Southampton Row (21 page)

Tellman was watching him, waiting for his response.

“I’ll go to see him,” Pitt said unhappily. “What’s his name, and where in Teddington does he live?”

“Udney Road, just a few hundred yards from the railway station. London and South West Line, that is.”

“And his name?”

“Francis Wray,” Tellman replied, watching Pitt’s eyes.

Pitt thought of the cartouche with its bent letter inside the circle, like a reversed
f
. Now he understood more of Tellman’s unhappiness and why he could not cast it aside, much as he would prefer to. “I see,” he acknowledged.

Tellman opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. There really was nothing to say that they did not both know already.

“What have your men found on the other clients?” Pitt asked after a moment or two.

“Nothing very much,” Tellman replied dourly. “All kinds of people; about the only thing they have in common is enough money and time to spend chasing after signs of those already dead. Some of them are lonely, some confused and needing to feel their husband or father still knows what’s going on and loves them.” His voice was getting lower and lower. “A lot of them are just interested, looking for a bit of excitement, want to be entertained. Nobody has a grudge worth doing something about.”

“Did you learn anything about the other ones who came through the garden door from Cosmo Place?”

“No.” There was a flicker of resentment in his eyes. “Don’t know any way of finding them. Where would we begin?”

“About how much did Maude Lamont earn for this?”

Tellman’s eyes were wide. “About four times as much as I do, even with promotion!”

Pitt knew exactly what Tellman would earn. He could imagine the volume of business Maude Lamont could take if she worked four or five days a week. “That is still rather less than running that house must have cost her, and maintaining a wardrobe like hers.”

“Blackmail?” Tellman said without hesitation. His face tightened to a mask of disgust. “It isn’t enough she dupes them, she has to make them pay for silence over their secrets?” He was not looking for any answer, he simply needed to find words for his bitterness. “There are some people who look to be murdered so hard it makes you wonder how they escaped it before!”

“It doesn’t make any difference to the fact that we must find out who killed her,” Pitt said quietly. “The fact of murder cannot go unanswered. I wish I could say that justice would always visit every act fairly and apportion punishment or mercy as it was deserved. I know it won’t. It will be mistaken in both directions. But allowing private vengeance, or escape from anything except threat to life, would be the gateway to anarchy.”

“I know!” Tellman said curtly, angry with Pitt for pointing out to him the helplessness he already understood quite clearly, as if he could not have found the words so easily to express it.

“Anything more from the maid?” Pitt ignored his tone.

“Nothing helpful. Seems a sensible sort of woman on the whole, but I think she may know more about those séances and how they were rigged than she’s telling us. Had to. She was the only one close. All the other staff, cook and laundress and gardener, all came in by the day and were gone before the private sessions ever began.”

“Unless she was equally deceived?” Pitt suggested.

“She’s a sensible woman,” Tellman argued, his voice sharper as he repeated himself. “She wouldn’t be taken in by tricks like pedals and mirrors and oil of phosphorous, all that kind of thing.”

“Most of us have a tendency to believe what we want to,” Pitt replied. “Especially if it matters very much. Sometimes the need is so great we don’t dare disbelieve, or it would break our dreams, and without them we die. Sense has little to do with it. It is survival.”

Tellman stared at him. He seemed on the point of arguing again, then he changed his mind and remained silent. It obviously had not occurred to him that Lena Forrest might also have doubts and loves, people now dead who were woven into the meaning of her life. He flushed very faintly at his omission, and Pitt liked him the better for it.

Pitt stood up slowly. “I’ll go and see this Mr. Wray,” he said. “Teddington! I suppose Maude Lamont was good enough to bring someone all the way from Teddington to Southampton Row?”

Tellman did not answer.

Pitt wasted no time thinking about how to approach the Reverend Francis Wray when he should find him. It was going to be wretched no matter what he said. It was best to do it before apprehension made him clumsier and even more artificial.

