

She took a breath to speak, then apparently changed her mind. She crossed over to the mantel shelf, piled with photographs, and began again in the same flat voice.

“She had spent a perfectly usual day. She had no household affairs to attend to, of course—I do all that. She wrote letters in the morning, consulted her diary, and kept an appointment with her dressmaker. She lunched here at home, and then in the afternoon she took the carriage and went calling. She did tell me upon whom, but I forget. It is always the same sort of people, and as long as one remembers oneself, it really hardly matters. I dare say you can find out from the coachman, if you wish. We dined at home. Lady Pomeroy called, a most tiresome person, but a family obligation—you wouldn’t understand.”

Pitt controlled his face and regarded her with continued polite interest.

“Fanny left early,” she went on. “She has very little social ability, as yet. Sometimes I think she is too young for a Season! I have tried to teach her, but she is very artless. She seems to lack any natural ability to invent. Even the simplest prevarication is a trial to her. She went on some small errand, a book for Lady Cumming-Gould. At least, that is what she said.”

“And you do not think it was so?” he inquired.

A slight flicker crossed her face, but Pitt did not understand it. Charlotte might have interpreted it for him, but she was not here to ask.

“I should think it was precisely so,” Jessamyn replied. “As I have tried to explain to you, Mr.—er—” She waved her hand irritably. “Poor Fanny had no art to deceive. She was a guileless as a child.”

Pitt had seldom found children guileless; tactless perhaps—but most he could remember were possessed of the natural cunning of a stoat and the toughness in a bargain of a moneylender, although certainly some were blessed with the blandest of countenances. It was the third time Jessamyn had referred to Fanny’s immaturity.

“Well, I can ask Lady Cumming-Gould,” he replied with what he hoped was a smile as guileless as Fanny’s.

She turned away from him sharply, lifting one slender shoulder, as if his face had somehow reminded her who he was and that he must be recalled to his proper position.

“Lady Pomeroy had gone and I was alone when—” her voice wavered, and for the first time she seemed to lose her composure, “—when Fanny came back.” She made an effort not to gulp, and failed. She was obliged to fumble for a handkerchief, and the clumsiness of it brought her back. “Fanny came in and collapsed in my arms. I don’t know how the poor child had had the strength to come so far. It was amazing. She died but a moment afterward.”

“I am sorry.”

She looked at him, her face devoid of expression, almost as if she were asleep. Then she moved one hand to brush at her heavy taffeta skirt, perhaps in memory of the blood on her the night before.

“Did she speak at all?” he asked quietly. “Anything?”

“No, Mr. Pitt. She was nearly dead by the time she got so far.”

He turned slightly to look at the French doors. “She came in through there?” It was the only possible way without having passed the footman, and yet it seemed natural to ask.

She shivered minutely.

“Yes.”

He walked over toward them and looked out. The lawn was small, a mere patch, surrounded by laurel bushes and a herbaceous walk beyond. There was a wall between this garden and the next. No doubt, by the time he had closed this case, he would know every view and corner of all these houses—unless there was some pathetic, easy answer, but none presented itself yet. He turned back to her.

“Is there any way your garden connects with the others along the Walk, a gate or door in that wall?”

Her face looked blank. “Yes, but it is hardly the way she would choose to come. She was at Lady Cumming-Gould’s.”

He must send Forbes to all the gardens to see if there was any sign of blood. A wound such as that must have left some stain. And there might even be broken plants or footprints in gravel or grass.

“Where does Lady Cumming-Gould live?” he asked.

“With Lord and Lady Ashworth,” she replied. “She is an aunt, I believe, and is visiting for the Season.”

With Lord and Lady Ashworth—so Fanny Nash had been to Emily’s house the night she was murdered. Memories came rushing back of Charlotte and Emily as he had first known them in Cater Street when he was investigating the hangman murders. Everyone had been afraid, looking with new eyes at friends, even at family; suspicions had been born that could otherwise have lain silent all life long. Old relationships had faltered and broken under the weight. Now violence and obscene and ugly secrets were close again, perhaps inside the very house. All the nightmares would return, the cold questions one was afraid even to think, and yet could not shut out.

