Southampton Row (25 page)

“Of course he must have done something remarkable to have been knighted by the Queen. I suppose we should have taken that into better account. I’m so sorry, my dear.”

Perhaps it was the condescension in the voice, but it was to Rose a goad she could not ignore. “I’m sure he did something very special indeed!” she retorted. “Probably to the tune of several thousand pounds—and contrived to do it while there was still a Tory Prime Minister to recommend him.”

Emily froze. Her throat was tight and the room glittered and swam around her, the lights in the chandeliers multiplying in her vision as if she were going to faint. Everyone knew that wealthy men had donated massively to both political parties and been given knighthoods or even peerages for it. It was one of the ugliest scandals, and yet it was the way both parties funded themselves. But to say specifically that anyone had been rewarded in such a way was inexcusable, and wildly dangerous, unless one was both able and willing to prove it. Emily knew Rose was lashing out in every direction she could because she was afraid Aubrey was not going to win after all. She wished it for all the good she knew he could do, and believed in passionately, but also for him because she loved him and it was what he had set his heart on.

Perhaps also she was afraid of the guilt that would consume her for her own part in the loss, if it should happen. Whether the newspapers ever heard of her connection with Maude Lamont or not, or whether they used it, she would always know that she had cared more for her own necessity than for Aubrey’s career.

But the urgency now was to stop her before she made it any worse.

“Really, my dear, that is a very extreme thing to say!” the woman in gold warned with a frown.

Rose’s fair eyebrows shot up. “If the battle to win a place in the government of our country is not extreme, then what prize is it we are waiting for before we really say what we mean?”

Emily’s mind raced for something, anything to rescue the situation. Nothing came to her. “Rose! What a marvelous gown!” It sounded inane, forced, even to her own ears. How idiotic it must sound to the others.

“Good evening, Emily,” Rose replied coolly.

Emily had not forgotten a word of their previous clash. All the warmth of friendship was gone. And perhaps she was already realizing that Jack was not going to defend Aubrey if it looked like doing so would jeopardize his own seat. And even if it did not cost that price, it might well mean any offer of position that Gladstone was considering making him would be reconsidered in the light of his unwise friendship. Aubrey would be marked as an unreliable man, like a cannon loose on the deck of a pitching ship. If she could not save his seat for this election, at least she could save his honor and reputation for the next, which by all accounts would not be too far away.

Emily forced a smile to her face which she feared might look as ghastly as it felt. “How discreet of you not to say what it was he did!” She heard her voice high and a trifle shrill, but certainly drawing the complete attention of the others in the circle. “But I fear that in so doing you have created the misimpression that it was a donation of money, rather than a service of great worth to equal such an amount . . . conservatively.” She tried to scrape together in her mind the pieces of information Charlotte, or Gracie, had let slip of the Whitechapel affair and Voisey’s part in it. They had, for once, been remarkably discreet. Damnation! She widened her smile and stared around at the other women, all startled and fascinated to know what else she was going to say.

Rose breathed in sharply.

Emily must be quick before Rose spoke and ruined it. “Of course, I don’t know it all myself,” she hurried on. “I know something, but please don’t ask me! It was most certainly an act of great physical courage, and violence . . . I cannot say what, I should not like to misrepresent anyone, perhaps malign them . . .” She left that suggestion lingering in the air. “But it was of great worth to Her Majesty, and to the Tory government. It is very natural that he should be rewarded for it . . . and quite right.” She shot a jaggedly warning glance at Rose. “I am sure that is what you meant!”

“He is an opportunist,” Rose snapped back. “A man seeking office for himself, not to pass laws that will bring social justice for more people, for the poor and ignorant and dispossessed, who should be our greatest charge. I would have thought a little time listening to what he says, with thought rather than simply emotion, would have made that abundantly clear.” It was an accusation, and directed at all of them.

Emily began to panic. Rose seemed bent on self-destruction, and of course that meant taking Aubrey with her, which would cause endless guilt and pain afterwards. Could she not see what she was doing?