He made his way to the railway station and enquired about the best route to Teddington, and was told that he would have to change trains, but that the next train to begin his journey was due to leave in eleven minutes. He purchased a through ticket, thanked the man, and went to get a newspaper from the vendor at the entrance. Most of the space was taken up with election issues and the usual virulent cartoons. He did notice an advertisement for the upcoming exhibition of costermongers’ ponies and donkeys to be held at the People’s Palace in Mile-End Road in a couple of weeks’ time.

On the platform with him were two elderly women and a family obviously on a day out. The children were excited, hopping up and down and unable to stop chattering. He wondered how Daniel, Jemima and Edward were enjoying Devon, if they liked the country, or if they found it strange, if they missed their usual friends. Did they miss him? Or was it all too full of adventure? And of course Charlotte was with them.

He had been away from them too often lately, first in Whitechapel, and now this! He had hardly spoken to either Daniel or Jemima in a couple of months, not with time to reach towards the more difficult subjects, to listen to what was unsaid as well as the surface words. When this matter of Voisey was over, whether they knew who had killed Maude Lamont or not, he must make sure he took a day or two every so often just to spend with them. Narraway owed him at least that much, and he could not live the rest of his life running away from Voisey. That would be giving him victory without even the effort of a fight.

He dared not even think too closely of Charlotte; missing her left an ache in him too big to fill with thought or action. Even dreams left an ache that hurt too much.

The train came in in a roar of steam and the clatter of iron wheels on iron rails, with flying smuts, the smell and heat of power, and the moment of parting with her was as sharp as if she had left barely a moment ago. He had to force himself into the present, to open the carriage door and hold it for two elderly women, then follow them up the step and inside and find a seat.

It was not a long journey. Forty minutes and he was in Teddington. As Tellman had told him, Udney Road was only a block away from the station, and a few minutes’ walk took him to the neat gate of number four. He stared at it in the sun for several moments, breathing in the scents of a dozen flowers and the sweet, clean odor of hot earth newly watered. It was so full of memory, so domestic, that for an instant it overwhelmed him.

At a glance the garden looked random, almost overgrown, but he knew the years of care that had gone into its nurture and upkeep. There were no dead heads, nothing out of place, no weeds. It was a blaze of color, new with long familiar, exotic and indigenous side by side. Simply staring at it told him much of the man who had planted it. Was it Francis Wray himself, or an outdoor servant paid for the task? If it were the latter, whatever he earned, his real reward was in his art.

Pitt unfastened the gate and went in, closing it behind him, and walked up the path. A black cat lay stretched on the windowsill in the sun, a tortoiseshell strolled through the dappled shade of late crimson snapdragons. Pitt prayed he was here on a fool’s errand.

He knocked on the front door, and was admitted by a girl in a maid’s uniform, but who could not have been more than fifteen years old.

“Is this the home of Mr. Francis Wray?” Pitt enquired.

“Yes sir.” She was obviously concerned because he was someone she did not know. Perhaps Wray was usually visited only by fellow clergymen or members of the local community. “Sir . . . if you’d wait there, I’ll go an’ see if ’e’s at ’ome.” She stepped back, then did not know whether to ask him in, leave him on the step, or even close the door in case he might have designs on the gleaming horse brasses hanging behind her in the hall.

“May I wait in the garden?” he asked, glancing back at the flowers.

Her face flooded with relief. “Yes sir. ’Course yer can. ’E keeps it a real treat, don’t ’e?” She blinked suddenly as tears came to her eyes. Pitt gathered that Wray had thrown himself into its care since his bereavement. Perhaps it was a physical labor that eased some of the emotion inside. Flowers were a kind of company that absorbed all your ministrations, yet gave back only beauty, asking no questions and intruding nowhere.

He had not long to stand in the sun watching the tortoiseshell cat before Wray himself came out of the front door and along the short path. He was of average height, at least four inches shorter than Pitt, although in his youth he might have been less so. Now his shoulders sank, his back was a little bent, but it was his face that carried the indelible marks of inner pain. There were shadows around his eyes, deep lines from nose to mouth and more than one razor nick on his papery skin.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he said quietly in a voice of remarkable beauty. “Mary Ann tells me you wish to see me. I am Francis Wray. What may I do for you?”