“Is there access between all the gardens?” he asked carefully, forcing the fog and terror of Cater Street from his mind. “Might she have returned that way? It was a pleasant summer evening.”

She looked at him with light surprize.

“I hardly think it likely, Mr. Pitt. She was wearing a dinner dress, not pantaloons! She went and returned by the road. She must have been accosted by some lunatic there.”

A ridiculous thought flashed through his mind to ask her how many lunatics lived in Paragon Walk, but perhaps she would not know there had been coachmen lounging around at one end waiting for their masters and mistresses to leave a party, and a constable on the beat at the other.

He eased his weight from one foot to the other and stood a little straighten

“Then I had best go and see Lady Cumming-Gould. Thank you, Mrs. Nash. I hope we will be able to clear up the matter quickly and not need to distress you for long.”

“I hope so,” she agreed with formal coolness. “Good day.”

At the Ashworth house he was shown into the withdrawing room by a butler whose face mirrored his social dilemma. Here was a person who admitted to being of the police, and therefore undesirable, and should not be allowed to forget he was here on sufferance only, a most unpleasant necessity due to the recent tragedy. Yet, on the other hand, he was quite extraordinarily also Lady Ash-worth’s brother-in-law! Which is what comes of marrying beneath one! In the end the butler settled for a pained civility and withdrew to fetch Lord Ashworth. Pitt was too entertained by the man’s predicament to be annoyed.

But when the door opened, it was not George but Emily herself who came in. He had forgotten how charming she could be, and at the same time how utterly different from Charlotte. She was fair and slight, dressed at the height of fashion and expense. Where Charlotte was disastrously forthright, Emily was far too practical to speak without thinking, and could be exquisitely devious when she chose, in a good cause, of course. And she usually considered Society to be an excellent cause. She could lie without a tremor.

She came in now and closed the door behind her, looking straight at him.

“Hello, Thomas,” she said wanly. “You must be here about poor Fanny. I didn’t dream we should have the good fortune that it should be you to investigate it. I’ve been trying to think if I knew anything that would be of help, as we did in Callander Square.” Her voice lifted for a moment, “Charlotte and I were rather clever there.” Then her tone dropped again, and her face took on a pinched, unhappy look. “But that was different. We didn’t know the people to start with. And the ones who were dead were dead before we ever knew of them. When you didn’t know people alive, it doesn’t hurt the same way.” She sighed. “Please sit down, Thomas. You tower there, sort of flapping. Can’t you do up your coat, or something? I must speak to Charlotte. She lets you come out without—” She looked him up and down and gave up the whole idea.

Pitt ran his hands through his hair and made it worse.

“Did you know Fanny Nash well?” he asked, sitting on the sofa and seeming to spread over it, all coattails and arms.

“No. And I’m ashamed to say it now, but I didn’t especially like her either.” She made an apologetic little face. “She was rather—dull. Jessamyn’s enormous fun. At least half of me can’t bear her, and I’m constantly diverted by thinking what I might do next to annoy her.”

He smiled. There were so many echoes of Charlotte in her that he could not help warming to her.

“But Fanny was too young,” he finished the sentence for her. “Too naive.”

“Quite. She was almost insipid.” Then her face changed, filling with pity and embarrassment, because she had momentarily forgotten death, and the manner of it. “Thomas, she was the last kind of creature in the world to invite such an abominable thing! Whoever did it must be quite insane. You must catch him, for Fanny’s sake—and for everyone else’s!”

All sorts of answers ran through his mind, reassurance about strangers and vagrants, long gone now, and they all died on his tongue. It was quite possible that the murderer was someone who lived or worked here in Paragon Walk. Neither the constable on duty at one end nor the servants waiting at the other had seen anyone pass. It was not the sort of area where people wandered unremarked. The probability was that it had been some coachman or footman from the party, inflamed with drink and with time on his hands, allowing a foolish impulse, perhaps when she threatened to cry out, to become suddenly an ugly and appalling crime.