“All politicians are tempted to say whatever they think will get them elected,” Emily answered a little too loudly. “And it is so easy to respond to a crowd and to try to please them.”

Rose’s eyes were wild and hard, as if she felt Emily were deliberately attacking her and it was yet another betrayal of friendship. “It is not only politicians who have succumbed to the temptation to play to the gallery, like a cheap actress!” she retaliated.

Emily lost her temper. “Indeed? Your simile escapes me. But then apparently you know more about cheap actresses than I do!”

One woman gave a nervous giggle, then another. Several looked acutely uncomfortable. The quarrel had reached the pitch where they were no longer happy to be witnessing it and were desperate to find any excuse to withdraw and join some other group. One by one they left, murmuring unintelligible excuses.

Emily took Rose by the arm, feeling her resist with rigid body. “What on earth is the matter with you?” she hissed. “Are you mad?”

Rose’s face lost the shred of color it had had, as if every drop of blood had drained out of her.

Emily clasped Rose’s arm, afraid she was going to fall. “Come and sit down!” she ordered. “Quickly! This chair, before you faint.” She dragged her the few yards to the nearest seat and forced her onto it, against her will, pushing her until her head was forward, almost to her knees, and shielding her from the rest of the room with her own body. She would have liked to fetch her something to drink, but she dared not leave her.

Rose remained motionless.

Emily waited.

No one approached them.

“You can’t sit like that forever,” Emily said at last, quite gently. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what is wrong. This calls for sense, not tantrums. Why is Aubrey behaving like such a fool? Is it something to do with you?”

Rose jerked up, two spots of furious color in her cheeks, her eyes brilliant like blue glass. “Aubrey is not a fool!” she said very quietly but with an intensity of feeling that was almost shocking.

“I know he isn’t,” Emily said more gently. “But he is behaving like one, and you are even more so. Haven’t you any idea how ugly it looks to attack Voisey as you are doing? Even if everything you say is true, and you could prove it, which you can’t, it would still not gain you any votes. People don’t like having their heroes torn down or their dreams burst. They hate the people who deluded them, but they hate the ones who made them realize it just as much. If they want to believe he’s a hero then they will. All you look is desperate and spiteful. The fact that you may be right has nothing to do with anything.”

“That’s monstrous!” Rose protested.

“Of course it is,” Emily agreed. “But it is idiotic to play the game by the rules you would like there to be. You will lose every time. You must play within the rules there are . . . better if you like, but never worse.”

Rose said nothing.

Emily went back to her first question in the whole miserable affair, which she still thought might be at the heart of it. “Why did you go to the spirit medium? And don’t tell me it was simply to contact your mother for a comforting talk. You would never do that at election time, or deceive Aubrey about it. You’re tormented with guilt over it, and yet you kept on going. Why, Rose? What do you need to resolve from the past at that price?”

“It has nothing to do with you!” Rose said miserably.

“Of course it has,” Emily contradicted her. “It’s going to affect Aubrey—in fact, it already has, and that will affect Jack, if you expect him to try and help, to support Aubrey at the election. And you do, don’t you? His backing away now would be pretty obvious.”

Rose looked for a moment as if she were going to argue, her eyes hot and angry, then she said nothing after all, as if the words were useless even as she thought of them.

Emily pulled another chair closer, opposite Rose, and sat down, leaning forward a little, her skirts around her. “Was the medium blackmailing you because you went to her?” She saw Rose wince. “Or over whatever it was you found out from your mother?” she pressed.

“No, she wasn’t!” It was not a lie, but Emily knew it was not entirely the truth, either.

“Rose! Stop running away!” she begged. “The woman was murdered! Somebody hated her enough to kill her. It wasn’t a chance lunatic who wandered in off the street. It was someone who was there at the séance that night, and you know that!” She hesitated, then plunged on. “Was it you? Did she threaten you with something so terrible that you stayed behind and rammed that stuff down her throat? Was it to protect Aubrey?”