For a moment Pitt even thought of lying. What he was about to do could only be painful and grossly intrusive. The thought vanished again. This man could be “Cartouche,” and if nothing more, he could supply another recollection not only of the evening, but of the other occasions on which he had been at Maude Lamont’s with Rose Serracold and General Kingsley. With a lifetime spent in the church, surely he was a profound observer of human nature?

“Good afternoon, Mr. Wray,” he replied. “My name is Thomas Pitt.” He hated approaching the subject of Maude Lamont’s death, but he had no other reason for taking Wray’s time or intruding into his home. But not all the truth was necessary yet. “I am endeavoring to be of some assistance in a recent tragedy which has occurred in the city, a death in most unpleasant circumstances.”

Wray’s face tightened momentarily, but the sympathy in his eyes was unfeigned. “Then you had better come in, Mr. Pitt. If you have come from London, perhaps you have not had luncheon yet? I’m sure Mary Ann could find enough for both of us, if simple fare would suffice for you?”

Pitt had no choice but to accept. He needed to speak with Wray. To have gone in but refused the hospitality would have been churlish and hurt the man’s feelings for no reason but to ease his own conscience, and quite artificially. Putting distance between them would not make his act any less intrusive or his suspicions less ugly. “Thank you,” he accepted, following Wray back up the path and in through the front door, hoping he would not be placing more pressure on young Mary Ann.

He glanced at the hall as he passed through it towards the study, waiting a moment while Wray spoke to Mary Ann. Other than the horse brasses there was an elaborate brass stick and umbrella stand, a carved wooden settle that looked at a glance to be Tudor, and several very lovely drawings of bare trees.

Mary Ann scurried off to the kitchen and Wray returned, seeing the direction Pitt was looking.

“You like them?” he said gently, his voice charged with emotion.

“Yes, very much,” Pitt answered. “The beauty of a bare trunk is quite as great as that of a tree in full leaf.”

“You can see that?” For an instant Wray’s face lit with a smile, like a shaft of sunlight on a spring day. Then it vanished again. “My late wife did them. She had a gift for seeing a thing as it really is.”

“And a gift to translate that beauty for others,” Pitt responded, then wished he had not. He was here to find out if this man had gone to a spirit medium in a bid to recapture something of those he had loved, but in contradiction of all that his life and faith had taught him. Pitt might even have to entertain the idea that Wray had murdered the confidence artist who had betrayed that trust.

“Thank you,” Wray murmured, turning quickly aside to give himself a moment’s privacy as he led the way to his study, a small room with too many books, a plaster bust of Dante on a plinth, a watercolor painting of a young woman with brown hair smiling out shyly at the viewer. There was a silver vase of roses of all colors mingled together balanced on the desk, rather too near the edge. Pitt would have liked to read the titles of a score or so of the books to see what they were, but he had time to notice only three: Flavius Josephus’s
Histories
,
Thomas à Kempis
, and a commentary on Saint Augustine.

“Please sit down and tell me how I can help,” Wray offered. “I have plenty of time, and nothing in the world more useful to do with it.” He attempted a smile, but it was more of warmth than any happiness within him.

It was no longer possible to evade the issue entirely. “Are you by any chance acquainted with Major General Roland Kingsley?” Pitt began.

Wray thought for a moment. “I seem to recall the name.”

“A tall gentleman, returned from military service largely in Africa,” Pitt elaborated.

Wray relaxed. “Ah yes, of course. Zulu Wars, wasn’t it? Served with great distinction, as I recall. No, I’ve never met him, but I have heard him referred to. I am very sorry to hear he has had another tragedy. He lost his only son, I do know that.” His eyes were bright and seemed almost blind for a moment, but he controlled his voice, and his attention was set entirely upon what he could do to assist Pitt.

“This is not about his bereavement,” Pitt said quickly, before thinking as to whether he was contradicting himself or not. “He was present shortly before someone died . . . someone to whom he had been going in an effort to find solace for his son’s death . . . or the manner of it.” He swallowed, watching Wray’s face. “A spirit medium.” Had he read of it in the newspapers? They were mostly overrun by coverage of the election.