But it was not the crime itself; it was the attendant investigation that frightened, and the haunting fear that it might not be a footman but some man on the Walk, one of themselves with a violent and obscene nature lying under the mannered surface they knew. And police investigations uncovered not only the major crimes, but so often the smaller sins, the meannesses and deceits that hurt so much.

But there was no need to tell her that. For all her title and her assurance, she was still the same girl who had been so vulnerable in Cater Street, when she had seen her father frightened and stripped of his pretenses.

“You will, won’t you?” Her voice cut across his silence, demanding an answer. She was standing in the middle of the floor, staring at him.

“We usually do.” It was the best thing he could say and be honest. And even if he had wished to, it was not much use lying to Emily. Like many practical and ambitious people, she was disastrously perceptive. She was well accomplished in the art of polite lies, and she read them like a book in others.

He recalled himself to the purpose of his visit.

“She came to see you that evening, didn’t she?”

“Fanny?” Her eyes widened a little. “Yes. She returned a book, or something, to Aunt Vespasia. Do you want to speak to her?”

He took the chance immediately.

“Yes, please. Perhaps you had better stay. In case she is distressed, you would be of comfort to her.” He imagined an elderly female relative of excessively gentle birth with a correspondingly tender susceptibility to the vapors.

For the first time Emily laughed.

“Oh, my dear,” she put her hand over her mouth. “You can’t imagine Aunt Vespasia!” She picked up her skirts and swept to the door. “But I shall most certainly stay. It is precisely what I need!”

George Ashworth was handsome enough, with bold dark eyes and a fine head of hair, but he could never have been an equal for his aunt. She was over seventy now, but there were still the remnants of a startling beauty in her face—the strength of the bones, the high cheeks and long, straight nose. Blue-white hair was piled on her head, and she wore a dress of deep lilac silk. She stood in the doorway and looked at Pitt for several minutes, then moved into the room, picking up her lorgnette, and studied him more closely.

“Can’t really see without the damn thing,” she said irritably. She snorted very gently, like an extremely well-bred horse. “Extraordinary,” she breathed out. “So you are a policeman?”

“Yes, ma’am.” For an instant even Pitt was at a loss for words. Over his shoulder he saw Emily’s face alight with amusement.

“What are you looking at?” Vespasia said sharply. “I never wear black. It doesn’t suit me. Always wear what suits you, regardless. Tried to tell Emily that, but she doesn’t listen. The Walk expects her to wear black, so she does. Very silly. Don’t let other people expect you into doing something you don’t wish to.” She sat down on the sofa opposite and stared at him, her fine, gray eyebrows arched a little. “Fanny came to see me the night she was killed. I assume you knew that, and that is why you have come.”

Pitt swallowed and tried to compose his face.

“Yes, ma’am. At what time, please?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“You must have some idea, Aunt Vespasia,” Emily interrupted. “It was after dinner.”

“If I say I have no idea, Emily, then I have no idea. I don’t watch clocks. I don’t care for them. When one gets to my age, one doesn’t. It was dark, if that is of any help.”

“A great help, thank you.” Pitt calculated quickly. It must have been after ten, at this time of the year. And Jessamyn Nash had sent the footman for the police at a little before quarter to eleven. “What did she come for, ma’am?” he asked.

“To get away from an excessively boring dinner guest,” Vespasia replied immediately. “Eliza Pomeroy. Knew her as a child, and she was a bore even then. Talks about other people’s ailments. Who cares? One’s own are tedious enough!”

Pitt hid a smile with difficulty. He dared not look at Emily.

“She told you that?” he inquired.

Vespasia considered whether to be patient with him— because he was foolish—and decided against it. The thought was plain in her face.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she said smartly. “She was a child of quite moderate breeding, neither good enough nor bad enough to be frank. She said she was returning some book or other.”

“You have the book?” He did not know what made him ask, except habit to check every detail. It was almost certainly immaterial.

“I should imagine so,” she replied with slight surprize. “But I never lend books I expect to require again, so I couldn’t say. She was an honest child. She hadn’t the imagination to lie successfully, and she was one of those comfortable people who know their own limitations. She would have done quite nicely, had she lived. No pretensions and no spite, poor little creature.”