Rose was ashen, her eyes almost black. “No!”

“Then why? Something in your family?”

“I didn’t kill her! Dear God! I wanted her alive, I swear!”

“Why? What did she do for you that matters so much?” She did not believe it, but she wished to jolt Rose into telling the truth at last. “Did she share the secrets about other people with you? Was it power?”

Rose was appalled. There was anguish, fury and shame in her face. “Emily, how can you think such things of me? You are vile!”

“Am I?” It was a challenge, a demand for the truth.

“Nothing I did harmed anyone else . . .” She dropped her eyes. “Except Aubrey.”

“And have you the courage to face it?” Emily refused to give up. She could see that Rose was shivering and close to the breakdown of her self-control. She reached out and took Rose’s hands in hers, still shielding them both from the rest of the room, all busy talking, gossiping, flirting, making and breaking alliances. “What did you need to know?”

“If my father died insane,” Rose whispered. “I do wild things sometimes; you asked me just now if I were mad. Am I? Am I going to end up mad, as he was, to die alone somewhere in an asylum?” Her voice cracked. “Is Aubrey going to have to spend the rest of his life worrying about what I’m going to do? Am I going to be an embarrassment to him, someone he has to watch and continually apologize for, terrified of what awful thing I shall say or do next?” She gulped. “He wouldn’t have me put away, he’s not like that, not able to save himself by hurting someone else. He’d wait until I ruined him, and I couldn’t bear that!”

Emily was overwhelmed with a pity that rendered her speechless. She wanted to put her arms around Rose and hold her so tightly she could force warmth and comfort into her, which was impossible. And in this crowded room it would have caused even these busy, absorbed people to turn and stare. Anything she offered could only be words. They must be the right ones.

“It is fear that’s making you behave wildly, Rose, not inherited madness. What you have done is no more stupid than the things any of us do at one time or another. If you need to know what your father died from, there must be ways of finding out from the doctor who attended him.”

“Then everyone else would know!” Rose said with panic rising in her voice, her hands gripping Emily’s. “I can’t bear that!”

“No, they don’t have to—”

“But Aubrey . . .”

“I’ll come with you,” Emily promised. “We’ll say it is a day out together, and we’ll go and ask the doctor who attended him. He’ll not only tell you whether your father was mad or not, but if he was, whether it is something that happened to him alone, because of an accident or a disease, or if it is something you might inherit. There are lots of different kinds of madness, not just one.”

“And if the newspapers find out? Believe me, Emily, learning that I went to a séance will be nothing compared with that!”

“Then wait until after the election.”

“I need to know before! If Aubrey becomes a member, if he’s called into some office in the government, the Foreign Office . . . I am . . .” She tailed away, unable to say the words.

“Then it will be terrible,” Emily said for her. “And if you are not, but are driven mad by fear, then you will have sacrificed all your chances for good for nothing at all. And not knowing won’t change it anyway.”

“Will you?” Rose asked. “Come with me, I mean?” Then her face changed and the hope died out of it and it became bleak and full of pain again. “Then I suppose you will go and tell your policeman brother-in-law!” It was an accusation born out of despair, not a question.

“No,” Emily replied. “I will not come in with you, and I will have no idea what answer you receive from the doctor. And it is certainly no business of the police what manner of illness your father died from—unless it caused you to kill Maude Lamont, because she knew?”

“I didn’t! I . . . I never got to asking the spirit of my mother.” She sank her head into her hands again, lost in misery, fear and embarrassment.

The exquisite voice of the singer floated through from the other room again, and Emily realized they were alone, except for a dozen or so men all talking earnestly together in the farther corner near the doors to the hallway. “Come,” she said firmly. “A little cold water on your face, a hot cup of tea, which they are serving in the dining room, and we shall rejoin the others. Let them assume we are planning a garden party, or some such. But we had better tell the same story. A fête . . . to raise money for a charity. Come!”

Slowly, Rose climbed to her feet, straightened her shoulders, and obeyed.

CHAPTER
TEN

Pitt and Tellman returned to the house in Southampton Row. Pitt was increasingly certain that he was being observed each time he came and went in Keppel Street, although he had never actually seen anyone but the postman and the man who sold milk from the cart which usually stood at the corner of the mews leading through to Montague Place.

He had received two brief letters from Charlotte saying that all was well; they were missing him profoundly, but other than that having an excellent time. There was no return address on either of them. He had written to her, but made sure that he dropped the letters in boxes far from Keppel Street where the inquisitive postman would never see them.

The house in Southampton Row looked peaceful, even idyllic in the hot, still summer morning. There were errand boys in the street as usual, whistling as they carried messages, fish and poultry, or other small grocery items. One of them called out a cheeky compliment to a housemaid shooing a cat up the area steps and she giggled and told him off soundly.

“Get on wi’ yer, yer daft ’aporth! Flowers, indeed!”

“Violets!” he shouted after her, waving his arm.

Once inside the house it was a different matter. The curtains were half drawn as was appropriate for a death, but then many people did that anyway, simply to protect the rooms from the strong light, or to offer a greater privacy.

The parlor where Maude Lamont had died was undisturbed. Lena Forrest received them civilly enough, although she still looked tired and there was a greater air of strain about her. Perhaps the reality of Maude’s death had become apparent to her, and in a short while the necessity of finding another position. It cannot have been easy to live alone in the house where a woman whom you knew, saw every day in the most intimate circumstances, had been murdered only a week ago. It said a great deal for her fortitude that she had managed to remain in control of herself.

Except that no doubt she had seen death many times before, and the fact that she served Maude Lamont did not in itself mean that she had any personal affection for her. She might have been a hard mistress, demanding, critical or inconsiderate. Some women thought their maids should be on duty at any hour of the day or night that they might be sent for, whether it was really necessary or not.

“Good morning, Miss Forrest,” Pitt said courteously.

“Good morning, sir,” she replied. “Is there something further I can do for you?” She included Tellman in her glance. They were standing in the parlor now, uneasily, each of them aware of what had happened there, if not why. Pitt had been thinking profoundly about that, and had discussed it briefly on the way over.

“Please sit down,” he invited her, then he and Tellman did also.

“Miss Forrest,” Pitt began. Her attention was unwavering. “Since the front door was closed and locked, the French doors to the garden”—he glanced at them—“were closed but not locked, and the only way out from the garden is through the door into Cosmo Place, which was locked but unbarred, it is the inevitable conclusion that Miss Lamont was killed by one of the people in the house during the séance. The only alternative is that it was all three in some collusion, and that does not seem even remotely likely.”

She nodded silently in agreement. There was no surprise in her face. Presumably she had already realized as much herself. She had had a week in which to think of it, and it must have crowded almost everything else out of her mind.

“Have you had any further thought as to why anyone should wish Miss Lamont any harm?”

She hesitated, doubt in her face. It was clear some deep emotion worked within her.

“Please, Miss Forrest,” he urged. “She was a woman who had opportunity to discover some of the most profound and vulnerable secrets in people’s lives, things that they may well have been desperately ashamed of, past sins and tragedies too raw to forget.” He saw the instant compassion in her face, as if her imagination reached out to such people and saw the horror of their memories in all their terrible detail. Perhaps she had served other mistresses with griefs, children dead, unhappy marriages, love affairs that tormented them. People did not always realize just how much a lady’s maid was privy to, and sometimes how much she knew of a woman’s most intimate life. Some might like to think of her as a silent confidante, others might be appalled that anyone else saw their most private moments and understood too much. Just as no man was a hero to his valet, so no woman was a mystery to her maid.

“Yes,” Lena said very quietly. “There are not many secrets from a good medium, and she was very good.”

Pitt looked at her, trying to read in her face, her eyes, whether she knew more than the bare words she was offering. It would have been difficult for Maude Lamont to have hidden from her maid any regular accomplice, either to fake manifestations or to gain personal information about prospective clients. A lover would also have given himself away sooner or later, even if only in Maude’s demeanor. Was Lena Forrest keeping such secrets out of loyalty to a dead woman, or self-preservation because if she betrayed them then who would employ her in such a sensitive position in the future? And she had to think very carefully about that. Maude Lamont was not here to give her a good reference as to her character or skills. Lena was coming from a house where a murder had been committed. Her outlook was, if not desperate, at the least extremely poor.

“Did she have regular callers who were not to do with séances?” Tellman asked. “We’re looking for those who gave her the information about people that she told them . . . things they wanted to hear.”

Lena looked down, as if embarrassed. “You don’t need a lot. People give themselves away. And she was very good at reading faces, understanding the things people don’t say. She was a terribly quick guesser. I can’t count the number of times I was thinking something, and she’d know what it was before I said it.”

“We’ve searched the house for diaries,” Tellman said to Pitt. “We found nothing other than lists of appointments. She must have committed everything to memory.”

“What did you think of her gifts, Miss Forrest?” Pitt said suddenly. “Do you believe in the power to contact the spirits of the dead?” He watched her closely. She had denied helping Maude Lamont, but surely there had been some assistance, and there was no one else here.

Lena took in a long, very deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “I don’t know. Seeing as I’ve lost my mother and my sister, I’d like to think they were somewhere I could speak to them again.” Her face was blurred with the depth of her emotion, which she kept only barely in control. It was profoundly obvious that her loss still racked her, and Pitt loathed having to reawaken it, and in front of others. Such grief should be afforded privacy.

“Have you ever seen manifestations yourself?” he asked. The answer to Maude Lamont’s murder lay at least in part in this house, and he had to find it, whether it affected Voisey or the election, or anything else. He could not let murder go, whoever the victim and whatever the reason.

“I used to think so,” she said hesitantly. “Long ago. But when you want something bad enough, like these people did . . .” She glanced sideways at the chairs where Maude’s clients sat at the séances. “Then perhaps you see it anyway, don’t you?”

“Yes, you can,” he agreed. “But you had no interest in the spirits these people wanted to contact? Think back to all you heard, all you know of what Miss Lamont was able to create. We’ve heard from other clients of voices, music, but the levitation seems to have happened only here.”

She looked puzzled.

“Rising up in the air,” Pitt explained. He saw a sudden flash of understanding in her eyes. “Tellman, take another look at the table,” he ordered. He turned back to Lena Forrest. “Do you ever remember seeing something different on the mornings after a séance, anything misplaced, a different smell, dust or powder, anything at all?”

She was silent for so long he was not sure if she was concentrating on something or if she simply did not intend to answer.

Tellman was sitting in the chair where Maude sat. Lena’s eyes were steady on him.

“Did you ever move the table?” Pitt asked suddenly.

“No. It’s fixed to the floor,” Tellman replied. “I tried to move it before.”

Pitt stood up. “What about the chair?” As he said it he walked over and Tellman rose and picked it up. He saw with surprise that there were four slight indentations on the floorboards where the feet had rested. Surely even the most continual use could not have made them. He moved to one of the other chairs and lifted it. There were no marks. He looked up quickly at Lena Forrest and caught the knowledge in her face.

“Where’s the lever?” he said grimly. “Your position is a very precarious one, Miss Forrest. Don’t jeopardize your future by lying to the police.” He hated making the threat, but he had no time to waste in trying to dismantle the woodwork to find the mechanism, and he needed to know how far she was involved. It might be crucial later.

She stood up, white-faced, and came around to the opposite side of the chair. She leaned over and touched the center of one of the carved flowers on the table edge.

“Press it,” he ordered.

She did, and nothing happened.

“Do it again!” he ordered.

She stood perfectly still.

Very gradually the chair began to rise, and glancing down Pitt saw that the floorboards immediately under it rose also, just those actually supporting the four feet. The rest remained where they were. There was no sound whatever. The machinery was so perfectly oiled it happened easily. When the chair was about eight inches above the rest of the floor it stopped.

Pitt stared at Lena Forrest. “So you knew that at least this much was trickery.”

“I only just found out,” she said with a quiver in her voice.

“When?”

“After she was dead. I started to look. I didn’t tell you because it seemed . . .” She looked down, then quickly up again. “Well, she’s gone. I suppose she can’t be hurt. She doesn’t know anything now.”

“I think you’d better tell us what else you learned, Miss Forrest.”

“I don’t know anything else, just the chair. I . . . I heard of the things she did from someone who came by . . . with flowers, to say how sorry they were. So I looked. I never sat in on a séance. I was never there!”

Pitt could not draw anything more from her. Minute examination of the chair and the table, and a journey to the cellar, exposed a very fine mechanism, kept in perfect repair, also several bulbs for electric light, with which the house was fitted, and which worked from a generator also in the cellar.

“Why so many bulbs?” Pitt said thoughtfully. “Electric isn’t even in most of the house, only the parlor and the dining room. All the rest is gas, and coal for heat.”

“No idea,” Tellman confessed. “Looks like she used the electricity for the tricks more than anything else. In fact, come to think of it, there are only three electric lights altogether. Maybe she meant to get more?”

“And got the bulbs first?” Pitt raised his eyebrows.

Tellman shrugged his square, thin shoulders. “What we need to find out is what she knew about those three people that made one of them kill her. They all had secrets of one sort, and she was blackmailing them. I’d lay odds on that!”

“Well, Kingsley came because of his son’s death,” Pitt replied. “Mrs. Serracold wanted to contact her mother, so presumably hers is a family matter lying in the past. We have to be certain who Cartouche is, and why he came.”

“And why he wouldn’t even tell her his name!” Tellman said angrily. “For my money, that means he’s someone we’d recognize. And his secret is so bad he won’t risk that.” He grunted. “What if she recognized him? And that was why he had to kill her?”

Pitt thought about it for a few moments. “But according to both Mrs. Serracold and General Kingsley, he didn’t want to speak to anyone in particular . . .”

“Not yet! Perhaps he would have, once he’d really believed she could do it!” Tellman said with rising certainty. “Or perhaps when he was convinced she was genuine, he would have asked for someone. What if he was still testing her? From both witnesses, it sounds as if that was what he was trying to do.”

Tellman was right. Pitt acknowledged it, but he had no answer. The suggestion that it had been Francis Wray was not one that he believed, not if it included the possibility that it was he who had deliberately knelt on Maude Lamont’s chest and forced the egg white and cheesecloth down her throat, then held her until she choked to death, gasping and gagging as it filled her lungs, fighting for life.

Tellman was watching him. “We’ve got to find him,” he said grimly. “Mr. Wetron insists it’s this man in Teddington. He says the evidence will be there, if we look for it. He half suggested I send a squad of men over there and—”

“No!” Pitt cut across him sharply. “If anyone goes, I will.”

“Then you’d better go today,” Tellman warned. “Otherwise Wetron may—”

“Special Branch is in charge of this case.” Again Pitt interrupted him.

Tellman stiffened, his resentment still clear in his eyes and the hard set of his face. His jaw was tight and there was a tiny muscle ticking in his temple. “Don’t have a lot to show for it, though, do we?”

Pitt felt himself flush. The criticism was fair, but it still hurt, and the fact that in Special Branch he was out of his depth, and aware of it, and someone else had his position in Bow Street, made it worse. He did not dare to think of failure, but it was always at the back of his mind, waiting for an unguarded moment. When he was at home in the empty house, weary and without any clear idea where to look next, it was a black hole at his feet and falling into it was a possibility all too real.

“I’ll go,” he said curtly. “You’d better do more to find out how she got her blackmail material. Was it all watching and listening, or did she do some active research? It may help to know.”

Tellman appeared undecided, one emotion conflicting with another in his face. It looked like anger and guilt, perhaps regret for having said aloud what was in his mind. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he muttered, and turned to leave.